The Watchers

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  Had Dante—or the beings he seemed to work for, the overlords—had a hand in the disaster after all? Had they caused it?

  * * * *

  Claire could hear the distinct ring tone of her cell as she neared the tent once more. She stiffened and then rushed to her sister’s tent and began searching the cot where she’d slept. Naturally enough, the ringing had stopped by the time she managed to unearth the fanny pack she’d been wearing when she’d left her apartment and run into the Gestapo that had tried to shoot her.

  She was dismayed when she saw that Dom … Nick had tried to call her nearly a dozen times. It made her reluctant to return the call. He was bound to be pissed off after that many tries and she didn’t particularly feel up to dealing with explanations and apologies at the moment. What could she tell him?

  Not the truth, that was for damn sure!

  She supposed she could tell him part of the story—about running afoul of the soldier and being rescued by Dante—as long as she left out the part about Dante assuming his angel form and flying away with her! She was pretty sure Nick wouldn’t have any trouble believing ‘Father Moreno’ had taken off with her! Clearly he’d had some nasty suspicions in that direction from the first.

  Not that they were completely unfounded as it turned out!

  While she was debating the matter, the phone rang again and she answered.

  “Claire! Thank god! Where are you, babe?”

  Claire chewed her lip, knowing he’d explode if she told him the whole truth but reluctant to lie. She compromised with a partial truth. “Uh … I’m with my sister.”

  There was silence for several moments in response to that. “Well, thank god! Did she come to get you? Or did you meet up with her somewhere? Why didn’t you tell me you were going with your sister?”

  He was pissed and as angering as Claire found that, she also knew he had every reason to be angry. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t actually a plan.” She hesitated for a few moments but when he didn’t respond she tried again. “Don’t be mad, Nick. I truly am sorry. I just didn’t get the chance to let you know before I left. You know how the phones were.”

  She heard Nick let out a long, slow breath and knew he’d been battling his temper and struggling to be reasonable. “Yeah. I didn’t think about that. You could’ve left a note, though. You knew I was trying to make arrangements for you.”

  “Yes, I did, and I’m sorry. I don’t know anything else to say.” She thought it over a minute. “I had to leave. The National Guard arrived and dragged everybody out of their apartment and forced them onto trucks.”

  “Yeah. I know. I looked there first.”

  “Looked where?”

  “The refugee camp they set up near Gainesville.”

  A jolt went through Claire. “Refugee …? Are you serious? They forced everybody out of their homes and stuck them in tents in a damned refugee camp?”

  This time the silence was definitely thick with anger. “They had to move them to safety. What did you think they’d do with everybody?”

  “Maybe leave them alone and let them find more comfortable accommodations with relatives? Never mind. I know you had nothing to do with that. It just pisses me off.”

  “Well, you lucked out and managed to get with your sister. Where are y’all staying?”

  Claire bit her lip, but she had a bad feeling that if she lied about it Nick would catch her in the lie. Besides, she had no reason to lie other than the fact that he wasn’t likely to believe her—and he’d be thoroughly pissed off if he did. “We’re in Kuwait.”

  “Where?”

  Claire cleared her throat. “Kuwait.”

  “Kuwait—Middle East—That Kuwait?”

  “She’s an archeologist. She’s here on a dig,” Claire said a little testily.

  “Oh. She had connections to get you out? I still don’t know how she could’ve arranged a pick up …?”

  Claire sucked in a sustaining, calming breath. No way was she going to tell him the truth or make anything up. He was pissed off and he was going to pick apart any lie she could think up and be angrier. And he really would blow a gasket if she told him the truth and he believed her. “Well … I’m safe. I appreciate your efforts for me, but I’m ok. How are things going?”

  He seemed inclined to pursue the subject, but he reluctantly let it drop and gave her a report. It was a very upsetting report even though she thought he whitewashed it for her benefit. Thousands were missing and presumed dead. Everyone within a ten mile radius of ‘ground zero’ had been ordered out or removed and there were outer circles beyond that that had been designated as dangerous levels one through four and color coded according to the perceived threat level. Citizens in the danger zones had been warned to stay alert for the latest news in case they were ordered to evacuate. Florida was in a state of emergency, but it wasn’t the only one. The refugees that had fled so far had cleaned out most of the supplies in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi and were headed north like a cloud of locusts.

  It was hard to decide who to feel sorrier for—the people, like her, that had been forced from their homes and frightened away with little more than the clothes on their backs or the people who had the things the refugees needed. In short order, the refugees had stripped them of fuel, food, and water.

  The interstates, as far north as Macon and Birmingham, were parking lots from vehicles that had run out of gas in areas where the earlier refugees had already taken all the fuel available.

  No one, except maybe the government, had ever given a thought to how they would handle thousands of refugees from disaster because there’d never been a disaster on this scale before—or with so little warning that they weren’t able to get supplies and emergency personnel in place and spread out the evacuations.

  And the short answer was, it didn’t matter how much thought had gone in to such a problem. There was no solution. There was no way to handle an influx of thousands of people into an area only prepared to handle the local population. Even if FEMA had enough set aside to take care of that many people, it would take them days to mobilize and get the supplies to where they were needed because the movements of that many people had clogged all the roads, making it impossible to truck in supplies.

  It occurred to her that she hadn’t even told Dante she appreciated him rescuing her. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t realized the full scale of the disaster or what it would mean for her. He’d thought of her and he’d rescued her from the overzealous soldier and having to deal with the nightmare everyone else was dealing with.

  And all she’d done was accuse him of the most horrendous crime!

  And god only knew what Nick had gone through trying to pull strings for her and she’d been uncivil to him just because she was so uncomfortable trying to answer his questions.

  She was feeling pretty low when her sister made it back to the tent.

  Madelyn looked her over sympathetically. “You know, I think we’re still close to the same size. Instead of moping here in the tent, why don’t you change into something to work in and join the dig?”

  Claire sent her a wan smile of gratitude. “Thanks! I might as well at least try to make myself useful.”

  * * * *

  Dante did not know what made him more sick with fury—the fact that the overlords had caused the collapse when they had agreed to wait and give him time to come up with an alternate plan. Or that they’d done it in such a way as to make him feel that it was his fault, that he had failed the people under his guardianship.

  He knew he had not done this heinous thing, had not had a hand in it beyond the fact that he had taken the instruments to scan the caverns for a possible solution. But he had done that much. And the overlords had used the information he had gathered to kill thousands.

  And he knew that he had been distracted by his attachment to Claire, which was a part of the guilt he felt.

  Even now he saw nothing he could have done to prevent it and no alternate that he would have been abl
e to come up with to prevent the catastrophe, but he felt the burden of guilt none the less.

  And Claire had detected that sense of guilt and, no doubt, interpreted it to mean he truly was responsible of having caused it in some way rather than that he felt at fault for not being able to prevent it.

  He did not think he had ever hated the overlords as much as he did now.

  He had hated them when they had swept away the city where his woman, Nahla, and their sons had lived. He had distanced himself from them in the belief that it would protect them, missed the opportunity to watch his sons grow to manhood and to help guide them. He had deprived himself of being with Nahla when he had longed to go to her.

  And it had not protected them.

  Instead, he realized he had merely protected himself because he had formed no bond with his sons and worn away the bond he had had with Nahla through time and distance. He realized that a great deal of his pain in losing them was pain that he had thrown away opportunities for happiness, and frustration and anger that it had gained him nothing.

  And he had still cared enough for Nahla and his sons and for the humans who had died with them that he had threatened rebellion against the overlords.

  And spent many millennium in stasis undergoing emotional rehabilitation as a result.

  He might, eventually, have come to believe their lie that the destruction of the city was a natural occurrence if they had not created this latest disaster and tried to lie about it, as well.

  He supposed he might go over their heads and try to speak to the council regarding the mishandling of the human trust by the overlords, but, historically speaking, that had been fairly ineffectual. The overlords had been powerful enough even in the beginning, and merciless enough, that few wanted to oppose them. If anything they were more powerful now.

  And they had certainly not mellowed as they gained power!

  What they had done was a violation of the United Worlds Pact. The chances were that the assembly would have approved it anyway since the discovery had had the potential to be disastrous, to possibly result in a new war, but they had not been consulted before the overlords had acted—a tendency the overlords had had since the beginning when they had been appointed to oversee the preserve. And they became bolder and less inclined to uphold the Pact as time went on.

  Thrice in the past war had been fought over this tiny island—once with the humans themselves, and twice with the overlords, who had arbitrarily decided a broad ‘cleansing’ was necessary without consulting the assembly as to whether they were in agreement with that assessment.

  And it looked as if there might be another all out war in the air. He could not speak for the others, but he was inclined to think the gods should be removed as overlords and someone else appointed to the task that was not quite as merciless.

  Chapter Eight

  Even though what appeared to be the entrance to the temple had already been revealed by the diggers, it took days to move all of the debris away so that they had access to the opening beneath the arch of stones. And when they’d completely uncovered it, they discovered the structure had massive stone doors and spent several days more trying to pry them open. It was desperation to enter without destroying anything in the process that finally led to the discovery of the opening mechanism.

  There had been the possibility, of course, that the builders had at some point decided to abandon the temple—or it actually was a tomb that no one was supposed to enter—and the builders had simply dragged a stone into position to prevent anyone from entering. But not only was Madelyn not inclined to believe the structure to be a tomb, she had no intention of allowing that to deter her even if it was.

  Naturally enough, given her training and experience in the field, she had reason to suspect the possibility that there was some hidden mechanism that would open the doors. Even though she wasn’t familiar with the makers of this particular building, she had read about other megalithic structures in the past that had built in ‘magical’ features. Of course, as far as Madelyn had been able to determine, this structure predated anything previously discovered, but she reasoned that that didn’t necessarily mean it predated the desire to make temples seem magical to worshipers and the engineering of the building itself indicated the likelihood that the builders had been intelligent enough to invent something of that nature.

  And sure enough, after a great deal of aggravation, head scratching, and attempts to read the inscription around the door that they hadn’t even begun to decipher yet, they found the key to unlocking the door.

  And they were still shocked and totally unnerved when the doors swung inward without a sound and expelled a gusty sigh of the air that had been trapped within for untold ages.

  As the stale air hit her, it occurred to Claire that there was no telling how long the structure had been sealed or what sort of ‘bugs’ might be living inside. Grabbing her shirt, she covered the lower half of her face.

  Madelyn glanced at her and snickered. “Really, Claire! I didn’t realize you were a germ-a-phobe.”

  Claire lowered the shirt and glared at her. “If we pick up some nasty germ from ten thousand years ago, I’m going to remind you of that snide comment!”

  “Yes, well, it’s hard to contain microbes,” Madelyn pointed out dryly. “Think how easily roaches squeeze through spaces you wouldn’t think they could.”

  True. Claire knew it was probably irrational, and she was still unnerved at the thought.

  Since they were going on the assumption that the structure was a temple or a tomb, because of the size, and also because of the antiquity—because for some odd reason mankind built staggeringly enormous temples even when they lived in huts themselves—they were very cautious once they’d discovered the mechanism that allowed the huge stone doors to swing inward as easily as if they weighed pounds rather than tons.

  Madelyn summoned some of the workers and got them to bring lights and anything they could find to push the lights into the structure to illuminate it, just in case the entrance was booby trapped.

  One of Madelyn’s students brought the battery operated, robotic camera equipment down and set it up to examine the interior for potential danger before they entered and they settled to studying those images with what patience they could muster. Claire didn’t know how Madelyn could contain her impatience to go inside and examine the structure herself! She wasn’t even an archeologist and she desperately wanted to go in!

  Beyond its potential for setting off any booby traps they might have missed before when they shoved the lanterns inside, the video feed wasn’t terribly helpful to Claire’s mind. Either because the camera itself was low quality or because of the interference of the structure, they got more dim, blurry images or pure static than actual pictures. It was finally determined after agonizing hours of peering at the poor quality video feed, however, that the structure was amazingly sound considering its age and that there was no indication that the builders had laid traps for the unwary.

  Instead of everyone—or anyone—immediately trooping inside, however, Madelyn put them to work setting up a power station and floodlights to illuminate the interior for better study. A small generator was brought down and set up and flood lights were carefully positioned inside and the cords run out the entrance to a junction box.

  The wait was actually worth it, despite Claire’s initial pique at yet another delay. When the flood lights came on and flooded the interior with light, a collective gasp of pure awe and amazement went up from everyone who could see the room for the first time in many millennia.

  The ceiling of the structure—or at least the room they’d opened—despite the outward appearance of having been erected in the shape of a pyramid, was a dome. And the dome was painted—was one, enormous painting of the night sky.

  Or at least that was what it first appeared to be. Upon closer inspection, it didn’t appear to be anything as simplistic or even ritualistic as they’d first assumed. They began to notice as soon as they b
egan to examine the ceiling more closely that there were details no ancient people should have known—or that would have been there if the sole purpose was to depict the night sky. The stars weren’t merely depicted as white dots against a velvet black background. The stars were different sizes and colors and each had planets revolving around them, tiny specks of blue, and green or brown—all sorts of colors. Many different sizes, with ‘family’ groups of anywhere from one to ten planets and even moons around some.

  Rather than a mere representation of a night sky, it seemed that someone had gone to a great deal of effort to ‘record’ every detail known to them about the universe and that they had had a vast storehouse of knowledge.

  Claire and Maddie exchanged a long look after they’d examined the solar system nearest the entry. It looked like Earth’s solar system, but no one had known about the outer planets in the system until fairly recent history—after the development of telescopes. They certainly wouldn’t have known ten or twenty thousand years earlier.

  And yet the blue dot followed by a smaller red one, a meteor belt, and then gas giants ….

  Unfortunately, although both of them knew the basics of astronomy from high school, they were way out of their depth in determining the accuracy of this depiction and they knew it.

  “I believe I’ll run back to retrieve my camera/phone.”

  Claire knew Maddie was reluctant to leave at all. It was only the need to have photographic evidence that trumped her reluctance to leave even for a few minutes.

  Well, she wasn’t enthusiastic about dashing off when they’d just found the dome, but it was Madelyn’s discovery. “No. I’ll get it.

  By the time she’d grabbed both her phone and her sister’s and made it back she was breathless enough from dashing around in the heat that she felt light headed. She discovered that while she’d been gone, Madelyn had had the workers set up a grid system to film and photograph the ancient planetarium or observatory—or whatever it actually was.