by James Phelan
“OK, let’s do it.”
Sam followed Cody and the first few hundred metres were easy going, until they came to a sheer cliff face at which point they had no choice but to jump into the river. They floated along, and then Cody was first to shore about a hundred metres down, pulling Sam up onto a rocky ledge.
“Argh!” Sam jumped up from where he’d been seated, catching his breath.
“What?”
“That!” Sam pointed to a large scorpion close to his shoe. It was almost the same size, light yellow in colour and with huge, lobster-like pincers.
“He’s fine. Stomp near him and he’ll run away.”
“Poisonous?”
“A little, wouldn’t hurt much more than a bee sting, though.”
“Yeah, well I think I’m more worried about him carrying me off limb by limb.” Sam stamped his boot and the creature scuttled into a gap between the rocks.
Cody laughed.
“Gee, he’s got like his own lair down there.” Sam shuddered as he peered into the crevasse. “Anything else out here gonna eat me?”
“Not much will want to eat you out here—least, not while you’re alive,” Cody said, pressing on.
“Huh?”
“I mean nothing will attack you. But if you were a rotting corpse, that’d be a different story. Then all kinds of animals would come for a feed. Eagles, condors, mountain lions …”
“Sounds great,” Sam mumbled. “Must remember not to become a rotting corpse down here.”
27
ALEX
Alex stood inside the maintenance area of the Washington Monument. A sign said it was closed to the public pending an engineer’s safety inspection due to renovations and maintenance. There was a site room with a few empty desks, and with no one in sight, Alex called the Enterprise’s emergency number and asked for the Director.
“He’s unavailable,” the operator replied.
“Shiva,” Alex said, “put me through to Shiva.”
“Please hold.”
Alex used the time to catch his breath.
“Yo, this is Shiva,” the familiar voice said.
“Shiva, it’s Alex—”
“Hey man, how goes it?”
“I’ve got an emergency here,” Alex said, explaining the mysterious disappearance of his mother and the other Agents.
“You’ve had no contact with any of them for how long?”
“A while,” Alex hedged. “But I’ve looked everywhere.”
“Why didn’t you call in sooner?”
“I wanted to see if I could figure out what was going on,” Alex said, feeling a bit dumb about it now. “I thought I could fix this—whatever this is.”
“OK. You’re at the Washington Monument now?”
“Yep.”
“All right, look,” Shiva said, “leave Phoebe and the others to me. I’ll direct whatever resources we’ve got in the area to you so we can find them.”
“OK, thanks.”
“Meantime, this changes everything—your mission there is now no longer one of waiting and watching to see if anyone turns up.”
“What is it now?” Alex asked.
“You’re going to have to make sure that the Washington Monument is shut down.”
“Shut down? What do you mean?”
“I mean take it out of operation so that Mac or Stella or whoever can’t get it operational.”
“And how exactly do I do that?”
“I’m working on it,” Shiva said. “OK, here, I’ve got the schematics in front of me. You need to get to the top and disconnect the transceiver.”
“And where’s that?”
“It’ll be in the pyramidion—the point at the top of the Monument. There’s an access hatch near to it. Go through that and then you’ll see an aluminum apex that forms the capstone. Pry it open and disconnect all the wiring.”
“Like, just unplug it?”
“Well, it’d be a lot better if you could take it out of action more, shall we say, permanently.”
“I’m not going to destroy the Washington Monument!” Alex exclaimed.
“No, geez, I mean just cut any wires you find. Rip it all apart, rather than just switch it off,” Shiva said. “That’ll buy us time until we get a tech out there to disable it for good.”
“So you want me to get to the top of the world’s tallest obelisk and wreak whatever havoc I can on whatever tech I find under the capstone, all the while avoiding capture.”
“Sounds about right. Oh, and I’d be wary of the winds up there—wouldn’t want to get blown off from 170 metres, we’d have to send cleaners to scrape your remains off the Mall.”
“Gee, thanks, you’re a pal,” Alex said.
“Hey, you wanted to be part of this race. Now’s your chance.”
“Yeah, yeah, well you just find my mother and the others. Talk to you on the flip side.”
Alex ended the call and headed into the sub-basement and pressed the elevator call button. Least there’s an elevator …
Then he noticed the sign:
ELEVATOR OUT OF ORDER—
TAKE THE STAIRS, ALL 897 OF THEM!
“Ha, big joke …” Alex said, putting his foot on the first step.
28
EVA
“NO!” Eva said, sitting up, startled, looking at Lora who’d shaken her awake.
“You were asleep,” Lora said. “Talking in your sleep.”
Eva nodded. “Where are we?”
“Las Vegas, in our hotel. We walked here after ditching the car and our phones in that underground parking lot on the other side of town, remember?”
Eva sat motionless and unresponsive on the bed, looking out at the view.
“Eva? What’s the matter?” Lora asked, concerned about the expression on Eva’s frozen face.
“I was having a nightmare … about Sam. He’s in trouble!”
“What kind of trouble?”
“He’s …” Eva breathed deeply. “He and Cody. They’re walking into a trap!”
“Are you sure? We’ve got no way of contacting them. Sam doesn’t have his phone, and they’ll already be headed to the Gear location.”
“Cody has a phone,” Eva countered.
“You’re sure?” Lora asked again.
“He did in my dream.”
“That’s good enough for me. Get dressed, and we’ll find a payphone and place a call.”
“Payphone?” Eva asked, slipping into her Stealth Suit which then changed into a black and white dress.
“We may have given that drone the slip when we ditched the car,” Lora said, hurriedly packing up their small collection of things. “But as soon as we place a call to Cody or the Academy, I’m sure they’ll track our location. Let’s be on our way out in case they have people move in.”
“OK,” Eva said, still shaken. They headed out the door.
In the lobby of the hotel they found a row of payphones to the side of the reception area.
“Eva, you keep a lookout,” Lora said, then punched in Jedi’s number. Lora sounded serious as she spoke to him, her words tumbling out quickly one after the other. In under two minutes the conversation was over and they were walking out of the lobby doors. “Jedi is trying to get through to Sam to warn him.”
Lora flagged a taxi and held the back door open for Eva.
“Meanwhile, we’ll either charter a helicopter to get to Sam or …” Lora’s voice trailed off as Eva climbed into the back seat of the cab.
Two black cars roared to an abrupt stop at one end of the hotel’s circular driveway, about six taxis behind them. Several big guys, all wearing suits, scrambled out.
Lora jumped into the front passenger seat of the taxi.
“Drive!” she yelled at the driver, who looked from the two of them to the group of guys headed their way.
“Sorry, lady, I don’t want any trouble with the law,” the driver replied. Then he switched off the engine, opened his door and climbed out, waiting for Lora
and Eva to do the same.
“Do they look like the law to you?” Lora yelled, not moving from her seat.
Eva dived into the driver’s seat, started up the taxi and took off in a cloud of tire smoke. “Hang on!” she yelled as she did a sudden U-turn across six lanes of traffic. The rear of the cab clipped two others waiting in a line, before continuing down the busy road. Once she had steadied the taxi, Eva pressed down harder on the gas. “Where should I go?”
“Another hotel!” Lora said, then pointed. “Take that right, pull into the biggest casino complex you can see, and we’ll lose them inside.”
“Got it!” Eva kept her foot to the floor, seeing the two black cars in pursuit just as she rounded the corner.
“That one!” Lora said, pointing to a huge glittering glass hotel and casino across the road.
Eva pulled into the driveway and parked the car behind the other taxis dropping off and picking up patrons and guests. They jumped out of their taxi, not stopping to even close the doors behind them and ran inside the casino. As they entered the lobby, they changed their Stealth Suits to resemble the uniforms of the staff members they saw walking by.
“Rear exit,” Lora said. “Head for the restaurants and we’ll go through the kitchens out the back.”
“Follow me,” Eva said, spying a sign for the dining room.
They could hear the sound of a commotion breaking out behind them. Eva turned quickly to see six suited men arguing with the casino’s security. The security guards refused them entry.
Lora smiled at Eva as they walked quickly side by side.
“That was some nice work,” she said. “At this rate, you’re going to have me out of a job.”
29
SAM
An hour later, after much walking and scrambling over jagged rocks, they arrived at the fork in the river. Sam immediately felt as if he were re-living his dream.
“Impressive, huh?” Cody said.
A wedge-shaped canyon wall towered above them. Set within it, hidden except from this specific angle, there stood the entrance to a temple, carved into the rock. They waded across the river, grasping at overhanging branches for support, paddling across the current. At the far shore, they walked up to the entrance, Sam wide-eyed in wonder.
“Why would someone have built this here?” Sam asked, touching a stone pillar that had the faded tracings of snakes wrapped around it.
“I don’t know,” Cody said, drinking from a water bottle. “I know the whole region has artifacts dating to the Iron Age, some up to 4000 years old. The Puebloans built lots of stone and mud structures, especially into cliffs and caves like this, though I’ve never seen anything this detailed.”
They began to make their way up the slope of centuries’ worth of rubble that had eroded from the canyon wall. It was like walking up a small sand dune.
“Well, this Gear that we are after?” Sam said. “Most of the Gears we have found so far seem to date from the early 1500s onward.”
“Sounds like about the right period for those Spanish skeletons.”
“Exactly. It’ll probably be near them,” Sam said, thinking back to his time with Rapha in the hidden city of the Cloud People. Then he frowned. “It’s weird, though …”
“What is?” Cody said stopping suddenly.
“That you haven’t seen the Gear in your dream,” Sam said. “I’ve only just really realized. It all felt right, and it matched my dream exactly, so I just assumed that you had.”
“That’s what usually happens?”
“Yep. Up till now it’s always been the same—I dream of the Dreamer, the Dreamer dreams of the Gear.”
“Maybe it’s changed somehow,” Cody said. “I mean, as I was dreaming, maybe it’s been moved.”
“Moved? Maybe, I guess.”
We’ll find out soon enough …
Sam paused at the tunnel entrance, feeling a wave of anxiety stirring within him. Debris blocked most of the way in, leaving no more than a tight crawl space to enter the temple beyond.
He shrugged. “We’re here now. Let’s do this.”
“Lights on,” Cody said, switching on the bright LED flashlight on his helmet. “Watch out for the drop at the end.”
“Huh?” Before Sam could make sense of the warning, Cody had slid down the other side. Thankfully, seeing him down there and watching the path of his light down the steep drop, Sam knew what was ahead. He switched on his own light and then slid down.
“Oww!” Sam hit hard, then looked up and got a fright.
Sabre-toothed tigers carved from the stone stood menacingly outside the door.
“You think they were based on real creatures?” Sam asked.
“What, like around when this place was built?” Cody said.
Sam nodded.
“Doubt it. Sabre-tooths come from a real long time ago—certainly not a time you’d associate with such fancy building work. Could be that different parts have been added on over time.”
“Well, we should watch where we step,” Sam cautioned.
“What are you saying?” Cody said, smiling and turning around. “You think these beasts are still around? I’m pretty sure they died out about ten thousand years ago.”
“No, not that,” Sam said. “But let’s just say I’ve recently been in some secret chambers and long-lost sites like this, and have found out the hard way that there are booby traps.”
“You managed to get through OK,” Cody said.
“I had help,” Sam replied. “In Brazil, we had the benefit of a journal, written by a friend’s godfather, an archaeologist who specializes in the last 13 lore.”
Cody nodded and stepped aside. “How about you lead?” he offered.
They laughed.
“Sure,” Sam replied, full of bravado. “Follow me. And we go slow.”
“Next thing you’ll tell me not to touch anything,” Cody joked.
“That’s probably good advice.” Sam stopped at the threshold. Beyond the small entry door darkness loomed. “Wait a sec.”
Sam looked at the worn inscriptions on the doorway, which included a carving of twelve soldiers marching. “Can I use your phone?”
“Sure,” Cody said. “Reception is patchy down here, though.”
Sam took the phone and called the Academy and asked to be put through to Jedi. The line sounded like it had gone dead and Sam was just about to hang up when Jedi answered.
“Jedi, it’s Sam. Can you hear me?”
“Sam!” Jedi replied. “I can hear you—just. Where are you?”
“I’m going to message you pictures from a temple. We’re about to go in to search for the next Gear.”
“Shoot them through, I’ll have Betsy II crunch them, see what we can find.”
“OK, hang on the line,” Sam said, and snapped a couple of photos on the phone and sent them through.
“So how’s Betsy II?” Sam said, while they waited for the photos to load.
“Oh, you know … she’s a bit more temperamental than original Betsy, but I can’t complain. It’s just nice to be up and running again. How’s the new Dreamer?” Jedi asked.
“All good. Why?” Sam replied.
“It’s just that Lora ca—hang on,” Jedi said, “images coming through. OK, we’ve got an 81% match. They’re Olmec—but the carving of those twelve armed dudes depicts the twelve Hittite Gods of the Underworld … hmm, strange, wrong part of the world, I would have thought. Sure you’re not in a museum, pulling my leg?”
“I’m not, I swear. But thanks,” Sam said. “So, what were you saying about Lora?”
“Oh, right,” Jedi said. “You’re not on speakerphone, are you?”
“No.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing, but Lora says to keep your wits about, she’s not su—”
The line went dead.
“Hello? Jedi, can you hear me?” Sam said loudly.
“What did he say?” Cody asked as Sam handed him back his phone.
“Jedi said a ma
tch came up with an Olmec carving of the twelve Hittites, Gods of the Underworld, I think he said, but the line was pretty rough.”
“Olmec and Hittite?” Cody said, skeptical. “It can’t be, not here. Anything else?”
Sam shook his head, still thinking about the last thing Jedi said.
Lora said to keep my wits about me.
“Look, we came for the Gear,” Sam said, looking behind him. “So how about we go find it? Where are those skeletons?”
“Yeah, about that …” Cody said, not seeming to register Sam’s concern. He checked his helmet light was still on. “Get ready for darkness like you’ve never experienced.”
Sam followed Cody through the doorway and into the inky blackness of the temple proper.
“What’s that noise?” Sam whispered. He fought the urge to panic.
Nothing’s wrong. Yet.
They stopped and listened. Again it came, louder this time. Like a high pitched screaming, then—
Bats.
Thousands of them.
A cloud as thick as a storm front rolled around the corner as Sam and Cody dropped to the floor of the cave. They cowered down and huddled as the flapping wings of the tiny mammals rushed by at great speed.
“That was awesome!” Sam said after they’d passed.
“Yeah! Hey, feel that?” Cody asked.
Sam could feel a cool breeze blowing against his face from the direction of the darkness ahead. “Where’s that coming from?” he asked. “Is there another entrance?”
“Maybe. But I found out the hard way what’s in front of us now. Follow me. Carefully.”
After a few twists and turns down into the labyrinth of the cave, they came across an underground river, its black water roiling in the darkness.
“How do we cross?” Sam said, then stopped in front of a steel frame bolted into the rock floor, a cable disappearing into the fathomless void. He suddenly remembered his dream again. “Wow—the zip line. Cody, I thought you said this site was untouched, and had been for about five hundred years. So who set this up?”
“Uh, I really don’t know …”
“And look at all these footprints! At least two sets aside from ours.”