The Pandora Chronicles - Book 1 (A Scifi Adventure Thriller)

by Attard, Ryan

  “Here,” he said once he finished. They both stared at the screen blankly as it showed a point in the Caribbean Sea, south of Florida. It was quite literally in the middle of nowhere.

  “Thank you,” she said, as she took the phone back and began tapping it, no doubt sending the new intelligence to her superiors. Then she looked up at Nick, and for a second he was staring at his old friend, not the secret agent. “Do you want to tell me why had you in tears halfway through that? Or are you still struggling with those trust issues?”

  Nick rubbed his eyes, suddenly self-conscious. “Well, we did promise to trust each other. Just never thought I’d cry in front of you, and just when I was starting to impress you.”

  She smiled. “The first time you impressed me was when you beat the weather man’s predictions right down to the month, during my first year at the compound.”

  He mirrored her smile as the memory replayed itself in his head. “Okay, then,” he said. “Turns out I was right. We Select are all about bonds, and I’ve experienced the strongest one out there—family.” He watched as her eyes widened. “Finnegan, Ollie, and I are all distant relatives. Same family tree.”

  “Oh, wow.” She looked away, still unsure what to do with the information. “Are Select powers inherited, then?”

  “I came to the same conclusion,” Nick replied. “I think if you look back far enough, all Select came from the same DNA strand. Maybe we all have the same common caveman ancestor or something.”

  He stood up and rubbed his numb backside.

  “Either way,” he said nonchalantly, as he flexed his shoulders with as much bravado as he could muster. “We have a location and a coffin to get to. Pack something warm and revealing.” He gave Excalibur a sleazy smile. “We’re going down south.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “How is it that you manage to make everything sound so dirty? Is that one of your special talents, too?”

  “Nah, that’s all me, baby.”

  Chapter 30

  The following two days were a mess of travel and weary conversation.

  Agent Excalibur booked a flight to Florida—and immediately cursed the island of Malta. There were no direct flights, forcing the two of them to catch a flight to Heathrow, England, then another to Key West International Airport. Thirteen hours of flying, another five lurking around in airports, and neither one of them was feeling particularly happy.

  Excalibur was used to this scrutiny; Nick was not. He got grouchy and snappy, and his mood only lifted when he was completely absorbed by the red book. He felt whole every time he perused those pages, mesmerized by the mysteries within.

  Once at Key West, they both proceeded to find a motel room and a restaurant, although they ended up settling for a diner. “I don’t care so long as I get coffee and something not from a plane cart,” had been Nick’s only request. They spent their eating time in silence—she, using her NSA channels to obtain a vessel and sea permits for their trip, and he, browsing the nearest diving shop for their equipment.

  Following that, they decided both of them deserved a good night’s sleep.

  “Don’t come crawling in my bed when you feel lonely,” Nick joked as they both peeled their separate beds.

  He stared as Excalibur unabashedly peeled off her shirt and pants, leaving her standing in a smaller tank top and panties. He watched her very intently as she bent over to stuff her clothes in her gym bag, together with the business suit she wore in Malta.

  “You’re drooling,” she reprimanded.

  Nick was suddenly self-conscious of his staring, but couldn’t mutter an apology. He was experiencing the stupefaction that all men went through when a very beautiful woman nonchalantly strips in front of them and prepares to sleep in a bed only an arm’s length away.

  All he could manage was to look away and peek at her from his peripheral vision.

  She cocked her eyebrows at him, before calmly reaching into the gym bag’s side pocket and extracted a small handgun.

  “If you try anything,” she said, pulled back the slide, “I’ll blow your head off.” She shot him a dirty smirk. “Both of them.”

  She tucked the firearm under her pillow and proceeded to slowly put one leg under the sheets of the bed and then the other, giving Nick a perfect view of how far she can stretch her long, smooth, creamy legs.

  Nick forced himself to think of the gun, and the ease with which Excalibur can cause him harm. Still, he couldn’t help himself.

  “Not the kind of blowing I was hoping for,” he murmured.

  “Good night, Solomon,” she retorted.

  Nick got into his bed and looked at the back of her head, mesmerized by the golden sheen of her hair, like a field of wheat from some fantasy-themed picture.

  “Good night, Maddie.”

  ***

  “Well, hell-o, Sailor,” Excalibur said as he stepped onto the deck wearing a wet suit.

  They were in the middle of the ocean, on a small speedboat that was idly bobbing on the surface of the crystal blue ocean water, somewhere between the Key West islands and Dry Tortugas National Parks, and about an hour from the nearest shore.

  Nick hated wearing wet suits—it was a gross misconception, thinking that a skin tight outfit will make your muscles bulge and emphasize the size of your manhood. That only happens in cheap erotica novels.

  The reality was far more embarrassing—Nick felt himself being pressed in areas which had no business being pressed.

  “It’s cold out here,” he replied half-heartedly. He saw her raise her eyebrows and decided to fight fire with fire. “You could have confirmed the authenticity last night.”

  She smirked. “It’s okay, I prefer the gun. It never fails to perform.”

  “You know,” he said, running a hand through his hair, “once all this blows over, you and I should get together. Share some stories, reconnect. Maybe at some fancy hotel back in Miami.”

  Excalibur gave him a serious look. “You do know I’m the one who’s going to buddy-check you, right?”

  A buddy was a diving partner, someone to rely on in case it all goes south. Before a dive, the buddy would check all their partner’s equipment—and that included making sure the oxygen tank was properly opened.

  Excalibur ran her hands over Nick’s equipment, checking for leaks or loose clips.

  “You’re fine,” she said as she tightened a strap on his BCD.

  He offered her a cheesy smile. “You’re very pretty, yourself.”

  She rolled her eyes and pushed, sending Nick over the edge of the boat and into the water.

  The jet-propelled one-man vehicle carried him deeper and deeper into the ocean. It took Nick a couple of minutes to fully adjust himself underwater, but diving is like riding a bike—once done, it’s never forgotten. The clear waters and reef corals of the Caribbean were quite a sight. More than once, Nick found himself mesmerized by the vast array of colorful fish, and only the pain of equalization in his ears made him focus on the task at hand.

  The underwater navigation computer on his wrist had a GPS function and told him exactly when and where to stop. He switched off the vehicle and unhooked a metal detector and some markers. He went around the area, all the while praying to all he considered sacred that he was on the right spot.

  The Select powers functioned better than any computer. He had managed to calculate the tidal changes over entire years in relation to the geography he was in, narrowing it down to a square kilometer.

  But if he was off by just a single digit he’d end up having to canvas entire nautical miles all by himself. He had neither the physical strength nor the oxygen required for such a feat. Excavations of this type required multiple people. The coffin was a small object by comparison to some of the larger stuff he had dug up before but now he understood why entire teams came down here—the work is tedious, and it was very easy to feel alone and scared in the vast ocean out in the middle of nowhere.

  Nick checked his depth gauge again. At this depth, he ha
d ten, maybe twenty, minutes before nitrogen built up in his body. Not much time to work with. He had to have the exact location, otherwise the whole mission would be a bust and they would have wasted an entire day. At least the coffin’s supposed location wasn’t too deep. Perhaps some cosmic entity wanted him to find this logbook, like it was destiny, and he was meant to find the artifact.

  The metal detector let out a frantic burst of clicks, like a psychotic dolphin, and Nick ran it along the area to determine where he should set up the markers. He marked one side, and then another, until a coffin-sized area emerged.

  No freakin’ way, he thought. He felt light and giddy. He’d found it, exactly where his abilities told him it would be. The logbook, the final step to the artifact, was only a few inches of iron away from him.

  Nick pushed all notion of celebration aside for now and remain as calm as possible. It was easy to lose precious time and oxygen, neither of which he had a lot of.

  He would have plenty of time for celebration once above water.

  The gauge informed him that he had one minute before nitrogen narcosis, so he had to work extra fast. His training as an archaeologist took over, and he worked efficiently, tying a piece of bright cloth as a marker, securing the marker poles and tracing a trench where he would have to start blowing debris away and excavating. Once done, he latched onto the underwater vehicle and ascended at an angle at top speed.

  Once at five meters, he swam under the boat where Excalibur had dangled a net full of equipment. There he found an extra oxygen tank and shrugged out of his BCD. He undid his now-empty tank, and exchanged it for a fresh one, while shoving the old one inside the net.

  He also found a small emergency tank, much like the one he used to escape the helicopter in Venice. Nick shivered at that horrible memory and glared at the tank as if it had been somehow responsible for his ordeal. He tucked it into his BDC and checked the other equipment. The shoveling equipment, which had not been easy to come by, was all there, and he bound the items together onto the underwater vehicle. He gave the net a few tugs, signaling for Excalibur to pull it back up. A few seconds later, the towing cable shook, and the cable from which the net was dangling reentered the water, now devoid of any attachments. Nick grabbed the cable and attached the hook to the vehicle before, once again, descending next to his ancestor’s empty coffin.

  He used the vehicle’s jet propeller system to act as a dredge, removing debris and exposing the coffin’s crusted surface. He could tell where the weak coral was, and used a small pick to loosen the edges around the coffin.

  Finally, he tied the coffin with a chain and hooked the towing cable to it. The boat did not have enough power and weight to lift the coffin, so he attached two deflated balloons to the sides and filled them with air. Slowly, they inflated and, like hot air balloons, aided the towing cable in pulling the coffin from its watery grave. Nick hung all the loose equipment to the coffin and slowly watched it rise to the surface, like an overgrown jellyfish. He followed coffin upwards, staying level with it. From his particular angle, the whole thing looked like a Lovecraftian god, an alien from the abyss.

  Just like the ones who started all of this, he thought bitterly. The image of the multi-limbed and multi-headed god from the red book flashed in his head again, sending shivers down his body despite the relatively warm water.

  The coffin broke the water’s surface but Nick remained submerged, resting five meters below the surface for a safety stop. Excalibur would have to haul the coffin on her own.

  Nick looked up at the surface, taking in the first few moments of peace in a long time, while staring at the giant golden sun in the sky, distorted by the clear Caribbean water.

  Chapter 31

  They clinked their bottles in celebration. The sun was out, sending warm beams of light on the boat. Nick sat casually on the coffin and had shed all of his diving paraphernalia, before wrapping himself in a towel to dry up.

  “So, do I get any bonus points for this one?” he asked.

  “The United States thanks you for your services,” Excalibur replied.

  “Sounds like you guys are firing me.”

  “Depends on what we find in that thing,” she said, pointing at Nick’s seat.

  He took a final swig and put his bottle down. “Hand me that crowbar, will you?”

  She complied and watched him jab it into the seam between the lid and the coffin, putting all his weight behind it. The coffin creaked, groaned and, after Nick’s face turned a funny shade of purple, it finally gave. The inside was lined with hay and wood, all sealed with thick wax and hardened black tar. Nick rummaged inside the hay until his hand struck something solid. He extracted a small wooden box and opened the latch.

  The Belladonna’s logbook dropped in Nick’s hand.

  He opened the book and started reading, his eyes squinting at the tiny handwriting. Erratically, he flipped to the last entry, the El Dorado trip.

  “No, no, no.”

  “What is it?” Excalibur asked.

  Nick handed her the book and watched her try to figure out the weird series of words and letters. The alphabet was the one they were familiar with, but the words themselves made no sense whatsoever.

  “A code?” she asked.

  “Yep.” Nick sighed. “Another freakin’ code.”

  Excalibur shrugged. “Can’t you just solve it? Isn’t that what Select do?”

  The red ledger was nearby, and Nick grabbed it. Yes, he could still read the symbols. He figured it was some sort of primitive language when he first examined the book but hadn’t given it much thought. He was too busy getting shot at or blown up. But now, that same ledger confirmed the origin of his abilities: deduction and calculation.

  Nick pointed at the logbook in her hand. “I know some dead languages, and what I don’t know, I can deduce. Kind of like a Rosetta stone. But this—this is completely made up. Nothing I can do without the key to the code.”

  “So, essentially, you’re stuck?”

  “It would seem so.”

  “Then, what now?” Excalibur dropped the logbook on the coffin and crossed her arms. “Surely you didn’t bring me out here in the middle of nowhere just to look for an old book and clue you can’t solve,” she said, each syllable more passive aggressive than the previous one.

  Nick smirked at her. “I said I was stuck. But I may know someone who can solve this. A last resort.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Professor Brightmoore.”

  She scowled at him. “I don’t know who that is, Solomon. What makes this guy so special that you trust him with classified data and not the NSA?”

  “You may remember him as Doctor Hillweather,” Nick said.

  It took a while before realization washed over Excalibur’s expression. “The old English guy from the compound? The one with all the spooky stories? Is he still around?”

  Nick briefly nodded. “Turns out he left the camp a few years after I did,” he said. “He went on to become one of the world’s leading experts on dead languages and cryptology. He also created a program which can decipher any code or language with just a few lines. I ran into him when I needed early Viking pictography decoded some years ago.”

  “Solomon, you just said you can solve any code as long as you have the key,” she countered. “What makes this program so special? Both you and the program need the key.”

  “I’m getting to that.” Nick tapped the red ledger. “It’s not his invention that makes him special, but his former status in the camp. You remember the codes the senior members used to pass orders around?”

  She nodded.

  “I couldn’t solve those either,” Nick continued. “Like that time we were used as messengers from one safe house to another and spent two whole days trying to crack the code but couldn’t. I think it’s the same code. Think about it. They were as paranoid as they come about these aliens but they would be even more paranoid about Select—people with powers they couldn’t understand. It’s
only natural that they would take measures against us.”

  “Anti-Select methods of encryption,” Excalibur said. “The NSA would be very interested to take a look at that.”

  “Sure,” Nick said. “Like I give a damn if we really did make it to the moon. I wanna go to Brightmoore because he’s the only one I know with the tech and intel to solve this. Two birds, one stone.”

  Excalibur nodded. “Okay,” she said, extracting her phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  She frowned at him and put her phone to her ear. “I’m calling a trace on the guy and having a team apprehend him.”

  “No, no.” Nick stood up and snatched both the ledger and logbook. “Are you insane? Have you forgotten how they used to operate? The moment he feels threatened he’ll erase all data and escape. And if he can’t escape, he’ll kill himself—easy as that.”

  “Then, what do you suggest?” she asked impatiently.

  “Let us visit him, just you and me. Two people isn’t as threatening as a freakin’ SWAT team showing up on his front door. Besides, I know the guy. We sort of stayed in touch after he helped me out.”

  Excalibur scowled at him for a second before reluctantly putting her phone away. “Fine. We’ll try it your way.”

  “Thank you,” Nick said, putting the books down again. “Is everyone at the NSA this trigger-happy?”

  “From what I read on your file, you seem to get off on danger,” she replied with a grin.

  “I have a file?”

  “A big one.”

  He smirked. “Seems like someone likes reading about me when she’s alone at night.”

  She cocked her eyebrow at him. “And who said anything about being alone?” Before Nick could retort, Excalibur quickly changed the subject. “What’s Brightmoore’s last known address?”

  “Cibola, Arizona,” he replied. “The irony—Cibola is also the name of a mythological lost city.”

  “Maybe its destiny.”

  Nick rolled his eyes. “Freakin’ destiny.”