by James Ponti
Each one had a label with a red dot. The question was, how had they ended up in the possession of Stavros Sinclair?
23. Asgard
IN THE PRECEDING WEEKS, BROOKLYN had traveled by transatlantic jet, high-speed train, and unmarked spy plane. So it wasn’t surprising that she felt more at home riding the Metro to the outskirts of Paris. All she had to do was close her eyes, and it was like she was back in New York on the subway. She was, however, less comfortable with the spur-of-the-moment mission the group was undertaking.
Along with Sydney, Paris, Rio, and Kat, she was on her way to see if they could break into Asgard, Sinclair Scientifica’s secondary headquarters, so she could hack into the company’s mainframe. While she was on board with the goal of the mission, it was its spur-of-the-moment quality that concerned her. They’d spent weeks preparing for specific assignments, and now on the first day of the operation, they were already making it up as they went along. Maybe this was how things normally happened. She didn’t know.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Brooklyn asked.
“It’s not like we’re actually going to break in,” Sydney replied confidently. “We’re just collecting intel to see if it’s possible.”
“But shouldn’t we tell Mother or Monty?”
“Mother’s doing his National Gallery thing, and Monty’s meeting with the scientists on her panel for tomorrow’s symposium,” she replied. “We don’t want to risk blowing their covers. Besides, this is part of our original mission.”
Brooklyn shot her a skeptical look. “Riding out to some industrial park on the edge of the city is part of our original mission?”
“No,” said Sydney. “But hacking into the mainframe is. It’s not our fault MI6 doesn’t know where it is.”
For the moment, Sydney was the alpha, and that seemed to be good enough for the others. Since no one else was questioning the plan, Brooklyn decided to go along with it too.
“Speaking of MI6,” said Paris. “How’d they get this so wrong?”
“I was thinking about that,” answered Kat. “Remember when Tru showed us the final room during training? She said it was the one thing they weren’t sure about. They just assumed it was the server room.”
“Because it had so many vents and air-conditioning,” added Sydney. “The server room has to be cooler than any other part of the building.”
“Which makes me wonder what’s up there,” said Rio. “What else needs to be kept that cool?”
“I think it’s the climate system Juliette told us about,” said Kat. “You know how she said it adjusts temperatures and sends extra oxygen into rooms that need it? It’s all part of their ‘intelligent building’ plan.”
The area surrounding the Metro station was more industrial than the parts of Paris they’d already seen. Apparently the presence of Sinclair Scientifica had played an influence, because many of the businesses had tech names and logos.
Paris checked a map on his phone and tried to orient himself. “According to this, the Asgard campus is this way,” he said, pointing down the street.
“Why’s it called Asgard?” asked Rio.
“Because, like all things Sinclair Scientifica, it’s mythological,” said Brooklyn. “Olympus is the home of the gods in Greek mythology, and Asgard is the home of the gods in Norse mythology.”
“Oh great,” said Rio. “Another mythology geek.”
“If you’re a fan of mythology, there’s an excellent class about it at Kinloch,” Paris said enthusiastically. “I’m the teaching assistant.”
“Actually,” Brooklyn said sheepishly, “I only know that about Asgard because I like Thor movies. I’m more into Marvel than myths.”
Everyone laughed at this.
“Well, you’re right,” said Paris. “Asgard is the home of the Norse gods. According to legend it was protected by an enormous stone wall built by a creature called a rock giant. The wall was impenetrable except for one small weakness.”
“What was that?” asked Sydney.
“There was a trickster god named Loki who duped him into not finishing the gate,” he said. “So the gods didn’t have to pay him for his labor.”
“Oh, I like Loki,” said Brooklyn. “At least, I like the actor who plays him in the movies.”
A few minutes later they reached the building, and Sydney said what everybody else was thinking.
“Unlike Thor, Loki, and all the other Norse gods, I’m pretty sure Stavros Sinclair paid all his bills,” she said. “This wall looks pretty solid.”
The barrier surrounding the property looked more like something around a prison than an office building. It was sixteen feet tall and topped with razor wire.
“That’s some serious security,” Rio said, stating the obvious. “What are they keeping in there? Gold?”
Inside the wall a parking lot ringed a modern glass-and-steel building three stories tall. They walked around the entire complex and discovered that there were three openings, two for cars and one for pedestrians. Each had a gate manned by an armed guard.
“Well, the good news is that I don’t think we have to worry about the Purple Thumb striking here,” Sydney said once they’d completed their lap. “I don’t see how they could get over that wall or past those guards. The bad news is that we can’t do it either.”
“No way,” said Paris.
Sydney turned to Brooklyn. “And this is why we don’t bother Mother or Monty until we know there’s something actually worth bothering them about. Mother’s just going to have to tell Tru that there’s no way for us to access the mainframe.”
Brooklyn nodded. “Got it.”
It wasn’t until they were walking back to the Metro station that Paris recognized some familiar buildings and said, “You know, we’re not too far from Confiserie Royale.”
“What’s that?” asked Brooklyn.
“It’s an abandoned candy factory,” said Paris. “Or at least it was when Mother found me living in it.”
“Wait! You mean the warehouse where you rescued him from the fire?” asked Brooklyn.
“That’s the one,” he said.
“Let’s go see it,” Sydney said, excited.
“Really?” asked Paris.
“Absolutely,” said Sydney. “It’s like the birthplace of our team.”
Suddenly a disappointing trip had become interesting again. The building was only a half mile away, yet it seemed like it was in a different world. The high-tech industrial park surrounding Asgard gave way to old warehouses and abandoned factories. Confiserie Royale was still empty, although there were indications things were about to change.
A shiny new chain-link fence surrounded the property, and the weeds that once overran the parking lot had been cleared. There was a sign for a demolition company, and the windows had been removed so that only the shell of the building remained.
“Look at that,” Sydney said when she saw the fire damage on the exterior wall. The once-blue paint had been charred black by the smoke and flames pouring out of the windows. “That fire must have been horrific.”
Paris was overwhelmed by the damage, which was worse than he remembered. “I was hiding over there,” he said, pointing to where he’d crawled beneath an old truck. “And the cars and people were there.” He motioned to a spot by the entrance and paused as the memory replayed in his mind.
“It was so brave of you to rescue him,” said Rio. “Stupid, but brave.”
“Stupid-but-brave is my specialty,” Paris joked.
“How’d you get in and out?” asked Brooklyn.
This memory made him smile. “My secret entrance,” he said. “It’s funny if you think about it. The thing that kept him alive was traveling through the City of the Dead.”
“The what of the what?” Brooklyn asked, alarmed.
“There are countless tunnels, catacombs, and abandoned mines underneath this part of the city,” he said. “They’re filled with the bones of dead Parisians. When I lived here, that’s how
I got around. Mother and I escaped through one of the passageways.”
“I can’t believe that you used to sneak around tunnels filled with dead people,” Rio said with a shiver.
Paris nodded. “Unlike the living, the dead can’t hurt you,” he said. “I felt safest when I was underground.”
Everyone was grossed out but Kat. She was intrigued. “If there are tunnels beneath this part of the city,” she said, “does that mean there might be one underneath Asgard?”
24. The Catacombs
FOR HUNDREDS OF YEARS, MUCH of Paris was built with limestone mined from nearby quarries to the south. As the city grew and expanded in that direction, the mines were covered over by the construction of new roads and neighborhoods, which created a labyrinth made up of nearly two hundred miles of tunnels.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these tunnels were used to store human remains from overcrowded cemeteries. During the French Revolution, royal family members and aristocrats went underground to escape the Reign of Terror. And when the Nazi army occupied Paris, the French Resistance used the catacombs as a base of operations to fight for freedom.
In many places, the tunnels had been reinforced with massive columns to keep the buildings above from collapsing down into them. And, with the exception of a small area open to tourists, it was illegal to venture into them.
Despite this, exploring the catacombs was a popular Parisian pastime.
The team certainly wasn’t going to let the threat of a possible fine keep them from searching for a secret passage into Asgard. If they could find that, Sinclair Scientifica’s mainframe would be within reach.
Paris explained that the trip would take three to four hours, and because there was no cellular service underground, there’d be no way to communicate with the world above. They decided to split up, with Rio and Kat returning to the hotel to let Monty know what was happening, while Paris led Sydney and Brooklyn down below. Once they’d stopped at a store and picked up some flashlights and bottled water, they were ready to go.
“Welcome to the Gate of Hell,” he said as they approached a pair of matching buildings on opposite sides of a public square called Place Denfert-Rochereau.
“Wait, what?” Brooklyn asked, stopping in her tracks.
“Hundreds of years ago, Paris was a walled city, and this was the southern entrance,” he said. “It was called the Barrière d’Enfer, or Gate of Hell, and marks the beginning of the catacombs. This is where we’re going underground.”
It was the magic hour between day and night when there was just enough light for them to see what they were doing but also enough darkness so they could slip into the shadows. Paris led them down a mossy embankment into an abandoned train tunnel where he found a narrow passageway leading to something he called a “wormhole.”
“There’s a chamber directly below us,” he said. “If you wiggle through this hole, you’ll fall through it and down into the catacombs.” He smiled, and before the girls could ask any follow-up questions, he crawled down into an opening just wide enough for his shoulders. He wriggled for a moment and disappeared from view. The girls stared at each other.
“This is crazy,” said Brooklyn. “We are literally entering an underground city of the dead through a wormhole at the Gate of Hell.”
Sydney smiled and replied, “Suddenly climbing a wall doesn’t sound so bad, does it?”
Brooklyn was smaller than Paris, but her wriggling skills definitely needed work. She scraped her shoulder against a rock, got stuck for a moment, and when she finally made her way through, slammed face-first into a mound of dirt.
“Unff,” she said as the impact knocked the wind out of her.
She was spitting dust out of her mouth when Paris urgently yelled, “Roll to your left! Roll to your left!”
Despite being totally disoriented, Brooklyn managed to spin onto her side and get out of the way just in time as Sydney crashed into the same spot with a splat.
The two girls sat up and tried to wipe the dirt from their faces. When they’d cleared enough to open their eyes, the first thing they saw was a smiling Paris.
“Welcome to my old neighborhood,” he said.
“Lovely,” said Brooklyn.
“Makes the Three Lions look like the Palace of Versailles,” added Sydney.
“We’ll use my torch first,” Paris said as he turned on his flashlight, illuminating the way down a narrow corridor. “Save your batteries.”
It was about fifteen degrees cooler than it had been on the surface, and there was a dampness they could feel in their lungs.
“How well do you remember the way?” Sydney asked as they walked, hunched over so their heads wouldn’t hit the stone ceiling.
“Well enough to get us close,” he said. “Then we’ll have to search around.”
Having never been in an ancient catacomb before, neither Sydney nor Brooklyn knew what to expect. Some tunnels were claustrophobic while others opened onto huge stone chambers. There was graffiti on the walls, but people had also painted impressive replicas of masterpieces like the Mona Lisa.
They stopped periodically to catch their breath and take a few sips of water. It was just after their third break that they turned a darkened corner and Brooklyn let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Directly ahead of them was a wall, ten feet tall, made entirely of human bones that had been carefully stacked so that a line of skulls was right at eye level. Just the sight of it was every one of Brooklyn’s worst nightmares rolled into one.
“Are you okay?” Paris asked. “By the time I remembered, it was too late to warn you.”
As Brooklyn tried to keep from hyperventilating, Sydney used her flashlight to see how far the wall stretched and discovered it continued into the darkness well beyond the reach of her beam.
“Crikey,” said Sydney. “You told us that there were dead bodies down here, but it’s endless.”
“How … many … are … there?” Brooklyn asked in between deep breaths.
“I read somewhere that it’s six million people,” he answered. “Let’s keep going.”
He started walking, but Brooklyn didn’t move a muscle.
“Come on, Brooklyn,” he said to her. “It’s best we get you away from here.”
“I can’t,” she replied. “I’m sorry.”
Paris moved closer so that his face was right in hers.
“Forget the bones,” he said. “Just look at me. I’ll be in front of you, going where you should go. Point yourself in the right direction and follow your eyes. You are much braver than you realize.”
She nodded. “I can do that.”
It took them about fifteen minutes to make it past the bones, and Brooklyn spent most of that time focusing on Paris directly in front of her. At one point she stumbled, and when Sydney reached out of the darkness to help her up, she practically jumped out of her skin.
“I like this much better,” a relieved Brooklyn said when they reached a wide part of the tunnel where the walls were made of stone and blue signs marked which streets ran directly above them.
“Why are there road signs?” asked Sydney. “No one’s supposed to come down here.”
“True, but people do, and the city doesn’t want them to get lost forever,” he explained. “Besides, there is an agency called the Inspection générale des carrières that’s in charge of catacombs and has to make sure the buildings and roads don’t collapse. The signs help them keep track of where they are while they’re working. That’s also why there are lights along some sections.”
After nearly two hours, Paris said they were close to the old candy factory. He even pointed out a little room where he and Mother had slept the night of the fire.
“He was too weak from the smoke to make it out,” Paris said. “So we stayed here.” He couldn’t believe he was back five years later.
Using a map and the compass on his phone, Paris was able to lead them to a spot he thought should be directly beneath Asgard.
“You can’t make a call, but you don’t need service for the compass to work,” he said. “It uses a magnetic concentrator built into the phone. That’s important to remember if you ever get lost somewhere without a cell tower.”
“Good to know,” she said. “Although, remember what happened when you tried to teach me to use a compass during training.”
He laughed. “That’s right, you got lost in the woods.”
“I think I’ll just try to stay close to one of you guys,” she replied.
“Good idea,” he said.
“Look at this,” Sydney said, pointing toward a shaft that led toward the surface. “Let’s check it out.”
Cast-iron rungs were cemented into the wall, and since Sydney made the discovery, she went first, followed by Brooklyn and then Paris.
The rungs were hard and cut into their palms as they climbed, but Brooklyn reminded herself it was less painful than climbing the wall at Pinewood. It took about ten minutes to make it to the top, and when they did, they discovered that they hadn’t made it to Asgard quite yet.
They’d reached a storm drain directly across the street from one of the guard gates. Luckily, it was dark, and with their flashlights turned off, the guards couldn’t see them.
“We’re close,” said Paris. “Anything about fifty to one hundred meters in that direction should put us right underneath.”
The process of climbing down the ladder was slow, and at one point the mud on the bottom of Sydney’s shoe caused her to slip and almost fall.
They spent the next thirty minutes searching the area beneath the building until Brooklyn spotted something that looked out of place. Someone had painted a stylized night scene with glowing stars like Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
“What’s wrong?” Sydney asked when she saw Brooklyn studying it.