by Sean Platt
“I don’t expect you to know everything, Cameron. I just wish you’d admit when you don’t. Yusef explained it to you and not me, fine. But if you’d told me he’d been less than forthcoming, I’d at least have known what I was dealing with. If you’d said upfront that you weren’t entirely sure of the directions—”
“But I was sure! Yusef showed me what all of these—!”
“If you’d just told me you weren’t sure of the directions,” Benjamin patiently repeated, “I’d have taken the time to search for glyphs in the tunnels. We’d have taken longer, but we’d at least have found what we were looking for.” Another sigh then a lift in his voice. “Come on. Let’s look around, take some photos. Then we’ll just retrace our steps.”
As Benjamin began making his way around the room’s edge, Cameron looked at the small object his father had given him. It was a coin, apparently — about the size of a half dollar. It seemed to be made of an unknown brown metal, battered, with a square hole in its center. Cameron turned it over, wondering if his father expected him to theorize on the coin’s origin or maybe on its extraterrestrial forging methods.
It was moot. He turned back into the chamber and was about to put it back down when his father stopped him with a glance.
“Keep it. Only the Mullah come here, and if they cared about it, they’d have taken it already. Like I said, a souvenir.”
Cameron nodded then turned to the other side of the room and the raised platform that had seemed to be calling his name. He peered at his father, who was exploring a cubby. Then, without knowing why, he reached up and touched the round thing on its top. He felt a shock, like static, and practically jumped away.
Benjamin turned back, seeing him totter.
“Did you slip?”
“Just a little.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m … ”
What was he, exactly? Despite the shock — despite the fact that ceramic objects weren’t supposed to issue shocks — Cameron wanted to climb back up and touch the thing again. He still couldn’t see it properly without climbing onto the platform, but he could glimpse its edge. It had almost seemed to respond, conforming to his finger like dipping it in gel, despite the thing’s obvious solidity.
“Cameron?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” Then he squinted back up at the thing, which he’d swear was now glowing in the gloom. But that couldn’t be, and if it was, his father would say something. “But I could’ve sworn that—”
Benjamin cut him off, holding up a finger. Listening. Then, with something urgent invading his manner, Benjamin looked down at the napkin, turning it in circles, trying to make magic by mating the halves.
“Which way is out, Cameron?”
Cameron pointed the way they’d come.
“A different way. On here. Is this an exit? Is it this symbol here?”
Cameron followed his father’s finger. “I … yes, that’s the way out.”
“You’re sure?”
This time, yes. Of course he was. He had to be, or else he was a total failure.
“Yeah. But Dad, what’s — ?”
A mumbling. A grumbling. Coming from all around them. And then above, around, rock walls seemed to shift like some bizarre Rubik’s Cube changing configurations.
And then there was shouting.
The sound of rushing feet.
“What’s — ?” Cameron blurted suddenly terrified.
“Go. Just go!” Benjamin pointed to Cameron’s indicated path.
The walls continued to shift. Sand grated down from above. Benjamin shouted for directions, finally trusting Cameron, under duress, to read the map. Behind them, something collapsed. They heard Mullah shout.
“Which way?” Benjamin yelled back as they approached a fork, hurried feet behind them, chattering on in a language Cameron didn’t understand.
“Right. I mean left!”
“Are you positive?”
“Yes!”
Cameron looked back, saw something crash to the ground. The world was coming apart behind them.
“Dad, what’s happening?”
Still running, trying to hold his breath, Benjamin said, “Did Yusef say anything about a ‘Key Chamber’?”
“I don’t think so!”
“That’s what they’re shouting about.” Benjamin pointed back, leaping rubble. “‘Key Chamber.’”
“I don’t know anything about it!”
“Well, doesn’t matter. I think it’s gone now. You didn’t touch anything back there, did you? Before they came, before the walls started to shift?”
“No!” The word was out before Cameron realized it was a lie. And in his next blink he saw the thing on the podium, glowing serenely, begging him to touch it again, calling out to him even now.
The sounds were growing louder. Looking back, Cameron could see the first flashes of torchlight — not flashlights but real flames on burning sticks. Apparently the air in here wasn’t ignitable after all, and the Mullah, unlike Team Bannister, weren’t worried about burning all of the room’s oxygen. Because they knew the tunnels and exits. Just like Cameron sort of did.
Robe-clad Mullah knights spilled into the shaft from behind, but then something fell from above and blocked their way.
They ran fast, somehow finding the original shaft as if by a miracle and heading back the way they’d come, praying for faithful memory, luck, and daylight.
SEVEN YEARS AFTER ASTRAL DAY
CHAPTER 1
Up the tunnels. Past portals and doorways guarded by immense round rock doors. Cameron was panting, heaving, the lanyard around his neck with its small metallic bounty pasted with sweat to the skin of his upper chest. Jeanine Coffey was behind him, shouting in harsh whispers. The Reptar purr was no longer audible, but Cameron thought he could still hear Titan feet on the rock-hewn stairs. Titans could move quickly if they needed, or wanted to. The lines blurred anyway, seeing as one type of Astral could become the other — or even a spare viceroy, as it turned out.
“Which way?” Jeanine shouted.
“This way!”
“That’s down. We need up.”
A sudden sound cut the air, and Cameron reacted just in time, grabbing Jeanine by the shoulder of her jacket and pulling her around a corner, into what once might have been an underground bedroom. The place was like an enormous buried anthill or rabbit warren. Even if he’d had a map, it wouldn’t have helped in this unfathomable maze.
Jeanine’s eyes lit with anger. She seemed about to yell at Cameron for daring to drag her anywhere when he pressed his hand flat against her mouth. Outside in the passageway, feet scampered past — too agile and fast for a Titan, too few in number to be the paws of a Reptar. And although Cameron saw little as he pressed Jeanine against the wall to silence her, the woman’s amber eyes lit with alarm as she seemed to notice something flap past them in the recently abandoned corridor.
When their pursuer was gone, Jeanine said, “That was a human.”
“I know.”
“Mullah?” she whispered.
“Makes sense.”
“I thought we lost them.”
“They’re as old as the Templars. I don’t think they lose easily.”
Jeanine, usually tough and unflappable, seemed clearly flustered. Her eyes stayed on the stone hall’s doorway. “Jesus Christ. Haven’t they taken their pound of flesh already? We’re not even trying to find it anymore. So what’s their problem?”
“Ask my father.” It came out automatically and only slapped Cameron with a cold hand once out of his mouth. Even five years after Benjamin’s death, his absence still hurt like it happened yesterday.
“Wait. That might not have been a human. The place is lousy with Astrals. It might have been one of them, changed into human form. Like Kindred.”
“You know that’s not how it works.”
“Maybe they have one of those generator people, to make it work.”
“Progenitor,” Cameron cor
rected, using Kindred’s word for a shapeshifter’s donor. They’d seen plenty in the cities and deserts they’d been forced to wander before leaving them behind, but no evidence that Titans and Reptars could borrow a non-Astral shape without a progenitor and time to nurture the process. Even then their group had Kindred as a doppelgänger failsafe, able to tell a genuine human from an alien in her skin. They were otherwise impossible to spot. Good thing the real Meyer had been so bedraggled and emaciated when they’d found him. It gave the group time to get comfortable with a pair of them before Original Meyer regained his old body and musculature, at which point the two beings had become more than twins. Years later Cameron still kept wanting to tag one to tell the two apart, like a rancher branding cattle.
“Right,” Jeanine said. “That’s what I’m saying. The Astrals kidnap one of the Mullah, then copy him like Kindred copied Meyer. That guy could be their generator.”
This time Cameron didn’t bother to correct her. Jeanine wasn’t making a mistake; she was being intentionally annoying. She didn’t get outwardly nervous often, and always covered it by becoming a wiseass when she did.
“Then who cares? Swap one foe for another. What’s the difference?”
Jeanine was clearly distracted. For the first time, Cameron let himself wonder what had become of their remaining party, likely still several floors down in this strange place.
“I lost them,” Jeanine said. “When the Reptars came—”
“Shh!”
Cameron raised a finger. He could tell from her eyes that he’d pay for shushing Jeanine, but even after assuring himself that there were no pursuers behind them, he still had to concentrate. Even Derinkuyu’s touristy sections, back when there had been tourists, were confusing. The ancient underground city — sort of like an apartment building sunken into the rock — had thirteen underground floors, room for a city of twenty thousand people, plus all of the animals and supplies required for a happily ever after. It would have made a great hideout if it hadn’t been infested. But of course it was, so now they’d need to move on, to try and find somewhere else away from the horde. But really, how was that different from every day since they’d arrived at Mount Horeb in the shuttle and faced —
Well, he definitely didn’t want to think about that.
Cameron listened, but nothing came. He’d heard a phantom sound, or perhaps whoever was out there had finally found them, and was now in hiding, waiting for them to emerge.
“Maybe it was Charlie,” Cameron said. “Maybe he got around the Titans and you saw him, on his way to the surface.”
Jeanine shook her head. “No. That guy was wearing a robe.”
“Mullah,” Cameron muttered.
“But the Astrals … You know what they say about the enemy of my enemy being my friend.”
“The Mullah have spent the entire occupation avoiding the Astrals. More than seven years of running and hiding. I don’t think they’ll engage, even if we ask nicely.” Cameron crossed the chamber and peeked slowly into the passageway. “It’s clear. Let’s go.”
“You were going down before we came in here,” Jeanine said.
“I know where I was going.”
“The exit is up.”
“Our people are down.”
Jeanine was still shaking her head, now at the idea of moving farther into the warren instead of up toward open air. Despite obvious guilt over losing the others in the melee below, her action plan was apparently diametrically opposed to her regrets. For the former right hand of the late Nathan Andreus, strategy always trumped empathy.
“Yes. And they’ll head toward the exit, so we can meet them there.”
“I’m not going to leave them behind with the Astrals and trust they can make it out, Jeanine. Even you’re not that cold blooded.”
She actually laughed — too loud, in Cameron’s adrenaline-fueled opinion.
“And I suppose if they’re besieged, we’re going to save them?”
Cameron didn’t reply. Was that actually a question?
“Kindred can see into their group mind,” Jeanine went on. “He’ll know where the Astrals are. He can lose them in this maze then avoid them until the group finds the main exit, or even a chimney to shimmy up.”
“And the Mullah?”
“We’re just two people,” she replied. “But they have Christopher. And the Pall.”
“The Pall stayed topside,” Cameron said.
But she was set now, unperturbed by anything that contradicted her rapidly congealing battle plan. “If the Pall saw anything head into the cave after us, it’d do its smoke thing and head down past any Astrals to help. Create darkness like it did in Heaven’s Veil, so the Astrals couldn’t find them. Or take a form and fight.”
“What form have you seen the Pall take that would be any good in a fight? Heather Hawthorne, maybe?”
“They’ll be fine, Cameron. We’re in trouble.”
“Trouble? You?”
Jeanine rolled her eyes. “We’re not going to find out just sitting here. We go up, not down.” She said it with finality as if she led the group rather than Cameron — which, in times of crisis, she mostly did. “If they can get out, they’ll do it without our help. If they can’t, we’ll make no difference, and heading up is triage. Either way, our course of action’s the same. I’ll lead, if you want to be a pussy about it.”
Cameron grunted.
“Want one of my guns?”
“No.”
She was handing him a pistol anyway. A Beretta and a spare clip filled with self-packed bullets.
“I said no.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Cameron.”
“No guns.”
“What do you plan to use if we run into Mullah or Astrals? Your charming personality?”
“No guns,” Cameron repeated. He hadn’t touched one in years. Not since Sinai. And never again.
Jeanine’s look was either sympathetic or impatient. But she didn’t understand and would never be able to, beyond the tangential blast given by the archive that day. It had been a thousand times worse for Cameron.
He’d never touch a gun again. That’s what nobody truly got. His opinion was cast in cement. If he couldn’t change the past, at least he’d shape his future.
Jeanine put the gun away, not saying what was clearly on her mind. It wasn’t your fault, and you’re handicapping all of us by being stubborn. It was true but altered nothing.
“Fine. Stay behind me. But if someone comes from the rear, you’d better make like a human shield. I don’t intend to get shot, diced with a scimitar, or eaten just because of your hang-ups and refusal to be rational.”
They left the chamber, moving into the rock passage. Cameron didn’t like small spaces — hadn’t since the day he and his father had barely escaped the Mullah in Giza. But unlike those ancient hallways, Derinkuyu’s corridors were rounded by time and excavation, eroded by time as if by water. There was an openness here, even underground, that most confined sites lacked. He could have abided this place. It was almost too bad the hunch had been wrong — or that someone in the dusty burgs along the way had guessed their destination and ratted them out.
They reached the stairs. Without flinching, Jeanine moved upward. She had a small lantern in her left hand, a gun raised in the other.
But two steps up, Jeanine and Cameron both froze as they heard a scratching behind them.
Cameron turned. Piper was standing in the dim stone hallway behind them, her fingernails raking the rock wall.
“Piper!” he whisper-shouted, relief flooding his chest, moving forward. “Where are the others? Did you all get away? Are Lila and Christopher with you? Is — ?”
Instead of replying, Piper held up a hand then gestured for them to follow. She didn’t come forward to meet Cameron’s rushing embrace. She simply turned on her heel.
“That’s not Piper,” Jeanine said.
But of course Cameron had figured that out. Piper had been wearing a pair of scavenged jea
ns and a sweater that was coming unraveled at the sleeve. The woman ahead of them was in a pristine white gown, like Piper used to wear while living in Heaven’s Veil.
“Hey,” Cameron said.
Piper turned to look at him.
“I hate when you do that.”
With a relaxing breath, Piper dissolved into the boiling, multicolored smoke that they’d come to know as the Pall’s default shape. Unlike Astral shapeshifters, the Pall could become a mute version of anyone it touched. But it required tremendous energy, and freaked everyone out — especially Meyer.
Jeanine was still frozen on the steps.
“Come on,” Cameron said. “It wants us to follow.”
Still with her gun out. Still poised to move upward, toward the exit. “It’s going to lead us deeper into the tunnels.”
“It’ll protect us. It wouldn’t call us if there wasn’t a reason.”
At the end of the hallway, the Pall’s smoke became a large, malformed appendage, like an enormous reaching hand, and beckoned again.
Jeanine sighed and stepped down, moving to follow. “It’s like taking directions from Lassie,” she said.
CHAPTER 2
Meyer or Kindred — or Meyer and Meyer, as Piper thought of them, even now — were ducked low in a chamber across the squat, brown-rock hallway. Piper could feel their energy just as she could feel Lila’s beside and behind her.
The Meyers were strange, even after years of knowing them both — even after years spent trying alternative relationships, where she was with them both. They weren’t like twins: two brothers who happened to share identical genetics. They were like the same man, split in two. It had never felt like Kindred and Meyer shared her. It had never felt any more polygamous than it would feel to love one man, and his reflection.
But it must have been different on some level because even though they were the same man, they also weren’t. And still, even now with her heart beating and peril so familiar in her veins, Piper could feel them appraising their situation. Could feel each man’s reaction — the same yet nearly opposite. Fused into one thing, bickering like an old married couple.