by Jack Geurts
The screams stayed with him even now. Even here.
He had removed his clothes and sat naked on the canyon ledge. Naked save for a loincloth, and the night air felt cool against his skin.
He held his bare head in his bare hands. The Window he had stolen from the prince sat atop the pile of clothes beside him, and he did his best to ignore it. To forget what he had done to acquire it, and all the evil he had done in the days of his life.
All the people who no longer lived because he did. Because he believed in something they did not believe in. Because he fought for something they had long since given up on.
His father had told him not to mourn those people, for they were traitors to their own race. They would choose to live in exile rather than return to the home that had given them life. They would rather abandon it to the vile horde who had swept over it like a plague, feeding off it like a parasite feeds off a host – sucking every last bit of life from the planet until the world is run dry.
But his father would not let that happen.
He had fought to his final breath so that he might reclaim his rightful throne and in doing so, the distant home of his people. He had never lost sight of that dream and neither would his son. After all, that dream was the only light they had in a world of shadow. The promise of a future greater than either one of them could ever imagine.
It did not matter that he would never live to see it. By the time the Progeny destroyed themselves, Janus would be long dead. He knew that. He also knew that his son would live on, and when he died, his son would live on. And so it would be until the ending of the world, and his people would march back to earth and spread across the face of it. And then, finally, they would be home.
For now, they dwelt in darkness – no wind, no light. Forced to live in the bowels of the earth – in the damp, dripping intestines of some planetary beast, slowly digested over thousands of years until eventually they would be nothing. That is why they had to escape – before they were twisted into something less, something lower. Already, it was plain how far they had fallen, how far they had diverged from their illustrious past. How much of themselves had been lost along the way.
It was to this dark place he returned after setting the dinosaur back in its pit. After killing all within that camp – all apart from the boy, at least – he made the leap home and was tended to by his wife as he recovered.
She held him as he wept for the people in that camp, telling him that he did what he had to do, that his father would be proud. He had heard these words, but they brought him no joy. No solace. Not when every time he fell to sleep, the screams of those people returned to him. Their dying faces, their mangled forms.
He remembered the woman not unlike his wife – the mother of the boy. If not for her eyes and her skin, they might have looked similar. He had watched as the dinosaur’s jaws closed around her. Not simply watched, but instructed. He told the beast to attack her and the beast had obeyed him. It was not at fault. He was. Only he.
His son had come to visit him while he recovered from the leap home. Janus had told his wife not to let him in – he didn’t want his son to see him in such a weakened state. He didn’t want his son to know what he had done on earth, what he was capable of. It wasn’t some glorious rebellion against the king, after all, but a massacre of innocents. A necessary evil to keep their dream alive.
And yet, his son would have to continue the fight after he was dead. He may well have to commit similar atrocities himself. Janus knew the guilt that would weigh on his son’s shoulders as it weighed on his own, but that guilt would die with them. Their descendants would not inherit that guilt, but only the progress made on their behalf.
And so, thousands of years from now, when his people had recolonised the earth, they would not remember the evil done to get them there. They would not know the doubts and regrets that weighed upon his mind. They would not know about the times he faltered as he faltered now – just as the surface-dwellers did not remember the carnage their kings had wrought upon their enemies.
They did not recall how Jupiter usurped the throne from Saturn, and butchered his people in the streets. They did not recall how he hung the bodies of Saturn and his generals in the marketplace, and drove the survivors underground. They did not recall the dungeons, the howls of men under torture, the chopping block wet with blood.
All they remembered was a glorious revolution. The tyrant king banished. Jupiter taking his place in the pantheon of gods.
And so it will be with my people, Janus thought. And so it will be with me.
He had not even been home a day when word reached him of the princess arriving on earth, at the very place he had just left. He was told that not all within the camp had been slain – one had survived. A boy. The princess had taken this boy and headed off in the direction of the first Marker.
Janus had breathed a heavy sigh when he saw that this particular mission was not ended as he thought. There was yet more blood to be spilled. Royal blood, and common – each with a vendetta against him, and he could not deny that they were justified in their cause. But no more than he was justified in his.
And so the girl would have to die. And the boy would have to die. A boy younger than his own son.
He had gathered what strength he could and bid his wife and son farewell. He made the leap a third time, landing in the Sumerian desert around 3000 BCE. That was where and when the princess would need to go to find the first Marker, and sure enough, there she was.
When it was night and he was strong enough to walk, Janus made his way through the darkened streets of Eridu, tracking the princess and the boy to the temple at the top of the ziggurat. He dispatched the guards with a few bolts of Elemental and went inside, peering down into the pit they had made. Here, he saw them marvelling at an orb of floating particles, each one shimmering in the blue glow of the princess’ glove.
He didn’t see in the way that humans or surface-dwelling Precursors saw, but he could see nonetheless. The echoes of sounds in his environment bounced off objects and returned to him, and as this happened, he could tell how close a certain object was, and where it was located. He could see the outline of a person or a dinosaur by the sound of their breath, or the beat of their heart, or the blood rushing through their system – so finely-tuned were his ears to such things. They had to be, for him to survive in the dark.
Janus listened as the particles tinkled when touching against each other. He listened to the breathing of the boy, the girl and the bird. The sounds painted a picture in his mind, and as they did, he couldn’t help but be amazed by what he saw.
Certainly, he had known the location of the first Marker, as he knew the location of the others – but never had he gazed upon them. Despite his hatred for the tyrant who had laid them, they were truly a wonder to behold. Something so old, so breathtaking. It was a shame they had to remain hidden.
After confirming the presence of the boy and the princess, Janus had teleported out into the desert. He looked back upon the ancient city from afar and held out his gloved hand to bring time forward again. He watched as the temple collapsed, as the city was consumed in a billowing sandstorm.
He waited. He wanted to be sure they were all dead this time. He didn’t know if he’d survive another round trip should he fail again.
Janus cursed when he saw the bird, and again when the princess and the boy emerged from their hiding place in the sand. He watched her summon the Flight Pod and went to intercept them before they could board it.
Unfortunately, he was still weak from the leap and so the princess managed to get the better of him. It stung his pride even now.
He had left Eridu and gone straight to China, to the Emperor’s tomb. There, in the darkness, he had waited and recovered his strength. The flames were not yet lit, the crossbows not yet fired. He sat perched at the far end of the courtyard, and lay in wait to spring his ambush.
It occurred to him that they might never arrive, that they might not figur
e out the clue and if that was the case, he would have to go and hunt them. But as luck or misfortune would have it, they did arrive, pawing blindly through the dark until the princess caught an arrow in the chest.
She must have healed herself with the glove, and then they proceeded to do battle on the pillar-tops as the boy and the bird made their way to the Marker down below. He was surprised by Io’s fighting ability, by the boy’s skill with a glove since he had never worn one before.
As the boy and the bird neared the Marker, he and the princess had fought their way around to the far end of the courtyard. He was still weak – too weak to defeat her, it seemed – and so he tried a different approach.
“Princess,” he said, during a brief pause in the skirmish when both he and she were hid behind Terracotta Warriors. “Forgive me.”
She did not answer, apparently caught off-guard by his request.
“I am sorry about your brother.”
Still nothing.
“Please understand that I...”
He didn’t get a chance to finish the confession, because right then, the Terracotta Warrior he was using as a shield exploded and sent him flying backward into another one. As he picked himself up from the shards of broken soldier, he turned, and before the princess could get off another bolt, he launched one back at her.
She had turned to face him with her glove raised, and as his bolt connected with the statue she was hiding behind, the force of the explosion sent her toppling over the edge. By chance, she managed to grab hold of the ledge and he stood over her, preparing to deliver the final blow. Preparing to kill the daughter of his enemy.
A girl.
A child.
The last and only child of the king after the son Janus had already taken.
Could he do that to the man?
Would he wish that pain on even his most hated enemy?
In any case, he never found out, because at that moment, he was hit with a blast of green Elemental and went flying backwards off the pillar-tops.
He teleported before he hit the ground, landing instead outside the tomb, on a slope that was wet from days of rain, and he slid down it all the way to the bottom. In the shadow of the earthen pyramid, he coughed and spluttered as breath returned to him. The blast had been enough to break several of his ribs, but not to damage any of his organs, he didn’t think. The boy was only a novice, after all.
Yet, he was able to navigate the traps of the tomb. Able to hurl a bolt at him with such power and precision as to knock him down from so far away.
He had misjudged the boy, as he had the princess. The killing of two children should have been a simple, if dubious, affair. But they were a formidable team, he had to admit that much – even with the bird, whose value to their mission he couldn’t fathom.
Nonetheless, it became clear to him that he could not win this on his own. He couldn’t return home to face his family, let alone his people, after having been bested a second time.
Bested by a boy, a girl and a bird.
He would be cast out, shunned, and rightfully so. His mantle of leadership would be taken away and given to a man more worthy of it. He would be made to wander the surface world and all would know who he was, and what he had failed to do. He would be captured, paraded by the tyrant king as a trophy of war, beaten, humiliated, locked up in the dungeons and tortured until finally the king grew tired and had him put to death in the square like his ancestor had done to Janus’ so long ago.
So long ago...but so near to his heart. An ancient grudge undampened by time. Ancient wounds unhealed even in all the days that had come between then and now.
No. He couldn’t return yet. There was still work to be done, and he was not about to give up the fight. Not after all he had suffered, all he had done to get here. And if he could not do this on his own, then he would seek help – from someone, or...something.
Janus had picked himself up out of the mud and healed his ribs with the glove. He wasn’t sure what had been going through his mind when he asked the girl for forgiveness. Probably the same thing that was always going through his mind – the guilt that had, of late, begun to outweigh his anger. The anger that drove him, that kept him focused. The anger that assured him what he was doing was right.
His whole life, he had been running toward something. Now, it felt more like running from something. He hadn’t been lying when he told the girl he was sorry. But what did it matter? He had no choice but to continue on this chartered path. To deviate would mean to cast aside all the work he had done so far. Every inch gained and lost, every moment of frustration and doubt, every person he had killed, every moment of suffering he had inflicted – all of it would be for nothing. It would nullify his existence.
He couldn’t stop now, and he would not. He would not allow himself to falter here, at the crucial moment of his life.
Once he was healed, he made another leap. Not to Caral, where he knew the third Marker lay in wait, but to Texas.
To Texas where he now sat high above the dig site, watching from his ledge in the canyon wall. He waited until the lights were out and the men asleep, and then he donned his clothes and made his way down to the riverbed.
He walked up the past the tents, feeling the pebbles crunch and grind against each other underfoot. He approached the site that was marked off with stakes and string, and in the red glow of his hand, Janus looked upon the slumbering fossil.
He smiled. This ought to do it, he thought.
As he had in the Australian desert, Janus brought the dinosaur from its own time into his. He mounted up bareback and rode it out of the camp without bloodshed, for which he was thankful. The men would wake in the morning and find their pit empty, their hard work for nothing. But they would still have their lives and not know how lucky they were for that.
Janus knew that if the princess and the boy had figured out the first clue, there was a good chance they would figure out the second. And so he headed south, to the most ancient city on the continent.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Buried Secret
Io woke Jasper up to point out a dark shape forming on the horizon, and it took him a moment to realise what it was.
The western coastline of South America. More specifically, the coastline of Peru.
He didn’t know how long he had been out, but in whatever space of time it was, they had crossed the entire Pacific Ocean – all ten thousand miles of it. The journey from the Old World to the New had taken months in the days of Columbus or Magellan. Here, it had taken approximately the duration of a catnap.
They were coming up on a hazy shoreline, swimming like a mirage in the distance. Jasper rubbed the sleep from his eyes to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. As the glowing blue dot on Io’s Mind Map drew closer to the continent, he began to make out mountains beyond the coast.
The Andes.
The longest mountain range in the world, running from Venezuela to Argentina, passing through five other countries on the way down. Further south, the peaks were blanketed with snow, but here, it was arid, like it hadn’t rained in years.
The Flight Pod shot across green, cultivated fields sprawling back from the coast. At a certain point, the farmland came to an abrupt stop and gave way to desert. The contrast was so stark that it seemed as if a line had been drawn where civilisation was to end, and no one ventured beyond that line. It wasn’t just hot and dry, but black in some places, like the earth itself had been scorched. Nothing grew, and there was no colour. No bright colour anyway.
Up ahead, the saw-toothed mountain range looked to Jasper like paper mâché mounds left to cook and harden in the sun. They ran forever north and south, separating the coastal plain from the lush rainforest beyond. Jasper couldn’t help but wonder why on earth anyone would decide to build a city here.
And yet, there it was.
Nestled at the base of these mountains was all that remained of the first city in the Americas – a cluster of weathered mounds that used to be pyram
ids. They were easy to spot, being darker than the sand of the valley, and beyond them was a river separating the ruins and the mountain range. Along either bank of the river were fertile strips of green in an otherwise bleak landscape, but the area around Caral had been left dead, uncultivated. Untouched except by archaeologists and the throngs of tourists that came daily from Lima to see what the ancients had left behind.
Io slowed and hovered above the valley. The whole ruins-in-the-desert image might have reminded them of Eridu, except that these were in far better condition – or had at least been more thoroughly excavated. The ziggurat in Iraq had been almost indistinguishable from the landscape, seeming more like a rocky hill than the remains of an ancient civilisation. And though these pyramids had crumbled over the last four thousand years, they were still very obviously man-made – Jasper and Io could clearly make out the exposed tiers and rooms and passageways.
Not only were there six mounds here instead of one, but two of them had large, circular plazas out in front, sunken into the ground. The largest of the two was the southernmost pyramid, and could be more appropriately called an amphitheatre, hence its name – the Pyramid of the Amphitheatre. The other was the Main Pyramid, northernmost of the six and backing onto the lush green banks of the river. These two structures faced each other across a field of other mounds and pyramids, and they seemed to Jasper to be the most important of the six – or maybe just the best preserved.
Io raised her glowing hand, and Jasper steadied himself for the impending Time Shift. Even though he knew it coming, the Shift was no less astonishing when it happened – no less incredible than the first time.
The desert sands began to whip about, whirling around the settlement as Io turned back the clock hands of the earth. Rapidly, the teams of archaeologists that had come to excavate the mounds returned in reverse to cover them up again, until they seemed more like natural formations – like the rocky hill at Eridu.