Threshold

by Robinson, Jeremy

  “But I don’t understand. Why?”

  “Because if you don’t it’s likely they’ll all die.”

  A look of horror came over Lauren as she realized that King and Alexander knew a lot more about what was happening then they let on. She broke out in a run back to the bus, hoping that King and Alexander were crackpots, but somehow knowing they weren’t. And that terrified her. Because it meant there was something big, something evil, beneath Stonehenge that wanted to kill people.

  And she was heading straight for it.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Location Unknown

  FIONA AWOKE, HER head throbbing. Though the dizziness that accompanied her last wake-up was missing, the pain she felt more than made up for the lack of disorientation. In fact, after a cursory glance around her new cell, she wished for some way to escape reality.

  The cell was an eight-foot cube hollowed out of wet gray stone. There were no seams where floor met wall or wall met ceiling, though there were a few cracks. There was no entrance to speak of, only a four-foot-long, six-inch-tall horizontal slit that allowed fresh air and a small amount of light into the otherwise sealed space.

  She lay on her back, the stone floor cold beneath her. They air itself was chilly, but bearable, even in her black pajamas, which were now covered in layers of dirt.

  As she focused beyond the pulsing headache she became aware of the pain filling the rest of her body—stretched limbs and tight pressure. She looked down at her body and found her hands bound and tied to her feet. She’d been hog-tied and left.

  As pain flooded her head again she lay back on the stone floor. Staring up at the vacant stone ceiling, she recalled the horrors she’d seen before being knocked unconscious. The walls came to life. With no place to go, the prisoners couldn’t hide. She saw some trampled underfoot, some crushed by stone fists, and others, like poor Elma, torn apart.

  But for some reason, she’d been spared. One of the golems even moved to avoid her. Tears broke free and rolled down the sides of her face, dripping into her ears. The tickling of liquid striking earlobe annoyed her and turned her sadness to rage. She let out a scream, pulling on her bonds. Her scream ended quickly as a rush of pain struck. She was bound physically and emotionally.

  Why, she thought. Why spare me? What made me different from all the people that were killed?

  King.

  I’m either bait, or insurance. A hostage.

  Before losing consciousness she thought she had seen King in the cell’s entrance. He had come for her. He would again. And that was the only reason she still lived. Though she wasn’t sure how much longer she would remain alive.

  The headache meant she either had a serious injury she couldn’t yet inspect or was seriously dehydrated. Or both.

  She tensed again in frustration, this time just pulling with her arms. Her hands came up almost all the way to her face, pulling her bound feet with them. She could clearly see the old rope that had been used to bind her. It was thin and flexible, but frayed. Pushing with her hands and pulling with her legs, she rocked herself forward into a sitting position, legs open, hands bound to feet.

  She groaned as the blood draining from her head caused a new throb of pain. With eyes squeezed shut, she rode out the pain. With each beat of her heart, the headache dissipated. When she could finally think straight she looked down at her bonds. Had she not been kidnapped twice, drugged, knocked unconscious, and left for dead, she might have smiled. Her bonds could have held an adult, but she was a thirteen-year-old girl. She lowered her knees nearly to the floor and leaned forward. With her face at her hands she began gnawing at the rope, putting her flexibility and sharp teeth to good work.

  Desperate for freedom, she ignored the oily flavor of the rope, chewing it like a rat. She spat out some fibers, allowing herself to feel a measure of hope. Hope isn’t just something given, King told her once, when they spoke about why it was important for people the team helped to sometimes continue the fight after they’d left, it’s something you have to believe in. The words rang clear in her thoughts.

  She would break free of her bonds.

  And then what? She didn’t know. But she was hopeful. Not for her escape, but for her rescue. Her hope was in her father. He’d come for her once. He would come again.

  Her hope was shattered by a grinding of rock. She looked up and saw the stone wall parting. A man stood on the other side, silhouetted by a light source behind him. He wasn’t looking at her, so she quickly laid down and closed her eyes, pretending to be unconscious. A prick in her arm popped her eyes back open, but only for a moment. As the drug took effect, her eyes closed again, this time against her will. She heard a man’s voice as consciousness faded.

  “Time to go, child. Babel awaits.”

  FORTY-NINE

  El Mirador, Guatemala

  THE BACK SIDE OF the la Danta pyramid looked like it could crumble apart and bury them in an avalanche. The latticework of wooden planks, platforms, and ladders rising up the massive slope looked wholly inadequate for containing the structure’s bulk. Queen, Bishop, and Knight stood at the base, looking up. Several thin, pale trees still clung to the pyramid, most likely left in place because the roots helped hold the wall together.

  As they neared the temple, the three fell silent. Finding no footprints in the mud at the base of the pyramid, they circled around slowly, using the jungle for cover.

  The continuing thunderstorm made hearing anything impossible, but the rising sun had brightened the cloud cover, improving visibility. As they reached the front of the pyramid and found no one present, they hid and observed the site.

  The front side of the pyramid was much more impressive than the back. Its slate gray stone surface was covered in several levels of staircases that led all the way to the top. Trees covered much of the building, but the most impressive and well-preserved staircases were clear. Climbing to the top would be easy for all but the out-of-shape.

  As Bishop looked at the top of the pyramid he imagined what the site would have looked like two thousand years previous. A high priest adorned with bright-colored feathers and paints. Slaves and animals lined up for sacrifice, ready to appease Chac, the god of rain. Given the raging storm overhead, it seemed Chac was in a very bad mood; perhaps from being denied a sacrifice for two thousand years, perhaps because his temple had been recently violated. Bishop didn’t really care. Chac would not help him catch Richard Ridley, no matter how many lives were sacrificed. If that were true, Ridley would have been caught long ago.

  “No one’s here,” Bishop said.

  “Let’s do it,” Queen said, drawing her hidden UMP submachine gun from beneath her poncho.

  They moved as one, crossing the clearing between jungle and pyramid quickly. Scouring the steep grade for movement as they climbed, they ascended the ancient temple. They reached the summit without incident. Above the jungle, they could see the Guatemalan countryside in all its glory. Trees shifted in waves as great gusts of wind rolled past. Lightning split in fractals across the sky. It was an untamed landscape.

  A green tarp, torn free by strong winds flapped madly from the tree it was still tied to. Beneath it was a rectangular opening. A stone staircase, covered in pools of water, descended into the pyramid.

  After donning night vision goggles, Queen led the team inside. The tunnel, lit in shades of green, was unremarkable at first. The occasional spider was their only company. The staircase turned one hundred eighty degrees, like a mountain trail switchback. The walls on the next flight down bore huge relief murals carved into massive stones. Fluid scenes of human sacrifice, executioners, and angry gods covered the walls.

  As the stairs continued deeper, the images became more violent, taking the viewer through a story line that involved ritual preparation, ceremony, bloodletting, and death. Several different acts of killing were displayed—decapitation, organ removal, burning.

  As her nerves tensed Queen realized that those being led down this staircase would understa
nd the images as the horrors they would soon endure. It must have been enough to paralyze them with fear. Queen, on the other hand, had the opposite reaction. Anger filled her veins, pumping adrenaline into her system and boosting her senses.

  The staircase ended at a gently sloping, curved tunnel that Queen guessed lined up with the base of the pyramid. Everything from here on would take them underground.

  As she took a step forward into the curved tunnel she felt the stone beneath her foot drop almost imperceptibly. She froze.

  She held her hand up, stopping the others. She pointed at her foot and they understood at once.

  A trap.

  She listened for the telltale signs of a trap, shifting weights, grinding gears, but heard nothing. She chanced a whisper. “Maybe it’s too old? Rotted?”

  A clunk overhead proved her wrong.

  Queen looked up in time to see a shower of long, sharp darts fall from the ceiling, falling at her like a hundred miniature spears.

  FIFTY

  Wiltshire, England

  THE SMALL FLASHLIGHTS they carried did little to light the deep craggy tunnel, but King and Alexander moved quickly despite the low light. If Richard Ridley was at the end of the tunnel, they wanted to catch him by surprise. If they didn’t it might mean battling one of his golems or oversized sandfish.

  Or several.

  Their best bet was to knock him unconscious and shut his mouth before he knew they were there. Not knowing what waited for them at the end of the tunnel made King apprehensive, but he fought against the feeling with the knowledge that he had beat Ridley before, and the man beside him had killed the legendary Hydra on his own—a creature that took the entire Chess Team and Alexander’s aid to defeat in the present day. Having his handgun at the ready eased his nerves, too. Upon seeing Ridley, who could not die, he didn’t need to sneak up and knock the man unconscious; shooting him in the head until his mouth was bound would work just as well and provide some catharsis.

  The tunnel walls were rough at first, loose soil had been dug away and pushed out through the entrance. Stone had been crushed. It was a giant burrow. But just fifty feet in the scene changed. The tunnel became square and gray. Man-made. Old.

  “Merlin was a busy man,” Alexander said.

  “You buy that story?” King asked.

  Alexander paused and gave King a lopsided smile that said: Remember who you’re talking to.

  “Right,” King said. “If it’s possible Stonehenge was created by Merlin, what would he have buried beneath it?”

  “Given Ridley’s interest, I would assume some form of ancient knowledge regarding the mother tongue. In what form, I can only guess.”

  King didn’t like guessing, or the perpetual feeling of being two steps behind, which he felt in regard to Ridley and Alexander. He lacked a complete picture of both men’s motivations, and that disturbed him.

  They paused at the change in tunnel structure.

  King moved his light over the wall, which was made from lines of giant rectangular blue-tinged stones. “Its bluestone,” King said. “Same as many of the henge stones. You think this runs all the way to Stonehenge? Two miles?”

  “It seems likely. Perhaps a symbolic journey to the underworld.”

  “Or literal,” King said as he started moving forward.

  “Let’s hope not,” Alexander replied, breaking out into a quick jog.

  King wasn’t sure if Alexander’s reply was serious or an attempt at humor, but followed without a word. He wasn’t about to look like a fool by asking. The two ran in the near darkness, dimming their flashlights with their hands as much as possible to conceal their approach.

  They ran blindly, unable to see or hear anything ahead. When King judged they’d run almost the entire two miles, he slowed. “Were almost under Stonehenge,” he whispered.

  They walked a short distance more with their flashlights off and then stopped to listen. All was quiet. They continued forward in darkness, hands on the tunnel walls for balance and direction. Then the walls fell away on both sides.

  After what felt like a lifetime of quiet breathing and listening, King flicked on his flashlight. He scanned it back and forth, handgun in hand, looking for a target. He found nothing to shoot. The circular space was devoid of living or animated targets, but it held plenty of fascinating finds. The floor was covered in two-foot-tall vertical stone poles that looked like the stumps of a petrified forest. They were arranged in a classic glyph pattern with some rings of pillars being larger than others. The room was constructed entirely of bluestone. A large sarcophagus sat at the middle of the room, encircled by rings of stone.

  King and Alexander slowly made their way through the circles, panning their lights around the room. Closer to the sarcophagus, King could see that the lid had been slid away. It sat shattered on the floor on the far side. Their flashlights revealed a body within.

  The body was wrapped in tight linens from head to toe. Gathered around it were gold objects and sealed vessels. Its face, partially exposed by time’s rot still held remnants of a white beard.

  King shook his head. “It looks—”

  “Egyptian,” Alexander finished.

  “Is that possible?”

  “Anything is possible. It’s likely this man fled Egypt with knowledge of the mother tongue. Seeking to start his own empire, he used golems to create this monument, just as the people he left behind in Eygpt were doing to create the pyramids.”

  King looked closely at the man’s face, the bone structure and hair. “He doesn’t look Egyptian. Or Arabian for that matter.”

  “That’s because he’s not.”

  King looked at Alexander, who looked extremely unhappy.

  “He’s Jewish.”

  “You don’t think this is…”

  “Moses? No. But possibly a member of the exodus. Someone close enough to Moses to pick up some of the mother tongue. And someone who would have heard about the pyramids, but never saw them.”

  “Why’s that?” King asked.

  “The original generation that fled into the desert is said to have all died out during their forty-year migration. Even Moses didn’t enter the Promised Land. He only saw it from a distance before dying. Whoever this man was, he knew about the great monuments constructed by the golems, but knew nothing of their architecture.” Alexander took the man’s hands, which were bent open, as though in prayer, and turned them inward. They moved with ease until one overlapped the other.

  “And though I cannot tell you who this man was, I can tell you who he likely became.”

  King came to the same conclusion before Alexander could voice it. “Merlin.”

  “Which is a shame,” Alexander said. He saw King’s confusion and explained. “There will be no way to hide this discovery. Within hours, the site will be swarming with British authorities. Within months, everything that can be carted away will be. And the body of this man, buried in peace for thousands of years, will be carted off to a museum. He will be tested, dissected, and eventually put on display. Millions will flock to see the body of the great Merlin, whose dying wish had been to be buried in the tomb he created, with his most cherished possessions … including the one that was stolen.”

  “Stolen?” King said. “Something is missing.”

  Alexander removed his hands from the body’s hands. They hovered in the air, clutching an invisible object. “His hands were pried open. Whatever he was holding is gone. And the thieves with it.”

  “Damnit,” King said. Ridley seemed to be one step ahead of them at all times, like he knew where they were. King’s eyes widened at the revelation. “He knows we’re here.”

  A series of rumbles from above shook the chamber. Dust fell through the cracks of the bluestone ceiling. If it collapsed they would be crushed to paste. But it wasn’t the ceiling of the chamber that collapsed. It was the tunnel. King turned toward the tunnel, aiming his flashlight down its throat. In the distance he saw a wave of debris falling from the roof and fil
ling the void beneath. The tunnel was being packed tight from above.

  Tons of bluestone, bedrock, and soil filled the tunnel and spilled into the burial chamber, stopping at their feet as though held at bay by the ancient powers of Merlin. King scanned the tunnel entrance. It was packed tight. He turned around the room, searching the walls for some sign of an exit. He found none.

  They were trapped. Buried alive one hundred feet beneath Stonehenge.

  FIFTY-ONE

  El Mirador, Guatemala

  A CRUSHING WEIGHT fell on top of Queen, knocking her to her knees. But there were no pinpricks of pain that she’d expected to feel from the shower of trap-triggered needles falling from the ceiling. She rolled away and stood. When she turned around she saw Bishop, hunched over in pain. Close to a hundred needles stuck out of his back like porcupine quills.

  Bishop grunted and fell to one knee. “Poison,” he said through gritted teeth. With the number they were doing to Bishop’s body, Queen had no doubt she’d already be dead on the floor. He’d saved her life.

  Quickly and carefully, Knight and Queen plucked the darts from Bishop’s back. As the last dart came out, Bishop stood tall and shook his head; other than a poncho full of pencil eraser–sized holes, he was no worse for wear.

  “I don’t understand why this trap hadn’t been marked,” Knight said, looking over one of the poison-tipped needles that now held a thin coat of Bishop’s blood on its black tip. “Hudson doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to wait on exploring a find like this.”

  Queen saw the answer lying on the floor in an alcove obscured by loose stones—a bright orange “danger” sign featuring a decal of a man bending forward, arms up, and a shower of needles falling from above. She pointed to it. “I think someone down here was covering their back.”

  She knelt down by the stone that triggered the trap and turned on a small pocket flashlight. A faint yellow residue, invisible to anyone wearing night vision goggles rimmed the stone. “A chalk outline was wiped away. We’re going to have to be more careful.”