SHIAM Conspiracy- Book 1

by Joseph Heck

  Several rapid successions of lightning lit the warehouse with a flood of light that seemed reluctant to leave and Megan suddenly cried out.

  “Oh, no!”

  Zak looked up to see her standing with her hands cupped to her mouth. She looked as though she was fighting the urge to scream, her gaze fixated on something on the other side of the workbenches. Darkness had returned to the building and Zak had to follow her line of sight with the flashlight. There was a gap between two of the benches. The beam cut through the darkness and came to rest upon another body. This one was Elf.

  “Gavril?” he guessed.

  She could only nod her confirmation. The tears welling in her eyes could have easily been from the foul air, but she allowed them to streak down her face in grief.

  He was lying on the far side of the benches about ten meters beyond where they stood. Gavril looked to be about average height for an Elf, thin build and delicate features. He was lying on his back, a shocked expression on his cold dead face.

  Zak continued to sweep the area beyond the workbenches with his light. The bright beam came to rest on another body, then another and another, until he counted five bodies in all. At least two besides Gavril he could identify as Elves. The remaining two were face down so Zak couldn’t be sure, but he guessed that they were Elves as well. They were lying in a straight line from one another, spaced about two meters apart, which suggested to Zak that these weren’t random killings. The five had been executed.

  As he approached, Zak’s flashlight revealed a splattering of gore on the concrete floor beyond the bodies that told him everything he needed to know about how they died.

  “That is Gavril,” Megan whispered, her voice cracking with emotion, as Zak reached the first body.

  He knelt to examine the wounds on the Elf’s body. There were two holes in his chest, but these were slightly larger than those in the Ork. The wounds were grouped tightly together; two quick shots with deadly accuracy, the sign of a pro. He rolled the body only enough to confirm what he suspected; Gavril had been killed with the Uk’glok, his back one large crater between his shoulder blades. He eased the body back to the floor, not wanting Megan to see the gruesome wounds on her friend.

  He carefully moved to the next body. The second Elf had similar wounds in his chest. He didn’t want to disturb the crime scene any more than he had to in the dark, so he didn’t bother to check the Elf’s back; he already knew what he’d find. When he moved to the third body, he could tell it was another Elf even though the body was face down on the floor. The Elf’s back was in the same condition as Gavril’s. One large gaping mess that looked as though something had exploded from the body. The exit wounds from the two shots overlapped, the energy pulses expanding as they left the body. Pieces of the Elf’s lungs and muscle tissue were left clinging to the gaping wounds, as well as scattered upon the floor around him. Zak made his way to the remaining two bodies, confirming that they were also Elves and that their wounds matched those of the others.

  “They were all shot with an Uk’glok,” he said finally, shaking his head. “I assume the weapon over there by the Ork. It looks like these Elves were executed. Orkensha style. The Ghanstap have been training both the Dhoraz Sect and the Orkensha mafia for years, so it would be difficult to determine which group is responsible unless one of them claims credit.”

  “So, the Orkensha are behind this!”

  Zak paused at the bitterness now in Megan’s voice. No, not only bitterness. A deep anguish as well. He felt an overwhelming urge to comfort her, but he felt helpless to do so. His hatred for the Orks swelled within him, “The fragging scum are going to end up starting a war!”

  “I do not understand,” Megan said, her voice now weak with distress. “Elves would never willingly work with the Orkensha. Gavril would never...”

  “I have a feeling the EAST Group isn’t all that it appears to be on the surface,” Zak said. “Gavril may not have known what was really going on. Hell, I still don’t know what’s really going on!”

  “It is pretty obvious that the Orks double-crossed the Elves,” Megan said in a bitter voice. “They probably lured them here under false pretense and then murdered them in cold blood. We have to make them pay!”

  “We don’t know anything for certain,” Zak told her. He surprised himself by saying it. Everything they found so far seemed to verify Megan’s interpretation of what happened. And, considering how he felt toward the Orks, he was more than willing to jump to the same conclusions. But something about it didn’t feel right. “All we have here is one dead Ork. It is not enough to prove that it was an organized Orkensha operation. And leaving one of their own behind isn’t typical of the Orks. Something’s not right. There’s something we’re missing here...”

  “Vennhim told you his contact confirmed the Dhoraz were involved!” Megan was practically screaming. “The proof is lying right here on the floor. What more do you need! You hate them, yourself. Why are you protecting them?”

  “I am not protecting them!” Zak’s anger flared before he could stop it. “You’re fragging right. I do hate the Orks. But I am not prepared to sacrifice innocent lives needlessly in order to satisfy my own vendetta. If this thing gets out of hand, it could end up turning into a world-wide conflict. Do you understand what that would mean?”

  If Megan’s emotions were not running so strong, Zak would have called the expression now on her face a pout. When she answered him, her pain cracked the hard stone of her voice. “Then I guess we had better find out what exactly is going on.”

  Zak could feel her watching him in the darkness as he began searching over more of the area with his light, but he chose to ignore her. Not far from the line of bodies he found that the floor had been completely swept clean. He walked over to the concrete and ran the light in large arcs across the floor. Why clean this section of the floor and leave the tracks on the other side of the benches? Was it an oversight?

  His light suddenly fell on something he had missed when he first examined Gavril’s body. He could just see the tip of the barrel beneath the dead Elf. The fact that he’d missed it earlier picked at him. He moved back to the body and gently lifted it for a better look. It was a Beamer Laser weapon. “Looks like your friend is the one who got the bead on the Ork. At least he died fighting.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your friend was the one who killed the Ork.”

  “That is not possible,” Megan said weakly, the shock of her friend’s death returning to her as her anger failed. “Gavril would never carry a gun much less use it on anyone.”

  Zak didn’t argue with her. He was preoccupied again, repeatedly swinging the flashlight back and forth over the bodies, studying every little detail. Something just didn’t make any sense. He could understand leaving the Elves behind. But if this was a Dhoraz operation, why leave a dead team member behind?

  Megan gathered the courage to follow the tracks Zak had made to Gavril’s body. She knelt down and gently stroked his hair, ignoring the small insects that were crawling through it, her tears falling freely now.

  Her grief weighed heavy on Zak as he watched her. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and console her. He wanted to make it all go away. But there was no way he could.

  His mind snapped back to the crime scene as a thought suddenly came to him. There was no evidence of a struggle. So the Elves all simply stood there and allowed the Ork to execute them? And what about Gavril? If he had a gun, why wait until all his friends were dead before killing the Ork? And if he was the shooter who killed the Ork, why was his body positioned as though he had been executed the same as the other Elves...

  It hit him suddenly. The Elves were all lying in more or less a straight line, like they had simply collapsed to the floor as they were shot. But that was against the laws of physics where an Uk’glok is concerned. The impact from the laser and the force of the exit should have sent each of the Elves catapulting from where they stood. There was no way they would have
ended up in a straight line like this.

  “Do you sense any magic having been used here?” he asked Megan.

  She was still bent over her friend and didn’t bother to look over at him. “I told you there was.”

  “No, I mean right here, in this very spot.”

  Megan cocked her head as though she was suddenly concentrating on the air around her. “Yes. Yes, there is something here, though it is very confusing. It has been masked, but there is also some sort of distortion.”

  She rose to her feet and slowly walked the line of bodies. Turning to Zak she said, “They had no chance to defend themselves. They were held in place using sorcery!”

  It was what Zak had suspected. After they were killed the spell was released and their dead bodies simply dropped to the ground. By the position of his body, it would seem that Gavril was also held and then dropped afterward. If that was so, how did he manage to kill the Ork? And if he didn’t, who did?

  Zak slowly exhaled the frustration he felt. He still had more questions than answers.

  16

  Zak’s attention was suddenly drawn back to the soft buzz of energy that seemed now to be reaching out to him. He and Megan had been so preoccupied with the bodies that he had nearly forgotten about the small prefab office and the strange energy pulsating inside it. In the darkness, he could barely make out the dull red glow filtering through the office window. As he watched, it grew steadily brighter, began to throb faster.

  “We better have a look at whatever that is,” Zak said, motioning toward the structure with his flashlight.

  Although Megan was reluctant to leave Gavril’s side she followed him. They approached the office cautiously as the mysterious reaction coming from within the small structure continued its repeating cycles of expanding energy, each time culminating in a discharge of energy that rose up and through the roof of the building.

  Zak watched as another thin streak of reddish light became gradually visible in the darkness, almost leisurely expanding into a column of distorted air that shimmered and throbbed as it drifted up toward the roof of the warehouse.

  A few steps closer and he could feel the tingling sensation of static electricity creep across his flesh. It tickled his entire scalp, raised the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck.

  “What the frag is that?” He wasn’t really expecting an answer from Megan. “This is close enough, I think.”

  Zak put a hand on Megan’s shoulder to prevent her from moving any closer to the structure. She stopped immediately without offering any resistance and stood transfixed, staring blankly at the quickening pulse that could be seen through the window of the room. She seemed dazed, her face expressionless. Zak worried about her emotional state over the death of her friend as he studied her by the light he held.

  “Megan?”

  She didn’t reply for a long moment. Suddenly she blinked and her expression became anxious. “There is something very wrong here!”

  Her comment seemed rather obvious to Zak, but all he could think to say was, “What do you mean?”

  “I am not sure,” she said thoughtfully. Her eyes seemed to glow in the dim light. “Very powerful sorcery has been used here. I think it has been masked, just like the sorcery at Grimrok was, but I cannot tell for certain. There is too much interference.”

  “What kind of interference?”

  “I think it is coming from that.” She pointed toward the small office in front of them.

  “Can you tell what that is? Is it magical?”

  “It is definitely some sort of energy source, but I have no idea what it is,” Megan said squinting to see past the light Zak was shining at her. “I do not think the energy source itself is magical. There is something strange about it though. Could you get that light out of my eyes!”

  “Sorry,” Zak said and lowered the flashlight. “Can you sense anything else?”

  “It is very weird,” she said. “There was definitely more than one sorcerer involved. They used a very sophisticated concealment spell to hide that energy source. These guys were not amateurs. It is like this whole building is in lockdown. The spell they used seems to be self-perpetuating. I think it is feeding off the energy somehow, while preventing it from being detected at the same time. The ethereal echoes seem to have been manipulated the same as at Grimrok, but I cannot be certain because of all the interference.”

  “What about the signatures, can you get anything from them?”

  “The same as at Grimrok, as far as I can tell.” Megan looked directly at him. “I cannot say with any certainty that the signatures are Orkensha, but they seem to be.”

  “Can you tell if it’s the sorcery that is causing this energy leak or whatever it is?”

  “There seems to have been a number of spells cast here.” Megan’s brow furrowed as she concentrated. “I can only make out the last sorcery that was used. It was a concealment spell. And I think some sort of a containment spell was combined with it. Whoever performed the sorcery was trying to contain the energy as well as preventing anyone from finding it.”

  “Judging by the way that stuff is shooting out through the roof, I don’t think they did a very good job of containment.”

  “The sorcery is beginning to weaken. It seems to be breaking down.”

  “I thought you said it was self-perpetuating?”

  “Nothing lasts forever.” Megan moved toward the office again, shaking off Zak’s grip as he attempted to stop her. “I need a closer look!”

  “Megan, no. We don’t know what this is!”

  Zak cursed under his breath and followed her, since he was unable to stop her.

  The static energy grew even stronger as they drew nearer to the source. Zak felt as though hundreds of invisible insects were crawling over his flesh. The office was a three-meter cube with an oversized window and door cut into the near side. As they approached the structure the pulsing red light became clearer, the air inside the structure seemed thick, like a dense blood fog which hid all details of the room. It pulsed...pulsed...pulsed...then suddenly they heard the familiar popping sound and the red blinked to black. A moment later the process began again.

  “Zak, I am sensing a lot of power here that has nothing to do with sorcery,” Megan said nervously. “And I get the feeling that the suppression spell is just barely holding it back.”

  “Holding it back?”

  “It is like a dam ready to burst,” she answered.

  “That’s not a good thing,” he said dryly. “Do you think you can fix it?”

  “Fix it?” She looked at him in disbelief. “I do not even know what this is, never mind how to fix it!”

  “Crap!” Zak muttered his frustration. He attempted to look through the window, keeping a discreet distance between himself and the structure. “You have better vision than I do. Can you see anything inside?”

  “No, nothing specific.” Megan also seemed hesitant to get any closer. She stood for several moments as though mesmerized by the light. Finally she added, “There is something there. I cannot see it. I can only sense it. Something powerful!”

  He wanted to tell her that she was being a bit melodramatic, but he felt it as well. It was like a shadow falling over him, a sense of hopelessness threatening to push him to the edge of despair. But it also created a strange impulse within him. He walked the remaining distance to the office, his mind suddenly lost to any real awareness, reaching out a hand even as he felt reluctant to touch the door. His gaze never leaving the window, the red pulsing light within seemed to call out to him. He hesitated, fighting to resist and then no longer able to...

  “Wait!” Megan cried out. She grabbed his arm in time to prevent him from coming in contact with the metallic handle. As she touched him, his compulsion to open the door vanished.

  “This is way too weird,” she said. “Let me see if I can find anything out. I have more experience dealing with this sort of stuff than you.”

  She began chanting in a low voice. Zak reco
gnized the language she spoke as High Elvish, but he couldn’t understand any of it. He barely knew the modern Elvish languages. When she had finished her incantation, Megan reached out and gently placed her hand upon the door.

  Suddenly she began chanting more frantically, her eyes growing wide with fright. She pulled on her hand, attempting to free herself from the door. She became desperate, crying out and twisting her body for leverage, but her hand remained in firm contact with the door.

  As soon as he touched her he felt it, a dark malevolence hovering just beyond the door. It was all he could do to maintain contact with Megan’s hand, as he struggled to peel her frozen fingers from the doorknob.

  “Help me!”

  “I’m trying!”

  “Get me free!”

  “I’m trying!”

  He struggled to free her, but to no end. It was like her hand had been welded to the door handle. As he continued to struggle, he heard the familiar popping sound and suddenly she was free of the door. They both went flying backwards from the sudden release, Zak landing upon the concrete floor with Megan falling on top of him. His flashlight went flying out of his hand, skidding across the floor, as Megan’s weight came down on his midsection, punching the air from his lungs.

  For a moment Zak was not aware of anything; he was caught in a void without shape. Then suddenly he realized that he was gasping for breath and that Megan was lying on top of him panting heavily. She quickly rolled off him, seeming embarrassed over her close proximity to him. They both sat there upon the floor for several moments, trying to recover. When Zak felt that he could breathe somewhat normally again, he reached out and took Megan’s hand. Using his Elf vision in spite of the risk of aggravating his headache, he checked first her hand and then the entire length of her arm for wounds or damage of any kind.

  A succession of lightning assisted his vision. In the flashes of stark white light he could see that her palm was red and swollen, but he detected no lacerations. He swiveled her wrist, waiting for the next series of flashes to check the rest of her arm. He breathed a sigh of relief when he couldn’t detect anything further. Megan showed no sign of pain or discomfort. She merely sat there gasping in deep breaths of air, staring over at him with frightened eyes.