by S. M. Nolan
“Aye,” Matthews said.
“They don't seem to be grieving,” Maggie said with fleeting sympathy.
“No time for it,” Russell admitted. “We've got to stay focused. If Omega attacked, they'll know we bailed. Bangladesh wouldn't risk an international incident without their protection. They'll be looking for us, which means we need to move as fast as possible to get to the Reverberant before Omega finds us.”
“How the hell'd they find us anyway?” Maggie asked, facing the open tree-line.
“Satellite. They tracked us to Apra and out again. The easiest place to hit us was in the air. The jet probably only made contact to confirm it wasn't I-D'd before firing.”
Maggie sighed frustration, her sympathy for Brown and the Protectorate waning. She put a hand at her hip, placed the other at her forehead and thumbed her temple.
“This is fucking mental, Russell.” She flicked her lip ring as her accent emerged, “What the hell am I doing 'ere?”
“What can we do otherwise?”
“We were just blown out of the fucking sky!” She yelled, throwing up her hands.
“Maggie, I know you're upset, but we need to stay calm, and quiet.”
Maggie growled. Grass crunched. They swiveled, rifles raised. Davis threw up his hands, holding what appeared to be a small cell-phone.
“Thank God,” Maggie said, lowering her rifle.
Davis stepped between them for the far-edge of the clearing, “Come on. We need to find Matthews and get the hell out of here.”
“How far are we from the crash site?” Russell asked in-step.
“Two or three miles.” His eyes repeatedly darted between the screen and the trees ahead, “It went down somewhere in the mountains, but I doubt they'll check it.”
“Why'd they shoot us down anyhow?” Maggie asked Davis.
“Isn't it obvious?” He derided.
“How can they have that kind of connection?” Russell asked.
Davis shook his head, planted heavy steps through tall grass. He spoke over swishing foliage, “It wouldn't have happened on a full crew. They wanted to take advantage of that; take out a transport we heavily rely on. Normally, we'd have been loaded for bear with counter-measures and an escort.”
“Why weren't we?” Maggie asked pointedly.
“Because this is an unexpected excursion,” he said with a caustic undertone. “Ryusaki and Miramoto's deaths were poorly timed. We're simply not in any position to pull people from the field.”
He led them through into the trees. Russell was confounded, “You mean there are field agents?”
“Yes. Spies mostly. In deep, investigating leads on Omega's leadership.”
“How many?” Maggie asked out of curiosity.
“A hundred?” Davis said, double checking the device.
“That many?” Russell asked in disbelief. “How is it possible you're not closer to finding them?”
“It isn't that simple,” Davis said, satisfied with the device. He placed it in a pocket of his flight suit. “At any given time there's dozens of professional entities being investigated. Within each are several plants at different levels of the corporate ladder. That's a few dozen people each. We get useful Intel most of the time—hence the meeting between Ryusaki and Miramoto, but nothing concrete on the top-level so we have to continue investigating.”
He diverted around some trees, realigned his course.
“There's weapons manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, political bodies, and any other number of seemingly inane conglomerates requiring scrutiny, and then there's the small stuff, like you.”
“I still don't understand how you haven't found anything.”
“They're obviously intelligent, and well-funded enough to wage a war. Constantly working to cover the paper-trails doesn't hurt. Everything's been about following them to their last position, then racing to try and find them before the trail goes cold again.”
“But you haven't?” Maggie asked.
“No.”
“You're telling me, in a thousand years, the Protectorate's found nothing?” Russell ridiculed.
“No, not really,” Davis admitted with reticence. “Until recently, we never had much support. Omega was mostly isolated anyway. Each group was an annoyance to the other, not a threat. They sought the weapon without interference. When we felt they were getting close, we eliminated or redirected them.”
He huffed from exertion, double-checked the device, then steered at an angle through trees.
“For the last seventy years however, Omega's power's been growing, but they've only very recently been actively seeking us out. It's gotten worse because of the opportunities technology's presented. Progress has been good to Omega, but it's causing the Protectorate's downfall. We're an old, nomadic group clinging to ancient traditions and ideas. The Reverberant simply isn't prepared to cope with the future around him.”
Russell shook his head in disbelief that a thousand year war had only recently been considered a threat. The rationales of certain, Protectorate decisions were already in question, but Russell couldn't help silently ridiculing their unwillingness to adapt.
Maggie grunted in disgust, quelling Russell's thoughts. Davis halted them and stepped forward to a tangled mass of parachute and man hanged from a tree. Crunching twigs signaled someone approaching. Matthews called out in a hush before they raised their weapons.
The group stood before Brown's body. Paracord wound up and around it. His chute's cords had wrapped around his throat, the silk caught higher up. His neck was snapped at an odd angle, his open eyes empty of life. Silver moonlight glinted in them as his body swayed, limp.
Maggie forced herself against a tree to battle her rising stomach. The mournful silence was interrupted by Davis climbing to cut Brown free. Maggie forced back acidic sickness. The corpse crashed to the ground and bile lurched upward again.
Davis dropped beside it with a thud, stooped to rifle through Brown's pockets. He removed several small devices and pistol magazines, handed them to Matthews with a pistol, then cut a length of parachute down and covered Brown. Satisfied with the make-shift shroud, he stood back.
Davis shook his head, took a pistol from Matthews, and ushered the others forward. He retrieved the device from his back-pocket, and handed it to Matthews.
“Keep us on track for the temple.”
He dropped back to cover their rear. The group trudged over uneven ground, around trees, and through thickets toward the Protectorate's hide-away. They cut a swath of noise through an ever-lightening forest, occasionally stopping long enough to pass around a canteen.
The sun rose steadily in its arc, heralding the sounds of a new morning. Dew clung to grasses and leaves, refracted light through tiny, prismatic drops along nature's countless surfaces. Small animals and birds darted here and there with swishing or the wet shake of tree-limbs. The air teemed with life's harmonious cries and the wading of creatures foraging for food over the constant crunch of the group's boots.
Matthews disturbed the tranquil symphony only to relay his confidence that they were closing in on the temple. They entered a small clearing, a canopy shading them from the sun. They took advantage of it, sat around a precarious rock formation to rest for a drink.
“Where were we headed? An airstrip?” Maggie panted, more frustrated than curious.
“To the southwest, yes,” Matthews replied, over a sip from the canteen. He passed it to her. “From there we'd have taken the truck, headed north-east—to somewhere near here, and walked the rest of the way.”
Maggie downed a gulp with a hot breath, “Not an easy place to find.”
“For good reason,” Matthews said. “The temples house the bulk of the Order. Some are families, others are—”
“It's here,” Davis interrupted from behind a tall, trapezoidal stone. He stepped out holding a device, “The entrance is here.”
“What?” Matthews rose, grabbed the device from him. “How?”
“Th
e entrance is here,” Davis said, pointing down. He shifted his hand right, to a rock-wall buffering the eastern-edge of the canopy, “but the tracker's in the temple somewhere ahead.”
“I don't see an entrance,” Maggie said, wondering if she'd missed something.
She stepped beside the two. Russell followed. Davis ran a free-hand over the stone, made wide streaks, then shifted to small circles near its top. He became intensely interested in a small area, allowing it to wash through his mind with a tactile impression.
“Feel it.”
Maggie ran her hand over the stone. A light rise formed a vague shape beneath dirt and grime clinging to the weathered stone. A triangular shape with something beside it imprinted in her mind.
“Anyone have paper?”
“I do. Here.” Russell stepped back toward his duffel bag. He ripped a sheet of paper from a lined notebook, handed it over with a pencil.
Maggie began to take a rubbing, “What d'you think it is?”
“Hopefully direction,” Davis replied.
The image became clearer as the rubbing progressed. Maggie recognized it at once as an element of the design from Ryusaki and Miramoto's tattoos; the empty triangle with the vertically-lined mound beside it. She finished, handed it to Davis. He stepped back, held it level with its place on the stone.
His eyes lit up, “Here, help me.”
He cast the paper aside, sprinted at the tall stone. The others watched with a curious perplexity. He fought the stone with all his might. They moved to help, grunting to loosen it from the Earth.
“It makes sense now. Why it's ahead. But the entrance is here,” Russell strained.
Matthews grunted, “Must be. A tunnel.”
Maggie shoved the massive stone beside them. They worked into a rhythm, inching it off the ground. Then, all at once, its gravity shifted and it begin a slow topple.
“Watch it!” Davis panted, glistening with sweat.
The stone passed its equilibrium with him atop and hit the ground with a cloud of dust. Davis followed. His gut hit the edge of the stone. He rolled sideways, winded. Maggie stooped to his aid but he waved her off and rose to all fours in a coughing fit.
Deep, rasping breaths emitted from his crouch near the uncovered earth. He swept away dirt and dead leaves to a thick, wooden trap-door.
“Open it.”
The other three struggled against slime and mud to break the door's earthen seal. Russell stepped away, returned with his rifle and bag slung over his back. He removed his pistol and flash-light from his side, knelt beside the opening.
With a twist, his light danced through particles of dirt and dust drifting past a ladder to a limestone floor. It splayed around the hole revealing stone walls at a right-angle toward the eastern rock-face.
“I'll go first,” Russell said, positioned over the hole.
He hung his legs in, dropped down without a second word. Maggie retrieved her pack and followed. Russell's light crawled along limestone a few yards forward as he double clicked his Lash.
Davis responded, “We're in. Door's closed.”
Russell took the distance with his pistol raised over his opposite wrist and the flash-light sweeping the tunnel with a radiant gaze. Maggie caught up, kept pace with her rifle loose in her hands and her senses attuned. Her feet overtook slapped small puddles then stopped abruptly.
The tunnel dead-ended in a brick wall beneath Russell's light. Maggie's mind synced with his.
“A false-wall.”
“It must be an escape tunnel.”
“It makes sense why it would've been hidden—but not under a stone,” Maggie replied, hearing Davis and Matthews close in.
“That large a stone would've been impossible to lift.”
Maggie nodded, “Unless they didn't need to escape.”
“It wasn't just for hiding.”
She agreed, “No.”
“Shit,” Davis said behind them. “I was worried about this.”
“So, we're right?” Maggie asked.
“If you're thinking what I think, yes.”
Davis stepped to the wall and ran his hands along it. He depressed a block that gave way and sank. The wall belched dust, came loose. He forced his weight against one side. It swung open with grinding stone. The wall divided the passage in two, open on either side.
He peered in with a heavy sigh, “They're already gone.”
15.
The Nepalese Temple
October 3rd
12:14 PM
Protectorate Temple
Maggie and Russell followed Davis into the temple amid a cautious silence. Matthews lagged behind. The group emerged from the escape tunnel into a large, vaulted, stone room. Their raised weapons followed the slope its massive ceiling upward. It appeared to be shaped like the innards of an ancient pyramid.
Red, wooden walls rose to waist-height, repeating along the temple's sides every few feet. Columns interconnected them with a wood loft overhead. Stairs jutted from it at either end on both sides of the room.
Doorways led to small, square rooms doubled atop and beneath the loft. Most were ajar, as though their inhabitants had left in a hurry. Likewise a circular, stone fire-pit sat beneath a metal grate in the room's center, a tall trellis and pot overturned atop it.
To their right, the temple's rear-wall bore a massive, cracked symbol similar to what had marked its entrance. It had worn in the eons since its construction, its defining asterisk faded to a mere circle within the triangle. The mound's vertical lines were jagged, their outlines clear despite missing sections.
The whole of the temple's age was topped off by a musty smell of aged wood and stale air stirred by their echoing steps.
Davis lowered his pistol, hurried to check a room. He returned disheartened. Matthews exhaled a heavy breath, “They'd have left a message—some clue as to where they were going. We just have to find it.”
Maggie progressed toward the fire-pit in a small circle, her neck craned to survey the room, “Like what?”
Matthews shrugged and shook his head. Davis spoke urgently to Russell, “We'd better get started. Head outside. Make sure we're clear.”
Russell motioned Maggie away, toward an opening opposite the symbol's wall. Light shone in a corridor ahead from beyond a shorter one at the right. The two formed an L that led out, into a light breeze.
Russell's rifle remained at-ease as he checked a corner and motioned Maggie into the first section of corridor. She admired his profile in the growing light of the passage, calmed by the confidence it conveyed. She was suddenly aware of a mixture of emotions brewing in her, tried to force them away. The melange resisted, began to claw its way to the surface.
She tried to keep her mind elsewhere. “Where d'you think they went?”
Russell shrugged, oblivious to her internal struggle. “Dunno', but I'm sure they're somewhere close. They can't have gone far or they would've attracted too much attention.”
“You think they're still in Nepal?”
He rounded the second corner and faced an open doorway.
“Depends how much time's passed.”
Warm sunlight and cool, fresh air beckoned them forward. He halted Maggie with a hand but with her mind fighting itself, she walked into him. She apologized instantly, but he was out the door. Thick cedars and pines lined the inside of a small clearing beyond carved stones of various heights, likely left behind by the Protectorate.
Russell lowered his hand and caught Maggie's bewilderment, “You okay?” She nodded. “It's clear.”
She readjusted her rifle and followed him into the noon sun. She drew thin, mountain air deep into her lungs, closed her eyes toward the sky to bask in its warmth. Russell watched her with a smirk.
She sensed it, “Don't look at me like that, I'm not crazy.”
“I don't think you're crazy.”
She lowered her head, looked to him with a raised brow, “But?”
He joked with a step forward, “Maybe a little rough
around the edges.”
“You arse.”
“I'm not the one fishing for compliments,” he chuckled, strolling between two, thigh-high horizontal stones.
He sat down against one, faced away from the temple to watch the tree-line ahead. Maggie considered his words, their lingering attraction in her mind. She suddenly felt an unbearable loneliness, as if suspended over every soul in the world, exiled from them.
“Yeah, you're right. You were trying to be nice.” She thought of his apology at the shop with a weak smile and sat beside him.
He caught it. “See? That's what I'm talking about. You wouldn't need to fish for compliments if you smiled more. It takes the dread out of things.”
Maggie's face drew taught playfully, “Now, I may be wrong, but I think there was a compliment buried in there somewhere.”
“Possibly.”
She rolled her eyes, laid her head against his shoulder. “I'm glad it's you here, and not… someone else.”
He slid his arm around her waist, pulled her closer. Her head shifted to his chest, her hand clenching his shirt. A glimmer of sadness flashed across her face.
He quelled it, “I'm glad you're here too, Maggie.”
She eased away to sit even with him, channel the warmer of her mixed emotions through her eyes. They caught one another's intentions, their minds playing through all that had happened.
For Russell's part, he found Maggie genuinely unique, however “rough around the edges.” He couldn't bear to see her hurt, nor imagine being apart from her—at least not now. He especially didn't blame her for those rough-edges. She was so far from her element, yet somehow, she still managed to remain level-headed when it mattered, and stunning despite dirt, sweat, and disheveled hair.
He found a rippling desire to touch her, slid his hand against her face. She nudged it with a soft warmth that welcomed him. They leaned in until their lips met and their tongues danced.
Maggie pulled away when she felt the moment pass. She channeled the more timorous of her emotions. Her eyes turned to orbs of deep longing. Russell wondered at it, his face blank.
Before, her fear and anger had seemed effects of simple pain. So near the cusp of greatness, and losing everything, there was no questions as to her reactions. Now though, he saw how dreadfully lonely she was: with only two, squabbling sisters as company and a failing business, she had little to hold on to. Yet despite being terribly frightened, she kept going.