‘Mum! DON’T LEAVE ME!!’
‘Open your heart,’ her mother’s voice whispered through the pain. ‘Resist temptation and the light will set you free.’
Darkness returned and with it the pain. Sarah cried out in agony and images cascaded through her mind. A meteorite cut through the sky, skimming across heaven’s vault like a celestial spear. Down and down it arrowed, its burning arc of fire speeding over cities and towns before it impacted in a fantastic explosion of light. An invisible shockwave sped out from the epicentre, decimating everything in its path. Millions died, and Sarah watched as, one by one, small bright lights emerged from the ruins, until millions of these single radiant illuminations hovered above the ground, before floating up towards the sky and the stars beyond.
The dead never die, Sarah thought through the agony. We live on!
The surroundings of the train re-emerged through the mists and Sarah found herself once more staring into the eyes of the Anakim woman, as she clasped a massive hand over Sarah’s head. The giant opened her mouth and spoke again, but this time Sarah understood the words. ‘Open your heart,’ the ancient woman said. ‘Open your heart, Mor ... gan.’
Sarah stared deep into its gaze and imagined, felt her heart opening. Her chest ached with pain and the vision changed and she saw Trish and Jason entering the chamber containing the frieze, alongside a woman Sarah thought she recognised. She couldn’t make her out, though, as she had her back to her. This unknown woman wore what looked like a Deep Reach jacket, splashed on the arms and back with dried blood.
‘And it’s through here?’ Jason said, pointing at the frieze. ‘And you’re sure you’ve still got your pendant?’
The woman nodded.
‘How do we get through?’ Trish said, looking as confused as Jason.
The woman turned and Sarah realised it was her. She was looking at herself! Am I seeing the future? she wondered, as the scene continued to unfold.
The Sarah in the vision smiled, moved past Trish and Jason and placed her hand on the same circular indent Sarah currently touched.
Nothing happened at first, but then a blue light bloomed into being inside the frieze, the metal turning transparent and rippling like water. The constellations on the frieze glowed bright and a stream of light connected up star after star until a shimmering pentagonal opening formed at their centre. Sarah’s mysterious twin released the circle and stepped towards the newly created doorway, which gleamed like liquid metal.
‘I don’t like this,’ Jason said, eyeing the strange undulating phenomenon with trepidation. ‘Why all the sneaking about? And what’s with the blood?’ He gestured at Sarah’s jacket.
‘If it helps us find this gate, then we need to do as she says.’ Trish followed the other Sarah through the frieze, but as Trish disappeared through the portal-like entrance, something dropped to the ground, unnoticed.
Did she drop it by accident? Sarah wondered, noticing the glint of the gold locket gleaming in the half-light. Or was she leaving a trail for me to follow? It can’t be a message from Trish, Sarah told herself, totally confused, because I’m already with her. I’m seeing a past I don’t remember!
Jason shone his flashlight back the way they’d come, as if he sensed someone was watching. ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’ he said, and then followed Trish into the opening and vanished from sight.
Light flared bright and a rush of sound made Sarah gasp for air. Her eyes opened wide and the freezing cold of reality returned with a FLASH.
Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Eight
‘Sarah, can you hear me?’
A hand touched her shoulder and Sarah stared up at the upside-down face of Cardinal Avery Cantrell, as he peered down at her from above.
Sarah managed a nod and struggled up from the ground into a sitting position.
‘Are you okay?’ Avery said, clearly wanting to comfort her, but reluctant to make contact after her brush with the unnatural.
‘I saw my friends.’ Sarah looked up at the dirt-encrusted frieze and the opening she knew lay concealed within.
‘You had another vision, didn’t you?’ Avery said, sounding excited. ‘Tell us what you saw.’
‘Trish and Jason were here.’ Sarah struggled to her feet. ‘They were here in this pit; they’ve been here all along.’
‘That can’t be,’ Chen said. ‘We only finished excavating it late last night.’
‘Then they must have been here since then.’
‘Impossible,’ Major Lanter said, moving forward. ‘My men have been guarding it round the clock. No one’s come in or out.’
‘Major,’ one of the Swiss guards said, ‘what about the interference we experienced at zero four hundred?’
Avery frowned. ‘Interference?’
Major Lanter nodded. ‘Our cameras, helmet visors and rifle scopes all exhibited some kind of malfunction at four a.m. We thought it might have been Konstantin preparing for an attack, so we took up defensive positions.’
‘Time enough to allow someone to sneak inside?’ Avery said.
Lanter glanced at Sarah. ‘Perhaps.’
‘They were here last night?’ Sarah said, unable to believe what she was hearing. She looked at the frieze and then down at the locket, which remained clasped in the palm of her hand. She unfurled her fingers and touched it. ‘Trish and Jason are alive.’ Her hopes soared.
‘What else did you see?’ Zinetti said, growing impatient ‘What aren’t you telling us?’
‘Give her time,’ Avery said. ‘She’s had a shock.’
Sarah looked at Ruben. The Catholic monk remained silent, watching from within the shadows of his hooded robe. ‘You can’t trust them,’ a voice in her head said. ‘If they knew what you saw, they’d think you were as insane as you feel. Tell them nothing!’
Sarah looked down at her jacket, feeling the urge to take it off to examine. But, as she peered at the arms, she didn’t see any blood like she’d witnessed in the vision. I must have washed it off, she thought and then recalled the dead body of Chen’s teammate and its gruesome mutilation. I did it. The horror of realisation dawned on her. I did it. I killed that man. I killed him then washed off the blood and I don’t even remember. She looked at Chen and Farish, whose scowl deepened on eye contact. They were right all along. I’m a murderer! I’m possessed!! Her hands, which already trembled, shook harder and she folded her arms to conceal the tremors, along with her guilt.
‘Sarah?’
She looked at Avery.
‘What is it?’ he said, noticing her fear. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ She avoided everyone’s gaze and moved to look up at the frieze. She reached out a shaky hand and touched the circle again, but this time nothing happened, even when she pressed her hand firmly against it.
‘The stars,’ she said, remembering how the frieze had glowed with light. What was concerning her, however, was that she didn’t know if it was a memory from her vision, or one from real life she’d since forgotten.
‘What about them?’ Avery said.
Sarah looked around and held out her hand. ‘Water, give me water.’
Ruben handed her his flask again, but rather than drink it Sarah splashed the liquid over the ancient sculpture. Again and again, she threw the water against it until the flask was empty. She dropped the container to the floor and rubbed at the wet coating to reveal the diamonds that lay hidden beneath the dirt.
‘Help her!’ Avery said.
Chen grasped Farish’s hand as he went to assist, his eyes lit up with greed.
‘Don’t touch it,’ Chen said, giving Avery a look of distrust.
Sarah continued to scrub at the metal wall, scarred by a network of cracks, and when she’d finished, she stepped back to admire her handiwork.
Avery came to stand beside her. ‘What do you see?’
Sarah looked at the inscriptions around the edge of the sculpture, and Chen also came to stand by her side. The Australian looked at Sarah and held
up a knife, then drew it across her throat, spraying blood over the frieze and Sarah’s face.
Sarah screamed and Avery grasped her arm.
‘What’s wrong, child?’
Heart racing, Sarah looked round and saw Chen standing in the same position, but no blood covered the wall and she held no knife in her hand.
‘Nothing,’ Sarah said, trying to quell the shaking in her body which had begun again. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘Have you taken your drugs?’ Avery said in concern.
‘I’m fine.’ But she was far from fine. She was seeing things. Hearing things. The voice in her head whispered to her and she resisted the urge to clamp her hands over her ears. Am I losing my mind? she thought. Or have I already lost it?
Lost it? You never had it to begin with. Her inner voice gave a chuckle and she tried to quell the terror that was building within.
‘This is a gateway,’ she said.
Avery gave her a sceptical look. ‘Heaven’s Gate?’
Sarah shook her head.
‘Tell us what you saw,’ Zinetti said, not realising she was balancing on the edge of sanity.
Her eyes darted to Avery and he nodded for her to tell them.
‘Don’t tell them about Trish and Jason,’ said the voice. ‘Don’t tell them about the doorway.’
But I need to find my friends. I need their help.
‘They can’t be trusted. Look at Zinetti, he’d sell his own grandmother if he thought it would get him what he wanted. Lanter is just as sly, and Avery is blind to it. Ruben is ...’
Is what?
‘Ruben is complicated. Chen hates you, Farish wants to kill you and the Swiss Guard would shoot you as soon as look at you.’
Sarah looked at the soldiers and saw it was true.
‘You’re a sheep surrounded by wolves. Don’t tell them what you saw. Don’t tell them anything!’
‘I saw a meteorite impact,’ she said, going against the wishes of the voice in her head, a voice that sounded like her own.
‘But it wasn’t AG5, was it?’ Avery said, sounding worried.
Sarah shook her head again. ‘How did you know?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Go on, what else did you see?’
‘I thought it might have been showing me something from the past, but I saw human cities, modern cities. And the impact was on land, not in water, like with AG5.’
‘Why are you listening to her?’ Zinetti said. ‘She’s possessed of the Devil. We can’t trust a word she says. A vision?’ He gave a derisive snort. ‘More like fantasy or wishful thinking.’
‘She sees the future,’ Ruben said. ‘It is another sign. An interpretation of tongues, a vision, these are gifts of the spirit.’
‘Visions are not gifts,’ Zinetti said. ‘And you forget, she’s an unbeliever, she has no faith. God does not reward those possessed by darkness.’
‘And you would know this, how?’ Avery said.
Zinetti glowered at him, but Sarah wasn’t listening. ‘How can you know I see the future?’ she said to Ruben.
The monk held her gaze and her eyes widened as she recalled the light in the sky. ‘Unless – unless, you know there’s another asteroid heading for Earth.’
Avery looked at her, a look of sadness coming over him. ‘He told you, didn’t he? Konstantin? He told you about the next asteroid.’
Sarah thought she was hearing things again, but Avery was deadly serious and she nodded in confirmation.
‘But you didn’t believe him.’
Sarah shook her head as the world crumbled around her. Another asteroid … could it be true?
‘Another asteroid?’ Chen looked from Sarah to Avery, her face a mixture of conflicting emotions. A smile creased her face, but the serious expressions around her made it fall away. ‘That’s why you’re on a tight schedule,’ Chen said, looking horrified as the truth of it struck her. ‘You knew all along and said nothing.’ The Australian explorer cursed and shook her head in disbelief. ‘And you were never going to tell us.’
Chen’s Malaysian friend remained grim-faced at her side, as silence fell in the underground chamber.
‘So, where is it going to impact?’ Chen said. ‘Here? Italy? Rome?’
Avery shook his head.
‘The United States,’ Zinetti said. ‘Few will survive.’
Chen looked dumbstruck and Sarah felt the same. The USA, destroyed? It couldn’t be, could it?
‘And the fallout?’ Chen said.
‘Catastrophic,’ Avery said. ‘It’s smaller than AG5, but another impact winter is imminent.’
‘An apocalypse is coming,’ Sarah said.
Everyone looked at her.
‘What did you say?’ Zinetti said.
‘Oh, my God,’ Sarah said in realisation. ‘Konstantin was telling me the truth. An apocalypse is coming and that’s why you’re here. That’s why you’re all here!’
‘What are you talking about,’ Chen said.
‘Don’t you see?’ Sarah said. ‘Heaven’s Gate, they’re not here to speak to God at all. They’re not here for Agartha, for the Anakim, for any of it.’
Chen and Farish glanced at the Vatican men, who’d gathered together into a tight-knit group. The Swiss Guard fanned out to block the entrance, their fingers straying onto triggers.
‘What are you saying?’ Chen said, looking nervous.
‘I’m saying,’ – Sarah stared into Avery’s eyes – ‘I’m saying Heaven’s Gate is not a gateway to God.’ Sarah pointed to the frieze. ‘Look at the wave. A tsunami!’ She rubbed feverishly at the frieze to reveal more of the diamond constellations. ‘Look at the stars.’ She spread her arms wide. ‘They’re in the same position now as they were back then. The Anakim knew what was coming and they left us a warning. A warning through time. They went underground for a reason. Oh, my God, it all makes sense, everything makes sense. Don’t you see?!’ Sarah stared up at the frieze before her and the sculpted Anakim men and women, some of whom pointed to the sky. ‘They knew what was coming.’
Chen grasped Sarah’s arm and spun her round. ‘What did they know? Sarah, what have you seen?’
Sarah pushed Chen aside and pointed at Avery as the truth hit like a blow to the head. ‘Heaven’s Gate.’ She looked up at the frieze and Konstantin’s words rang in her head. And she looked at Zinetti. ‘Next asteroid, you said next asteroid. Oh, dear God. There’s more than one. There’s more than one, isn’t there?’
Chen stared at her and Farish shifted in unease.
Sarah looked at the men of the cloth, from Zinetti to Avery and then finally to Ruben. ‘They’re not here for any of it,’ she said speaking more to herself than to Chen. ‘They’re here to stop the end of the world. They’re here to stop an apocalypse.’ Her mind cleared, the truth finally revealed.
‘It was they who were sent by God,’ the voice told her.
An image of blood and the shadow filled her mind. And what am I? she asked herself. Have I been sent to stop them? She shook her head. There was no evil in them, it’s in me!
Chen grasped Sarah’s arms and shook her. ‘Sarah, what is Heaven’s Gate?’
‘It’s a weapon, a weapon designed to stop what happened millennia ago from happening again.’ She looked at the Vatican men in a new light as the veil lifted. ‘They’re sent by God. They’re not here for anything else.’ Sarah stared at Zinetti in shock and couldn’t believe she’d been so wrong about him, about everything. ‘They’re here to save us all.’
Chapter One Hundred Seventy-Nine
The Capitol Building.
Washington D.C., USA.
A fighter jet roared past in the skies high above Washington D.C. Professor Steiner glanced up as another jet followed in the wake of the first. As the sound faded, he looked behind at the massed ranks of the FBI and a couple of thousand U.S. Army personnel, and beyond them to the ring of steel, which completely sealed off the Capitol Building from the outside world. Helicopter gunships patrolled the immediate vicinity, the whi
rring hum of their rotors echoing off nearby buildings. Accompanying these aerial guard dogs were formidable tanks, gun emplacements, wire fences and the National Guard, which maintained the impenetrable shield on the ground against the very real threat still posed by the GMRC. The Global Meteor Response Council remained locked down inside its numerous complexes across the country, the protracted siege an order from the President of the United States himself. However, they still possessed significant firepower and a standing army that could ignite a civil war. The nation, as it had been in the recent past, was again at its highest alert. DEFCON 1 was in effect. The conference between the president and his EU and Chinese counterparts was only hours away. With the European fleets poised for action in the mid-Atlantic, international tensions were at breaking point. The chance of a third world war occurring was seconds away from one wrong move. Nothing was being taken for granted, nothing, that was, except for five people branded as terrorists and the world’s most wanted criminal, who even now had penetrated two layers of security and were heading for the third.
Professor Steiner adjusted his tie and gripped his folder tighter. He was supposed to be a special advisor to the president, although he knew that charade couldn’t last much longer. As soon as they reached the next checkpoint, it was up to Brett, as an ex FBI agent, to secure their passage inside. He just hoped she was able to convince her friend in the Secret Service that the president needed to listen to what they had to say.
Steiner suppressed a sigh. It seemed like an eternity since they’d fled California, narrowly escaping the clutches of the GMRC and U.S. military with the aid of a handful of Darklight mercenaries. And yet, it was only a matter of days, and now they found themselves trying to break into the most secure building in the country, possibly the world, as they sought to convince the U.S. President to launch a nuclear strike on an asteroid destined to devastate the continental United States. It was a plan bordering on the suicidal as, if they were caught, they would be shot on sight. They were, after all, responsible for the president’s abduction weeks before, not to mention being in league with the infamous cyberterrorist known as Da Muss Ich – Because I Can – or, simply, Bic. And if all these things weren’t problem enough, the man they needed to save the nation, and indeed, the entire surface of the planet, the President of the United States, was being hunted by perhaps one of the greatest assassins the world had ever known, Ophion Nexus. Nexus had infiltrated Steiner’s team by force at the eleventh hour, in order to secure passage into the Capitol Building, so he could kill, first, Steiner himself, then the president.
Ancient Origins: Books 4 - 6 (Ancient Origins Boxset Book 2) Page 97