“Let’s move,” Morris called out. He began to lead the way up the ridge, Turcotte and Mualama following.
McGraw and Olivetti were pushing through waist-high snow. Each man would take ten steps, moving up the ridge, then step to the side and let the other take his place blazing the trail. They’d been doing this routine for over an hour and the muscles in their legs burned in agony, yet that didn’t slow them in the slightest. Both men wore night-vision goggles and the clear night sky gave enough illumination that they could see the way clearly.
McGraw had just taken lead and was on step number five when his crampon hit something buried in the snow. He paused and leaned forward, brushing snow away from the object. Two bodies. Frozen solid. Wearing modern climbing gear. Casualties from some climbing expedition. McGraw stepped over them and continued. Olivetti did the same.
Lexina was awakened by Aksu switching out her oxygen cylinder. “Your companion is dead.”
Lexina slowly sat up. “Which one?”
Aksu shrugged. “You did not tell me their names.”
“Cause?” Lexina slid out of her sleeping bag, feeling the bite of the cold. It was a clear night and thousands of stars glittered overhead.
“His oxygen tube was slightly crimped. He didn’t get enough air. As near as I can tell, this brought on cerebral edema.”
Lexina stiffly got to her feet and walked over to Coridan’s body. He was curled up in a fetal position. Aksu stripped off the mask, then unscrewed the oxygen tube, sliding it into his own pack. She lifted one eyelid. There was no doubt he was dead. Unzipping his bag and parka, she went through the layers of clothes until she uncovered a small medallion in the shape of two outstretched arms. She removed it from the body.
Elek had joined her and the two hybrid human/Airlia clones stood silently over the body of their companion for a few moments.
“The spirit of Coridan must pass on,” Lexina finally said. “The spirit must pass on,” Elek echoed.
Lexina held up the medallion. “We take his spirit, the spirit of Coridan. We take his ka so that he might be reborn.”
Aksu was watching carefully, surprised at the ceremony.
Lexina handed the ka to Elek. Then she took a small black case out. Opening it, she sprinkled a little bit of black powder on the body. Aksu took a step back as the black powder began eating the body as if it were some powerful acid. Soon nothing remained except the clothes.
Lexina turned to Aksu. “We are ready to proceed.”
Olivetti tapped McGraw on the arm and pointed down. Three cones of light pierced the darkness several hundred feet below them and to the west. The lights showed up like searchlights in the SEALs’ night-vision goggles. The two SEALs paused in their climb and watched the lights for almost a minute. It was clear that whoever was wearing them were moving slowly and straight up, which meant they would cut across the SEALs trail. McGraw knelt, pulling off his pack. He removed a claymore mine from the pack and placed it next to their trail, hiding it with a facing of snow. He then ran the trip wire across the trail, knocking snow off the side of the furrow to cover it.
McGraw faced back up the ridgeline and began climbing. The two were moving at an incredible pace, their legs churning through the waist-high snow, cutting a path straight along the knife-edge top of the West Ridge.
Being immortal had turned into a curse, Duncan realized as she regained consciousness via a severe jolt of pain as if a red-hot poker had been shoved into her forehead. As the pain from the jolt receded, her head pounded from an almost blinding headache. She opened her eyes, but it made no difference. She was in absolute darkness and her body couldn’t move, no matter how hard she struggled. She tried to scream and realized that something was shoved down her throat.
A slash of pain, slightly to the left of the previous one, above her eye, caused her to choke on whatever was in her throat as she tried to scream. Then even as that subsided, another spike. Her body slammed against the restraints, muscles twitching. And another spike. She felt as if she were losing her sanity, overwhelmed by waves of pain that were increasing in intensity.
Then she realized she could see something very faintly. Shadowy gray images moving against a black background, but she couldn’t make out details. Then with another bolt of pain they were gone and the darkness returned. She realized there was a copper taste in her mouth, but she couldn’t move her tongue around whatever had been shoved down her throat.
She also became aware that she was submerged, her entire body enveloped in a fluid, which was at body temperature. The tube in the throat must be giving her oxygen, she thought, but it was wiped away by more pain, this time in her left temple.
Then blessed nothingness for a moment. Her body was rigid, waiting for the onslaught to be renewed, but instead she was blinded by light as the top of the tube opened. The light was diffused through the liquid, which had a dark tint to it and the clear plastic of a mask which was molded to her face. There was someone standing over the tube. She began struggling again, but the figure held up his hand indicating for her to wait.
She realized the liquid was slowly draining as the level dropped below the top of her body and she felt the chill of cool air on wet, exposed skin. Garlin remained still, waiting, and Duncan mentally cursed him.
Garlin reached in and in one smooth move pulled the tube out of her mouth. She coughed and gasped for air. He quickly unstrapped her, then tossed a towel into the tube. She wrapped it around her body as she sat up.
“I am done with you and your tests.”
“We don’t care what you’re done with,” Garlin said, “because we’re not done with you.”
“You keep saying we, but I haven’t seen anyone but you,” Duncan said. “That’s because we don’t trust you,” Garlin said.
“Screw you.”
“Do you want to know what we’ve learned?”
“Since I still have the same memories,” Duncan said, “I don’t think you learned much.”
Gariin shook his head. “On the contrary. The fact that we weren’t able to break through your conditioning with this machine indicates that this type of machine wasn’t used to implant your false memories. Something more sophisticated and more powerful was used.”
Duncan remained silent, her arms across her chest, holding the towel tight against her body.
“And”—Garlin drew the word out— “we think we know what that was.”
Duncan finally spoke. “And that is?” “The Ark of the Covenant.”
Duncan remembered the crown, and the leads from the Ark that she had attached. And the vision she’d had while hooked to it inside the Black Sphinx.
As if reading her mind, Garlin nodded. “The vision you had when you were hooked up to it probably didn’t come from the Ark of the Covenant. We think it came from your repressed memory.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Duncan said. “I was on board a mothership. How can I have a memory of that?”
“Good question,” Garlin said. “And one we hope to answer shortly.”
“How do you plan on doing that?”
“We’re going to bring the Ark of the Covenant here.”
Larry Kincaid was tapped into the military’s secure Internet, using Delta’s access to get him the imagery he needed. The line of mechs moving between Cydonia and Mons Olympus was larger than ever. And the first of those carrying the black material had reached the site high up on the extinct volcano’s side, less than a kilometer from the summit.