Yes!
Knight’s cry of pain galvanized her. She leaped onto the frankenstein’s back, wrapping her right arm around its head as Bishop had done, and clawed the fingers of her free hand into its eyes.
Though virtually immune to pain, the frankenstein reacted instinctively to the threat to its eyesight. It let go of Knight and reached up to defend against this new attack. Queen dug deeper, driving a finger between the orb and the eye socket, eliciting a howl of rage.
That howl was just what she had been hoping for.
“Cover up!” she shouted.
She dropped her left hand, using it to hold herself in place, and then jammed the object she’d been holding with her right hand into the thing’s open mouth.
With a sharp hiss, the M14 incendiary grenade ignited and transformed the frankenstein’s head into a miniature sun.
She threw herself back, scrambling to put some distance between herself and the bloom of white hot fire. Shading her eyes, she circled around to check on Knight.
He had heeded her advice and gotten well clear of the creature before the grenade had ignited, but even though he was several meters away from the blazing pyre of flesh, he was rubbing at his skin.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” He managed a wan smile as he looked up at her. “Weird thing though; I’ve got pins and needles all over.”
That was when Queen realized that she did too.
FIFTY-NINE
Two things saved King’s life.
The first was the shape of the fissure. The rift narrowed with depth, coming together at a seam so tight that a piece of paper could not have slipped into it. As he and Rainer fell, still locked together in combat, the shrinking gap between the walls caught them like friction brakes, slowing and ultimately halting their downward plunge.
The second factor that had made the difference between life and death was Kevin Rainer. Positioned as he was beneath King, Rainer’s body cushioned the eventual impact just enough to spare King from serious harm. King was bruised, battered and bloody, but none of his injuries were life-threatening.
The same could not be said for Rainer; King’s body drove into him like a hammer, forcing him deeper into the fissure than seemed possible, leaving him sandwiched between slabs of limestone about three inches apart. The pressure crushed the man’s ribcage, driving nails of bone through his lungs and into his vital organs.
King felt the walls pressing in on either side of him as well, and he started to panic. He was afraid to move, fearful that doing so might cause him to slide deeper into the crevasse, to a place where it would be impossible for him to get free. Then he felt the tingling in his skin, and he knew that being trapped in stone was the least of his worries.
His awareness of what was at stake did not make his task any easier, but Rainer’s body was a stable platform from which to begin clawing his way out of the abyss. With each inch he climbed, the press of stone against his chest diminished.
There was light now, bright but indirect, pouring down from high above to reveal his destination: the dark passage that led to the Prime.
Parker’s words came back to him.
If I can’t stop this, everyone dies.
Parker hadn’t been able to stop it, though.
King’s skin was burning, and the tingling was sinking deeper into his limbs. He wondered how much worse it would get before the end.
Pulling himself up into the tunnel was like sticking his head in a furnace, only in this case, the fire was inside him. He gritted his teeth against the pain and forced himself to move forward.
His brief respite from the darkness ended when he started down the passage, but there was a faint glow ahead, and he fought through the blossoming agony toward the beacon.
It was a computer — Sasha’s laptop. He saw that much from a distance, but it was only when he got closer that he saw Parker’s body crumpled in front of it.
There’s a ring of stones, Parker had said. I think that’s the marker. I’m going to try to put it there.
Further down the tunnel, King saw another body — Sasha’s — lying prone in front of the stone circle. It was tantalizingly close; Parker had fallen just a few steps from the Prime.
If this thing kills me before I can get clear, someone else is going to have to finish it. Do you understand?
He understood.
King reached for the computer, but even as his fingers closed on the hard plastic, his legs simply gave out.
No, damn it!
He planted his elbows on the hard stone and pulled himself forward, one ahead of the other, over and over again, until he reached Sasha’s lifeless form. The stone circle was just beyond her, but he could go no further.
With what he thought was surely the last of his strength, he flung the laptop toward the stone ring that marked the location of the Prime, and then collapsed in pain. His body curled up, feeling ready to implode, but then, as though he was suddenly touched by the divine, his pain faded. Still wary, he sat up.
The cave was silent.
His body felt untouched by the destructive force that took Sasha’s and Parker’s lives.
The world — he noted with a hint of surprise — had not come to an end.
EPILOGUE: LIMBO
“So what do you think is going to happen?”
It wasn’t the first time Rook had asked the question, but as before, the only answer he got was silence.
The truth of it was, King had no idea what was going to happen.
There had been a few moments, as he lay unmoving on the floor of the Prime cavern, where he felt something approaching satisfaction. But then, like the painful sting that accompanied the return of sensation to his nerves, the bitter reality of the situation hit home.
Parker was dead. That by itself was almost more than he could bear, but the way it had happened…
He thrust the thought from his mind. Yes, his friend had died. Parker had made a rash decision to help Sasha and it had cost him his life, and therein lay the problem.
King couldn’t tell the truth, and not just because of how crazy it sounded; he was much more worried about the possibility that someone would actually believe him.
He had dragged Parker’s body into the stone circle that marked the location of the Prime, laid him next to Sasha, and then ignited an incendiary grenade to erase all evidence that either of them had ever existed. He’d fed Sasha’s computer and al-Tusi’s treatise to the flames as well; maybe someday, someone would figure out how to read the Voynich manuscript and would discover the Prime and what it signified, but with a little luck, that day wouldn’t come until the world was a much better place.
The official story would be the same one he had told the rest of the team: Sasha had been spooked by Rainer’s arrival and fled into the cave. Parker had followed and both of them had fallen into a crevasse and died. King had used Sasha to bait the trap, and even though they had succeeded in running down Rainer and the other rogue operators, a CIA contractor and a Delta shooter had paid for the victory with their blood.
King knew that the others had questions about what had happened in the cave; he could see it in their eyes, but none of them had pressed him for details. He was grateful for that. He alone would take responsibility for what had happened, and if it meant the end of his career — or even criminal prosecution — then he alone would bear the burden.