“Yes. Let’s talk.”
“Talk about what?” Alexander asked. “How we’re going to get out of here?”
“No,” Caleb replied. “We need to talk about what Montross has seen, and what I saw. Compare our versions. And I need to understand how much is fact, and what’s merely imagination playing with myth.”
“Can’t it all be fact?” Montross asked.
Caleb held his head, then massaged his temples. “I don’t know if I can believe what I’ve seen. It’s too much to contemplate.”
“Well, let’s start with what we know to be true.”
Caleb aimed the light down at their feet. He took slow breaths, not knowing if the air down here was circulating somehow. It tasted stale, but yet still pure as if its isolation through the millennia had protected it from outside contamination. “So here’s what I know. Robert Gregory believed the Emerald Tablet possessed the power of the universe: a concept similar to the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian Epic of Creation. We know he somehow allied himself with the cult of Marduk, whose members seem bent on reacquiring what the god Anu took from Marduk and delivered to Enki, better known as Thoth, for safekeeping, thousands of years ago.”
“But why?” Montross guided him. “What was the supreme honcho worried Marduk might do with it?”
Alexander scratched the back of his head. “Make a mess of the universe?”
“Precisely,” Montross said, smiling as the flashlight beam drew away from his face and settled on the enigmatic iron chest. “You asked about my dreams? What I’ve seen to make me plan that assault on your team, on your home? And cause such regrettable loss.”
“Yeah,” Alexander said, finding himself choking up again. “Why?”
Montross hung his head. He scratched over his shoulder, where the backpack would have been, the one confiscated in the helicopter, the one with his sketchbook.
He closed his eyes, and when he spoke, the descriptions echoed the visions he had suffered. Dreams pervading into his every waking thought, nightmares parading about his nocturnal slumber; images that never relented, despite every attempt to thwart the final assault on his mortality. Visions that never, ever let up.
All his life.
He stands in the shadow of an immense statue, a figure whose crown blots out the sun, and whose upstretched arm has served as a beacon to millions of hopeful voyagers.
He stands with his arms out, ready to embrace what he knows is coming.
What he has failed to prevent. What he can never prevent.
At least, not alone.
His face turns to the heavens, but first settles on the face of the Lady high above, on her sad, impassioned eyes that seem to cry for him.
For the world.
The ground trembles.
In the harbor, the water boils.
Something crashes beside him, shatters into thousands of pieces, none of which hit him.
Her arm.
The torch bounces, rolls, then falls into the seething water where boats are capsizing, tankers exploding. The air sizzles. Beyond the statue, the city’s skyline erupts from an invisible wave that crashes through the buildings, exploding glass and concrete as if they’re mere castles of sand. But the debris — instead of falling, seems to suck back, vacuumed to the west, along with huge chunks of earth. Central Park’s trees are uprooted, skyscrapers topple, then shatter, collapsing and hurtling away.
The shadow is gone.
Lady Liberty is bent backwards, spine broken, head sheared off, crown tumbling.
And trails of phosphorescent light streak across the globe, rending the fabric of the very air, tearing through the world, splitting the earth, the seas, sweeping away the atmosphere itself until only the blackness of space, bedecked with frightened stars, remain.
Montross opened his eyes, then looked deep into Caleb’s before shifting to see Alexander.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and pointed to the box. “But that is all that matters. Preventing it from falling into their hands. Or destroying it utterly. Nothing else. I’ve done what I could. Stopped every vision of death from coming true, all my life. Countless times, I’ve cheated mortality. So I know it can be done. But this one… this vision. I’ve tried everything, RV’d every strand of my future. I know what causes my death. And I know, this time, it’s not just me.” He lowered his eyes.
“It’s everyone.”
23
Caleb shuddered. Took a step toward Alexander, put his arm around his son. “I didn’t see all that exactly, but I did see what could happen. What the tablet contains and how it’s been used before.”
“Before?” Alexander asked.
Montross nodded. “You saw it? The first war?”
“Tiamat. Marduk. Whoever they were. Whatever they were. Ages ago, something was released. Marduk was reckless, desperate to beat her at all costs. Tiamat and her son had used it for defense only, protection, but when Marduk got it, deciphered it and understood its powers…”
“He destroyed her. Utterly. And her people.”
Caleb closed his eyes and again saw an unbelievable vision, something straight out of Hollywood science fiction disaster epics. He felt the cosmic explosion, felt the seismic rift before the release of such energy, shattering an entire world, spitting debris across the system, remnants floating in space.
Alexander looked from his uncle to his father, not understanding. “What do you mean? What’s going to happen if they get the translation?”
“I’m not exactly sure how it works,” Montross said, “but it starts in the most unlikely of places.”
“Where?”
“Alaska.”
Caleb blinked at him. “What’s there?”
“That’s what I wondered, but a quick search showed only one thing of interest.” He sighed and said, “HAARP.”
Alexander chuckled. “A harp?”
“HAARP. Short for High Frequency Active Aural Research Project. HAARP is a facility dedicated to the study of the ionosphere for the purpose of improving radio communications and surveillance efforts. Currently, there are all sorts of wild theories and paranoia about tests being done up there in Gacona, Alaksa. Rampant fears that such powerful radio transmitter array — capable of outputs nearing billions of kilowatts — could disturb the ionosphere over any part of the earth, manipulating weather, and possibly, using scalar wave technology, even instigating earthquakes. Powerful earthquakes.”
“That’s nuts,” Alexander whispered. “But still cool.”
Caleb thought quietly, then said, “So this facility, Robert Gregory must have had a connection there? Another cult member? And the information contained on the Emerald Tablet — there must be something, some calculation or set of instructions that could be used to enhance the power of the array.”
“To do what?” Alexander asked.
“To do what I saw in my vision,” Montross replied.
“Destroy the world? But they’ll just kill everyone, even themselves.”
“The ultimate sacrifice?” Montross voiced. “Possibly. I don’t know if it’s a simple matter of revenge, or if it’s something more. Maybe they have some way out reserved for themselves.”
“I think you’re right,” Caleb said. “It is something more. Much more.” He considered everything he had learned, everything he knew about the tablet, about its connection to alchemy, to psychic powers and spiritual transformation. “I think they believe in a special kind of reward. An immortality to be obtained, at the expense of the rest of humanity.”