Their faces were lit now by the warm glow coming from the split in the ground. As they followed it around a large pile of boulders, they were astonished to find themselves standing a few hundred meters from a wide, flowing river of fire.
“It’s magma!” Zeke said. “I damn well said it was hot in here!”
“Lava,” Ryan said. “It’s not hot enough to be magma, but you were close enough.”
Zeke smiled and gave Lea a wink. “That’s very magmanimous of him, no?”
“Oh, pleeease — don’t you start with the puns too,” Lea said.
“Sorry.”
“I never knew there was a difference,” Kamala said.
“It’s technical, but magma was a good guess,” Ryan said. “Cairo would have called it fire water.”
“Fuck off, Bale.”
“I wanted to do that twenty minutes ago and you stopped me!”
Lea felt her breathing quicken and held onto Hawke’s arm at her side. “This is starting to freak me out, Joe. Maybe this really is hell.”
“I see another archway,” Scarlet said. “Over there near where the fire water is entering the cavern.”
Shielding their faces from the intense heat of the lava flow, they walked over to the archway and found a heavy wooden door blocking their way. Carved into the door was another series of symbols.
“For fuck’s sake,” Scarlet cursed. “Didn’t any of these clowns ever hear of a doorbell?”
“What is it?” Lea asked. “Another warning?”
Jazmin and Ryan stepped closer and shone their beams over the gnarled door.
“No, it’s a Byzantine riddle,” Ryan said. Leaning in closer to the wall, he blew some dust away and ran his finger along the carved symbols. “It reads we are sisters without souls. Each in time is older than the last, but all of us make equal rounds of time…”
“What does it mean?” Kamala asked.
Nikolai grunted. “It means trouble.”
“It’s just a sodding riddle,” Ryan said, annoyed. “Can I have some hush?”
The group quietened down. Nikolai turned and kicked his heels in the dust.
“We cry out, yet we never open our mouths, and we go forward, yet we have no feet. We speak to you here, as you can see, and we’re everywhere if you’re willing to look.”
Lexi uncrossed her arms. “What does it mean?”
He looked at her. “Do you know what it means?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t had time to think about it.”
“Snap.”
She pursed her mouth and raised an eyebrow. “But you work on Central Nerd Time, right?”
“If you mean I think faster, then… ah! I have it. It’s the hours on a clock — each older than the last, equal rounds of time, moving forward but no feet. It’s as obvious as the crush Alex has on Joe.”
Lea started and fixed her eyes on him. “What the hell?”
“Never mind about that,” Scarlet said. “If we…”
“Hold it right there!”
They froze when they heard the sound of the Blood Crew’s boots crunching over the ground beside the lava flow. Kashala’s serious face appeared from behind the boulders and he marched over to them, flanked on either side by Demotte and Crombez. Behind him was Sergei Dimitrov and a handful of his mafia goons.
“Get away from the door.” Kashala snapped his fingers and Demotte ran forward, pushing them back. When they were clear, he slammed a pack of C4 on the door and stepped backwards to his crew.
“Actually,” Ryan piped up. “It’s a riddle and…”
“Shut up, fool.” Kashala slipped a detonator from his pocket. “I’d take cover if I were you. Three, two…”
The ECHO team dived for the safety of another pile of boulders to the left of the door which half a second later was all over the ground. The force of the explosion blew some of the heavier pieces as far as the lava, where they burst into flames, incinerated in mid-air by its blazing heat.
Stepping to the door, the Bulgarian mafia boss looked inside. He turned to one of the men in suits. “Professor Zhivkov, join me please.”
Hawke and the others waited alongside the Blood Crew for a few tense moments as the two men vanished inside with their flashlights. When they returned, Dimitrov turned to Kashala with a grim smile on his face. “General Kashala, have your men bring the equipment. This is it.”
“This is what?” Lea asked.
Dimitrov stepped forward, dabbing his brow with a silk handkerchief. “Now you are here, you will be the first to see the true treasures of hell.”
“And what might that be?” Lea said.
“Exotic antimatter particles,” Dimitrov said.
“Oh my God!” Ryan said. “You’re insane!”
Lea flicked her eyes at him. “What is it?”
“Every particle has an antiparticle — carbon, anticarbon, hydrogen, antihydrogen, even gold and antigold.”
Dimitrov continued. “Inside this cavern is a very strange anomaly, a uniquely powerful magnetic field trapping a cloud of antihydrogen gas particles, suspending them safely out of reach of the rest of the material world.
“This is impossible!” Lea said.
“No,” Ryan said. “It’s not. Scientists have been detecting geoneutrinos deep within the interior of the earth for some time. Is that not right, Professor Zhivkov?”
“Yes,” the solemn professor said. “It is true. Neutrino detectors have located these particles deep within the earth’s interior, but never before has anyone actually been this close to them. Here, today, with the discovery of the antihydrogen cloud, we make history.”
Lea fixed her attention on the professor’s deranged, glazed-over eyes. “So this is just about a weapon after all?”
“Not just any weapon,” Zhivkov explained. “An antimatter device such as the one I have developed will be the most destructive weapon in human history. Even the most powerful nuclear missile will be as nothing compared to what I have created.”
He stepped over to where the Blood Crew were assembling the complex machinery. “With the help of this specially designed magnetic field trap, I will be able to capture the antimatter particles and then use them as part of Eschaton.”
Hawke and Lea exchanged a tense look. “Eschaton?” He whispered. “What the hell is that?”
She shrugged and mouthed the words, “No idea.”
“What makes this so damned dangerous?” Kamala asked.
Ryan said, “When a regular particle of matter like an electron comes into contact with an antimatter particle, like a positron, the two of them totally annihilate each other in an unimaginable fierce energetic explosion.”
“So one great big fuck of a big bang?” Zeke said.
“And talking of which,” Zhivkov said. “Some physicists hypothesise that there is another universe exactly the same as ours but in reverse, stretching out on the other side of the Big Bang and constructed mainly of antimatter instead of normal matter.”
Dimitrov stepped in. “Part of Professor Zhivkov’s theory suggests that not only will this device be the most powerful bomb ever created by man, but that its detonation may very well open up a gate into this other universe. Consider that for a moment. Just imagine what may be waiting for us in an entirely new universe.”
Kamala took a step back and stood beside Nikolai. “Holy crap, this guy’s crazy.”
“You only just got that now?” the Russian said.
“How did you know this was down here, Dimitrov?” Hawke asked.
“Deep in the pages of a lost manuscript written by Orpheus himself. He wrote a great deal about the awesome destructive power of the gods. Some of the things he described could only be explained by antimatter forces. I took a gamble and it looks like it’s paid off.”