Locked, and no keyhole.
Orlando pounded his fist against the glass, then peeked through the narrow window into the hallway, seeing a body slumped to the side and two other administrators stumbling around, hands to their heads as if trying to dislodge a deadly infestation of ear mites.
I have to get out of here. Have to get to the twins.
Have to warn Phoebe. Is she even safe? Are any of them?
Gently, he reached down and checked the dead man’s pockets. Finally…
The key card.
Time to see just where the hell I am, and then get out of here.
3
“Okay,” Nina snapped. “Let’s dispense with the history lesson and all the cool Ancient Aliens aspects about what we’re about to see. Let’s just pretend your father is here, regaling us with clever tidbits of lore and legend. Meanwhile, we can all get down to business.”
“But it’s crazy interesting!” Alexander insisted. He was in the front of the outrigger, eagerly looking ahead, through the mist rising like witches’ fingernails from the murky water north of the shore.
They had landed after midnight at the Pohnpei International Airport, with its red and yellow faded coloring, with its one runway ending at the acid-washed blue jean water. They’d first set down in Guam and chartered a quick jumper from there. Along the way, on his iPhone, Alexander had brushed up on all the history he could find on the ancient city of Nan Madol, deciding that someone needed to focus on their mission.
Jacob and Aria were fast asleep minutes after takeoff — which concerned Nina and Alexander, given that Aria was their shield against psychic detection, but they figured it was too late now. Their enemies surely knew of their mission if they had any psychics to RV their location, but it shouldn’t matter. They had a sizeable head-start out to this nearly inaccessible part of the world, out in the middle of the ocean.
Their phones had lost satellite connection around 2 AM, and they landed shortly after. They took a short taxi ride to the local hotel where everyone crashed hard. Everyone except Nina, who stayed up, readying weapons and staring out the window as if expecting an army to burst from the swaying palms at any moment.
Alexander awoke after a fitful three hours, confused that he couldn’t remember the gist of the dream he’d just had, other than something about a familiar chair, radiating power, and his father again seated in it.
They tried again to reach anyone from the Morpheus group, but had no luck. Phones were out, and very few islanders were about — which they attributed to the limited population anyway. The island, seen for the first time now in the dawn’s light, was mountainous and lush, sporadically dotted with run-down homes and chicken-wire farms.
But they had no time for sightseeing. A quick breakfast of eggs, pork sausage and bananas, and they were off to meet a guide at the dock and throw their gear into the outrigger. Two tanks, scuba gear, gloves, suits and flashlights, and they were out just as the sun cleared the lush peaks and scattered festive lights on the water to blaze their way.
Alexander bit his tongue at Nina’s scolding of his history lesson and tried to think about what his father would say at such a moment. “This isn’t about travel guides or making conversation,” he snapped back, and met Aria’s eyes. She finished a big yawn and tried to get comfortable amidst the bags and oxygen tanks, all while squeezed between Nina and Jacob.
“What’s it about, then?” Jacob asked. “Ancient rocks and cryptic puzzles and deadly traps? In other words, ‘the usual?’”
“I don’t know. Not sure what’s waiting for us, but if our new team back in Virginia has any skill…”
“Which I highly doubt.”
“…then they’ve given us a map to where this Emerald Tablet is.”
“ET Part II, you mean?” Jacob laughed at his own wittiness. “After our dear old Dad shattered the first one.” He said the last part with some bitterness, recalling the event in different shades than Alexander did, as they had been on opposite sides for that battle.
Alexander had the scribbled map in his hand now, holding it up to the sun as they followed the coastline, then turned into the thicker mist. The shore had become thick with mangroves, choking the ground and spreading out and over the coral banks.
He considered the map, the line drawn through the rectangular shapes to a large circular centerpiece, which then became a dotted line to the center where there was an ‘X’.
“Victoria and her team indicated that one of the tunnels riddling this site should lead us into a cavern system. Natives believed the tunnels and pits all were ceremonial and sacred and were used in burial rites for their rulers.”
“But,” Aria spoke up, “like with the Great Pyramid, maybe that’s not the case, and the real, original purpose was for hiding something else?”
“Exactly.”
Nina cleared her throat and hefted one of the bags. “Victoria also told us most of the tunnels were blocked up long ago. Purposely caved in or filled with boulders. So…” She smiled. “We brought C4, and I’m more than okay decimating this internationally-protected site.”
“I’m not,” Alexander said, wistfully looking ahead at the large shape taking form in the mist ahead: something immense rising from the coral. “But I think we can make an exception in this case. For the greatest of all artifacts.”
“If it’s even still there,” Jacob said sourly. “You know how you Morpheus people get things wrong by not asking the right questions.”
Alexander glared at him. But he had to admit, the thought had crossed his mind too. Victoria and the new recruits were just that — new. And while this site certainly had promise — it was ancient, far beyond what modern archaeologists believed to be its age. They had relied on carbon dating of ashes found in a pit to fix the date around a thousand years ago, forgoing everything the natives told them — that these massive ruins and carefully designed man-made islands, constructed with basalt stones averaging twenty tons or more — had been here for millennia.
“Look at that.” Aria spoke, and her voice was dreamy, full of awe, as the scope of Nan Madol came into view. Flickering in the dawn’s brilliance, it rose up out of the waters; mist clung to the coral ruins, along with mangrove growing from the cracks and along the tops of the cyclopean blocks, which were stacked together like Lincoln Logs.
The first section of the artificial island city greeted them like a ghost from the ancient past.
They maneuvered a short distance into the city on its unnatural canals, marveling at the architecture, the sheer size of the blocks and the sense of great age of everything.
“So, they just built these things on top of the coral?” Aria asked as the boat slowed to a glide, veering toward a shallow section beside a large complex. Fruit bats circled overhead, and mosquitoes buzzed about, temporarily avoiding them due to morning lethargy, bug repellant, or both.
“Yes,” Alexander replied, getting ready to guide the prow alongside the bank. “Nan Madol. It means ‘Between the Spaces’, and it fits.” He took a breath. “Somehow, they stacked up these giant blocks — almost eight million of them, some weighing up to sixty tons — and built the walls around the small rectangular islands they created out here; and then they filled them in with tiny bits of coral, building walkways and craving out entire channels. It was called the Venice of the Pacific. The Eighth Wonder of the Ancient World.”
“Whatever,” Jacob said, checking the air tanks and the scuba gear. “How far to the thing we have to blow up before we get to go swimming?”