“Like we’re Age of Aquarius,” Aria said.
“Yes. So, we’d start with that one, then go through Summer and Fall…
“Can you guess?”
“Rather not,” Alexander said. “I don’t know what would happen if—”
“Avalanche,” said Orlando. “Or collapsing bridge.”
“Can we get through to Diana?” Phoebe asked. “Have her access the NASA programs, and…”
“Yes,” Alexander said. He stepped closer, gazing at the ancient door, at the unyielding barrier. He noticed the cracks in the surface, a thick one that ran up from the base. “Start that,” he said, “but I’m close. I can almost… see… the night sky back then. In that time when this was all new.”
He was aware suddenly that something had changed.
He was alone, the others scattering. Someone cried out his name, but it sounded so far away, lost in the grinding drone of the engines and a horn—
Someone grabbed him and they both rolled to the side, just as the Sno-Cat roared by. Over the bridge, bearing down and still accelerating — right into the door.
It crunched into the barrier, splintering metal and riding up on the wreckage, but it had enough force to shatter the wall and break through as the tracks caught and pushed and never relented, riding just ahead through the crack that expanded and exploded in a cloud of dust and wrecked ancient masonry.
Alexander, under Orlando, looked around for Aria. For Phoebe.
And he waited for the avalanche, or the bridge collapse…
…that never came.
A creaking, grinding sound of metal on rock or ice. Crunching footsteps, and Nina came out of the wreckage. A little wobbly, she put her hands on her hips and looked around at everyone, scattered and tense.
“Come on, people. After a hundred million years or whatever, any traps had to be useless, or at least close to it. And that crack was just begging to be widened.” She removed her gun, cocked and loaded it.
“Let’s go rescue Caleb. Again.”
35
She handed out weapons from the satchel after the others had gingerly climbed through the wreckage and over the Sno-Cat’s mangled rollers.
An MP5 for Phoebe, who hefted it carefully, then released the chamber, sighted and nodded. Aria took a Taurus .45 and did the same. Alexander shook his head at the offered Beretta, and then reluctantly accepted it. Nina reached in for one more, looking at Orlando who waited beside Phoebe, and rubbed his hands together for warmth.
Nina shook her head. “Nah, you’re good. Just follow along.”
She turned, and with a cautious glance over the edge, just past the Sno-Cat’s crushed front grill, she held the others back, and led them toward the wall. They started down the incline, but Alexander kept veering toward the edge. No railing, nothing but open space, and the hint of shapes and illumination below.
“Something’s on fire down there,” he said with urgency. The walls glowed too with inherent luminosity from gems, striated lichens and other marbled colors pulsing in the murals, from the eyes of statues, from the runic script and dazzling histories emblazing the walls like some prelude to a Disney ride.
“Settle down,” Nina said. “Don’t know what kind of traps or enemies are waiting, and I’m not letting any of you go—”
Orlando, clutching Phoebe’s arm, rushed forward. “They’re dying!” he shouted, and they both rushed past Nina, almost knocking her over.
“Shit!” Nina rolled her eyes, shrugged at Alexander and Aria, and said: “So much for sightseeing. Run!”
They ran.
And Alexander, as he raced hard on Nina’s heels, with Aria matching him stride for stride, prayed.
Prayed they wouldn’t slip. Prayed the statues or artifacts wouldn’t spring to life like in Khan’s tomb and launch arrows at them. Prayed the walkway wouldn’t fall from under them into a pit of spikes, or worse. Prayed most of all that down there, where the flaming sword-like thing waited, his father was still alive. That the twins were still alive.
That the world still had a chance.
On the second bend, Orlando almost collided with Phoebe, then almost overcompensated and tripped on his own feet and slid over the side. She grabbed him at the last moment, pulled him back and together they stumbled around and regained their momentum. Nina and Aria were already way ahead, in the flickering shadows.
The tree-thing to their right, always on their right, loomed and breathed and shuddered like some undead husk.
Is it alive? Sensing us?
He thought back to his experience in the other dimension, his other self. So alien and foreign and yet, so him. The tree and the kids… He was again running toward it, toward them, toward the entrance, but could he enter again? Could he ever regain that state?
You have to, he thought.
Have to, and this is one time she couldn’t go with him.
Phoebe. She had to stay out of this, he knew. The other place would shatter her reality. She was too down-to-earth, a rock. Always his rock, grounding him, focusing his thoughts, serving as a beacon for his ever-higher flights of fancy.
The other world tugged at him, beckoned him to rejoin the bits and bytes, the quarks and nano-particles of theoretical gobbledygook; the dark matter, the anti-reality that he had so often dreamt about, only one day, for a brief time, to jump into its pool and swim around.
Focus, he thought, turning once more as Alexander ripped past them on the outside track.
“Move it, slowpoke!” Phoebe yelled, and even she picked up the pace.
The walls glittered, gems sparkled, and fairy dust sprinkled from the tree, or the ageless sloping ceiling. Murals promised artistic visions of grace and longing, offered a substitution for the world of white and grey, and statues with knowing expressions seemed to bristle at this disturbance.
Up ahead, gunshots echoed, and the screams cut the silence.
Alexander ran headlong, desperate to catch Aria, or at least be there beside her when they reached the landing, when they reached the rift — and his father. The nagging fear grew and grew with every step. Something waited, something more than just the protective sword. Something far more natural.
He had a flash of something with a lupine head and a weapon like a mace but ten feet long, and thick plate armor, jet-black, like it could blend in with the statues in the shadows.
Not just one, he thought. A pair…
But that was his last thought before something crunched into his left side and sent him sprawling toward the edge. His gun, already barely held with any strength, was gone, skittering away as he scrambled to grab onto anything with both hands. The air left his lungs, and as he rolled he saw the teeth, red eyes and that sickly tree, reaching its skeletal arms toward him to drag him the last few inches over the side.
Loud shots rocked his ears, dispelling the ringing and the roaring pain thrumming up from his chest and pounding his head. The wolf-jackal creature had turned from him, as if having knocked off the weakest, potentially pesky adversary, it could now turn its attention to the boss.
But this boss, in this case, was pissed. Bad move, Alex thought, wincing and just arresting his fall partway to the edge. He looked down but could barely see anything in the haze of pain and bright spots.
More gunshots, thumps, howls and screams, and when he turned back, he saw flashes off the defender’s armor as someone advanced on him, firing the .45 with a shaky hand.
Oh shit.
Aria!
She heard Alex grunt and cry out, a cry she never wanted to hear again. For a gut-wrenching instant, she was back in the Afghanistan desert, restrained by the terrorist leader known as The Eye, forced to watch (and hear) her parents tortured. Punched, kicked, beaten.