The Prometheus Objective

22

The oxygen gauge was just clicking into the red.

He took Aria’s and checked: she had burned through more, as he expected. He aimed her light away from the gauge before she could see it, and just gave her a thumbs-up sign so she wouldn’t worry.

They had to ascend. Had to go back up and out. He knew there were tunnels and access points down there, much lower, but they would never make it. Not even another twenty feet deeper, much less hundreds, if his estimate of this Pharos-like tower’s length was even remotely close to accurate.

He thought suddenly again of the tunnel system, the underground pathways and secret access points that led up to the island. Did the survivors, with the help of the remaining psychics and their technological artifacts, use them to burrow back to the city to try to find or rescue anybody?

As they approached the exit, he froze. Expecting at worst to have to clear a path through the stingray blockade, he didn’t expect this: lights speared through the depths, seeking them.

Divers.

Aria grabbed his wrist and this time the shock was faster and more direct and came with an almost electrical shock of fear. Her fear.

He could feel it, the pure terror that they were about to die. Couldn’t go up, and couldn’t stay here, nor go any lower. Air almost depleted, he didn’t even want to waste a moment and check their tanks. If his breaths were shallow and tough going, he could imagine what she was feeling, and had a swelling of pride for her toughness.

She had survived the worst life could throw at her. Her parents killed. Her village decimated by terrorists; having to be awake to block their location for days on end… She had been through hell, so maybe this wasn’t so bad. But it was entirely different, opposite in fact, from the sweltering heat and the dust and the suffocating tunnels in Afghanistan.

Still, hold on Aria.

He tried to convey this, but her grip was too intense, her fear too palpable and her oxygen — almost gone. She was gasping, and her eyes were so wide and frightened.

Their enemies were coming, lights probing into the hole. He had to act fast, and even as the visions pummeled his senses, vying for control, he tried to keep them at bay, sifting only marginally through the glimpses they offered, while he took her light and shined it up and zigzagged it along the underside of the barnacle-coral-littered dome.

Where the light almost died at the end of its beam, he caught motion: a school of fish, mahi or something large, swirling and circling in and out of a fissure.

He kicked toward, it, pulling Aria along with him, and as the trio of light beams worked through the crack behind him, he shut off the light. They swam in the dark, blind, toward the fissure — and the tunnel he had seen in his vision.

The tunnel constructed ages ago after the cataclysm by the survivors. One of dozens, attempting to reach back into the glory of their former capital… He could still see it in his mind, and he flicked the light once, while the beams behind them were scattered and the tiny forms of the divers were swimming in different directions.

He turned off the lamp after fixing their destination — and saw the glowing eyes of the hundred or so fish swarming over the opening. But first, Aria tightened her grip on him and he saw her pointing to her gauge and then wildly to her throat.

Shared tank breathing.

He had only practiced it for a minute in the YMCA pool when he took his certification class back in Rochester, but this was different. This was life or death. This was never seeing his family again. Never kissing Aria again, never breathing fresh air or seeing the world.

Or saving it.

They had to survive.

Had to get to that tunnel.

Had to breathe long enough to make it there.

She took his mouthpiece as precious bubbles scattered form his lips. She drew a breath, eyes still on his. Nodding, looking relieved, but concerned now for him. He shook his head, tightening his grip on her hand — and on the flashlight, and flicked it back off as he kicked toward the direction of the fish, and escape.

She came with him and what seemed like a minute passed, and his lungs started to burn, and he couldn’t see anything in the gloom but shadows that took on stranger and stranger forms: twisted serpent bodies, gnarled fingers, a giant squid’s conical head…

Then he had to risk it. After a glance behind them, ascertaining that the lights, still dim, were far off, he switched on the beam again. Aria drifted to him, settled in his arms and he felt her trembling. But she had her hand on the mouthpiece. Her eyes sought his, and she nodded as she took one more breath, then passed it to him.

Greedily he took it, cleared his breath and took in a shallow but desperate gulp. Another, and then deeper, and he passed it back, just after she wriggled out of her air tank, and he was impressed. She didn’t need it any longer, and it would only slow her down and lead to more oxygen deprivation.

Holding his breath, he turned and aimed the light — and was pleasantly shocked. They hadn’t gone too far off course. The edge of the dome was there, about ten yards distant. The fish scattered as if the light burned their scales and, in their absence, they created a runway of sorts, a tunnel through their wriggling cold bodies to the other tunnel he knew to be there.

But was it collapsed? Blocked? Would it be their tombs as it just led to a dead end?

No, have to believe… It’s getting us out of here. It had to lead to the shallows and the coral around Nan Madol’s temples, to its canals and walkways and to Nina and Jacob and freedom.

But first…

As he approached the crack and what he saw now with the light’s radiance was large enough to easily fit through for both of them, he feared they were drawing attention; but it couldn’t be helped. Now it was a race. He had to hope Nina had cleared the way out there, and they had something to return to; but until then, they had a tunnel to traverse. And if his glimpse earlier was to be trusted, then maybe another sort of treasure awaited. Not the one they sought, but something, nonetheless.

He wriggled through, still holding his breath and running out of time, and Aria was right behind him. If she feared tight places or worried about rushing headlong into the unknown, she didn’t show it. In fact, the opposite. She came in fast, and he saw why.

The fish had scattered in a hurry. And as he tried to see in the spinning light, all he could tell was the water was cloudier.

Redder.

Aria had her knife out, but Alex couldn’t figure out why.

Until he saw the black form rushing toward them.

The giant fin. The sparkling teeth.

Shark.

She pushed him, and he tumbled into the dark, banged his shoulder painfully and dropped the light. Her body tangled up with his, rolling and kicking. His mouth opened in an anguished cry, and the rush of icy water hit the back of his throat

They were through, he knew that much. But not much else. The light spun this way and that like caught a chaotic dance at some ballistic club, and at one point it revealed a pointed snout and blazing eyes and sharp teeth trying to break through the crack.

Great White, he thought, but it didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered except…

They stopped moving. She held him down, using leverage with her feet against the ruggedly carved walls. She found his lips with her fingers and passed the secondary mouthpiece quickly to him.

The air was so thin, barely breathable. He started hyperventilating. Fear took root, but then he realized something. It was her. Why did she…?

She had seen the shark and called to it — cutting herself. He could see the slash now on her forearm.

And then it hit him.

She was always the smart one.

With Jaws out there, the divers aren’t getting through after us.

He fished for the light, calmed his breathing and flushed out the last few coughing bits of water. Shined the beam back and saw the eyes gone, the teeth flashing away, hopefully meeting the incoming threat.

Deal with that, he thought.

We have our own shit here.

With that, Aria took the main regulator, and now he could hear her breaths, and they calmed him. Enough to turn and swim. Side by side, they barely fit, and as they kicked he took the measure of this tunnel.

Walls thick with slime and crusted coral, organisms that hadn’t seen light in a thousand years or more.

Without willing it, another vision came, shattering through the blue: men digging, digging, hauling out debris and pulling out larger stones — almost effortlessly with another staff-like object, crating everything away, into a chamber waiting not much farther, a chamber…

He started seeing red. Spots now, blossoming in his vision.

Passing out.

No…

She shook him, even as he thought he could make out something changing with the passage ahead. It widened, and… were those stairs beneath them now?

He looked up, and there was Aria, with her mouthpiece out.

No! he wanted to scream, but nothing was registering. She was going to die!

He reached for her arms and tried to pull her close, but sudden bubbles appeared in his vision, scattering like his views of the past. And then he was the one being lifted. Standing weakly, about to pass out, her fingers reaching for his mouthpiece, ripping it out.

He gasped and thought this was it. She’s gone crazy from deprivation and thinks we can breathe underwater.

Air cascaded into his lungs. It felt amazing, fresh and like heaven. For the first few gulps, after coughing out salt water and algae and grime. Then it was stale and moldy and dank, but that wasn’t something he’d describe for several more minutes; much later, after they’d ascended the stairs and took their measure of the chamber they had discovered.

The flashlight beam spiraled upwards and pierced a darkness that hadn’t been disturbed in so many generations.

“Where are we?”

Aria’s voice, timid and reverent, seemed to echo from everywhere, even bubbling up from the cold tunnel water below. It echoed, bouncing off the impossibly tall pillars, some broken and chipped, but all decorated with images in faded colors — obscure scripts, complex designs and byzantine lettering that made hieroglyphics look simplistic.

“I thought this was a burial chamber,” Alex replied, licking salt water off his lips. He shuffled off his air tank, still marveling that he could breathe in here, and let it slip into the water as he took the last step out and stood on the uneven floor.

He moved the light around from the tiled floor littered with dust and rocks, larger pieces of masonry and marble. “It’s not level. Definitely got rocked in the cataclysm, but not as bad as the city we just saw. The ground held up better.”

Aria stepped ahead of him. She shivered and took huge gulps of air as her light beam trembled erratically and danced about, trying to find anything that could be a threat — or a way out.

“There’s air,” she said. “Not the best, but that has to mean we’re near the surface, or there’s ventilation shafts.”

Alex closed his eyes, and in the comforting dark emerged a flash of one of his previous visions. “We’re near our first stop earlier. The main Nan Dawas complex — where that boulder stopped us.”

“That boulder,” Aria echoed as she carefully pulled off her fins and gingerly stepped around some jagged stones with her bare feet. “Seem to recall we couldn’t budge it last time.”

She turned and as the beam played across a portion of a mural depicting a breathtaking seaside landscape, she met Alex’s eyes. He saw resignation and fear there.

Taking her free hand, he held it to his chest. “We’re not dying in here.”

“And I’m not swimming back through that tunnel. Not without air, and with a shark, and murderous divers and angry stingrays and…”

“And we’re getting past that boulder.” He pressed his forehead to hers. Felt her arms circle around his back. She tried to smile, their lips so close, and he leaned in — just as something moved in the interplay of light and shadow.

By the looks of the shadow, something huge.

Towering over them with some sort of weapon.

He screamed and backed up, pulling Aria beside him as he fumbled for the light. Aimed it, hoping to blind whoever it was, but the attacker didn’t move. Didn’t blink, didn’t waver.

It stood over them to the right, beside the first pillar. Fifteen feet tall, with a broad chest and rippled arms. Colorful floral skirt and boots, and a crown of once-resplendent colored gems, while in his grip — a great staff, curled like comma at the apex.

“Thought you vision-swiped this chamber,” Aria said, gripping his arm from behind, and eliciting a slight chuckle. “Old bronze statue here didn’t show itself?”

Alex let out a long sigh as the beam left the sad, expressionistic eyes, then roamed across the main area to the flanking statue — its twin beside the next pillar. Half of this statue had been sheared off, along with the base of the pillar. Its staff, likewise was only a fraction of its former length, a broken bit clenched in a damaged hand.

“Didn’t linger long enough,” he replied. “Kind of pressed for time back there. And…” He turned slowly and reached for her hand. “And I didn’t realize that touching you would…”

She frowned at him, then understood. “It works both ways? I can break through the shield?”

“I don’t even know if it’s that so much as you’re the same — as whatever caused it in the first place. Whoever caused it.”

“Except I don’t have the Sight.”

“Right, just one side of it.” He glanced back to the walls, to the mural displaying crowds going about life along the majestic bridges and in the harbors of the ancient city. Then he returned his attention to the statue of one of the Twin-Kings.

He shook his head. “Actually, not like them. They had both skills, so they probably didn’t even know of the blocking ability. It was something, maybe an evolutionary byproduct — protection from both present and future enemies. Like a subliminal set of weightless armor.”

“Okay, role-playing boy, I don’t really get it, but I get enough. Touch me and you can see what was normally blocked.”

He nodded, smiling as he caressed her fingers, taking satisfaction in even that innocent tangible connection. “That’s one of the benefits.”

She laughed. “Such a charmer. Okay, pick something to see, touch me… more, and find us a way out of here.”

He did, squeezing her hand tighter and bringing her close. Their lips found each other this time, and when he closed his eyes, the stale air took on the sudden fragrance of lavender, of orchids and incense. And he saw: This brightly-lit chamber, with mirrors sending dazzling beams in patterns of geometric beauty and lighting up the two statues flanking the bodies of their kings in ceremonial coffins — as they are lowered into alcoves below.

A priestess with golden-brown skin and long braided hair stands before a packed congregation of surprisingly jovial mourners. She wears a gown like a mermaid’s fin, and shuffles forward, removing a necklace from the one body, the one who must have been older by minutes, as he wore the larger crown. She takes the necklace with the familiar jade gem and holds it up. For a moment her eyes cloud green with the penetration of some kind of power into her mind…

“We should use this,” a dark-haired, dreadlock-maned muscular man whispers in her ear. He exudes the element of a warrior, or a general. “We can invade their minds. End the conflict with our enemies before they unleash the Doom we foresaw.”

She shakes her head solemnly and looks upon another section of the murals on the wall: the same city landscape, except now the sky is darkened, and flaming comets streak from the sky, and tidal waves are set to pound the embankment walls and the domed city teeters on the edge of a chasm as fire rages through the streets and bridges collapse.

“We cannot. That way invites complete annihilation.”

“Then let us invite it. And let us die as warriors.”

“It will let in the Others, and that cannot happen. We have sworn it to them.”

Then she drops the necklace into a platinum coffin held by a waiting servant.

With equal reverence, the servant then passes it to another, and then another — and a series of glimpses trail a montage back to the domed city beyond, still above water; and the box ascends the largest Pharos-like tower, to be placed beside the eternal fire, under mystical runes.

Back to the chamber, the coffins are lowered, the floor sealed over, and the statues moved into place over their bodies.

Moved effortlessly, floated as the mourners bow and weep.

Moved by another priestess, this one holding a staff almost twice her height, a staff that later fits…

He snapped out of it, squinting as Aria aimed the beam in his face.

“What?”

He blinked and let go of her hand — and the vision. Scanned the floor, seeing a broken section under the eastern statue, and he wondered if they could smash through and find the body.

What treasure might be down there? Or under this other one, if they could move its statue-tombstone?

Treasure, however, wasn’t his top priority. They had their way out. Or so he prayed.

“You have to ask yourself, why boulder up these tunnel entrances, and this one especially, with such a large boulder?”

“Because…” Aria snapped quickly, but then paused as the question’s true purpose sunk in. “Because… they could.”

Her eyes darted around, then settled on the staff in the kingly statue’s hand.

Alexander had been looking at it as well, and then met her eyes. “Yes. Need to try it.” He walked to it carefully, studying the walls, the pillar inscribed with the indecipherable script. Looking for dart holes, any traps.

Aria came up behind him. “Thinking if you grab it, the ceiling drops on us?”

He took a long breath. “Actually, I thought the floor would drop to waiting spikes. That would have been my guess, but…”

A flash as she contacts his shoulder, and a scattering of blue confetti in his mind gives way to an image of this room: much cleaner, dazzling in gold and platinum trim, and that tall, golden-skinned priestess with gems in her braided hair stands reverently before the statue, gently placing the staff in its grasp.

He blinked and was back, frowning, eying the statue’s hand, and seeing the fit of the staff. The angle, even after the tectonic shift, had lifted the base somewhat, making this easier.

“It slides out,” he said. “But I think it’s ok to take it.”

“No traps?”

“None that I saw.”

“Great. Snatch and grab,” Aria said, smiling, and moving toward the upper length as Alexander settled his hands on the lower grip, ready to slide it upward.

He was somewhat surprised that it didn’t cause an immediate reaction when he touched it. No hum, no vibration, no…

As soon as Aria touched it, however, it was a different story. He felt a jolt, a searing flare that sent his hand away, red. The staff slid out gracefully for her and seemed at ease in Aria’s hands. It almost scraped the ceiling as she balanced herself and spun it slowly in her fingers.

She smiled at him. “Seems to like me.”

“Makes sense,” he said, rubbing his hand on his wetsuit. “You must have the genetic DNA from this line of ancestry. The Blue Screen shield, it was an innate side-effect of their talents. So, this tool — whatever it is — works with their biological-psychic makeup. And now it’s working for you, at least so far.”

Aria shrugged. “I like it, and it feels cool.”

Just then, they heard muffled pops from somewhere close, and echoes of sloshing steps behind them, in the tunnel. Alexander gave a wistful look around the chamber, lamenting the knowledge and the stories the murals and the writing on the walls and pillars all cried out so desperately to tell. The entire lives locked up in story form here, stories the world had forgotten. In most scholarly venues, they had even denied the presence of such a grand civilization.

“We’ve got to go.” Alexander gently took her arm and led her toward the hallway, and the arch with the boulder and debris blocking their exit. He could taste the warmer air seeping through some cracks, and now could hear the popping sounds clearer:

Gunshots. Right on the other side, as if someone were pinned down, desperately firing their last shots.