The Prometheus Objective

25

Alexander didn’t have time to enjoy the thrill, to shake off the otherworldly feeling of this is just a dream or no way we’ve just solved the mystery of how the ancients moved these monstrous blocks (although he still didn’t understand it). They had been at the exit where the boulder effectively blocked up the ascending tunnel, and Aria had tried wielding the staff.

Determining that she might have the only shot of unlocking its power since she seemed to carry the genetic trait of the psychic dampening field, she took it and tried focusing on the properties of the staff. Alexander didn’t know what it was made of, but it felt like some kind of carbon-marble composition, and not wooden at all — fortunately or it would have decomposed by now.

Whatever it was, Alexander guessed it had some kind of electromagnetic configuration that interacted with this location’s magnetic field. Maybe it was this specific geographic location on the planet. He wanted to delve into theories that megalithic sites were purposely built on ley lines tracing across the globe, locations of power where misunderstood forces prevailed; maybe it was because the magnetic field in this area was conducive to this sort of scientific-magical construction process. Something was screwy with the compasses around here for sure, and he imagined this staff might be attuned to the user’s own thought-waves; it directed them through the staff’s electromagnetic signature to negate a targeted object’s mass, and then employed vibrational thought-energy to affect movement.

He wanted to spend hours and days and weeks with this, imagining the experiments he could run, the conclusions he could prove, and the benefits they could deliver to the world with this technology.

But this wasn’t the time, and he didn’t have the expertise to investigate. All he knew was that when Aria focused intently on the boulder and aimed the staff, he felt something like a trembling in the air. The floor rattled, the walls shook, and the boulder moved, slightly.

Aria giggled, and she said her arm tickled.

Right after that, they heard Jacob’s voice from the other side. He’d found them, seen them while Aria’s shield had been down. He and Nina were trapped on the other side, with a chopper and armed soldiers closing in. Only one chance — something he had foreseen — was that the boulder would and could be moved clear, giving Jacob and Nina an escape.

What he hadn’t foreseen thought was the extent of Aria’s control, of the utter weightlessness of the rock once she adjusted the parameters of whatever control she asserted. Once Jacob and Nina had gotten out of the way, she gave it what she thought was a nudge to roll out and away — and instead it shot out of the tunnel like a cannonball.

A deadly accurate one, unfortunately for the helicopter and its pilot.

Alexander led her out the tunnel, where they cautiously stepped through the smoke, avoiding the remnants of two soldiers and then gaping in horror as the chopper went down in pieces.

“Told you,” Jacob said from their left, but Aria’s scream cut off their reunion. He spun around and saw her on her knees, pointing the staff upwards and across her body like it was a shield. Rocks tumbled from the closest wall as a lone soldier in black scrambled up there, around a palm tree, trying for a clear shot. The destruction of the chopper and the sight of a projected boulder surely gave him momentary pause, but now…

Bullets flew.

— The wrong direction. Up, and wild, as Alexander saw the attacker no longer had his feet on the basalt top level. Upended, his legs flailed, and his arms swung wildly, even the one holding the gun and pulling the trigger.

Aria swung the staff laboriously, like in an exaggerated golf swing. Then pulled it back along the same path.

The man flew up and arced out short distance, and then as if on a bungee tether, his motion slowed, then stopped. Wildly flailing, he was hauled backward and crashed with a bone-shattering sound into the ancient coral-and-basalt wall. He tumbled down like a broken doll.

Aria gasped — and now dropped the staff.

Nina bounced up, cat-like, and ran to the body, keeping her 9mm trained on it. Alexander and Jacob joined her, but Alexander looked back to Aria, who now seemed shells-hocked. He understood.

She had, in the space of under a minute, just ended two lives with a power no one could have imagined. Granted, her actions saved their lives, but he of all people knew the toll such an act took on the soul. He had dealt with it in Mongolia, and the look on that man’s face he shot had never left his thoughts.

He moved fast and stopped her from coming closer. She didn’t need to see the after-effects of her handiwork. She accepted his embrace and buried her face in his shoulder as Nina talked to the dying soldier.

“Who the hell are you people? Aligned with Boris?”

A coughing sound, and the man’s voice cracked and made a watery, sputtering sound before it cleared up.

“Boris… gone. Just here to thin your team even more.”

Alexander felt his blood boil. He eased off from Aria, held up a finger, then went over to the others. “Why were you really here? There’s nothing to guard anymore.”

Nina and Jacob looked at him in shock. “What do you mean?” she whispered. “We came all this way…”

“For nothing. A false vision. Or…” He thought for a minute of the sight he had down there, touching Aria…

“An old one…”

The fleet of some twenty naval vessels, with the rising sun emblem blazing on their sides, stationed off Nan Madol on a clear summer day. Divers drop into the choppy bay. Some with tethers, others free diving. Locals forced at gunpoint to do the same, more familiar with the depths.

Another view: from deep below — what look like depth charges, men descending, dozens at a time, some coming up with boxes and artifacts, and one in particular…

A native, holding onto a huge turtle aiming for that crack in the coral reef, the opening that was really the entrance to the ancient city…

Through, releasing the shell, gliding to that first spire, dimly lit in phantom plant growth and dissipating sunlight, and the alcove at the top of the sacred tower. Almost breathless, he just grasps the platinum box and kicks away.

Some kind of spring trap attempted to close but was brittle and ineffective. The prize drifts away, back up to the crack and through before the diver holding it runs out of air and breathes in the salty embrace of death — while pushing the box upward and through the mantas, where a Japanese diver, nearby, catches the light glinting off its platinum surface, before it descends, and swims down to the investigate. His eyes widen as he closes in…

“They took it. Back before the war.”

“Iraq?” Aria asked, hopeful, and from personal experience.

“World War Two.” Alexander stepped closer, frowning at the intensity of the dying man’s gaze — upon each of them, as if he were sizing them up for weaknesses. “A diver brought it up along with everything else the Japanese could find while stationed here.”

That’s right,” the man spoke, and his voice took on an Asian accent. Thick and confident, supremely so. Almost arrogant despite his proximity to death.

“You found it.” Alexander said, just as he glimpsed the diver again, the one coming up with the platinum coffin, checking inside, and reaching for the sole green gem, shaped like a teardrop.

Not sure why I know that, but it’s him.

“What?” Nina was still pointing the gun at his face, but it wavered now with her confusion.

“It’s him,” Alexander said, cocking his head. “Our real enemy. But… not him.”

The man grinned through bloody teeth.

“Can’t be that guy who found it,” Jacob said. “He’d be like, a hundred years old.”

“Ninety-seven,” the man said. “But who’s counting. Congratulations on escaping the tomb, on using the ancient technology.”

“You’re welcome?” Aria had crept up behind them. “Who the hell is this?”

“I’m someone who had been, and will be, for a long, long time. I have ultimate memory, and am close to much, much more. I’m… sure I’ll be seeing you and your other psychic friends and family soon. I have the twins, and with them…”

Alexander dropped to his knees, reaching for the soldier’s throat. “You have who?”

The dying man smiled, gagged on blood, and his eyes blinked fast. He said something like, “…Antarctica.”

And was gone.

Nina stepped back, putting away her gun. “What the hell was that?”

Alexander shook his head. “I think someone remotely possessed that guy. Got into his mind. Saw through him, spoke through him, like a puppet. Maybe he could have done more, but the body was dying.”

Jacob coughed and looked around nervously, expecting more. “And he’s been pulling the strings here? This 97-year-old?”

“I don’t know,” Alexander said. “That gem — it’s like the Emerald Tablet. Maybe made from the same stuff.”

“Wasn’t it a meteorite?” Aria asked.

“Yeah, with special properties forged in a psychic bond by an early high priest.”

“Okay,” Nina said, “whatever it was, someone found it, took it from where we were supposed to find it, and now…”

“Now we’re screwed,” Jacob muttered.

“No, now we have a new objective.” Alexander felt the winds die as the clouds rolled away and sun emerged, clear and with a touch of much-needed heat. “Need to get the team to work on it. Get us focused.”

“After we dry up, warm up and get the hell out of here,” Aria said.