“A pattern found throughout history and around the globe,” Roland added, “but this maze is clearly more elaborate, expanded upon, more intricate and convoluted.”
He pulled out Kircher’s journal and held it up, letting them all compare the maze below to the labyrinth on the cover.
Roland turned to Lena and read the understanding shining on her face. He touched her arm in thanks. “You were right from the very beginning, Lena.”
2:26 A.M.
Could it be true?
While Lena struggled to fathom all the mysteries and impossibilities found here, she recalled her first comment upon seeing the labyrinth on the damaged copy of Kircher’s journal, the one they had found in the caves of Croatia.
She repeated those words now. “It’s like a cross-section of a brain.”
Roland nodded.
She studied the more elaborate design below, noting every coppery curve and fold of those walls. They composed a perfect rendering of the gyri and sulci—the hills and valleys—that made up the human cortex and cerebrum.
“It is a cross-section of a brain,” Roland whispered. “One that is afire with energy.”
Lena watched the faint crimson tracery coursing along the copper walls, as if the entire structure were some ancient battery.
And maybe it is.
“But what does it mean?” Gray asked. “A cross-section of the brain supporting a suspended globe of the moon?”
Lena shook her head, remembering Roland’s description of the extraordinary, almost impossible to comprehend symmetry and dimension of the earth’s only satellite. A globe that produced the tides that supported life, a sphere of such perfect mass that it stabilized the spin and axis of the earth so the planet could become an abiding and secure home for complex organisms to evolve into an intelligence that could look to the skies and wonder.
She stared down at the depiction of the human brain and felt tears rising in her eyes. While she could not answer Gray’s question, deep down she knew the wordless truth, sensed the enormity of both what was designed here and what lay beyond these walls.
Roland tried to explain. “Maybe what we’re looking at here is these ancient teachers’ attempt to comprehend God.”
Lena sensed he was close to the truth, but the mysteries here ran even deeper than that, like how the dark side of the moon could be rendered in such detail by these ancients.
Roland sighed, perhaps realizing the same. “Or maybe all of this . . .” He waved an arm, encompassing not just this chamber of mysteries, but the greater mysteries beyond. “Maybe it’s another ancient intelligence’s attempt to communicate to us, to leave behind a message for us to discover, burying it both in our DNA and in the movement of the sun, earth, and moon.”
“But what’s the message?” Lena asked.
Gray offered one conjecture. “Physicists have always been baffled by how strangely—almost impossibly—the universe seems to be fine-tuned for the creation of life. Take electromagnetic force. It has a specific value that allows stars to produce carbon, the building block of all life. Likewise, the strong nuclear force, which holds atoms together, is also perfectly balanced. If it were a tad stronger, the universe would be made up entirely of hydrogen. A tad weaker, there would be no hydrogen.”
Lena understood. “If any of those constants were different, life would not exist.” She turned to Gray. “But how does what we’re looking at fit into all of that?”
He sighed. “I’m not entirely sure. But I think these ancient teachers built all of this as a model to show us that life too is a fundamental law of nature. Ultimately we were meant to discover these connections—these ratios and symmetries that tie our bodies to the larger universe—and to begin to comprehend a greater truth.”
“Which is what?” Roland asked.
“That we’re special.” He pointed down to the labyrinth of the brain. “That maybe the universe is centered around the creation of intelligent life, in the creation of us. That we are a fundamental law of nature.”
Silence settled over the group as they contemplated this possibility.
Roland finally mumbled, “No wonder Father Kircher hid this knowledge.”
“The world was not ready,” Lena added.
And maybe it’s still not.
Roland nodded to the labyrinth below. “Nicolas Steno, later in his life, ended his pursuit of paleontology, ceasing his examination of fossils.” He turned to them. “Do you know what he devoted the final years of his life to studying?”
Lena shook her head.
Roland turned and stared below. “He studied the human brain.”
The ticking of this massive clock suddenly took on a new note, more frantic, less steady. It took Lena a full breath to realize the new cadence was actually footsteps, racing down behind them.
She turned to find a small shape flying at them.
“Jembe?”
2:28 A.M.
From the boy’s sudden appearance and breathless descent, Gray immediately knew something was wrong. Seichan stepped over and caught Jembe before he plunged headlong into the mysteries below.
He panted, his eyes wide upon what was suspended in the room, momentarily struck dumb.
Gray took his chin and drew his gaze to his own face. “What’re you doing here?”
Jembe pulled his chin free and glanced back. “I run fast . . .” He flitted a hand through the air. “Like a hummingbird. But here is very dark.”
Only now did Gray note the dark trickle of blood down the boy’s forehead. He must have struck his head while trying to find them.
Jembe clutched Gray’s jacket, gasping. “Bad people coming. They have Chakikui.”
Gray straightened, staring up.
Was it the Chinese again?
Seichan wondered the same. “They must have followed us.”
But how?
Gray pushed that question aside and asked a more important one. “How many, Jembe?”
The boy held up ten fingers. “Another is still with Chakikui.”
And all likely armed to the teeth.
He yanked out his SIG Sauer as Seichan did the same. But the odds were not good.
Two pistols against a fully equipped strike team.
“We’re too exposed in here,” Gray said and started moving everyone up, pulling the boy behind him.
“What about hiding in the libraries?” Lena offered, hurrying alongside him. “Those rooms go on and on, maybe circling all the way around this space.”
Roland nodded.
Even Seichan liked the plan. “It’s our best chance. We could secure the others while we play a little game of cat and mouse with our guests across the rooms.”
As they reached the top step and reentered the crystal chamber, Gray pointed toward the metal library, hoping the gold-plated cases and bulletproof books inside would offer some shelter. He momentarily considered sending everyone into the crystal library, while he and Seichan lured the marauders the other way, but the strike team might send searchers in that direction. If that happened, the others would be defenseless. So he stuck to his original plan.
He passed Seichan his flashlight. “Take them.”
“What’re you going to—”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
She nodded and herded everyone toward the open door, taking the light with her.
Rushing through the dark, he crossed back to the gold skeleton and the completed pattern atop the dais. In the past, Nicolas Steno must have successfully closed the doors to the moon room by scrambling the marbles and resetting the mechanism.
Gray didn’t need to be that thorough. He reached and merely switched a metallic sphere for a crystal one. With the pattern disrupted, the doors began to close with a soft sighing of hidden gears.
Hurry up . . .
He glanced to the stairs that led down here. Through the darkness, he spotted a faint light flowing from above. The enemy was approaching cautiously, likely edgy, knowing the boy would ha
ve alerted them. Still, he needed more time, so he raised his pistol and fired twice in that direction, hoping the threat would give the enemy reason to pause.
Finally the doors sealed shut behind him with a grinding thud.
He waited a full breath in case the mechanism needed time to reset. Then he reached over and plucked one of the metal balls from its socket. As before, a loud chime immediately sounded, a strike of metal on crystal.
With the timer again activated and the countdown restarted, Gray fled low across the floor, hoping to make it through the library door before being spotted.
No such luck.
A spatter of gunfire erupted from the stairwell, cracking and ricocheting off the quartz tiles at his heels. He dove across the library’s threshold and rolled farther into the room.
Seichan was there to pull him to his feet. Together they raced behind the nearest bookcase, putting that wall of metal-plated books between them and the door.
“The others?” he asked.
“Two rooms back and to the left. Told them to keep moving if we can’t hold them off here.”
Another of the chimes echoed.
She grumbled at him. “Like a team of commandos wasn’t enough of a threat?”
He showed her the metallic sphere still in his palm. “If need be, I can reset that timer. Maybe even use the marble as a bargaining chip. And in the worst-case scenario, I end up creating the world’s biggest distraction.”
“You like to live loose and fast, Gray.”
“Right now I’ll just take living.”
Furtive movements sounded out in the next room. Something rolled across the threshold, bobbling and spinning across the tiles.
A grenade.
Okay, now that’s a better bargaining chip.
Seichan grabbed him, and they both dove away.
2:31 A.M.
Lena involuntarily ducked at the sudden blast. Even from two rooms away, a flare of brilliance reached their hiding place, etching the shelves and the threshold of the door ahead.
She crouched with Roland and Jembe behind a bookcase. Roland shaded a small penlight with his palm, his face lined by worry.
The boy tugged at her sleeve. “Ms. Lena,” he said, trying to get her attention.
She realized he was probably scared. He had been clinging to her, trying to get her to listen to him. She put an arm around him.
“We’ll be okay,” she tried to reassure him, though it felt more like she was trying to convince herself.
“No. I must tell you.”
She turned and read the urgency in his eyes. “What?”
He told her.
Roland heard him, too, and grabbed her arm. “We have to warn the others.”
2:32 A.M.
Seichan groaned and picked herself up off the floor. The explosive device hadn’t been a grenade, but a flashbang meant to stun and soften an enemy. If not for the shelter of packed shelves, she would have been blinded. But the concussion and noise still felt like a giant had slapped both sides of her head with its palms.
Gray looked no better as he rolled to a low crouch, his pistol raised.
They had retreated to the next room. Gray took one side of the door while she kept to her feet on the other. She spied high while Gray remained low, both of them searching the room they had vacated.
Shadows shifted out there.
Gray fired once—earning a satisfying cry of pain. It wasn’t a mortal wound, but it got their attention.
Guessing the enemy came equipped with night-vision gear, Seichan reached to her belt and thumbed loose a small penlight. She flicked it on and whipped it out into the shelves. It wasn’t exactly a flashbang, but the sudden flare of brilliance would momentarily blind their sensitive night-vision equipment, stinging any eyes wearing such gear.
“Smart,” Gray whispered.
The penlight also revealed a pair of enemies, who fled from that well of brightness. She and Gray both fired. She hit one in the meat of his upper thigh, sending him flying behind a case. Gray clipped the other under his ear, dropping him flat.
One down.
But the enemy was not so easily cowed. Other forces were flanking wide, keeping out of sight. There were too many. She knew it was time to retreat even farther and get the others moving even deeper.
Before she could turn, lights flared brighter, flowing in from the crystal room, a strange crimson flickering.
Then gunfire erupted—at first sporadically, then more fiercely.
Shouts and screams rose, full of blood and pain.
What the hell?
A black uniformed shape came hurtling toward them, straight between two bookcases—then the man’s throat exploded, sending him flying forward. A long arrow protruded from his throat. He crashed to the floor, snapping the shaft. The victim crawled toward them, gasping, then his back arched, foam flecking his lips.
She glanced down to the arrowhead on the floor.
Poison.
Footfalls erupted behind her. She swung around with her weapon raised.
“It’s Lena and Roland,” Gray warned before she fired.
The boy came with them.
Gray waved them all to the side.
Lena exclaimed breathlessly. “It’s Jembe’s tribe.”
Seichan glanced to the boy, who nodded vigorously.
“Chakikui told me to take the bad people in here. So I do, but he also say in secret that my people are in the forest. I try to tell you.”
Seichan realized the boy was right. After hearing about the threat, they had all bum-rushed the skinny kid up the stairs and into hiding.
A ringing chime scolded her, sounding much louder now.
As it faded, she noted the fierce firefight had died down to sporadic bursts, echoing from deeper in the library, coming from neighboring rooms as the ambushers drove the Chinese farther back.
“What now?” Roland asked.
“We have to hightail it out of here,” Gray said.
“Why?”
“I dropped the ball.” He showed Seichan his palms. “In this case, literally. I had the marble in my hand, but when that flashbang blew, I lost it.”
Of course, you did. Nothing was ever easy with Gray.
He studied the dark room, his expression grim. They didn’t have time to find and replace the lost puzzle piece, especially with an unknown number of enemies still waiting in the shadows.
Another chime sounded, full of dire warning.
“We’ll have to make a run for it,” Gray announced. “Jembe, you find one of your people. Let them know to clear out, too.”
The boy nodded.
Gray clapped him on the shoulder and turned to everyone else. “Ready?”
No one was, but they had no other choice.
2:37 A.M.
“Let’s go.”
Gray lifted his pistol and swung around the doorjamb. He rushed low in the next room; the others followed his example. He skirted around the dead man and out past the towering bookcases. He paused behind the last one, eyeing the door that opened into the crystal chamber.
It appeared unguarded.
More bodies lay on the floor, both in this room and beyond the threshold; most wore black commando gear, a few only loincloths. Several torches burned out there, abandoned in the crystal chamber.
Deeper in the library, gunshots occasionally rang out.
But that wasn’t what worried Gray.
The crystal chamber quaked with another resounding clang.
Time was almost up.
Knowing they could wait no longer, he burst toward the open door. But a dark shape leaped into view at the last moment. Jembe yelled out in his native language. Gray skidded to a stop—with the point of a poisoned arrow poised at his chest.
The tribesman had heard Jembe and shifted aside. The tall man spoke rapidly to the boy as the group fled the library. Jembe pointed up the stairs. The man nodded, cupped his lips, and cast out a loud warbling whistle, recalling his fellow tribesmen
.
Gray gripped the warrior’s forearm in thanks. Any further demonstration of appreciation would have to wait. “C’mon,” he ordered the others.
As he sprinted for the stairs, the final chime sounded, rising again toward the same dire crescendo. Once it reached its peak, the ground bucked under his legs, sending him sprawling. The others fared no better; only Jembe kept his balance.
Around them, plates of obsidian crashed down from the ceiling and shattered into sharp shards. Pillars rocked and cracked.
Gray got everyone up. “Move!”
Behind him, natives dashed out of the library.
Gray led them all up the stairs and across the next chamber, the one covered in elaborate mosaics. As the world continued to shake, tiles rained to the floor, dissolving the images of animals and their caretakers from the walls.
A roaring rush echoed behind him.
Water.
His ears popped as the air pressure spiked higher. He pictured floodwaters filling the mysteries below and rising rapidly toward them, squeezing this only pocket of air.
As he fled, one certainty grew.
Atlantis was sinking for a final time.
2:38 A.M.
“We must go,” Major Sergeant Kwan warned Shu Wei.
She stood amid shadowy bookshelves as cold water washed over her boots. The quaking had toppled shelves all around, knocking loose massive volumes bound in black metal. The brown-skinned natives who had ambushed her team had already fled the rising tide.
A part of her wanted to remain here, to accept her defeat with a measure of grace and honor, but a larger fire burned inside her.
For revenge.
Limping on a twisted ankle, she set off. Kwan came forward and helped her, hooking an arm around her waist. Normally she would have shunned such assistance, taking it as a sign of weakness, especially for a woman in the army.
Instead, she leaned more heavily into him, sensing his support was born of more than mere loyalty. His strong arm held her firmly. She would reserve her own strength to deal with her enemy.
She intended to become like the man who held her.
To become a Black Crow, a merciless force who took what was owed.
By the time they reached the exit to the library, the waters had risen to her thighs. Kwan now half carried her, wading swiftly. But a familiar figure blocked the way out.