“Dude, so maybe the original dudes who lived there were these same alien dudes who lived down here.”
“They weren’t aliens, Nick—” said Will.
“Chill, you know what I mean, the Other Team dudes.”
“Maybe. If it was at its peak two thousand years ago, what’s the oldest they think Cahokia could be?”
“No one knows that either,” said Ajay, “due to the absence of datable artifacts. Many more thousands of years at least. But there’s another detail that ties it to our location: The settlement to the south includes extensive sections of sophisticated underground construction.”
“You’re getting warmer,” said Nick.
“So to elaborate on Nick’s theory,” said Ajay, “what if that Cahokia was actually first settled by an even older civilization? A much older one?”
“One that isn’t human or alien,” said Nick.
“Exactly! An older race of beings that then established outposts or colonies in nearby parts of the upper Midwest. At least one of which in our neighborhood that has never been officially discovered.”
“At the least,” said Will, “it means whoever carved Cahokia on the doors had the same idea.”
“What about that other word, Teotwawki?” asked Nick. “Could that be our place’s real name?”
“Actually, no,” said Ajay. “That means something else.”
“What?” asked Will.
“It’s an acronym, and I’m a bit embarrassed that I didn’t recognize it, as it’s something of an Internet meme.”
“Like one of those dudes with the white stuff on his face who doesn’t talk?”
“That’s a mime, you idiot,” said Ajay. “TEOTWAWKI stands for ‘The End of the World as We Know It.”
No one spoke for a second.
“Hello,” said Nick.
Nick rang the bell on the counter.
“Nepsted! We’re back, dude,” said Nick. “And we brought you a present.” Nick paused, but they heard nothing. “That special thing you asked us to find for you, remember?”
Another ring of the bell. Still no reply. They didn’t even hear the squeak and whine of his motorized wheelchair. Nick boosted Ajay up onto the counter and he peered back into the deep shadows of the equipment cage through the steel mesh.
“Nothing’s moving,” said Ajay. “I don’t see him anywhere.”
“You think he’s okay?” asked Nick, looking worried.
“Let’s go in and find him,” said Will. “Make sure no one’s around.”
Nick and Ajay scouted this isolated area of the locker room as Will moved to the cage and put his hand around the lock, testing its strength one last time.
“All clear,” said Ajay, returning.
“Glasses,” said Will.
They all slipped on their glasses. Will took the key from his pocket. Its restless, animated components extruded out and began their peculiar winding motions. When he moved it closer to the shifting plates of the lock on the cage door, both lock and key lit up with the same sickly green energy. A nest of liquid steel tendrils from the key slithered out and around the lock, merging and flowing into its central jewel-like column.
They heard a complex series of thunks, clicks, and whispers, and then the lock gave way, the diamond shaft slipping out of the plates, letting go. The hasp folded elegantly back into the center and the lock fell to the floor, its toxic glow fading to a dull gray.
Will put both hands on the cage and pushed. Rusty hinges screamed but the gate yielded only an inch. All three put their shoulders to it, a door that hadn’t been opened in decades and had been painted over many times, and on the fifth try it gave way just enough for them to squeeze through the gap. Nick flipped a light switch on the opposite wall and pale fluorescent fixtures flickered on all the way to the back of the long narrow storage room.
Ajay set up a button-sized camera just inside the cage, pointed out through the mesh toward the locker room. He activated it with a small remote control the size of a playing card; an image of the locker room appeared on the controller. Will checked out the image and gave Ajay a thumbs-up.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“Shouldn’t we close it behind us?” asked Ajay, glancing back at the door.
“We can’t fasten it from inside,” said Will. “But you’re right, nobody better see it open. Hang the lock on the door.”
Nick slipped the lock back through the slot in the door and they shoved it even with the frame.
Ajay edged cautiously forward into the cage, between the tall aisles of sports equipment. Ten yards in, he pointed out a fixed security camera on the wall near the ceiling. Staying hidden in the middle aisle, Ajay drew a small device shaped like a fat squirt gun from his vest. He pointed it at the camera through a gap in a shelf and pulled the trigger. A pulse of energy shot toward the camera and cracked the lens. Ajay nodded at Will. They continued down the middle aisle.
“Nepsted?” called Nick.
“Raymond!” called Will.
No answer. All they heard until they reached the end of the aisle was their own footsteps scuffing the concrete. When they reached the back wall, they found a low, wide passage that led to the left and followed it to a plain, unmarked door.
“Chez Nepsted?” asked Ajay.
“I thought his first name was Happy,” said Nick.
“It means ‘house of Nepsted,’ ” said Ajay.
“His name,” said Will as he opened the door, “is Raymond Llewellyn.”
A single light shone down from a lamp across a darkened, windowless room. Piles of clutter trailed off in all directions into the shadows. Nepsted’s wheelchair stood empty to the left of where the beam of the lamp landed. They moved in a few steps more and there in a pool of light sat Nepsted, or something like him, in a large galvanized steel tub filled with dark, thick liquid the consistency of molasses and the color of plums. Heat burbled up from the bottom as if it were a natural hot spring, trailing vapor into the air.
Nepsted appeared to be floating or hovering in the liquid, on his back and at rest, his stunted body hanging loosely below him. His limbs bobbed up and down, just below the surface, and seemed to slowly oscillate between their solid form and the pale, ropy tendrils they’d briefly seen before. His wide eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, and every once in a while his face seemed to lose its structure, melting into a slack formlessness before phasing back into shape. He seemed to register that they’d entered the room but didn’t react in any other noticeable way.
“Hope you don’t mind we opened your door,” said Will.
“We found the key, dude,” said Nick, holding it up.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” said Nepsted, almost vacantly, eyes still fixed on something above.
“It wasn’t easy,” said Will. “But it was right where you’d said it would be.”
“Although, truthfully, your directions might have been a bit more specific—” said Ajay, before Will cut him off with a gesture.
“We found everything, Raymond,” said Will. “The city, the cathedral.”
“The Tomb of the Unknown Conehead,” said Nick.
“The bone yard and the hospital,” said Will. “And the room with all your friends in it.”
That got his attention. Nepsted’s eyes darted to Will. “What else do you know?”
“The dinner with Henry Wallace in 1937,” said Will. “The plane crash in ’38. We know that Raymond Llewellyn and Edgar Snow were the only two who really survived, because you were part of the Knights and they did something terrible, to all of you, after they found that city down there and built the hospital. We know that Snow goes by the name of Hobbes now, and they’ve started another research program. And we need you to fill in everything else, before and after.”
“Like you promised,” said Nick, leaning on the
side of the tub.
“Did anyone see you?” Nepsted looked a little panicked. “Did they follow you?”
“They saw us,” said Will. “But no one followed us and they’re not stopping us.”
Nepsted studied Will, as if seeing him for the first time.
“Then I must keep my promise,” said Nepsted simply.
“You want us to get you out of here?” asked Will. “If you don’t feel safe, we can talk someplace else.”
“No. I’ll say what I have to say. I’ve waited a long time for this.”
“We’ll keep an eye on the door,” said Will, then held his hand out to Ajay, who handed him the playing-card-sized screen showing the feed from the camera at the cage.
Will took a look. A still life. Nothing moved in the locker room.
With flicks of tendrils that occasionally peeked out of the murk, Nepsted slowly turned around in a lazy circle as he began his story. At a nod from Will, Ajay activated a recording device—disguised as a pen—in the chest pocket of his coat.
“They made it seem like so much fun, you see,” said Nepsted. “The Knights were paragons to us, the envy of the school. The parties they gave. The theatricals they put on. The spirit they embodied—sophisticated, gifted, worldly beyond their years. Everyone wanted to be a Knight, but we knew they only took twelve men a year.”
“They weren’t a secret society yet,” said Ajay.
“Not when I arrived in ’34,” said Nepsted. “That came later. Everybody knew who the members were then, past and present—the club existed openly. But we didn’t know the criteria for membership, or how they made their selections. You just presented yourself in the best possible light and hoped to make an impression. Then one day, late in our junior year, they let us know.”
“How?”
“A mask. I found it on my pillow that night. A horse’s head. All twelve of us found masks we were required to wear the next night, at our first dinner, when they gave us our names. I was Ganelon the Crafter. From that moment, we had to refer to each other, in private, by our secret names.”
Will thought back to the twelve ancient masks and the list of names they’d found in a trunk hidden in the auxiliary locker room last fall.
“We know about those, too,” said Will.
“But I don’t know if you can appreciate what this meant to us. To be welcomed into the fold of a group like this. The intoxicating sense of privilege it gave us when we learned the history behind the Knights, and our true reasons for being.”
“What were they?” asked Will.
“That for a thousand years the Knights had been the secret guardians of everything good and true produced by Western civilization—education, science, medicine, charity, the arts, spiritual enlightenment. They had us believe that the Knights were dedicated to the preservation of those disciplines and its highest ideals, throughout the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Renaissance, all to way to the founding of America and into the Modern Age.”
Will and Ajay exchanged a look. Ajay’s eyes opened wide, and Will knew they were thinking the same thing. This is much older and bigger than we even imagined.
“My parents owned a hardware store in Columbus, Ohio,” said Nepsted. “I was a smart boy, nobody special, but a scholarship student who’d gotten into the Center on merit not family connections. But the Knights quickly made us believe that we were joining a high moral order that operated at global levels of influence and had served mankind for centuries.”
“So you were brainwashed,” said Will.
“A real sell job,” said Nick, almost muttering.
But Nepsted heard him. “You’d do well to remember, my young friend, how much trouble there was in the world then. The depths of the Depression, a second world war on the horizon that everyone saw as inevitable. A few months later, when they asked us to contribute by making a sacrifice of our own, it seemed the most natural thing in the world.”
“Who asked you?” asked Will.
“Our faculty advisor, Dr. Abelson.”
Will remembered the name from the monument. “A teacher?”
Nepsted looked surprised again. “Yes. He was the adult in charge of the Order.”
“But you called him the Old Gentleman,” said Ajay, glancing at Will.
“That’s what the Knights have always called the man who holds that office,” said Nepsted. “Abelson taught science and philosophy and was chairman of both those departments. A traditional role for the Old Gentleman. The Knights have been associated with a school or academy for over a thousand years, and always one serving in the vanguard of advances in science and philosophy.”
“Where was Abelson from?” asked Will.
“He was Swedish, but he’d been educated in Germany,” said Nepsted. “You see, Dr. Abelson was instrumental in the development of eugenics. That was his area of expertise.”
“Eugenics?” asked Nick, clueless, looking to Ajay for an explanation.
“The applied science of improving a contained population’s genetic makeup,” said Ajay in a hushed tone. “As a way of increasing desirable traits in its most gifted citizens while at the same time … reducing the reproduction of people with … less desirable traits.”
“Through genetic manipulation,” said Will.
“Oh,” said Nick quietly.
“But he took eugenics much further,” said Nepsted. “Abelson had developed experimental techniques that he believed would prove the theories he’d developed in Germany.”
Will felt his guts wrench at the realization. “In Germany,” he said. “With the Nazis?”
“We didn’t know about that when we joined,” said Nepsted sharply. “None of us did. Abelson never spoke of it. If we’d had any idea how twisted he was, this would never have happened.”
“Twisted how?” asked Ajay.
“The advancements he’d made meant we no longer had to wait generations, as the limits of eugenics required, to see radical improvements in human potential. Abelson believed his treatments could transform human potential, that healthy, living subjects could be elevated into superior states of physical, mental, and spiritual being in a matter of months. He called this accelerated form of evolution the Great Awakening.”
“Good God,” said Ajay.
“So Abelson built the hospital down there?” asked Will. “For this.”
“I believe that started not long after Abelson arrived in 1932. He told us our class of Knights had been selected for a great honor: the first members of the Order to benefit from his … enhancements. The first to Awaken, founding members of the modern order of Paladins. A new breed of warriors in the cause they’d been fighting for for a millennium.”
“Abelson did this to you?” asked Nick, furious.
Nepsted nodded.
“Dude, what the hell, so you just went along with it?” asked Nick.
Nepsted seemed frustrated by Nick’s outrage. “What can I say to make you see how this happened? We were just boys, stupid, overconfident egotistical boys. There was nothing rational about it. We believed in him, believed in the glory he was bestowing on us.”
“That can’t be the only reason,” said Nick.
“You’re right, Nick. We had a leader of our own, in our class of Knights, who believed in Abelson’s Awakening so ferociously that he made saying no seem unthinkable.”
“That must have been Hobbes,” said Will. “The boy you knew as Edgar Snow.”
“No, Will. He was an important member, second in command to the one I’m referring to, but it wasn’t Edgar.”
“Who was it, then?” asked Ajay.
“Franklin Greenwood,” said Nepsted.
Will sucked in his breath hard, involuntarily.
My grandfather.
“Franklin Greenwood, the second headmaster?” asked Ajay incredulously. “So
n of the founder of the Center?”
“Frank was in our class of recruits. His name in the Order was Orlando. Traditionally Orlando plays the role of senior advisor to the Old Gentleman.”
Will’s mind raced: My own grandfather was mixed up in this madness? How is that possible?
“Is he in the photograph of the dinner?” asked Will, slipping a copy from his pocket.
“Yes, of course, Frank was there that night,” said Nepsted.
“Show him to me, please,” said Will, holding the photo closer to Nepsted.
Nepsted looked at the photo impassively. A tentacle lifted out of the muck and delicately touched one of the figures in the picture that Will had hardly noticed before. A tall, slender boy seated at the end of the table, farthest from the camera. He looked more youthful than the others. Arms folded on the table, leaning forward, smiling vaguely.
But something in his eyes contradicted that smile, and then Will realized he wasn’t looking directly at the lens.
Franklin was looking straight at the back of Henry Wallace, seated in the foreground, nearest to the camera, turned in his seat to face Thomas Greenwood, if Will’s theory about who took the picture was correct.
When Will really studied him, Franklin looked not only suspicious, but also angry.
“Does this means the Center was in on this?” asked Nick.
“No, no, on the contrary,” said Nepsted. “The headmaster was aware his son had joined the Knights, but he seemed to think it was no more than a fraternity. Frank helped impose all the secrecy so his father wouldn’t find out what we were really doing. He was the leader of our group—a born leader, in his character—and Abelson’s Awakening was the path down which he led us.”
“But Thomas did find out about it,” said Will. “Or he had serious suspicions. Why else would he invite Henry Wallace to the school?”
“They were old, trusted friends,” said Nepsted, nodding. “Thomas sensed something was going wrong with his son and the Knights and he asked Wallace here to help him find out what it was. We didn’t know that at the time.”
“Was he too late?” asked Nick.
“By the night of that dinner, we’d already received the first weeks of treatments. Only injections at that point, but they’d gone flawlessly. We all felt healthy, strong, optimistic. Better than we’d ever felt, honestly.” His eyes clouded over with pain. “And Abelson was convinced that Wallace never suspected a thing.”