2041 Sanctuary (Let There Be Light) (10 page)

The SED, of course, had been fantastic, as had the glory of the United States Subterranean Base itself, and the Anakim treasures contained within and without, but there had been something else that Sarah had found deep down in the Earth’s crust, and that thing was love, or at least the blossoming beginnings of it. The man in question, Riley Orton, her Deep Reach SED team leader, had grown close to her during her stay and one thing had inevitably led to another. Responsible for her induction into the SED and for the intensive training regime that enabled her to pass the tests to qualify for Deep Reach duties, Riley had proven to be an amusing and uplifting companion in a foreign world; a world that she had, at first, striven with every fibre to escape from.

Sarah, wary of trusting her own judgement when it came to men, her track record poor, had deliberated long and hard about leaving behind the man she’d grown to care for. But leave him behind she had; her quest to expose the existence of the Anakim and their creation, Sanctuary itself, had proved too great a pull. It was her life’s ambition to prove Homo gigantis – or Homo giganthropsis as they were also known – existed, and one that she could not put aside for anyone or anything.

The wrench of separation had been great and she still felt the loss like a knife in her heart, despite what she’d found out afterwards. However, there had been another motivating factor to her leaving the base and setting off for the surface. The death of her mother years before had left a blight on her life, a blight that she couldn’t shake. The shadow of her parent’s demise followed her wherever she went, an apparition at the edge of vision that refused to leave her be. Her life had now taken on dual purpose; expose the Anakim to the world and bring her mother’s murderers to justice.

Combined with the fact that to stay in the U.S. Subterranean Base Sarah would have had to relinquish the notion of ever returning to the surface, she had decided to leave a dream job and the potential of a lifelong partner for ambition, freedom and justice; powerful ideals individually, but undeniable in union.

For years Sarah had believed the fire that had stolen her mother’s life to be an accident, but events the year before in 2040 had transformed her perception from that of a horrific tragedy into one of deception and murder. The Anakim maps Sarah had unearthed and then stored in her mother’s house for safekeeping had been an act of targeted destruction by agents of the Catholic Church – or at least, that’s what she’d thought until she’d found one of the very same maps on display in Sanctuary’s secret vaults.

The sad fact was the whole operation, the USSB, the SED, Deep Reach and Riley himself, had turned out to be a lie. They weren’t the champions of archaeology and humanity as they proclaimed, but the users of it, abusing their roles for the good of the military and personal gain with no thought for the significance of history and everything that entailed. They even stooped to murdering the innocent to acquire the artefacts they desired.

When Sarah had voiced such reasoning to Trish and Jason, her friends had been quick to voice their opinions.

‘How do you know they were responsible for stealing your maps?’ Trish had said. ‘They could have bought them from the Vatican’s agents, or somewhere else.’

‘And even if they did,’ Jason added, ‘you can’t blame Riley, he’s just some poor sap taking orders like everyone else.’

‘Jas is right,’ Trish had said, ‘and I don’t think Riley was a manipulator, either, he’s not that type.’

Sarah didn’t care for such thoughts; they made too much sense and fed her anger. She also refused to believe no one could have known where or how those Anakim parchments had been acquired. And that made those complicit in their retrieval and use as much to blame for her mother’s death as those who had set the fire, and as much to blame as Sarah herself for hiding such precious artefacts in her mother’s home in the first place. Not a day went by when she didn’t curse her selfish stupidity for chasing a dream that had ultimately resulted in her worst nightmare. Except now that her mum was gone, that dream was the only thing she had left, that and the resulting quest for justice born from the ashes of her own guilt for her leading role in the whole sordid tale. The taste of it physically manifested like a pus-riddled boil on her tongue. Sometimes she even retched when the thoughts came, such was the intensity of the emotions involved. When she found herself in such a moment, her mood turned foul and a vicious side reared its ugly head, a side of her that she disliked, but one she seemed unable to control. It didn’t help, though, when Trish and Jason tried to console her or alter her perspective on matters. In fact it was like a red rag to a bull and down in the depths of the Earth where tensions were already fraught, relations tended to sour, as she’d just witnessed.

While Sarah dwelt on such things a memory of Riley’s smile sprang to mind, catching her unawares. Angry at the reminder of his betrayal she willed the image into oblivion, but if anything the thought grew stronger. Handsome features, the touch of his embrace and a familiar sense of safety filled her soul. Shutting her eyes, she grasped the pendants that hung round her neck, wishing the heartache away.

‘You okay, Saz?’ Jason said.

Sarah looked up and shook her head. ‘I’m fine.’

Bemused by her conflicting signals, Jason scratched his head. ‘You gonna speak to her then?’

‘Who?’

‘Err, Trish?’

‘Yeah – yes – I’ll do it now.’ Sarah rose, put her helmet back on and made her way over the boulder strewn landscape to her friend. The grey silhouette produced by Sarah’s Deep Reach helmet visor highlighted Trish’s frizzy afro, a gift from her mother’s side of the family. Slightly shorter than Sarah, and a fellow Londoner, Trish had also chosen a career in archaeology, which was how the two had met. Sarah could still remember their first encounter like it was yesterday.

Sarah had been late – no surprise there – for her very first university seminar and had rushed headlong into the lecture hall. Unfortunately for her, she’d misjudged the top step and had fallen, head over heels, down thirty more, ending up in a heap at the bottom in front of the whole class. Sporadic tittering had added to Sarah’s physical pain, which had consumed her whole body. It was at that point a face had appeared above her. Sharp features framing kind eyes, Trish’s expression had been one of deep concern. Helping her to her feet with the assistance of the lecturer, Trish had taken a bruised Sarah to the university nurse, where she was prescribed painkillers and plenty of rest. Without hesitation, Trish decided to skip her classes for the rest of the day to take care of her and they’d been firm friends ever since.

Back in the present, inside a cold, dark cave, miles beneath the mountains of Mexico, the sound of Sarah’s approach made Trish glance back. Slipping her own headwear back on, she turned round.

‘We still friends?’ Sarah said.

Trish wiped away traces of tears from her face and shrugged. ‘Does it matter? You’ll do what you want anyway. You always do.’

‘I only do what I think is right. It worked, didn’t it?’

Trish seemed like she was about to say something, but instead she moved past Sarah without another word, the tension between them unresolved. Sarah knew she’d come round eventually, and she also knew she’d done the right thing. The clock was ticking and they had to find the Anakim temple so they could use its transportation device to get back to the surface, assuming that’s where it transported them to, anyway. Thinking about the things that could go wrong with their plan, which were still many, Sarah told herself to get a grip.
I can’t afford to lose focus. Not now. There’s too much riding on this.
Everything was on the line – not just their lives, but justice for her mother, justice for history and justice for the people. Her expression became determined, her purpose resuming its crystal clarity. Find the temple, get to the surface. Get to the surface, change the world.

Sarah switched on her helmet’s twin torches and pressed a button located near her temple to open the coms channel to her friends. ‘Time to move,’ she said, and gestured towards the route ahead.

Behind, the lights from the Centipede traced her shadow on the rocks as Trish and Jason followed her into another long dark tunnel, the bonds of friendship tested, the route ahead uncertain. Putting one foot in front of the other, tired muscles aching and her climbing boots biting into loose deposit, Sarah resumed her journey into the bowels of the Earth, the call of the surface an all-consuming vision.

Chapter Six

Shadows danced across rough, cracked stone walls, the sheen of a mysterious substrate on the cave roof reflecting the Centipede’s main beams like thousands of tiny diamonds. The three companions moved through Sanctuary Proper, their footfalls echoing loud as the way ahead narrowed.

Sarah called a halt to proceedings, the time for rest a necessity. ‘Grab some sleep,’ she said, ‘I’ll wake you in a few hours for some food and water and then we’ll get moving again.’

Too tired to respond, Jason slumped to the floor with a great sigh. No sooner had he slipped off his helmet than he’d fallen asleep, his breathing slowing to a shallow rhythmic rise and fall. Trish, quick to follow his lead, lay down close by, her eyes also drifting closed. Sarah powered down the supply vehicle, selected a place to rest and switched off her helmet visor. The ice blue display gave a bleep before fading to transparency and the blackness of the subterranean catacomb closed in around her. Blinded by dark she sat down against the curve of a curious Anakim structure that emerged from the ground. The finger of rock could not be a natural formation and neither, for that matter, could the cave system itself, unless Sarah was missing something. The ancient builders of Sanctuary, nearly a million years before, had somehow mastered the moulding of the Earth’s crust into formations that looked to be of a geological composition, a synthetic construct simulating natural progression. It was a feat of engineering that she continued to marvel at and one she didn’t care to dwell on as sleep eluded her. Despite tired eyes, Sarah felt wired, an anxious mind inside a weary shell of flesh and bone.

Feeling she needed to do something in order to promote mental apathy, she reached down inside a pocket on her red and blue Deep Reach uniform and withdrew an object wrapped within a piece of thick, white cloth. The rough fabric appeared grey under the dim light of the Centipede’s low level night light to which her dilated pupils had now grown accustomed. Placing it on the ground, she peeled aside the material to reveal the contents within. An orb-like artefact lay before her. Each of its twelve metal sides, made up of yellow and green flecked surfaces, was in the shape of a pentagon, a form that seemed to be of great significance to the race of giants – our long extinct cousins, Homo gigantis – that had forged it. The orb was no normal Anakim object, however, as its recent history suggested it was as far from normal as normal could be. When Sarah had first laid eyes upon it, it rested amongst nine of its fellows in a restricted chamber within USSB Sanctuary’s super-secure U.S. military laboratory complex. At the time Sarah had been on a return journey from reclaiming other ancient artefacts that had been confiscated from her upon entry into the subterranean base. In an attempt at avoiding being discovered, she’d stumbled across a treasure trove of Anakim technology undergoing complex scientific study. Unwilling to pass by such an opportunity, she’d decided to steal one of the orbs, which weighed as much as a lump of solid lead. It was a weight she’d considered bestowing on their mechanical supply vehicle many times in the last week, but the artefact was one she’d vowed to keep close, such was its significance in proving the existence of the Anakim and Sanctuary itself.

She couldn’t afford to lose it, this strange and otherworldly orb, although Trish and Jason had both voiced their unease at her having it with them at all. The reason for their continued concern was perhaps understandable. Sarah could still remember the agonising sensations that had rendered her unconscious when she’d held the orb against the skin of her palm for more than a few seconds. But that was nothing to how it had reacted to another’s touch, a woman who’d being trying to prevent Sarah from fleeing the base with her prizes. Her name had been Cora, a member of Sarah’s Deep Reach team Alpha Six, and when she’d held the orb it had sent her into a seizure that ended in a broken spine and death. That the woman was –
had
– been ten steps beyond the wrong side of crazy and had been trying to kill Sarah prior to this was beside the point, the object had shown what it was capable of and that was all her friends needed to know. Sarah on the other hand felt differently, this small, yet dense object had saved her life and she felt a strange kind of empathy with it.

She reached out to brush her fingertips against its side, caressing it like a lover, tender and light. She noted its rough corrugated surface, which turned smooth when activated. Activated to do what she knew not, only that to be holding it when it did come to life was not a wise move in anyone’s book; anyone that didn’t want to chance dying, that was.

With her memories lingering on that time, she remembered the silver script that had once adorned the orb, script that had transferred to the skin on her hands prior to the darkness taking her. In the present, she looked at her palms before rubbing them together with the faint hope of bringing the vanished lettering back to the surface. Like anyone would in her position, she hoped the transposition of the Anakim symbols to her body didn’t represent a threat to her well-being. So far she’d felt no ill effects from the process, but it did leave a niggling doubt in the periphery of her mind.
What has this thing done to me? Is it permanent? Could it render me unconscious at a later date?

Dispelling such thoughts with a shake of her head, Sarah yawned and felt the chain that hung around her neck move; reaching inside her coveralls she pulled it out. Two disc-like, pentagonal pendants dangled before her, both cast from a smooth, silver-grey metal. The smaller of the two was plain, with a small circle set into the centre on one side. This she had found a few years before; however, the second pendant was her prize possession and it was also what was going to get them back to the surface, or so she hoped. With intricate symbols embossed onto it, the larger pendant measured two and a half inches in diameter and, like its sibling, had a hoop at one end. Unlike the other it had a small clip at the bottom, covering a cylindrical hole which contained a tightly furled Anakim parchment – a kind of digital paper – something that Sarah had returned to its original home after she’d retrieved it from the U.S. Army’s military vaults, just prior to their escape from the base.