Modern Rituals (29 page)

They passed an open door through which lights flittered in clockwork precision. James halted.

“Wait,” he said. Blinking lights usually meant computer terminals and that might be his ticket out of there.

“No time, we have to—” Trevor said.

James rushed through the door.

“Goddammit. Really James?” Trevor said and followed.

James glanced around the small quarters. Tall, windowed racks stood in rows and held stacks of computers on which LED strips blinked. Colette sneezed behind James, which alerted him to the frigid air pooling from beneath the racks. James danced around the room until he found what he sought—a laptop lay on a workbench. He hurried over to it.

“James, what are you doing?” Colette said. “It’s freezing in here.”

He ignored her.

“Trevor, can you log in to this laptop?” James said.

“Yes, but I don’t think it’s—”

“Just do it, Trevor,” James said. “You owe me.”

Trevor sighed. “Fine—move over.” He typed a username and password into the laptop’s login screen.

“Thanks,” James said, turning the laptop toward him. “What the…? What flavor of Linux is this?” James said after launching a terminal prompt and typing
uname -sr
into the command line.

“Magnus has their own proprietary distro,” Trevor said.

“Figures,” James said and went to work tracerouting an IP Joe Johnston owned.

“I don’t want to know the kind of firewall you have here, do I?” James said.

“Who needs a firewall when you command every node driving the Internet? We
are
the firewall,” Trevor said.

This impressed James, and it also reinforced the credibility of his idea.

“All right, let’s see—ooooh what do we have here?” James said, turning to Trevor. “An open SSH session? What kind of IT guys are these?”
 

Trevor gawked and palmed his forehead.

“I swear to the Gods, Magnus needs to vet these guys more—granted, security here is tighter than a gnat’s ass, so there isn’t reason to believe anyone would, you know, just walk in here.” Trevor said. “Hey—what…are you curl’ing an NGINX package? I don’t think it’s a good idea to compile that.”

James gave him a
shush
face as if to say, “Who is screwed here? Yea, you and me both.”

“Just gotta set some IP tables and leave an open port,” James said. “And…traceroute map with port info echoed via a raw email header. Voilá!”

Backdoor on its way Joe—I hope.

“Nice work James. Personally, I would have whipped up a quick shell script—”

“Oh. My. God. Guys—are you nerds seriously flaunting IQs right
now
?” Olivia said.

Trevor sniggered. “Like there’s a compari—”

A man’s voice echoed in the hall outside the door. James ducked into a crevice between two of the larger racks, and the others joined him.

“So, I told Pam that it’s either me or one of the other half-assed bachelors in this establishment. She slapped me—can you believe it?”
 

“Yes. Yes I can believe it, you idiot,” another man said.

Their silhouettes shaded the doorway.
 

“Hey, do you remember leaving the door open?”

“Yeah, I did. Sorry.”

“Huh—okay.”

One of the men walked to the laptop James had just used—its screen displayed a login prompt once again. An enormous pylon—probably holding a fraction of Una Corda’s network servers—blocked James’ view. Trevor mouthed words at them, muted like a silent movie, and gestured at them to move to the door.

“Hey, you hear that?” one of the men said.

“Nah.”

“I swore I hear—”

Three armed militia bustled into the room. Trevor hustled James, Olivia and Colette back into their hiding space. The two IT geeks jumped to their feet.

“At ease, gentlemen,” an armed guard said. “Have you seen anyone who shouldn’t be here?”

The two men breathed heavy.

“No, sir,” they said together.

The armed guard held two fingers into the air and placed his hand on his ear.

“Understood,” he said, then to his men, “Sweep the area.”

Trevor turned to James, Colette and Olivia, pointed to himself and out the door. Then he made a mad dash for the exit, throwing an elbow into the neck of the guard inspecting the area near them. As the other two guards drew their guns, James moved away from the exit to the rear of the room. He faced the dumbfounded IT techs and put a finger to his lips. They didn’t move.

James grabbed the laptop off the table, closed it and brought the hunk of grey plastic and metal down on a guard’s head, smashing him to the floor. The remaining guard spun around to face James, but Trevor took advantage of the distraction and placed the guard into a vicious headlock. The guard lost consciousness.

An awkward silence followed as James applied a cautious toe to the men on the ground and glanced wearily at the IT techs.

“We weren’t here,” Trevor said to them. “Got it?”
 

The men’s heads bobbed in enthusiastic agreement.

“Good boys,” Trevor said. “Let’s go.”

They ran out of the room…and into five more armed guards.
 

“Follow me—and
zag,”
Trevor said.

The three ran behind Trevor, zigging and zagging. The armed guards pursued them, calling in the group’s location. Trevor darted left and swung around, pulling Olivia and Colette into a claustrophobic room. He punched a series of buttons into a panel behind them. Two sliding doors nearly clamped James as the room closed behind him. Gun-toting guards disappeared through the door’s crack.

“Hey, we made it,” Trevor said, perhaps too casually.

“Uh…yeah—where are we?” James said.

“The service elevator,” he said.

“But it’s so small,” James said. “I thought the chamber elevator would be
bigger.
”

“This is a
service
elevator,” Trevor said, smiling. “Don’t worry, the chamber elevator won’t disappoint.”

James pushed his heels against the floor to counter the elevator’s descent. Olivia lost her footing and bumped into James. Colette’s face fell into Trevor’s chest—she kept it buried there throughout the ride. Trevor placed his hands on her shoulders and patted them.
 

“Long day, huh?” he said.

James plopped against the elevator’s side and slid to the ground.

“Yeah, take a quick break—this lift is slow,” Trevor said.

Olivia collapsed beside James, their shoulders resting against each other. James’ eyelids grew weary. He sucked in a deep breath and held it.
 

Gotta keep going. We’re almost out of here
.

All too soon, the elevator tilted and settled. A ding, and the doors parted.

“Nap time’s over,” Trevor said.

Dry, cold air rushed into the small cabin. It smelled of minerals and dust. James hiked his back up the wall and peered out the doors.
 

“What is this place?” he said.

“We’re in sector four, about a half mile above the chamber and a half mile below Una Corda. A midway point. From here on out, we’re walking through the cavern. The chamber elevator isn’t far,” Trevor said, jamming his elbow into the control console, which splintered into sparks. “That should buy us some time. Come on.”
 

A path of leveled rock, smooth and coated in chalk, led from the elevator entrance, and high walls of roughly hewn limestone enclosed them. Hanging bulbs within screened canisters swung from an arced ceiling, providing ample, ghostly light.

James squinted—up ahead, a blurry face stared back from the end of the corridor. His mind labored to determine its authenticity—or whether his imagination (and sanity) was toying with him. As they neared, the image clarified—a monstrous face, many times James’ height, filled the passage. It wore a grotesque expression: pained eyes staring upward, a mouth curled into a melted groan—and embedded into its gaping lips, like teeth, sneered a stone door inset with intricate carvings of some ancient origin.
 

“Well, we’re here. What do you think?” Trevor said.

“This? Where’s the elevator?” James said.

Trevor kissed his hand and turned a knob next to the corner of the face’s mouth. The floor rumbled and dust spilled from the eyes and nose as the stone doors retracted from each other in a yawn.

“Whoa,” James said.

“After you,” Trevor said to Olivia.

James followed Olivia. The mouth swallowed him, depositing James in a vast rotunda. A tongue carved into the floor licked their feet as they shuffled into the elevator—it lay center of a circular platform that extended nearly to the walls, divided only by a seam running along the circumference.

“Listen,” Trevor said. “There’s no turning back now—not that we had any choice. Stay close and follow my lead—like, really follow it—to a tee. If the blood chamber is disturbed, it could unlock, which would be really, really bad. So, don’t touch anything and do as I say, got it?”

“Yeah,” James said.

“Uh huh,” Olivia said.

Colette sidled next to Trevor and nodded.

“All right, then,” Trevor said. “I need to remember how to operate this thing. It’s ancient—and I mean millions-of-years kind of ancient.”

A column holding three stacked discs stood near the entrance, and Trevor made his way there. It rose to his hips, and he bent over it, tapping his fingers on his thighs.

“For Christ’s sake…” he said. “Well, here goes.”
 

Trevor mashed one of column’s many stone knobs, pressing it down into a sheathed recess, then jumped back as a hologram of Holmes’ head erupted from the console. His voice bellowed in the round hall.
 

“Hello,Trevor,” he said.

“Holmes! How’s it going, my man?” Trevor said—he didn’t skip a beat.

Holmes’ jaw clenched.

“Trevor, it isn’t too late. Turn yourself in. I can offer a plea bargain—we’ll call it temporary insanity. We’ve all been under a great deal of stress lately—especially you having entered a ritual—it’s unheard of.”

Trevor stepped back until he stood between James and Olivia.

“Insanity?” Trevor paused, inhaled and stared into Holmes’ holographic eyes. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “Performing ritual sacrifices is
more
sane than considering alternatives? We have the technology—surely we can dedicate resources to end this madness.”
 

“And we do, Trevor. Magnus devotes considerable resources to such research. If we could absolve ourselves of practicing rituals, it would happen in a heart beat.”

In more than one drinking session, Theo Watson had made Trevor privy to Magnus’ resource allocation—a fraction of their immense research and development efforts were dedicated to “absolution.”

“Wish I could believe that, Holmes. I wish that I could trust you, too. I know better than anyone your dangerous potential—I’ve seen it firsthand, and it ain’t pretty. You are one of the few officials that scares me. And I don’t scare easily.

“So, this is how it’s going down,” Trevor said. “If you send anyone after us, we unlock the blood seal. It’s simple—let us walk free.”
 

“Do you understand the ramifications of your presence within the chamber? This is a selfish act with severe consequences for you and the entire human race—hell, it’s been years since an earthly soul has directly confronted a blood seal, save for maintenance personnel, and they prepare
years
in advance. And how do you think you’re going to escape? It’s a one-way trip down—and if you did somehow manage to leave via some ancient conduit—yeah, I know how you think, son—do you really believe Magnus won’t find you within minutes of stepping foot outside?”

Trevor considered this, then shrugged and grinned.

“I guess I’ll take my chances.”
 

“Enough!” A voice bellowed in the rotunda.

James wrapped his elbows around his head and ducked. He peeked around—Trevor, Colette and Olivia had taken to the floor as well.
 

“What the hell was that?” James said.

Holmes’ image flickered into static then faded. Light emanating from a central skylight in the rotunda extinguished, plunging the group into darkness. A scratching sound directed James’ numbed and frightened senses upward.

Golden ink looped across the ceiling, its curves refined and brushwork tidy, as if a master calligrapher commanded the pen.

THE TIME IS NIGH

GO FORTH

DEFEAT DEATH

The ground shifted, and James placed a hand on the floor to steady himself. The elevator lumbered and descended into the earth.

3

Theo Watson watched as the guards captured and removed him from the containment facility. His doppelgänger obliged the guards’ every whim—a model arrestee.

He crouched on his knees behind the mermaid sphere, and a piece of floating seaweed near his head caught his attention. A clown fish snatched it from view, only to be gutted mid-chomp by a passing mermaid’s fin—the mermaid then spun around and consumed the fish whole.
 

“Nasty creatures. How did literature get them so very wrong?”

Prickly tingles danced on his calves as his muscles starved for blood. He got to his feet and massaged them to life, then reached into his pocket for his earpiece. He did a visual sweep of the containment’s center entrance as he inserted the device, then activated it and said, “Clayton, do you read?”
 

A long silence answered. Then, “—Theo? Theo, is that you?” Clayton’s voice said. “Wait—I just saw you in cuffs. What’s going on?”
 

Theo didn’t answer.
 

“Hold on,” Clayton said. “You didn’t…did you?”
 

“Sorry, Clayton—I had to. That was the dallylander you saw, not me.”

“We need to get it back in its cell immediately.”

“We will—don’t worry.”

The dallylander redefined bizarre. Its innocuous appearance, small and cuddly cute—like a brown koala bear with puppy-dog eyes—hints not at all at its unique ability to take on the semblance of another living being—right down to the DNA. By all measures, the guards had just escorted the corporeal form of Theo Watson III back to his cell. Side effects accompanied such a power, however, and among them was an eating disorder: the longer the dallylander remained in a foreign form, the hungrier it grew. Left unchecked, the voracious creature would revert to its original shape—and not a single living soul would want to be there when that happened.