The Far Dawn (7 page)

Ignore him
, I thought over and over, and yet I could feel myself shaking. I couldn't take the bait. He wanted to see me lash out, I could tell, to break me down further. Instead I met his gaze and pointed to Evan. “What did you do to him?”

Evan was still slumped on the stone floor, breathing hard. Lilly had her arm around him and was speaking quietly in his ear.

“I altered him to suit my needs,” said Paul. “His DNA and brain wave composition, specifically, to make him a stand-in for Leech—well, an improvement: less attitude. I had a full recording of how Leech's mind interacted with your skull, and how the skull interfaced with the brain, from back in EdenWest. I found that with a few tweaks to Evan's DNA, I could make him a genetic duplicate, at least as far as the Atlantean skull is concerned.” He grinned at me. “They're not perfect, as you know.”

I didn't respond, but I wondered if this meant that he knew all the skulls were calling to me.

Evan started coughing again and doubled over, dry heaving. A thin line of spit dripped to the floor.

“It's left him a little worse for wear,” said Paul.

Lilly swore under her breath. Her face was murderous, but she rubbed Evan's back and kept whispering to him, ignoring Paul.

“The last thing I needed to get into this place was Leech's notes and the sextant,” Paul continued, “oh, and a fresh sample of his blood to activate the door. Luckily, he left plenty of that in Desenna.”

I fought the anger inside me, fought to stay quiet. “So now what?” I asked.

“Now.” Paul smiled. “We have everything we need. I have my three Atlanteans and the location of the Paintbrush of the Gods is now safely in Evan's head. We're close, Owen. Very close to the end of the one true quest, the oldest quest there is. So many explorers have died searching for what we are about to find. And don't think I'm referring only to Atlantis. This goes further, from Ponce de León to Herodotus, back to the dawn of humankind.”

His riddles filled me with the same mix of hatred and curiosity I now knew all too well, but I focused on a more important question. “What are you going to do with us?”

Paul laughed, a short, dangerous burst. He looked at me like he was going to speak, but then a voice from a tinny speaker interrupted us: “Sir, we've got activity.”

Paul pulled a phone from his belt. “Copy that. We're ready.” He looked around the room. “Time to go, everyone. Quickly. The electrodampeners worked to a degree, but now our presence has been detected, and a certain someone is waking up.”

Lilly flinched, glancing to the ceiling like she'd heard something the rest of us hadn't. I tried to catch her eye but she focused on helping Evan get to his feet.

The soldiers started to file out. Emiliano moved to Lilly and Evan, taking them each by an arm, but Lilly tore herself free.

“Relax,” she hissed, supporting Evan as he leaned heavily on her shoulder. “We're not going anywhere.”

Emiliano let her go, but Francine trained a handgun on her. Another soldier placed Leech's skull in a black bag. I saw that Francine had the bag with Lilly's skull from Desenna over her shoulder. As everyone moved toward the door, she looked at me, and I kept my gaze icy, like I didn't know her at all.

“Out,” she said to me, just as coldly.

When Paul moved, I noticed a boy behind him in the shadows, wearing a dirty LoRad pullover and sweatpants. He had dark skin and kept his eyes on the floor. Paul glanced back at him and said, “Mateu,
viens
.” It sounded like French. Mateu followed. He looked a couple years older than me, and I guessed that he had been the target of the Eden raid in Coke-Sahel, the one we'd watched in Heliad tactical. Who was he? Why was he here?

We all exited the skull chamber and followed the tunnel out onto the narrow bridge. I watched the soldier's back in front of me, Francine in front of him, and weighed my chances. Could I knock them both into the chasm before I was hit or shot? Could Lilly grab me and fly us out? I thought to glance back at her, and see if she was thinking the same thing.

Except she was busy talking softly to Evan.

“Don't worry, just keep moving. We'll be all right.”

“Lilly,” Evan's voice was tattered and thin, “I'm sorry, I didn't want to . . .”

“It's okay,” she said.

“We fought as hard as we could, but . . .”

“Sshh, not now. Let's just get out of here.”

I heard her kiss his forehead and I told the sliver of jealousy in me to shut up. This wasn't the time. They were friends, and Lilly and I were so much more now, but of course Lilly cared about him deeply. The only problem with that care was that, with Evan's condition, escaping or getting Lilly's skull would be basically impossible.

“Keep moving,” Paul said tersely.

We were halfway across the bridge when something thundered from high above, a quick concussion followed by a deep rumble that made the bridge shudder.

“Was that—” Francine hissed urgently.

“The sound of our time being very much up,” said Paul. He touched his phone. “Containment team, do you copy?”

The only reply was a hiss of static.

“Containment team . . .”

Another rumble reached our ears, and then, fluttering behind it, a scream.

“It's coming,” said Lilly quietly.

“Hurry,” Paul commanded and we all started to run.

We'd only taken a few steps when more screams reached us and the sound of gunfire.

A light began to grow up at the top of the wide staircase, cold and white and skull-like. It flickered on the walls, then sprayed out into the chasm. Wind slammed against us, stopping us in our tracks. And a sound grew, a sound like terrible wailing, like knives being sharpened for the kill.

A streak of light burst out of the darkness, swooping from the staircase into the chasm, spiraling like a shark swimming circles above us.

The Sentinel had arrived.

Gunshots exploded from behind me: one of the soldiers, rifle pointed straight up.

“No! I told you don't under any circumstances!” Paul shouted.

The Sentinel screamed again, a sound like razor-sharp icicles, and then dove toward us. It moved like fluid, and it was on us before we could move. As it blurred down I could almost make out its features, a flow of robes, impossibly long hair trailing behind it like a comet tail.

It hit the guard who'd fired in a burst of light. He barely got out a scream before the Sentinel crushed him, literally smashed right through him in a liquid explosion of light, and then out his back and on down through the bridge. The stone exploded and the screaming soldier tumbled out of sight. Others opened fire at the slithering light, but only for a second, as the bridge began to crumble and fall away.

“Get off!” Paul shouted. He grabbed Mateu's arm and ran.

I started after him with everyone else. Two of the guards fell screaming. One was picked off by the Sentinel, another shoved over the side by Francine.

“Owen!”

I turned back and saw Lilly hanging on to Evan as the rock crumbled away around them. And in the moment that I paused the bridge beneath me collapsed and we plunged into darkness.

I heard screams, saw Emiliano falling, too, and looked for Lilly, but rock rained around me. A chunk slammed me in the shoulder. White light blurred. I felt the rush of cold air, then the breath of heat from below. Darkness became complete. I flailed my arms uselessly. What was at the bottom of this chasm? I'd be dead the moment I found out.

“Qii-Farr-saaan
.
”
A hand grabbed my arm. “Hang on to me!” Lilly shouted. Her glowing form shot by me. I gripped her wrist as she flew sideways and banked upward. “
Nnnn!
” she cried through gritted teeth, holding me with one hand and Evan with the other, straining but dragging us out of the chasm.

I distantly heard the echoes of gunshots, the banshee screams of the Sentinel. I'd seen Emiliano fall, but what had happened to Paul and the rest of them?

Lilly brought us up past the remains of the bridge, back up the wide staircase and into the hall, leaving the fray behind. “We'll go back out the way we came in . . . ,” she said, her words labored. She followed the arc of the passageway, and my back scraped against stone. “Sorry!” she called. “Almost—”

The screaming of the Sentinel chased us down like a missile.

It slammed into us, throwing Lilly off course and we hit the wall and then tumbled to the floor. My right arm caught under me and I heard a
snap
like a tree branch breaking and then a wicked, numbing pain burst up and down my arm. Spots exploded in my eyes.

Everything seemed to get quiet. I faintly heard the pop of gunshots like they were miles away. I looked over, the world sideways, and saw one of Paul's soldiers, covered in dust, aiming one of the strange guns with the radar dish at the end. Pulses of high-pitched sound surged from it, but the Sentinel's cry drowned it out.

She swooped down and punched through the soldier's chest, exiting out the other side in a fountain of white light. The soldier crumpled, gun clattering to the ground.

“Owen, come on . . .” I looked up, found Lilly tugging on my shoulder, and saw Evan staggering to his feet. I looked down at my other arm and saw that my wrist was flipped around, bent at the wrong angle like it had been put on backward. More white spots, more pain like a flood over me . . .

The Sentinel's scream snapped me out of it. I saw the light bearing down on us, but then Lilly began to glow herself, shouting, “Get back!” The Sentinel broke off in a wide arc.

“Only the Three shall pass!” it hissed in a deep, silken voice.

“We are the Three!” Lilly shouted, but the Sentinel bore down on us again anyway, and I stumbled to my feet and we barely got out of the way as she slammed into the wall in an explosion of rock.

“In there!” Lilly pointed ahead toward a vast light. We ran and passed through the broken chunks of what had been the large door we'd seen on the way in.

We moved through dust into a high-ceilinged room. Before us was the immense, convex crystal window I'd seen when we first flew in. It looked out onto a panorama of mountains. The sun had crested the horizon, spraying orange beams across the jagged peaks.

A single chair stood before the window, carved from thick wood. I thought of the Sentinel sitting there, watching the sun rise and fall for ten thousand years, waiting for someone to arrive. For many of those millennia, that view had likely been blurred by sheets of ice.

“Only the Three shall pass!”

I felt the wind of her arrival and spun, Lilly and Evan beside me, our back to the dawn world.

She landed and faced us, burning in white fire, a beautiful ancient maiden skeleton. It was as if we could see her bones and her skin at the same time. Her long white gown seemed at once radiant and tattered, like she was flickering between alive and dead. Her eyes were hollow pits of black, her mouth pursed and menacing.

And now she raised a sword, its silver blade flickering with blue flame.

“I was told to find you!” I shouted at her.

She hissed at me, teeth bared, a sound that froze my blood.

“Stop!” shouted Lilly.

The Sentinel regarded us, her hollow gaze impossible to read. She bobbed up and down, snakelike, sword still held high, ready to strike. “Only the Three shall pass,” she said again, her words slithering around us.

“I told you, we
are
the Three,” said Lilly. “Now stand down, sister.”

The Sentinel's head turned slightly toward Lilly. “You are of the Three.”

“Yes,” said Lilly. “Thank you.”

“And you,” the Sentinel breathed, sizing up Evan.

She turned back to me. “But you are not of the Three.”

And in a blur she lunged forward and her blue blade flashed.

“OWEN!” Lilly screamed.

My breath stuck, my whole body frozen in screaming pain, fire, ice, all at once. I looked down to see the sword stabbed deep into my chest.

And then a wrenching burning as the Sentinel pulled the blade back out.

My breath tumbled out of me. I collapsed to my knees, grasping my chest. I'd been stabbed, stabbed . . . I looked down. My hands covered the wound, and something warm seeped between my fingers, but it wasn't blood. It was light.

Light, my life, slipping away. I fell back to the floor, my head slamming the rock. Everything spun.

“No! Owen!” I heard Lilly scream, and I saw her face above mine, her hair falling over me. “Stay with me, stay here . . .”

But I was already leaving, draining out, the world becoming a distant thing.

The edges dissolved, Lilly disappearing, the burning in my chest, the hoarse sucking sound of my breaths, all fading away until I . . . was . . .

Gone.

Into the white.

PART II

The Jaguar, Eu, will leap because the Turtle, Ana, cannot reach.

Qi and An.

Ana is aware that she cannot leap.

Eu is aware that he cannot float.

This is balance. This is Truth.

Qi and An.

One cannot be without the other.

But then one day Eu thinks, if he could tie a rope around Ana,

He can keep her close.

He can leap as high and as far as he wants,

Whenever he chooses.

And in this moment, the great harmony is lost.

—TRANSLATED FROM A MAYAN CODEX, PRECISE ORIGIN UNKNOWN

8

THERE IS DARKNESS, BLANK SPACE, BUT I CAN STILL sense it, as if time is moving and I am still a part of it. Maybe I am not dead . . . yet.

Now light.

The white realm
, a voice says distantly.