The Golden Crystal (14 page)

Vilocek was beginning to look a little worked up — apparently his five minutes of searching the chamber’s already-excavated areas was long enough for him. He called out to the pair at the end of the hall. “Did you two find anything over there, or is this place a waste of my time?”

Jensen shook his head, resigned. “There doesn’t seem to be anything here, Dr. Vilocek.”

Vilocek let out an exasperated sigh. His normally impeccably-moussed hair had become disheveled, and he looked fatigued. Clearly he had lost sleep in anticipation of what he might find down here. What secrets and powers would the crystal hold, and what possible cures and healing properties would it provide? Jensen found himself intrigued by the opportunity to make such a discovery — most of his own career had been spent behind a desk performing dry research on well-traveled subjects. 

“Come on, then,” Vilocek snapped. “Let’s get the hell out of here. We need to figure out what this D.C. map means, since it clearly wasn’t telling us to come to the Lower — “ Vilocek cut himself off as his eyes fell on the wall next to Corinne. “What’s that?”

Their eyes followed his. On the wall at Corinne’s side, about three feet off the floor, was a square, outlined in bluish light on one of the blocks of stone. The stone itself was smaller than the surrounding stones, like afterthought or filler of some sort. As Vilocek drew nearer, the blue glow seemed to intensify. As he faced the stone, the blue lines went from a throbbing, pulsating glow, not unlike a neon sign viewed at close range, to solid, constant lines of light, as if they had warmed up and were now fully “on.” 

“Amazing,” Vilocek whispered. “What did you do?” he asked, looking sharply at Jensen. 

“N — nothing,” Jensen stammered.

“Well, something must have caused the stone to light up like that, “ Vilocek said. “Everyone, lights off. Let’s see if there’s anything else in this pyramid we’re missing.”

All throughout the Lower Room and hallway, the men’s lights flicked off. All at once, they were bathed in heavy darkness — even after their eyes adjusted to the pitch black, the glowing blue square didn’t light much beyond the immediate area.

“Dr. Vilocek,” Corinne said, “look at your pocket!”

From inside one of Vilocek’s pants pockets a blue hue of light was shining through the fabric like a fading star. He reached in and withdrew the object. 

Opening his palm, he revealed a positively beautiful, spherical crystal.

“It’s the synthetic crystal,” Karn said.

Dr. Vilocek held the ball close the square stone at the end of the hallway, and immediately the lines around the block glowed a bit brighter. Then, dead in the center of the block’s face, a strange symbol appeared:

“It looks like hieroglyphics!” Beka said in amazement. 

“Could be,”  Vilocek said. “But we don’t have time to figure it out. There’s got to be a way to…” His voice trailed off as he tentatively brushed the symbol with the hand holding the crystal. Suddenly the ground below them gently shook. 

“Do you feel that?” Corinne whispered. 

Jensen nodded, barely noticeable in the gloom. “I think it’s some sort of door. It’s moving.”

The small stone block had begun to slide backwards into the wall. It moved slowly and steadily for about three feet, stopped for a split second, and then moved
straight upward,
into a hidden space behind the wall. 

The scraping of the small block continued for a few moments before stopping completely. From somewhere deep beneath the pyramid, the grinding and gentle shaking also eased and stopped. Karn and Beka flipped on their lights. The moving block had left behind a hole in the wall the size of a small crate.

Just large enough to crawl into, Vilocek knew immediately that it was a passageway to a yet undiscovered section of the pyramid. The synthetic crystal had somehow activated the mechanism — he was glad he’d had the sense to bring it along. The trip was going off without a hitch so far, and with a bit of luck they’d be able to find the original crystal here and be out of this God-forsaken country before morning. He grunted with satisfaction, and headed into the new tunnel. 

The rest of the group followed, Corinne taking care to stay close to Jensen so as not to activate the strange — and painful — effects of the crystal they’d experienced back at Vilocorp. 

But Jensen wasn’t thinking about the crystal’s side effects as he crawled headfirst into the tunnel. He was thinking about something else. 

Vilocek was wrong about the marking on the stone.

The glyph on the keystone was not Egyptian hieroglyphics. In fact, it was not Egyptian at all — nor was it part of any script Jensen had ever studied. He had a vague thought that he’d seen it somewhere before; it reminded him of an extremely ancient written language that very few people, including himself, knew much about.

He crawled along in rapt silence, struggling to remember why that symbol seemed so familiar.

8:35 PM - GIZA, EGYPT

The entrance corridor didn’t seem to match the scale of the pyramid itself. The tiny passage was no more than three feet high and about three and a half feet wide, sloped downward at an angle of 26 degrees into the depths of the earth. The musky, ancient air seemed to hang in place, compressed by the extreme weight of the massive blocks of hand-carved limestone above. Thousands of years of silence, solitude, and secrecy seemed to fill the pyramid’s interior passageways and sanctums. 

Bryce and his team cautiously entered the tomb. With Bryce in the lead and Wayne Thompson bringing up the rear, they crept, doubled over or duck-walking, down the shaft. The passageway was lit dimly by fluorescent fixtures at irregular intervals, spaced every ten or so feet above their heads, and all of the men wore headlamps. Still, the passage seemed oppressive and dim; the feeble headlamp beams only extended a few feet ahead, swinging erratically back and forth.

They descended about 90 feet until they came to a small hole in the ceiling of the passage. It was the entrance to the Ascending Passage, which led to the Grand Gallery and the Queen’s and King’s Chambers. Holding up a hand, Bryce peered upward into the Ascending Passage, checking for movement. They had no idea where Vilocek and his men were. Bryce doubted they’d gone up the Ascending Passage, but needed to be sure. He switched off his light, motioning for the others to do the same. His eyes slowly adjusted to the increased darkness.

As he gazed up the Ascending Passage, straining to see, Jeff whispered over Bryce’s shoulder. “Hold up here, Captain. I think I hear something down below.” 

They all tensed, silently waiting and listening. From somewhere far below, they could hear voices, though they couldn’t discern what was being said. 

Bryce silently waved his hand forward and moved off down the passage, his rifle in a low ready position. 

The men all carried M4 Carbine Assault Rifles, fitted with SOPMOD (Special Operations Peculiar Modification) kits, which allowed them to modify their load-out on-the-fly, depending on the mission. In this case, since Bryce wasn’t sure of what sort of situation they’d be in, he’d outfitted the men with 4X zoom day scopes and mini night-vision sight attachments, suppressors, and sidearms. Wayne was the team sniper, so he’d been given a high-magnification scope, while his brother Jeff got a bottom-loading M203 9-inch grenade launcher. Bryce had given Cole Reed his own assault rifle and kept the modified assault rifle left by Vilocek’s men — the same rifle that had immobilized the Egyptian guards outside the pyramid. 

Huddled together in a line, they continued their descent. After a solid fifteen minutes, the passage leveled off and continued for another 30 feet. Bryce knew from Whittenfield’s briefing that they’d reached the bottom of the Descending Passage, and were now entering the Lower Room, about 345 feet down the Descending Passage.

They halted at the opening as Bryce peered cautiously into the chamber. Immediately, he knew something was wrong. 

“What’s up, boss?” Jeff asked in a whisper. 

“There’s no one here,” Bryce replied, taking a few more steps into the Lower Room. “It’s empty.” 

“Maybe they went back up another way.“ Bartlinski offered. 

“No, Whittenfield said specifically that there’s only one known entrance or exit to the Lower Chamber, and this is it. Besides that, there are only
two
entrances to the entire pyramid, both off the passage we just came through. The original built by the Egyptians, and one created by excavations years later. If they came down here, we’d be looking at them.”

“Unless,” Wayne said, thinking aloud, “there’s another exit from this chamber. An
unknown
exit…”

Bryce looked at him, considering the possibility. Surely any passageways or tunnels large enough for a man to crawl through had long been discovered, excavated, and mapped — after all, this
was
one of the original Seven Wonders of the World, and the only one still in existence. The pyramids were more heavily visited, studied and excavated than almost any archaeological site in the world. How could all that attention over the years have missed a back door? 

As Bryce considered what to do next, Cole walked toward the right wall, wanting a closer look at some scratches or markings there. He reached forward to rub some of the dust off the stone, and abruptly jumped back. 

“Hey, check this out!“ he said, no longer whispering. 

His hand was inches from the wall, but he held it in place as he glanced back to the group. “I think there’s something
written
here — hieroglyphics or something.”

The others gathered around. On the stone surface, bluish lines curled and zigzagged in seemingly random patterns, only visible as Cole’s hand drew near. They were symbols, individual pictograms, shapes that twirled around each other from left to right. Cole moved his hand sideways along the wall, revealing more pictograms as he went, the symbols vanishing again as his hand moved past. Bryce leaned in, shining his headlamp on the wall where Cole’s hand had passed. He ran his finger carefully over the spot. There was no etching, chiseling, or break in the stone whatsoever, and without Cole’s hand close to the surface, the blue script was completely invisible. 

“I don’t think they’re hieroglyphics,” Wayne said. “These are more curved; rounded. Plus, I’ve seen ancient Egyptian writing in museums, and this isn’t it at all. It’s some kind of script, for sure though. See, there’s sections of the text that repeat, using the same symbols but in different orders:”

“What is it, then?” Gary McGowan asked, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the pyramid. 

“No idea,” Bryce said, “but let’s get some pictures for Whittenfield so he can analyze them. I don’t know that they’ll be visible in this light, or even if there’s enough of a signal from down here under all this rock, but it’s worth a shot.” He aimed his shoulder-mounted camera at the wall, following Cole’s hand as he passed it over the wall, revealing more of the blue writing at each section. 

Suddenly, they heard shouts coming from the passageway behind them. Bryce ran to the entrance, peering around the edge with his gun at the ready. 

“Egyptian military,” Bryce said. He felt trapped between two opposing forces, one of which surely wanted them dead, and another that certainly wasn’t excited to see them. He needed a plan, and quick, but the Egyptian team was closing fast, and his team was in a corner.

“Bryce! Over here!” Cole frantically called from the corner of the room, next to the hole that was the Descending Passage’s exit. He’d reached the end of the line of ancient symbols, moving all along the wall left to right, and now he stood wide-eyed and impatient. “I may have found another way out!”

Cole raised his hands up above his head, revealing a thin blue line on the wall. He moved his hands apart and down, and the line continued, outlining a man-sized stone set in the wall. Where the line highlighted the stone’s edge, a hairline gap was barely visible.

Cole brought his hands in toward his chest, and immediately in front of him there appeared another symbol. They’d seen it repeated in the line of text along the wall; some sort of man-like creature emerging from the sea, arms outstretched: