The Pandora Chronicles - Book 1 (A Scifi Adventure Thriller) (24 page)

Nick stole a quick glance at her. She was tied to the support bars and every violent turn made her shoulders stretch. There was a small line of red on her wrists where the plastic straps restraining her bit into her skin. She was smart enough to move her wrists so that the plastic cut the upper part of her forearms and wrists, not the soft part where the arteries were easily accessible, but she was panting and huffing, with strands of golden yellow hair plastered on her face and in her eyes.

Nick felt himself jump from his seat and land heavily on his tailbone, sending pain signals along his entire body. Mowgli did not slow down as they went over a particularly steep hill. Instead, he grunted and gunned the engine. Nick would have let out a string of curses if his jaw wasn’t clenched shut and his eyes wide open. He squeezed the support bar tighter and remembered that his ancestor had faced a life-threatening situation on this island as well—and despite Finnegan having to fight his way through a tribe of local natives, Nick doubted if he could survive a quad bike trip to the site behind a Neanderthal who seemed hellbent on killing the both of them.

As a distraction, Nick forced himself to go over his plan of escape one more time.
 

He would use Astrid’s greed against him. Better yet, he would stand by and watch as the mercenaries suffered the same fate as the pirates who entered the cave all those years ago.
 

Then, he would kill Astrid. That bastard had to pay for what he did to Brightmoore. He started all of this, and Nick would finish it—by finishing him.

Once they were over the hills and on a relatively flat road, Nick pick-pocketed Mowgli’s lighter. He thought it was a very creative way to punish a chain smoker, and Nick was not above petty acts. Besides, he needed Excalibur to cover his back, and that lighter would set her free.

Gritting his teeth, Nick prepared himself for what came next.

Mowgli abruptly turned off his quad bike and yelled something to the rest of the men behind him. It sounded like, “We’re here,” but no one could really be sure with his unique language of grunts and mumbles.

Astrid was the first one off his quad bike and, in his haste, stumbled face-first to the ground. None of the men laughed and for a while, the only sound heard was Nick trying, and failing, to stifle a giggle. The rest of the men tried their best not to offend Astrid, knowing how volatile he could be, and slowly dismounted from their vehicles. They lacked precision and tact, roughly grabbing their weapons and clumsily attaching flashlights. Only Mowgli hopped down with the agility of a monkey.

Nick slid down from the quad bike and felt as if his pelvic bone had been sawed in half. He stumbled against a tree and tried to get some feeling back in his legs as Mowgli passed by him, machete in hand.

“
Pendejo
(dumbass)
,” Nick heard him sneer.
 

He considered retorting in kind, but was still feeling queasy from the ride. After listening to the rest of the mercenaries speak Spanish, it wasn’t hard for him to grasp the language, and they had no idea Nick could comprehend everything they said; including how they were going to divide their money and in which order they were going to kill Nick and Excalibur.

So Nick wisely decided to downplay his abilities.

“Keep smiling, asshole,” he muttered in plain English as he steadied himself. He looked over to Excalibur and saw a mercenary binding her hands with a fresh strap.

“Go easy on her wrists,” Nick called out. He glared at Astrid. “If those things are tight, she can cut herself. And if she bleeds to death, I’m out of the picture, too, and you get nothing but sand up your ass.”

Astrid looked like nothing would please him more than to slowly break each of Nick’s bones and toss the carcass to a flock of vultures. Instead, with pursed lips and glaring eyes, he walked over to Excalibur and shoved the mercenary away. He tightened her bonds himself, but kept it loose enough so she could freely rotate her wrists.

“There,” he spat. “Now, the princess is comfortable.” He extracted his gun and grabbed Excalibur by her hair. “I grow tired of your insolence, Solomon. From now on, I give you orders, not the other way around. If you don’t like it, you can watch as I kill your woman.”

Nick raised his hands slightly. “I’m sorry.”

Astrid smiled and shoved Excalibur away. “There. Was that so hard?” He shouldered Nick as hard as he could before barking an order to his men.

The mercenaries placed explosives around the large boulders covering the entrance to the cave, until one of them initiated a countdown and pressed a remote charge. There was half a second of tense quiet before the large explosion sent rock flying all around them. The tremor was enough to leave sizable cracks in the ground.
 

Nick wrapped himself around Excalibur as they both crouched down behind the main convoy truck. Astrid was a few feet across from them, similarly crouched. Once the explosion died down, both he and Nick were the first to stand up and stare at the gaping black hole the explosives had opened in the rock.
 

Even from out there, Nick could feel the ominous energy of the place, both inviting and terrifying.
 

He swallowed hard and looked at Astrid. “Your treasure’s in there.”

Astrid nodded. “Then let’s go get it.”

Chapter 35

They were well-equipped against the darkness. All of the mercenaries carried flashlights under their rifles and huddled together to create a wide beam of light.
 

The entrance of the cave was far away, swallowed by the pitch black that seemed to consume the walls themselves. They had walked for only a few minutes, but the distance covered seemed like too much for such a short span of time. Every step triggered more of Nick’s residual memories and he could swear the corridor seemed a lot shorter from when Finnegan had come through all those decades ago.

Could it be that the machine had somehow dug itself deeper into the ground?
he thought. No, that would be impossible.
 

Finnegan had jammed the orb, effectively shutting down the whole system.

Maybe there was a backup generator of sorts? Or maybe there was more than one orb, and Finnegan’s tactic was just temporary?

Nick’s trail of thought was disrupted when he saw the substance on the walls begin to move, like ripples in water.
 

“Look at the walls,” he muttered, aware of how his voice echoed ominously.

The party slowed down as Nick and Excalibur went over to a large section covered in gunk, a mixture of dried petroleum, lead, various metals, and thick veins of gold, silver and platinum. Astrid came over and ordered his men to illuminate the tunnel.

“What is this place?” he whispered, mesmerized. At the sight of gold his eyes widened with lust and greed.

Nick tore his gaze from the wall and looked around.

The tunnel loomed over them like a scene from
The Lord of the Rings
, with a ceiling that was so high they could not see where it ended. Glossy obsidian, clumps of minerals and crystals, copper, and other precious metals—they all reflected luminescence back in their own color, painting an ever-shifting picture.
 

Even Mowgli gasped at the sheer awesomeness of the scene around them.

Nick noticed movement on the walls, like insects crawling over each other. Images began moving, creating shapes and murals, a story communicated through pictograms and etchings.

“What do they mean?” Excalibur whispered close to Nick’s ear. The reverence of the place automatically made everyone cease their talking, and when they did break the silence, it was in hushed tones.

Nick placed his hand tentatively on the nearest picture. It felt cool and slimy, and shifted like a serpent until the figures and depictions became clearer.

“It tells of a tribe of gods descending from the sun,” Nick said as he began moving along the walls, one picture at a time. “The gods saw that mankind was in need of help, and so they created a series of…”
 

He squinted his eyes, pretending not to know the story. He had to make something up, so as not to give away the real secret within the pages of the red ledger, of the sheer power those artifacts held.
 

“A series of magical, round objects, like miniature suns, I suppose, and gave one to each of the mankind’s leaders. They used these objects to strengthen their crops, to make rain during the drought and to fortify their bodies against predators.”

Nick moved on to the next picture, with the rest of the troupe following him like a procession.

“But soon, they were unsatisfied by merely making their people prosper. Their tribes expanded, and war broke out as they fought one another for land and territory. The orbs no longer produced sunlight and rain, but steel and stone. It became a contest to see whose spear was the sharpest and whose shield was unbreakable. The fire and water used to nurture them became weapons at their disposal too. And then, the gods
 
had had enough, and nature turned on mankind.”

“Earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions destroyed the tribes until only a scant few survivors remained. The leaders decided to each take an orb and migrate to the four corners of the earth, where they would never interfere with one another again. Never again would they wage war with the weapons of the gods. So, they established their separate civilizations and settled there. But, still fearing war, they hid those objects, so that no one would ever threaten to destroy mankind again.”

Nick finished reading, and silence fell, broken only by the stifled symphony of the ever-shifting minerals slithering about.

“So, this gift from the gods,” Astrid said, while straightening his shoulders and pretending not to be affected by Nick’s story. “They are some sort of weapon of mass destruction?”

Nick rolled his eyes. “Potentially, yes. But you see this stuff, here?” he said, pointing at the various metals and minerals on the walls. “All that came from the orb, that gift from the gods. That is what it does, create oil, gold, whatever you want. An endless supply of fuel and precious metals.”

“Ah, yes.” Astrid’s maniacal smile had returned. “I can hold the world hostage, or blow it up as I see fit.” The barrel of his gun jabbed Nick in the back. “Lead the way, Mister Solomon.”

The main room was as Finnegan had left it all those centuries ago: two pedestals, one coming down from the ceiling, and the other emerging from the ground, with a hollow portion in the middle where the artifact was supposed to hover inside an electromagnetic field.
 

Instead, it was now stiffly pressed on the rim of the lower pedestal, stuck to the blade of a sword.

The surrounding area was a clutter of dead machines. Wires hung out from panels—no doubt a result of violent feedback generated by the orb when Finnegan stabbed his weapon into it.

As the mercenaries entered, shining flashlights on every console and corner, their awe was evident. Nick noticed the pods from where the automatons were manufactured and the small concealed nodes of the force field as they walked through the doorway it once guarded. Skeletal remains of pirates bold enough to venture in littered the floor, accompanied by an assortment of belt buckles, buttons, earrings, pistols, swords, and knives; anything men of the sea carried.
 

One of them, closer to the pedestal than the rest, wore a crucifix, and Nick immediately identified him as Father Rodriguez.

“What happened here?” Astrid asked. His voice carried eerily around the circular room.

“Pirates, most likely,” Nick replied as he nudged a flintlock with his toe. “Maybe they took shelter here. This part of the Pacific tends to get
 
quite stormy.”

“Pirates?” Astrid echoed. “Then, explain this.” He picked up a metal skull from a pile of scrap metal on the ground. “What the hell is that thing?”

Nick took the metal head from his hands. It felt exactly like a skull, only smoother and cooler to the touch. There were no signs of rust or age, just a light cover of dust and muck, marking the passage of time. A flat sheet of metal and a series of bent rods were next to it, what had once been a chest plate and ribs for an automaton. Nick had no idea what happened to the rest of the body and, to be honest, he wasn’t that curious to find out.
 

Some things were better left unattended.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, dropping the head. “I suggest you don’t touch anything. Some of these chemicals may be radioactive,” he added, hoping that would keep the majority of the soldiers from getting too close and asking too many questions.

Astrid dropped the metal rib he was toying with as if it were made out the plague. “What is this place?”

Nick pointed at the orb in the middle of the room. “You wanna find out? I think I can activate it.”

The Spaniard’s expression turned lustful once more. He was soon going to be the richest and most powerful man on the planet, and like most maniacs, patience was not a virtue he possessed.
 

“Do it,” he said, almost immediately.

Nick walked up to the console by himself. Everyone else was too afraid to approach the eerie machine and opted to watch from a safe distance close to the entrance—which was exactly how Nick predicted they would act.