The Thrones of Eden 3 (Eden) (5 page)

Demir looked at Alyssa a moment before turning his eyes to Savage and Hillary, quick glances of acknowledgement really, then returned them back to Alyssa.

“What?” she asked.

 Demir responded by raising his MP5K. And with fluid motion he racked his weapon. The click of chambering ammo into the weapon echoed off the surrounding walls in haunting cadence.

“What?” she asked again, this time with more emphasis. “What is it?”

Demir’s features remained neutral. “It seems, Ms. Moore, that we are not alone.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s exactly as I said,” he told her, pivoting on his feet, his weapon ready. “There’s something in here with us.”

CHAPTER NINE

The air suddenly felt horribly oppressive, the heat beyond endurance.

And Alyssa thought that her heart was about to misfire in her chest.

Hillary, on the other hand, appeared almost enamored with the idea, perhaps romancing the aspect of danger whereas John Savage kept his antennae up, always scoping his surroundings and looking for shadows moving within shadows.

Slowly, and cautiously, they made their way down the corridor as the conical beams of light held steady before settling on a mass lying on the floor, spotlighting it.

It was an array of bones with a torpedo-shaped head, a long neck, and a rack of ribs connected to the chain link of its bony tail. The skeleton was polished as if it had been buffed. And the blood, small coagulated pools, had turned to the color of tar.

“Is this one of those things?” asked Demir. “The things you mentioned in your articles?”

“It’s a
Megalania Prisca
,” she said. “It’s a relative of the komodo dragon.” She then got on a bended knee for further examination, cocking her head.

“Where there’s one,” said Demir, “then there is more. Don’t you agree?”

She didn’t answer him. Instead, she traced a fingertip along the ribs, feeling multiple nicks. She did the same to the skull and to the tail—nicks were everywhere.

“Is there something in particular you’re looking for, Ms. Moore?”

Hillary and Savage followed her lead, tracing their fingertips along the bones in a simple act of forensics.

“Do you feel them?” she asked.

Hillary nodded. So did Savage.

“This thing was scoured clean,” offered Hillary. “You can tell by the cuts and notches. They’re everywhere on this skeleton.”

“Rats. Insects,” said Demir, although his tone intimated that he was asking a question rather than making a statement.

“Possibly,” she answered. Then she addressed Hillary directly. “Could this have been the thing you saw last night? Could this have been the shape?”

Demir shook his head. “Impossible,” he said. “It’s picked clean—probably over a period of months after the collapse of the temple.”

“Hardly,” said Savage. “The bones haven’t yellowed or tanned. They’re still white, still fresh. I’d say this happened within the past twenty-four hours . . . maybe less.”

Demir flashed his light toward the cracks and fissures, and to the openings along the floor. There were multiple gaps, sure, but nothing large enough to allow something of comparative size to compete against the
Prisca
—and then to kill it and pick it clean?

Demir wondered if there was another access, one that was further down the hall. Instinctively, he turned toward the corridor than ran deeper into darkness, his light penetrating no more than fifty feet.
There might be something down there
, he considered. Something that was far deadlier than the
Megalania Prisca,
something that might be watching them with an attentive eye. He began to tap his forefinger nervously against the stock of his assault weapon.

“How much further?” asked Savage.

“About a click,” said Demir.

Another kilometer
.

Savage stood, wishing that he was in possession of a weapon.

Alyssa continued to kneel by the remains alongside Hillary, both wondering the same thing.
What could have broken down matter so quickly and so absolute and not leave a trace other than a series of scratches along the bones from grazing?

Alyssa finally got to her feet with Hillary following her lead.

“Be very careful,” she alerted everyone. “These
Priscas
are very fast and can move around the dark as easily as we move around in the light. Who knows how many more are out there.”

“You think another
Megalania Prisca
did this?” asked Demir.

“No. When ecosystems change so does the food chain. And those capable of adapting will rise as a new order. Whatever did this was no
Prisca
.
Priscas
always leave something behind like entrails—something. But this—” She pointed to the skeleton.

“Have any ideas, Alyssa?” asked Hillary.

“Something in great numbers,” she guessed. “Beetles, ants, rats—could be any number of things.”

Hillary circled the remains. “Precisely.”

Demir, however, wasn’t so sure, believing that absolute hunger drove its kind to consume it down to its barest design. Somewhere beyond that veil of darkness ahead of him, he could intuit something massive lingering beyond the fringe of light. In any event, they were all in agreement that they were not alone.

“If you’re through with your examination,” Demir said, leveling his weapon toward the veil of darkness, “then I suggest that we move on, yes?”

Demir made a series of hand gestures, with half the unit responding by taking point.

They moved forward.

Alyssa continued to note that the cracks and fissures along the walls were becoming less, the support more stable. Apparently this section was far enough away from the implosion of Eden that it had little, if any, effect to its structure.

At the corridor’s end they came to a wall, the point where the laser measurement ended. There was no bend or outlet. No recess or junction—just a wall.

They had come to a dead end.

Demir, however, felt a pang of disappointment, his sense of intuition not as keen as he believed it to be, thinking something was hiding in the shadows when there was nothing there at all. “Well, Ms. Moore,” he said. “It appears to be a dead end.”

Alyssa stepped forward and pressed her palms against the engravings on the wall. “Hardly,” she said.

Her lips curved into a preamble of a smile.

CHAPTER TEN

Alyssa ran her palms over the images against the black silica wall as if they were Braille.

There was a series of icons set in a squared pattern. Beneath it was a riddle.

найстара
বিশ্বকোষ
жытным
পৃথীবীর
і

তালিকা
হয়েছে।
ўяўленьнямі бпа
২০০৭
 ўц
তারিখে

чанась
উইকিপিডিয়া
, ці дасканал
যাতে
ась
মুক্ত
ціцудаў

жанр
প্রকাশিনির্মিত

Fill the void with the correct (numeral).

Should you choose wisely, then to the Chamber of the One shall you pass.

Should you choose poorly, then darkness shall you forever see.     

“There’s a way in,” she finally said, tracing her hand over the figures. “It’s a riddle.”

Savage and Hillary fell in beside her.

“The images, do you know what they mean?” asked Hillary.

“I can piece enough together to figure out what it’s looking for . . . I think.”

“What does it say?”

She hesitated, examining the symbols and archaic script. “It basically says: Fill the void with the correct . . . numeral or symbol. Choose wisely . . .  then to the Chamber of the One shall you pass or go. Choose poorly, then darkness shall you forever see.”

“That last line doesn’t sound very promising,” said Demir.

“That’s because it’s a warning. If we choose the wrong symbol—trust me, what happens thereafter will not be pretty.”

“How so?”

“People will die,” she simply said.

Hillary stood back with his hands up and patted the air. “It’s all yours,” he told her.

She examined the keypad of symbols first.

“There’s a missing image in the second row, the second one down. The riddle is asking us to fill it in with the proper symbol, the proper numeral. The row beneath the symbols—”

“—is a numerical legend with each symbol having been assigned a number. The
¥
is symbolic of the number one.
The double
¥¥
is the number two, and so on. The
ɛ
represents the number five, at least by Sumerian script.
ɛ¥
equals six
, ɛ¥¥
is seven, and
the symbol
ᵿ
is the number . . . nine
.”

“Are you sure?” asked Hillary. “You don’t sound very confident.”

“I’m sure.” She studied the images further. “So now we can apply the assigned number to a symbol listed in the legend, to a symbol on the keypad.”

Her mind worked, quickly interpreting symbols and assigning them to their numerals.

The symbol
 
equaled
¥
,
and
¥
equaled the number
1
;
equaled
¥¥
,
the number
2
;
 
 represented
¥¥¥
, the number
3
;
 represented
¥¥¥¥
,
the number
4
;
 represented the symbol  
ɛ
, or the number
5
;
 symbol was
ɛ¥
, the number
6
;
 was
ɛ¥¥
,
the number
7
;  and
 represented the numerical value of
ᵿ
, the number
9
.