Durell stood by a rectangular black screen. The surface of the screen seemed to ripple as he touched it. Then it sprang into liquid fire and lights glittered around his twisted black clawed hand.
He smiled within the folds of his dark hood.
And his copper slitted eyes glittered.
‘Are we ready?’ came Gol’s voice from close behind in a hushed whisper.
‘Yes,’ said Durell, and touched the screen. ‘We are finally ready.’
Carter and Mongrel crouched in the gloom, weapons primed. They were allowing their eyes to adjust to the weak light cast from well-spaced flickering torches whose amber flames danced in iron brackets along the smooth red walls.
From where they waited, senses alert, one long wide corridor stretched off, filled with nothing but shadows.
‘It’s like being back in the annals of history,’ said Mongrel, shivering.
‘Yeah, I always had a thing for Ancient Egypt.’ Carter smiled and slowly unfolded from his defensive stance. He glanced around, moved forward cautiously a couple of steps, then halted once more. His head cocked and Mongrel came up beside him, sub-machine gun gripped in unsteady fingers.
‘I do not like this,’ said Mongrel softly.
‘Where are the guards?’ asked Carter.
‘They would not leave this unguarded,’ said Mongrel. ‘Something very wrong.’
Carter nodded. He activated his ECube and scanned on different frequencies. ‘Over there - a wall of blue k-laser. Invisible to the naked eye.’
‘A fucking digital tripwire that cut you in half with delayed action!’ muttered Mongrel. ‘Very nasty. You any idea how we get past?’
‘Yeah.’ Carter stared at Mongrel hard. ‘And so should you. Where were you during the seminars?’
Mongrel shrugged awkwardly. ‘I had this bird, down in the town. She had great pair of breasts that wobble all over place ...’ He petered off when he saw the look on Carter’s battered face. ‘I sorry,’ he finished. ‘I really am. But you should see tits! They mark a step in man’s way forward through life ...’ Mongrel trailed off feebly.
Carter moved carefully on while Mongrel covered their backs. Stopping within the stone-floored corridor, Carter lifted the ECube and digits flickered, tracing patterns across its alloy face. Nothing seemed to happen - visually - but physically they had become surrounded by an invisible globe of blue k-laser.
‘Come on.’
They walked slowly forwards, with Carter’s gaze never leaving the flickering read-outs on the ECube. As they moved through the invisible wall - the digital tripwire capable of cutting the two men into cubes of flesh - the ECube absorbed the sentry laser into its own field and allowed the signals to flow uninterrupted by the physical intrusion of the two men. They slid silently free on the other side and stood, Mongrel panting softly, looking around in the flickering light of the corridor.
‘We through?’
‘Yeah.’ Carter checked the mag on his sub-machine gun. ‘I kind of expected spikes, or something.’
‘This not Indiana Jones!’
Crouched in the shadows once more, the two men waited patiently. Carter allowed the ECube to perform a full scan - realising that it could save them many hours. Anyway, if the new version of the ECube had been breached by the Nex then they had already been discovered.
A drift of fine sand blew across the floor, and a cold breeze wafted from the temple’s depths.
‘What you doing?’
‘Shh.’ Carter held up a finger, then turned the ECube to Mongrel. Mongrel nodded, eyes wide. ‘This is some fucking huge temple. Look, it goes back into the mountain rock for nearly two kilometres.’
‘We never find Jam in here,’ said Mongrel.
‘I have an idea.’
Carter played with the ECube for a few minutes. Whilst not an expert on the machine like Natasha or The Priest, he could navigate his way successfully through the myriad coded terminals and keys and rhythms. Finally he smiled. ‘Yes, it’s here.’
‘What you doing? This place giving me the willies.’
‘The
willies?’
‘I been watching some
old
vid recently.’
‘The fucking
willies
?’ Carter laughed then, a brittle sound in the cool dry interior.
Mongrel touched his arm. ‘It good to hear you laugh. I know you not got much to laugh about. It good to see you keeping it together.’
‘Hey, insanity is my middle name. Now, when the Spiral mainframes picked up a stray signal from Jam’s ThumbNail_Map it held a pattern. A grid of the location that Jam was trying to traverse ... If I can match that grid to a pattern of corridors here, then we have a link, yes?’
Mongrel looked sideways at Carter. ‘You crafty fucker.’
‘So you agree? That’s a possibility?’
‘Aye,’ nodded Mongrel. ‘Sound feasible to ol’ Mongrel.’
Carter played with the ECube for a few more moments. Then he smiled. ‘Game on,’ he said.
They moved through the shadows of the stone corridor, most of it just bare sandstone-block walls, scuffing through the fine sheen of sand that scattered beneath their boots. Three times Carter had pulled them into smaller corridors that led off as teams of Nex moved slowly past, JK49s held with barrels pointing at the ground.
Three times they waited, risking discovery and a sudden blazing firefight that would end their quest...
Three times the Nex moved on silently, their black boots leaving nothing but imprints on the sandy floor.
From the wide central corridor at the entrance to the temple, they moved steadily downhill towards a hub -from which radiated another ten stone walkways, some leading up, some down, and some spanning away on the same level. All these corridors were extremely narrow and had no distinctive features to differentiate one from the other.
Using the ECube, Carter navigated them through the
labyrinth.
For the next twenty minutes they moved slowly, gently pressing their hands against worn stone-block walls. Mostly, ceilings were high and obscured by distance and darkness. At irregular intervals iron brackets held flaming brands, some guttering low and leaving the two men practically without light. They had the back-up of NVGs but night-vision aids gave off a subtle whine that was easy for the Nex’s superior senses to pick up.
‘What is this place? I never heard of it before?’
‘I don’t think it appears on any tourist maps,’ said Carter, leading them down a steeply sloping stone ramp. He halted at the bottom, holding his hand up. Mongrel glanced nervously behind, the muzzle of his gun wavering.
‘What?’
‘Listen.’
They could hear a noise, like a gentle rasping. Leather against glass. Or—
‘What the fuck is that?’
They crept forward and suddenly the walls ended and the ceiling soared high above them, disappearing into blackness. The floor fell away into a dark wide pit with gently sloping sides. The flat expanse of floor was spanned by an ornately carved stone bridge which arced gently over the depression, which in turn was filled with—
‘What the fuck are
they
?’
Carter and Mongrel stared. In the darkness, apparently sleeping, were a hundred or so
creatures.
They each had four limbs ending in savage black claws, and their bodies were tightly and hugely muscled, armoured with contoured interleaving plates. They were big - bigger than any wild feline - and their heads were triangular and tufted with thick strands of fur.
The large group were all breathing softly, intertwined in sleep.
‘You get the feeling we truly fucked if they wake up?’
Carter scowled at Mongrel, and prodded him in the chest. Then he moved forward, slowly, placing each footfall with care. He checked with the ECube and found another blue k-laser digital tripwire near the centre of the bridge.
‘A beautiful trap, don’t you think?’
said Kade.
‘Shut up.’
‘Lure you to the centre of the bridge and - bam! - a hundred fucking Sleepers descend on you and rip out your belly -with their teeth. Fucking primeval!’
‘What did you call them? Sleepers? How do you know that?’
Kade remained silent, watching, dark and brooding at the back of Carter’s mind.
Carter stepped onto the bridge.
He began to walk forwards. Below him, the creatures continued to breathe deeply, their eyes closed and Carter felt the tension rising in his chest. He licked at dry lips.
Out of the darkness rose columns, six-sided and carved from red and yellow stone. On the summit of each squatted a finely carved and crafted figure like nothing Carter had ever seen. These carvings were strange, alien almost.
Halting, Carter activated the ECube and the two men slipped neatly through the digital trap, then padded down the other side of the bridge and into the relative safety of another narrow stone corridor. Mongrel wiped sweat from his brow and then rolled his Nex balaclava back into place.
‘You OK?’ said Carter.
‘I’ve felt better,’ muttered Mongrel harshly.
They disappeared like ghosts into the dimly lit corridor. Behind, in the pit, there came a glimmer of movement as one of the Sleepers opened its eyes.
Copper slits glinted.
And slowly, gracefully, it began to uncoil...
The tunnel led down.
It was horribly claustrophobic, with a low rough ceiling which made both Carter and Mongrel stoop to avoid banging their heads. The narrow walls of the tunnel were mostly rough-faced, with some crumbling edges worn by time, but they would sometimes blaze with panels of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. The walkway was rough, and grooved down either side. Carter pointed, frowning, and Mongrel merely shook his head.
They moved even more slowly now, even more warily. Ahead, a strange noise sounded: a high-pitched keening wail, not altogether human. It rose in pitch, then faded away until it was nothing more than a distant dream of aural melancholy. Then it would wind up once more, into a terrible thrumming whine that hurt the men’s ears. Carter scanned with the ECube - but there was nothing.
‘I got bad feeling about this.’
‘Yeah, me too,’ said Carter. He checked his Browning and continued forward. He pulled off his Nex balaclava with a cursed, ‘Fuck it,’ and rubbed at his face. ‘I don’t think we’ll need these disguises now.’
‘But what if—’
‘Then we shoot the fuckers in the face.’
The corridor continued to lead down. Sand swept around their feet, pushed by a cool breeze that moaned softly. Carter’s nostrils wrinkled as a coppery and unpleasant odour drifted past them.
They passed the holding cell which they assumed was where Jam had been imprisoned. It was empty, with a few shards of twisted copper on the ground accompanied by a few dried bloodstains. With no other option, they continued to follow the passageway ...
Which led further down.
‘I do not like this. It feel like the Kamus.’
‘And that place was haunted,’ said Carter softly.
The whining sound lifted and fell, a ululating call of stressed metal. Occasionally there came the sound of a heavy impact like stone crushing stone. Both men felt their hackles rising as the tunnel came to an abrupt end. They crouched by the edge, looking out into a mammoth cavern.
It was almost circular. A million strange patterns were carved across the floor, walls and high distant ceiling, and the floor was littered with huge engraved blocks of stone, marble and granite. The floor was divided down the centre by a crevasse of black - which not only cut across the floor but up the walls as well, almost giving the impression that the huge hall
floated.
It was very dark, and a bad smell was carried by the cold - by a now chilling - breeze.
Carter gazed at the crevasse, the sheer drop that they would have to cross. It measured perhaps ten metres and was too wide to leap over. His gaze scanned from side to side, following the gap upwards and noting that it also crossed the ceiling. He also saw a bank of carved rock on the floor, a bridge across the actual ceiling that spanned the black crevasse, and a strangely angled doorway at the distant opposite side of the hall.
The wail returned, moaning softly from the depths of the gash in the rock.
‘Shall I check it out?’
‘Wait,’ said Carter softly.
They waited, watching, sweat beading on their brows despite the chill. This is some puzzle, decided Carter.
He scanned with the ECube, but it revealed nothing.
His stare raked the ceiling, the walls, searching for spikes, or holes, or tips of barbed spears.
‘An active imagination you have
,’ sneered Kade.
‘What do you want?’
‘To help, of course.’
‘Yeah, to help yourself.’
‘Let me have control and I will get you past the traps.
‘
‘Fuck off. What do you know of this place?’
‘I have my contacts.
‘
‘Yeah, and I have mine.’ Carter pointed and lifted his M24 carbine as a tall, broad figure stepped out from the crooked stone doorway opposite. The man held his large hands wide in an act of supplication, and his face was at peace, filled with serenity. His grey-flecked beard was just how Carter remembered it and the brown eyes were the brown eyes of the killer, the Spiral killer - the Spiral
traitor
...