Oracle

ONE

This is why I love being an archaeologist, thought Jade Ihara as she stared across Calzada de los Meurtos — the Avenue of the Dead — at the massive structure, known as the Pyramid of the Sun. Because she had spent so much of her professional career digging holes in the middle of nowhere, sifting dirt and, if she was lucky, finding a potsherd or two, she welcomed any chance to work a site like this, a place full of both history and mystery. It was a way of recharging her batteries. Lord knows, I could use that right now.

The invitation to join an ongoing investigation at the Pyramid of the Sun could not have come at a better time for her, both professionally and personally. It was a chance to get back to her roots, at least in terms of her career as an archaeologist specializing in Pre-Columbian American cultures.

Despite being one of the largest and most thoroughly studied sites on earth, very little was known about the origins of Teotihuacan and the people who first lived there. Even the names given to the city and its monumental pyramids were the product of later inhabitants. Teotihuacan was a Nahuatl word that meant “City of the Gods” and was the name given the place by the Aztecs who discovered and occupied it half a millennium after it had been abandoned by its builders. No one knew where the Teotihuacanos came from, why they built massive monuments — the Pyramid of the Sun was the third largest pyramid in the world — or why they disappeared. The chance to solve that enduring mystery, or at the very least, shed some light on it, was one of the main reasons Jade had jumped at the chance to join the dig.

She strode across the broad north-south thoroughfare where Aztec priests had once paraded sacrificial victims before throngs of bloodthirsty citizens, and ascended to the Plaza del Sol, the courtyard that abutted the western edge of the pyramid. Up close, Jade could see the individual stones that comprised the pyramid. Unlike the pyramids of Egypt, these structures had been built with small irregular chunks of rock, sealed together with limestone mortar. Jade knew that, in its heyday, the pyramid had been coated with a limestone veneer and painted with elaborate murals of feathered gods, priests and victorious warriors. The construction of the pyramids had been a massive undertaking, requiring centuries of focused cooperative effort, and had placed an extraordinary drain on the natural resources of the region. The deforestation of the surrounding landscape to fire limestone kilns was believed to be a major contributing factor to the decline of the city, but that was just one more theory that, while plausible, would never fully be proven.

“Dr. Ihara!”

Jade lowered her gaze from the pyramid to find a middle-aged man in khakis and a dress shirt, with a canvas duffel bag slung over one shoulder. She stepped forward and took his proffered hand. “You must be Dr. Acosta,” she said.

Jorge Acosta, a professor of Pre-Columbian art history, presently serving as curator in residence at the on-site museum, was the project coordinator, and the man who had hired her on after a team member had been called away by a family emergency. The excavation at the Pyramid of the Sun was only one of many archaeological investigations going on in the ancient city, and it was Acosta’s job to ensure that the cultural sanctity of the site was preserved, and all relevant laws obeyed.

“Welcome to Teo, Dr. Ihara.” His English was impeccable, without even a trace of an accent. “I imagine you’re eager to get right to work.”

“Please, call me Jade.” His smile slipped a notch and Jade realized that she had committed a minor faux pas.

Smooth move, Jade, she thought. Somebody loves his title. This is why I hate being an archaeologist.

At least when digging holes in the middle of nowhere, she didn’t have to deal with the fragile egos of academicians.

“I of course will continue to call you Dr. Acosta,” she hastily added, smiling and doing her level best to keep her tone free of sarcasm.

Acosta diplomatically changed the subject. “We were quite fortunate that you were available on such short notice.”

“Actually, I’m the one who got lucky. I just finished some work in Japan and was looking for…” She paused, not sure quite what she meant to say. Something different? Something to keep me busy? Something to take my mind off him? “A challenge.”

“Japan? That’s a rather strange place for an expert on early American cultures to be working.”

“You’re telling me,” Jade muttered. Her work in Japan, specifically at the Yonaguni monument near Okinawa, had been a roller coaster of excitement — for which she had a healthy appetite — and drama — something she had lost her taste for. Her research had been pivotal in battling a threat from the international quasi-religious conspiracy known as the Dominion, ultimately making the difference in thwarting a Dominion plot to throw the world into chaos. Unfortunately, it had also meant working with her ex, Dane Maddock, a former Navy SEAL and professional treasure hunter. Maddock had moved on with his life and that made working with him — working closely with him — almost unendurable for Jade. She had made herself vulnerable, put her undiminished love for him out in the open, and he had ultimately refused her.

The rejection burned like an open wound, and the only way to get past it was to get away from anything that reminded her of Dane Maddock. It was time for her to get on with her life.

She sensed that Acosta was still waiting for an explanation. “The circumstances were unique. I speak the language fluently and I do have a background in Asian studies. Besides, no matter where you go, the principles of archaeology are the same, right?”

Acosta made a humming sound that could have indicated anything from disinterested agreement to mild disapproval. “Well, follow me and I’ll introduce you to the team.”

He turned and led her along the perimeter of the pyramid, to a dark opening that appeared to lead right into the heart of the massive structure. Jade was somewhat surprised when, instead of heading into the passage, Acosta continued a few steps past the tunnel mouth and bent over a metal plate, flush with the sloping ground. The plate reminded Jade of the entrance to a basement, and she was not at all surprised when Acosta lifted the plate, revealing another opening that plunged straight down.

“I think I’d rather see what’s behind door number one.”

Acosta gave a polite chuckle. “That passage,” he said, indicating the first opening, “was dug by archaeologists. It doesn’t really go anywhere. This shaft that we’re using is the only passage we’ve discovered into the interior of the pyramid that was actually used by the Teotihuacanos.” He paused. “Or at least that was the case until a few days ago.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You’ll see.” Acosta took a pair of hard hats and two flashlights from his duffel, and passed one of each to Jade. When they had both donned their helmets, Acosta stepped down into the opening and began descending a steep metal staircase into the darkness.

Jade followed closely, playing the beam of her light on the surrounding walls. After the initial descent, the slope of the passage eased, but the sense of confinement increased dramatically. The air was warm and stale.

“This was a lava tube,” Acosta explained, his voice sounding muffled in the close quarters. “The builders removed the softer volcanic rock in order to reach the chamber under the center of the pyramid.”

Jade noted that, while they were continuing to descend, the passage snaked back and forth, following a course laid by natural forces millions of years ago. “Why?”

“I’m afraid we don’t know that, any more than we know why they built the pyramid in the first place. The chamber probably represents the Underworld, but until we can learn more about the religious practices and cosmology of Teotihuacan, we’re just guessing. Ah, here we are.”

The passage abruptly widened and Jade saw that a small tent-like structure had been erected right in the middle of the path. The door was thrown back, and two people stood inside, hunched over a laptop computer.

Acosta tapped lightly on the side of the structure. “Drs. Sanchez and Dorion, may I introduce your new colleague, Dr. Ihara?”

Jade quickly took stock of the two men that turned to greet her. One was short and stocky with a dark complexion and an infectious smile, the other average height and slender, with a mop of wavy brown hair framing a pale, studious face. The first man — presumably Sanchez — stepped forward quickly and began pumping Jade’s hand. “Dr. Ihara, so good to finally meet you. We’ve heard wonderful things.”

Jade returned the smile, wondering exactly what “wonderful things” the man had heard, and who said them. Probably just being polite, she decided. “Thank you. It’s good to be here.”

She realized that the other man — Dorion — was staring at her like she was a supermodel. “I’ve seen you before.”

Jade noted the accent — French, she decided. Not Paris, though. Somewhere in the countryside — but it was the way he spoke, with an almost reverential awe, that made her feel very uncomfortable. Before she could respond, he added. “It was in a dream, I think.”

Sanchez bellowed out laughter. “Paul is such a charmer. Watch out for him, Dr. Ihara.”

Jade didn’t feel the least bit charmed. She glanced at Acosta, still aware of Dorion’s scrutiny, then addressed Sanchez. “Please, call me Jade. It will save time.”

“Jade it is. A lovely name. You know that jade was extremely precious to the early inhabitants of Mesoamerica. Oh, but look who I’m talking to. Of course you know that.” He clapped his hands together. “I’m Noe. This is Paul.”

“Dr. Dorion is our resident muon tomographer,” explained Acosta. “He’s the one who is making it possible for us to see through the walls of the pyramid.”

“Muon tomographer?” Jade asked. She actually knew a little about the process, but decided it wouldn’t hurt to hear it explained by an expert.

“Muons are high-speed elementary particles found in cosmic rays.” With the shift to Dorion’s area of expertise, his voice lost some of its creepy undertone. “We are constantly bombarded by them on the surface, but they are unable to penetrate down here — one hundred meters underground. At least, this is the case where the pyramid is solid. Where there are gaps — tunnels and chambers — the muons can pass through and reach the detector.”

“Like an X-ray machine?”

“Exactly. Only subatomic particles can penetrate much deeper than X-rays.”

“It’s working, too,” added Sanchez. “Paul, show her what we’ve found.”

Dorion stepped back inside the enclosure and bent over the computer, tapping out a few quick commands. The lines of text on the screen were replaced by a blue screen with blossoms of yellow and orange that reminded Jade of a Magic-Eye photo. Dorion continued to manipulate the image and Jade saw the largest blossom begin moving vertically down the screen.

“What am I looking at here?”

“Particle frequency is abnormally high in the quadrant we’ve been monitoring.”

Sanchez pointed into the chamber just past the enclosure. “There’s a passage just behind that wall.”

“We think there’s a passage,” amended Acosta.

“The data are consistent with there being a hollow space in the pyramid,” Dorion said.

“But that’s not the best part,” Sanchez went on, with child-like enthusiasm. “Paul, show her the model.”

Dorion tapped a few more keys and the blue screen vanished, replaced instead by a transparent three-dimensional representation of the pyramid. The chamber in which they now stood and the tunnel leading to it appeared as a pale red artery, ending in four-headed bulb directly below the apex, while a blue vein snaked a vertical course to a smaller cavity directly above them.

Sanchez pointed an eager finger at the picture. “The passage doesn’t extend to the exterior. It’s probably been sealed since the time of the pyramid’s construction.”

Jade grasped the reason for Sanchez’s enthusiasm. A sealed chamber might offer an unprecedented glimpse into the origins of Teotihuacan and its inhabitants. “Why a vertical shaft going nowhere?”

“A sacred well?” Acosta speculated. “If this is a tomb, it might well represent a passage to the Underworld. Or it may be some part of the original inhabitants’ belief system that we have never seen before. That’s what we hope to learn when we explore the chamber.”

“When can we enter the chamber?”

“We have to proceed carefully,” Acosta went on. “We are dedicated to minimizing the impact to the site, but of course when word of this gets out, it will become difficult to protect whatever treasures — in the archaeological sense — may lie within. Our plan is to dig a small intersecting shaft, just large enough to insert a robotic vehicle. I’d like you to take care of excavation, Dr. Ihara, but remember, we only want to get a look at what’s in there. We won’t be taking anything out.”

The restriction did not bother Jade in the slightest. She felt the group’s excitement catch fire within her. Even Dorion’s strange manner seemed irrelevant. “Then let’s get started.”

This is why I love being an archaeologist.

TWO

Jade watched as the Jeep rolled across the nearly empty gravel parking lot where she had made her own arrival only a few days earlier. She checked her watch. The Laco 1925 Navy Classic sported a big white face with easy to read numbers, sort of like a miniaturized wall-clock. Given her jet-setting lifestyle, she didn’t own a lot of prized possessions, but this was definitely one of the few things that she always kept with her. It had been a Christmas gift from Maddock, a German watch from a German watch shop. Maybe Maddock was gone, but she still clung to her memories of that magical Christmas in Germany. They visited the Cologne Cathedral to get a peek at the bones of the Magi inside the Shrine of the Three Kings and ended up tangling with a branch of the Dominion called Heilig Herrschaft. She had invited Maddock’s partner and best friend, “Bones” Bonebrake and his sister, Angel, to join them and….

And now Maddock and Angel were together.

I should get a new watch.

It was too late in the afternoon for more tourists, which meant the Jeep probably belonged to the man she was waiting for. When the vehicle finally stopped, she rose to her feet and stretched, shrugging off the muscle soreness of long hours of physical labor in cramped conditions.

The job of methodically digging out the exploratory shaft by hand, while physically taxing, had been the perfect distraction from her emotional turmoil, and as she got closer to the vertical tunnel, her growing anticipation made even the aches and blisters seem irrelevant. Now that the shaft was finished — a slot in the surrounding lava matrix that was just barely large enough for her to crawl through — she was eager to move on to the next phase of the investigation. With a final standing cat-stretch to work out the last of the kinks, Jade started out across the parking lot toward the newly arrived Jeep to meet the man who would make that possible.

The passenger side door opened and a fit, and not altogether unattractive thirty-something man got out. His dark hair was shorn close in a military buzz cut, which instantly made her think about Maddock, but she pushed away the impulsive comparison.

Lots of guys were ex-military. No reason to hold that against him.

“You must be the robot guy,” she called. Acosta had made the arrangements while her head had been, literally, in a hole. He had decided to bring in an American, both to help preserve site secrecy and to meet specific technical challenges, but Jade couldn’t recall if the administrator had mentioned his name.

The man flashed a disarming smile and stepped away from the Jeep, extending a hand. “And you must be Lara Croft, Tomb Raider.”

“Wow. Never heard that one before.” Strike one, thought Jade.

“Kidding,” the man hastily said. “I’m Brian Hodges, the robot guy. I’ve heard a lot about you, Dr. Ihara. I’m looking forward to working with you.”

Jade weighed his response, wondering how it was possible that everyone she met had heard so much about her. Strike two, she decided. And he’s not really that good looking. “Have you got the robot with you?”

“It’s in the back.” Hodges paused a beat, then nodded toward the Jeep. “I think you already know my partner in crime.”

Jade heard the driver’s door slam and was just turning to greet the vehicle’s other occupant when a familiar voice froze her in mid-step. “Hey, stranger.”

Jade stared in disbelief at the tall lanky form of Pete “Professor” Chapman. “Oh, hell no.”

Professor affected a mock pout. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

“No. No way. This isn’t happening.” Jade shook her head and spun on her heel, already mentally constructing the rant she would drop on Acosta’s head like a ton of bricks.

“Jade, wait!”

Something about Professor’s tone stopped her, but when she turned back around and faced him, the acid bubbled up again. “Why are you here?”

He shrugged. “Why not? We make a good team.”

She shook her head again. “We made a good team. Then you quit and joined…his team.”

Deep down, Jade knew her accusation was not entirely fair. Professor had started out on his team — Maddock’s team — long before Jade knew either man. Maddock and Professor had gone through SEAL training together and served in the same unit for several years. Even then, he had been “Professor” — always ready with some bit of obscure trivia, but in the years following his term of military service, he had gone on to earn several degrees and had actually taught for a while. Institutional learning had not been a good fit for the former Naval SpecWar shooter, and so he had jumped at the chance to work with the archaeologist ex-girlfriend of his old swim buddy. Jade had welcomed his professional expertise on the Yonaguni investigation, but if she was honest, she had to admit that the real reason she had hired Professor was the chance to get close to one of Maddock’s old friends, and maybe figure out a way to win back her former lover.

It hadn’t been one of her better ideas.

Ultimately, the association had indeed brought Maddock back into her life, but not in the way she had expected. Maddock had gone back to work for the government as part of a secret group, informally called the Myrmidons — a reference to the deadly warriors who had fought with Achilles in the Trojan War — dedicated to rooting out the Dominion’s influence. Following the events at Yonaguni, Jade and Professor had both been invited to join the Myrmidons on a permanent basis. Although Jade despised the Dominion, the idea of working with Maddock had been too much to deal with. Professor however, had accepted the offer, citing some nonsense about the greater good, and that had been the end of their partnership.

She couldn’t really fault him for making that decision. The Dominion was a real threat. Their most recent campaign had resulted in thousands of deaths. It was, quite literally, a war and Professor was, first and foremost, a warrior who had sworn an oath to defend his country. She knew it was petty to be mad at him for making that choice — for choosing to fight the good fight — but it felt more like he had chosen Maddock over her, and that was a bitter pill to swallow.

Professor cast a quick glance at Hodges before returning his attention to Jade. “Will you give me five minutes to explain? I’ll buy you a coffee.”

Jade sighed. Prof wasn’t such a bad guy, and he certainly didn’t deserve to be recipient of her Maddock-focused ire. “Fine. Five minutes.” She looked at Hodges who had been watching the tense exchange with rapt interest. “I’m curious to know how you ended up with the robot guy.”

Professor nodded. “Brian, give us a few?”

“Take as long as you need, Pete. I’ll be here with the gear.”

Professor turned back to Jade. “So where’s a good place to buy a girl a cup of joe?”

Jade just shook her head. “Screw that. I need a shot.”

Professor slammed his glass down and grinned in triumph as the smoky liquid blazed a trail from his gullet to his belly. Jade, who had taken only a small sip of her mezcal, merely regarded him thoughtfully as she rolled the half-filled shot glass between a thumb and forefinger.

“Beats the hell out of sake, doesn’t it?” she remarked. “But you’re supposed to sip it, not shoot it like an American.”

Professor glanced around the little hole in the wall Jade had brought him to. Make that “hole in the ground.” The restaurant had been built — if that was the right word — in a deep cave grotto on the edge of the archaeological site. In fact, the terrace where they were now sitting overlooking the gaping cave entrance was built on the flanks of one of the lesser pyramids. As one of the few restaurants actually operating in the archaeological preserve, never mind the unique experience of dining in a cave, it was a natural place for tourists to congregate, and the establishment was bustling with activity.

“Well, I am an American,” he said finally.

She shrugged and took another sip, appearing to savor the agave liquor. Professor savored the view. With her athletic but nonetheless very feminine physique, lustrous black hair tied in a long braid draped over her right shoulder, and exotic Hawaiian-Japanese features, Jade Ihara was a feast for the eyes.

Maddock, how did you let this one slip away?

He knew the answer of course. Looks weren’t everything, and he knew from personal experience that Jade was…what was the term? High maintenance?

That was putting it mildly. Jade could be downright bitchy at times, and he had more than once gotten exasperated at her incessant mooning over Dane Maddock. Still, she was smart, tough and beautiful, and it was only her history with Maddock that kept him at arm’s length.

When he had first started working with her in Japan, it had seemed inevitable that she and Maddock would get back together — Jade had a way of getting what she wanted — and Professor had known to leave well enough alone. A cardinal rule of the SEAL teams was that you didn’t screw around with your swim buddy’s girl; combat and love triangles were a bad combination. Unfortunately, by the time he’d figured out that Maddock definitely wasn’t going to be in the picture, he was already in the friend-zone. That had made his decision to accept Tam Broderick’s offer to join the Myrmidons a lot easier, but Jade, for all her flaws, had stayed in his thoughts.

She set her glass down and made a point of looking at her watch. “Okay, Prof. The clock is running. Five minutes to explain just what the hell you’re doing here.”

“Oh, Jade, I’ve missed you.” He wagged his head, but then became more serious. “You could be in danger here.”

“Danger? From who?”

“Who do you think?”

She shook her head. “Not this time. There aren’t any mystical relics here, no magical alien artifacts. This is just straightforward archaeology. There’s no reason why the Dominion would have any interest in what’s happening here, ergo I’m not in danger.”

“I can think of two reasons why you’re wrong.”

“Do tell.”

Professor decanted another portion of mezcal into his glass. “What do you think you’re going to find in that chamber under the pyramid?”

Above her almond eyes, Jade’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “How did you even find out about that? It’s supposed to be a secret.”

“It’s very hard to keep secrets these days.” He took a sip, and then repeated the question. “What do you think you’ll find?”

She shrugged. “Probably a tomb. If the chamber served a ceremonial function, it wouldn’t have been sealed off in antiquity.”

“Whose tomb?”

“How should I know?”

“The ancient inhabitants of the city built one of the largest structures in the world over that tomb. I’d say the person buried there must be pretty important, don’t you think?”

“You’re wasting time. Get to the point.”

“The point, Jade, is that you seem to have forgotten about one of the most important aspects of Mesoamerican culture, something that Dominion is likely to be very interested in. Quetzalcoatl.”

Jade’s frown deepened. “Quetzalcoatl the Aztec god? What’s he got to do with anything? The Aztecs didn’t show up in Teo until almost a thousand years after the pyramid was built.”

“Worship of the feathered serpent deity in Mesoamerica goes back a lot further than the Aztecs. But as I’m sure you’ll remember, in some myths, Quetzalcoatl is often described as a bearded white man who brought great wisdom to the ancient people who once lived here.”

Jade rolled her eyes. “Please. I know what comes next. Quetzalcoatl was actually Jesus Christ, bringing the Gospel to the heathens of the Americas. No one believes those old stories anymore. It was just Spanish propaganda designed to convert the indigenous people.”

“Some people still believe.”

“Like who?”

“The Mormons.”

Jade’s mouth was open to reply, but then she closed it and sat back.

“Not officially,” Professor continued. “Not anymore at least, but for decades it was an article of faith in the LDS Church that the legends surrounding Quetzalcoatl were evidence that Christ once visited the Americas. And I don’t need to remind you that the Dominion has expressed a keen interest in some of those more antiquated bits of LDS folklore.”

Professor knew that Jade had first-hand experience with this subject; a few years earlier, her first encounter with the Dominion had seen the group infiltrate a Mormon sect in order to locate Biblical artifacts concealed in the Seven Golden Cities of Cibola.

“I’m not suggesting that the chamber is going to contain the remains of Quetzalcoatl or Jesus Christ,” he continued. “All I’m saying is, the Dominion might believe that, and if they do, then you can bet they’ll be watching to see what you discover.”

Jade processed this for a moment. “Okay. You said two reasons.”

Professor nodded his head in her direction. “You’re the other reason.”

“Me?”

“You’ve foiled their best laid plans a few times now, Jade. They aren’t likely to forget, and they certainly aren’t going to forgive.”

She laughed mirthlessly. “So that’s how you were able to act on this so quickly; been keeping an eye on me. Well, I appreciate the concern, but you can go back and tell Maddock that I’m a big girl. I don’t need protecting.”

Professor felt a twinge of irritation at her assumption that he was acting as Maddock’s lackey. “I’m not here to protect you,” he replied, speaking slowly to avoid letting any bitterness creep into his tone. “I’m here because if there’s even a chance the Dominion might show up, I want to be ready to crush them.”

She flashed a sardonic smile. “You sure know how to make a girl feel special.”

“Damn it, Jade, make up your mind,” Professor snapped. “Which is it? Do you want someone watching your back, or not? You can’t have it both ways.”

Jade’s lower jaw shifted slowly to the left, as if biting back a scathing retort. When she finally spoke, her voice was low, smoldering with pent up anger, but she didn’t address the subject directly. “What about your friend, Hodges? Is he really a robot expert, or is that just cover?”

“Brian knows what he’s doing,” replied Professor with equal intensity. “He got his training in Naval EOD. He also hates the Dominion more than you and I put together. His wife and baby daughter died at Norfolk.”

Jade blinked. The mere mention of the Dominion attack on Norfolk, in which thousands had died in a catastrophic tsunami wave, triggered by an ancient Atlantean device, seemed to have broken through her tough girl facade. Then she shook her head, dismissively. “Well, it’s probably not going to matter. What I’m really going to need is someone who can drive a robot into that chamber. Like I said, there’s nothing here that’s going to be of interest to the Dominion. It’s just straightforward archaeology.”

Professor raised his glass again. “Well, here’s to straightforward archaeology.”

THREE

Jade stared at the strange looking bundle of metal rods. “That’s a robot? It doesn’t look anything like WALL-E.”

Hodges grinned. “Some of them do, but in order to explore a vertical shaft, we need a unit that can climb walls. That’s why I brought Shelob here.”

“Shelob. Cute.” She took a step back, giving him room to assemble the robot, but Paul Dorion quickly occupied the space she had vacated.

“How does it work?”

Jade had not seen the particle physicist look so excited since the discovery of the hidden tunnel, though in truth, she had not seen much of him or Sanchez in the past few days. They had made themselves scarce while she had been laboring to dig the exploratory shaft, probably afraid that she would put them to work.

Hodges seemed only too happy to share. “Most wall climbing robots use suction cups or magnets, but those won’t work here. The stone isn’t magnetic and it’s too porous for a suction cup to adhere. I designed Shelob to work in chimney shafts and inside wet walls where the surface material would be unpredictable. Like her namesake—”

“I’m sorry, her namesake?” inquired Sanchez.

“Shelob is the giant spider from Lord of the Rings,” supplied Professor.

Hodges nodded. “That’s right. She’s got eight fully articulated legs — two sets of four — which can extend in any direction. One set of legs will extend out to brace her in place between opposing surfaces while the other set reaches up or down, taking a step as it were. When those legs are braced, the other set disengages and takes the next step.

“Watch this.” Hodges slipped on a headset microphone. “Shelob, run diagnostic.”

The metal rods abruptly unfolded from the thorax, which looked sort of like a tool box with a GoPro attached to one end, and began whirring and rotating until they made contact with the stone floor. The movements were mechanical and jerky, but it nevertheless looked very much like a silvery spider, though instead of a silk thread, it trailed a length of black coaxial cable that connected to a spool which was in turn hooked up to Hodges’ laptop. The display screen showed the view from Shelob’s camera. The robot went through a series of maneuvers, scuttling around chamber as if exploring.

“The legs can telescope out like the adjustable legs of a camera tripod,” Hodges said, “for a total reach of just over eight feet, which should be just about perfect for your tunnel.”

As if on cue, the robot’s legs began to lengthen, shooting out to their full length until it more closely resembled a daddy-longlegs than a spider, which in Jade’s opinion did nothing improve its appearance.

“Great,” muttered Jade. “Robot spiders. Nothing freaky about that.”

“You afraid of spiders?” Professor whispered in her ear.

She ignored him. Despite his persuasive arguments in the cantina, she was far from happy about the way he’d hijacked her dig. The only reason she hadn’t blown the whistle and told Acosta about it was that Hodges did happen to have a robot that would let her see the hidden chamber and she didn’t want to wait another week for Acosta to find someone else.

I’m not afraid of spiders, she thought grumpily. But robot spiders? That’s just wrong.

If she had still been keeping score, that probably would have been strike three for Hodges, but she wasn’t, not after learning about Norfolk.

She had never regretted walking away from Tam Broderick’s offer to join the Myrmidons. She was an archaeologist, not a secret agent, and besides, the last thing she needed was to be working alongside Maddock again. But that didn’t mean she was apathetic about the threat posed by the Dominion.

Still, they weren’t going to show up here. She was sure of that.

“Looks like it’s working just fine,” she told Hodges. “Send it in.”

Hodges spoke into the mic again. “Shelob, end diagnostic.” The robot’s legs retracted and it crab-walked over to stand in front of its master. Hodges picked up one of two joystick controls wired to his computer and spoke again. “Initiate manual guidance.”

The robot began moving again, only now it was responding directly to Hodges’ will. It walked toward the small hole Jade had excavated and proceeded within.

“Shelob, light mode.”

A light flashed on inside the rocky niche, and Jade saw the interior of the access tunnel appear on the computer screen. The robot continued forward at a plodding but relentless pace, and in less than a minute, reached the junction with the vertical shaft, which appeared as a dark hole in the center of the image. Jade had peeked through during her excavation but there had not been much to see.

She had tried to convince Acosta to let her go in. She was an average climber, maybe not ready for Yosemite, but more than capable of making this ascent. Ever since that business in Germany, she had made a point of always bringing climbing gear along wherever she went. Acosta however steadfastly insisted that the initial survey be done with the robot. Jade suspected the reason for this had more to do with Acosta’s fascination with technology than a desire to preserve the site. Similar remote surveys conducted by a competing team the previous year had revealed previously undiscovered passages under the nearby Pyramid of the Feathered Serpent, along with a collection of mysterious metallic orbs, the significance of which were still being debated. Robots and futuristic technology was sexy. Old fashioned archaeology? Not so much.

Shelob advanced until the camera was looking directly through the hole, shining its light into the dark vertical shaft beyond.

“Here’s where my girl will show you what she’s made of,” Hodges said with a triumphant grin. He set down the joystick. “Shelob, autonomous mode.”

The camera view lurched forward and then swung around with dizzying abruptness. When the image finally stabilized, it showed what looked like an ordinary tunnel shaft, but Jade knew the camera was now facing directly up. The robot was making the ascent without any input from Hodges.

The next few minutes were interminably long as the robot shuffled up the six-foot wide vertical shaft. In the glow of its high-intensity light, the smooth, perfectly round walls gave the impression of traveling through an old pipe. After the first twenty feet or so, the texture of the walls changed from ordinary bedrock to a more uniform surface that was unnaturally smooth and blood red in color.

“Painted limestone mortar,” intoned Acosta. “Remarkably well preserved. We’ve moved above the foundation and into the interior of the pyramid. The exterior would have been painted similarly and adorned with murals.”

Jade noted the absence of decorative artwork and wondered again at the reason for this well shaft that seemed to lead nowhere and which had been sealed off by its builders. Acosta’s speculation about it representing a passage to the Underworld was plausible enough, but Jade was beginning to wonder if they weren’t perhaps moving in the wrong direction.

A few minutes later, the end of the tunnel came into view. The light shone past the mouth of the shaft, and reflected off the domed ceiling of a larger chamber. The robot paused there for a moment as if allowing the people watching the video feed to appreciate the view.

“She’s trying to figure out how to climb out of the shaft,” explained Hodges. “It’s a little tricky, but she knows what to do.”

“Can you reorient the camera?” Jade asked.

“Sure thing.” Hodges picked up the second joystick and as he toggled it, the view began to change. Jade could now see more of the curving ceiling, including uniquely stylized images rendered in bright yellow and green against the red background.

“That’s the Great Goddess!” Acosta exclaimed, pointing at the screen.

Jade recognized the image, a spider-like figure that was believed to represent a deity unique to the Teotihuacan culture, in Mexico at least. “That might explain the vertical tunnel” she said. “The Great Goddess is believed to be the spirit of the Underworld, as well as a symbol of creation, similar to the Spider Grandmother in Southwestern Native American lore.”

“More spiders,” Professor said in a stage whisper.

“But no Quetzalcoatl,” replied Jade, matching his tone. “So much for that bright idea.”

“I did not realize the ancient Americans worshipped a spider god,” Dorion said.

“Spiders show up in a lot of cultural traditions on the North American continent, sometimes as a trickster—”

“You mean like the West African spider god Anansi,” interjected Professor.

“Yes, but more often the spider is seen as a creative or wise force. Her webs are the ideas that hold the universe together.”

Dorion pondered this for a moment, then asked, “Is there a connection to Arachne of Greek mythology?”

Jade was surprised at the physicist’s insight. “Not a direct connection, but you find a lot of these archetypes throughout history. Spiders have always been seen as magical creatures for their ability to spin intricate webs. It makes sense that ancient peoples began to see them as a symbol of creation.”

The conversation fell off as the robot succeeded in lifting itself out of the shaft, giving them an unrestricted view of the chamber. There were more murals, many with familiar themes, but nothing else — no artifacts and certainly no evidence of human remains.

“Well,” Acosta said after a long silence. “It’s not everything we could have hoped for, but it is certainly a remarkable find nonetheless.”

Jade wasn’t ready to admit defeat however. “Send the robot down the shaft,” she told Hodges, and then turning to Acosta, added. “What if this was a sacrificial well? We might find a lot more at the bottom than at the top.”

“Like a Mayan cenote? But why would they seal it off?”

Jade didn’t have an answer for that, but Acosta evidently did not require convincing. “Mr. Hodges, can you take us down?”

“No problem,” replied the robotics expert, and then amended, “unless you need to go more than a hundred meters. That’s the limit of Shelob’s cable.”

“It’s much more likely that we’ll hit groundwater and have to turn back. But since we’re here, we may as well have a look.”

Water, Jade knew, would not necessarily mean it was — metaphorically speaking — a dry hole. The Maya made extensive use of sacred cenotes — limestone sinkholes — for sacrificial purposes, and some of the greatest troves of Mayan artifacts had been discovered therein. There was a growing body of evidence to support the idea that the Teotihuacanos had performed ritual human sacrifice, though not of the heart-wrenching variety that would later be performed by the Aztecs, but not all offerings were blood sacrifices. The Maya would throw valuable artwork into cenotes — jewelry and golden sculptures — to appease their gods.

Jade mentally began assembling a shopping list of equipment she would need in order to dive. Professor could help her with that; the former SEAL had been her dive-master in Japan, and had a lot more expertise in the water than she. Maybe his intrusion would prove fortuitous after all.

The camera view swung around to show the top of the shaft, and after a few more minutes of maneuvering, the robot lowered itself into the tunnel and began descending. Jade found herself straining to catch some glimpse of what lay at the bottom of the long shaft, but it remained an impenetrable black dot at the center of the screen.

A spot of illumination appeared at the center of the darkness.

“Does anyone else see that?” Jade asked.

“Could be the light reflecting off water,” Professor suggested.

As the robot continued deeper, past the opening leading back to the chamber where the group was watching and down into parts of the shaft that had not been revealed by Dorion’s muon detectors, the spot of brightness grew more intense. Meanwhile, the tunnel walls became more irregular. It was still too perfectly vertical to be naturally occurring, but it seemed to Jade as if the craftsmen who had carved out the passage had gradually lost interest in maintaining perfect symmetry.

“Fifty meters,” Hodges reported. “This sucker is deep.”

The descent went on for several more minutes until, just as the cable was almost played out, the robot reached the far end of the passage. The source of the reflection however remained maddeningly indistinct; a bright spot directly below. Hodges tried moving the camera, but the bright spot continued to dominate the screen. The glare made it impossible to tell how much deeper the source of the reflection was.

“End of the line,” announced Hodges.

Jade turned to Acosta. “You’ve got to let me go in.”

The administrator gave her an astonished look, but she was ready for him. “I know what I’m doing,” she went on. “I have the equipment and will assume all the risk. I won’t touch anything or take a single step without consulting with you first. You have to let me do this Dr. Acosta. It’s the only way to know what’s down there.”

Acosta wasn’t ready to give up yet. “Isn’t there any way we can send the robot deeper?” he asked Hodges.

“I’d need more co-ax. But I’m not sure that would make a difference. It looks like a straight drop, and if that’s water down there, Shelob won’t be much use.”

Jade let Hodges’ verdict sink in a moment, then instead of repeating her plea, she said simply, “I’ll go get my gear.”

This time, Acosta did not even try to stop her.

FOUR

This is why I love being an archaeologist. Jade squirmed through the hole and looked down into the dark void. The LED headlamp she wore showed nothing that Shelob’s light had not already revealed, but that was about to change.

She placed her hands — now covered in fingerless gloves with an extra layer of reinforcement in the palms — against the smooth tunnel walls and pulled herself the rest of the way through, trusting the belaying rope secured to her climbing harness to keep her from taking the fast way down. She wriggled around until her feet were braced against the wall and then squeezed the brake release handle on her rappelling descender. The close confines of the tunnel kept her from making dynamic bounds, but the descent into the unknown was no less exhilarating.

She could make out Shelob at the bottom of the shaft looking like some kind metal drain screen. Four of its legs were stretched out, quartering the passage and holding the robot fixed in place, while the other four had retracted in close against its body. There was more than enough room for Jade to slip between the outstretched appendages, but she wasn’t ready to do that just yet.

She continued letting out rope — what little was left of it — until the sole of one of her hiking boots touched the robot’s slim central body. She tested her foothold, then let out a little more rope until all her weight was resting atop the robot. Something moved at one end of the body, presumably the camera turning to look at her.

She unclipped a small Motorola walkie-talkie from her belt and keyed the transmit button. “Can you hear me up there?”

Under normal conditions, the radio would have been useless, the signal blocked by the surrounding rock, but her signal didn’t have to reach the men in the chamber above. The receiving unit was wired into Shelob’s electronic guts, and the message would make the rest of the journey via the coaxial hardline.

Hodges’ voice sounded from the speaker. “Loud and clear.”

“Are you sure this thing can hold my weight for the next pitch?”

“Better than any of the climbing gear you could use to set your belay.”

That assurance didn’t fill her with enthusiasm, but she wasn’t about to turn back now. She peered down into the darkness below, noting the shiny spot almost directly underneath the robot. It was easier to judge the distance with her own eyes. “I think it’s only fifty feet or so to the bottom. Can’t tell if it’s submerged or not. I’m going to set the next rope.

She unlimbered a coil of Kernmantle climbing rope from her shoulder, laying it carefully atop the robot’s thorax, and then went to work rigging a second belay, using the robot as her anchor. When she had checked and double-checked her knots, she shifted the rope into one of the gaps and let it fall. There was a faint rustling sound as the line uncoiled, and then just a second later, a dull thud as most of it landed on something solid.

“No splash,” Jade said into the walkie-talkie. “Looks like we don’t have to worry about swimming. I’m heading down.”

There was a jumble of conversation — she heard Professor warning her to watch out for spiders — but Jade focused her attention on the task of unclipping from the first belay and switching to the one she had just rigged.

Because she was making a rope-only descent into the unknown, she proceeded more cautiously this time, slowly letting out the rope and keeping her eyes on what lay below. Once past the fixed body of the robot, she had a better view of her destination, but what she saw defied both expectations and explanations.

The source of the reflections appeared to be a large polished metal object — Jade assumed it was a mirror — positioned right below the shaft. She could see her rope trailing off one side. Her original estimate of fifty feet looked to be right on the money and after dropping half that distance, she was able to make out more detail about the cavern into which she was descending.

The shaft appeared to drop right into the middle of a stadium-sized hollow. The chamber extended in every direction further than her light could penetrate. Aside from the mirror — or whatever it was — the only evidence that the cave was not merely a natural formation was the uniformly smooth floor, which likewise seemed to go on forever. There was nothing on the floor, no altars or statues, nothing at all to hint at the purpose this sealed-off vault had once served.

She was close enough now to see her reflection in the polished surface below, a weird blob stretched out from the focal point as if she was looking at the back of a spoon. The mirrored surface was convex, curving downward in every direction. The ancients might conceivably have used it for diffusing sunlight and illuminating the rest of the cavern, Jade knew, but it would only have been useful when the sun was directly overhead, and once the pyramid was built, it would have served no purpose at all.

Jade continued sliding down until she was almost touching the reflector. Up close, she saw that she had been wrong about the object. It wasn’t just a convex mirror; it was a perfect sphere.

She recalled the discovery made at the Temple of the Feathered Serpent — a strange and unexplained collection of spherical orbs, ranging in size from about two to five inches, covered in iron pyrite to give them a gold-like sheen. This object was considerably larger, easily ten feet in diameter, and although Jade was no metallurgist, she was fairly certain that the metal surface was not “fool’s gold.” It was the real thing.

Jade hung there a moment longer, stunned by the discovery and perplexed by its significance. The sphere was like nothing she had ever seen before, certainly not in an archaeological dig. Unlike the hammered gold of most ancient American cultures, this enormous orb was perfectly smooth, as if polished by a machine. She decided she needed a closer look.

As her feet alighted on the sphere, it occurred to her — too late to do anything about it — that the ancients might have booby-trapped the orb. Nothing happened, but she decided to be more circumspect in her explorations. Pushing off from the top of the sphere, she swung her body out and squeezed the brake release, letting gravity do the rest. She touched down just a few steps away from the enormous golden ball.

It looked even more impressive at floor level, looming above her, almost double her own height, showing her stretched reflection. It reminded Jade a little of the Cloud Gate sculpture in Chicago’s Millennium Park. Satisfied that her arrival would not trigger some ancient anti-theft device, she unclipped from the belay and turned to take in the rest of the strange cavern.

“Hello! Echo!” It took so long for the sound to return to her that Jade was almost startled when it came. The chamber had to be enormous, at least a thousand feet across.

Before she could begin exploring, the rope trailing down from the shaft started to move, squirming like a snake. She jumped back, startled, and looked up to see someone abseiling down to join her. It was Professor.

Jade waited until both of his feet were on solid ground to let him have it. “What are you doing? Who said you could come down here?”

He flashed an indulgent smile. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I needed anyone’s permission. But if you must know, your boss, Dr. Acosta, gave me the green light. Just between you and me, I think he has trust issues.”

Before Jade could complain further, Professor turned to look at the sphere and gave a low whistle. “Holy…that’s gold!”

“I think so.”

“What’s it doing here?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet.” An idea occurred to her. “Hey, since you’re here, you can help me with something. Stay right there.”

Jade turned away and headed out across the cavern floor, ignoring his questions. With nothing to orient herself, there was a very real possibility, however small, that she might get lost in the vast emptiness of the cavern and spend hours wandering in circles trying to find her way back to the rope. If that happened, Professor could talk her in, using a variation of the childhood “hot and cold” game.

Fifty steps out from the sphere she caught the glint of another reflection in the darkness off to her right. She headed toward it and soon saw that it was another sphere, albeit much smaller than the enormous golden globe at the center; this sphere only reached slightly above knee height. That was not the only significant difference. This sphere appeared to be made of polished white stone. A second light reflecting off its surface alerted her to the fact that someone was approaching.

“What’s that?” asked Professor, making his way toward her.

Jade could still make out the golden orb glinting with the reflection of Shelob’s headlight, perhaps a hundred yards behind him. “I thought I told you to stay put. I might need you to help me find my way out of here.”

“You should have brought along a bag of breadcrumbs. Not to worry though. Paul can guide us back if needed.”

“Paul? He came down too?” Jade’s surprise at this development almost eclipsed her growing irritation. She couldn’t imagine why Dorion would be interested in venturing into the cavern, and he certainly had not struck her as the kind of person who would volunteer to rappel into a dark hole. “It’s turning into Grand Central Station down here. I suppose Acosta is coming down, too?”

“Just Noe, I think. The boss didn’t seem too eager to make the rappel. Brian’s going to stay topside as well, just in case we need a hand getting out.” Professor stepped around her for a better look at the second orb. “Two perfect spheres.” He turned to Jade. “Got a theory?”

“Well, the obvious interpretation would be that the gold sphere is the sun. Maybe this one is the moon.”

“I hear a ‘but.’”

“But there’s no evidence that the ancient American cultures thought of heavenly bodies as spheres. When they weren’t personified, the sun and moon were most often represented as disks. Never spheres.”

“We are dealing with one of the oldest and least understood cultures in the Americas,” Professor pointed out. “Maybe the Teotihuacanos did use spheres for their cosmological map. That big one is right underneath the Pyramid of the Sun, after all.”

“The Aztecs gave it that name. We don’t know what the Teos called it, but I doubt very much the Aztecs knew about any of this.” Jade knew it was foolish, and sometimes even dangerous, to speculate with so little information, but it was hard not to draw such a conclusion.

“There’s another one over here!” came an eager shout from the other side of the central orb. Jade recognized Noe’s excited voice.

Jade flashed Professor an irritated frown and got a helpless shrug in return. “Let’s go take a look.”

They found Sanchez and Dorion standing in front of another sphere, this one about twice as big as the white globe, reaching almost to Jade’s waist, and fashioned out of shiny blue-green stone. Unlike the white sphere, which had been a uniform color, this one was shot through with veins of black and flecks of iridescent white.

“I think it’s supposed to be Venus,” Sanchez said, excitedly. “This is a map of the solar system.”

“Not exactly to scale,” remarked Professor. “Venus would actually be about the size of a grapefruit and about half a mile farther away from the sun.”

“Still, you must give them some credit. Early Mesoamerican cultures like the Maya believed in a heliocentric universe. They understood the movement of heavenly bodies better than anyone before the invention of the telescope.”

Jade had to concede that point to her colleague, but before she could comment, she noticed Dorion staring at the sphere. His expression reminded her of their initial meeting, only now his almost creepy intensity was focused on the globe. It’s like he’s seen it before.

She dismissed the idea. “Let’s keep looking. If this really is a model of the solar system, then we’re short a few planets.”

“The ancients were aware of six planets,” Professor said, offhandedly. “Counting Earth of course.” His eyebrows drew together as if suddenly making another connection. “Venus and Mercury aren’t aligned in this model.”

“Why is that important?”

“Well, in the standard model of the solar system that we all grew up with, the planets are usually shown in a line, but a true planetary alignment is actually pretty rare. The planets all move at different orbital speeds. Mercury is over there…let’s call that six o’clock. Venus here is somewhere around nine thirty.”

“So this could be more than just a model,” Jade said. “It could be a calendar, indicating a specific day.”

Professor nodded. “If we can plot the other planets, it should be fairly easy to calculate corresponding dates. This particular configuration has probably happened several times throughout the history of the solar system, but one of those times might be linked to a specific date that was important to the Teotihuacanos.”

Jade grinned. “Now I remember why I liked having you around. Gentlemen, let’s go find our planet.”

They spread out in a picket line and began walking, continuing in a clockwise direction. They found the next sphere, a blue green orb similar to the Venus stone and just a little bigger, in the three o’clock position. Jade had just reached it when Professor pointed to something about thirty feet farther along. “Jade, is that what I think it is?”

She followed the beam of his headlamp and spied what looked like a heap of rags. “Depends. Do you think it’s a body?”

He nodded sagely.

“Let’s have a look.” Finding the mummified remains of one of the ancient inhabitants of the city, while not completely unexpected, was nevertheless a major coup. “Odd that they would just leave him lying out in the middle of…well, space. Do you think maybe he was the last priest left down here?”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Professor said, kneeling down beside the desiccated corpse, “but it looks like this fellow is a more recent addition.”

Jade couldn’t believe her eyes. Although it was impossible to draw any conclusions about the ethnicity of the man from the dark leathery skin drawn pulled tight across his skull, his clothing was most certainly not of a style worn by the original people of Teotihuacan or anyone else who would have been alive when the Pyramid of the Sun was being built.

Professor reached into the folds of the man’s doublet and withdrew a leather bound book. He opened it and confirmed what Jade already suspected. “It’s in Spanish. This guy’s handwriting is almost illegible, but there’s a date: October 23, 1593.” He looked up. “Sorry to break it to you, but it looks like we’re not the first to discover this cavern.”

Jade quickly overcame her dismay. This wasn’t the first time she’d ‘discovered’ a looted site, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. That was one of the endemic hazards of archaeology. “Well he didn’t come in the same way we did. There must be another entrance somewhere.”

“Jade!” Sanchez called out. He and Dorion were on hands and knees, shining their lights at the underside of the Earth stone. “You have to see this!”

“I guess it can wait,” she muttered. “Let’s go see what the kids are so excited about.”

Professor chuckled and tucked the book under one arm.

When she reached the blue sphere, she knelt down to see what had so arrested the attention of the two scientists. “Well, what have you got for me?”

Sanchez’s customary enthusiasm seemed amplified by an order of magnitude. “You won’t believe this, Jade. The sphere is moving!”

“Moving?” She looked at the sphere, but saw no evidence to support the claim.

“It’s barely perceptible, but watch.” He took a pen from his pocket and held its tip close to a dark spot on the sphere’s surface near what would have been its equator. Jade stared at it intently, and even though she couldn’t see any change in the position of the orb, after a minute or so, the point of the pen was no longer above the spot. “It’s rotating,” Sanchez said, excitedly. “And I’d be willing to bet that its rotational period is exactly twenty-four hours. Jade, this isn’t just a map of the solar system; it’s an orrery! A functioning model that simulates the rotation and orbits of the planets.”

“That can’t be right. Is there some kind of mechanism underneath this thing?” Jade dropped down to where Dorion was peering at the underside of the sphere.

“No mechanism,” Dorion replied. “In fact, I don’t think it’s actually making contact with the floor at all.”

She directed her light at the spot where the curve of the sphere met the floor. Dorion was right. The sphere appeared to be hovering a hair’s breadth above the floor.

Professor just shook his head. “So much for straightforward archaeology.”

FIVE

Brian Hodges listened intently as Jade’s voice issued from the speakers of his laptop. Beside him, Acosta was hanging on her every word.

“A Spaniard you say? Have you read the journal?”

“Not yet,” replied Jade’s voice over the radio relay. “We got a little distracted by something else. It seems the ancients built a working model of the solar system down here.”

“A working model?” echoed Acosta. “What does that mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. There’s an enormous golden sphere to represent the sun, and surrounding it are smaller spheres that represent the planets. We’ve found four of them so far; one for Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. We haven’t looked past Mars yet, but I’m betting we’ll find Jupiter and Saturn as well. But here’s the really weird part. The spheres are actually rotating and orbiting the sun just like the actual planets.”

Hodges felt a dry lump rise form in his throat. This was exactly the kind of thing he’d been worried about.

“We didn’t notice the movement in Mercury and Venus,” said Pete Chapman’s voice, “because they rotate so slowly. In fact, Mercury’s day is longer than its orbital year. But we’ve confirmed that the spheres for both Earth and Mars are rotating at a rate that corresponds exactly to the rotation of the actual planets.”

“This is amazing,” Acosta exclaimed.

“From what I can tell,” Chapman continued, “the present arrangement of these four spheres corresponds exactly to the position of the planets in the sky. I’m not sure what makes this thing tick, but it’s pretty uncanny.”

Acosta nodded vigorously, evidently forgetting that the people on the other end of the line couldn’t see him. “I need to see it for myself.” He turned to Hodges. “Can you help me get down? I’ve never done that sort of thing before.”

Hodges managed an eager smile to hide his growing sense of alarm. “Sure thing. The more the merrier.”

Jade leaned close to watch as Professor slipped the long blade of his knife into the gap between the bottom of what she was now calling the “Earth stone” and the floor of the cavern.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“No,” he admitted. “So maybe you should take a step back.”

She frowned but did not retreat. He edged the blade in slowly, as if probing a landmine, then with just as much caution, drew it back out.

“Well,” he said, “there’s no magnetic field. And the sphere is definitely not making contact with the ground. I’m stumped.”

Dorion cleared his throat. “I may have an idea about what’s at work here.”

Jade faced him. “We’re all ears.”

Dorion took a breath as if gathering his courage. “Are you familiar with dark matter?”

Professor stood. “It’s a theoretical substance thought to account for more than eighty percent of the total mass of the universe.”

Dorion nodded. “Dark matter particles have no electrical charge and are therefore completely undetectable.”

“If they exist at all,” countered Professor. He turned to Jade. “The dark matter hypothesis was formulated to account for the fact that the universe doesn’t seem to behave the way it should, mathematically speaking. But there’s a growing belief that maybe the problem lies with the math or with our fundamental understanding of the laws of physics.”

“Back up,” Jade said, turning to Dorion. “How would dark matter explain this?”

“Everything we can see and touch, or measure with our instruments, relies upon the interaction of positive and negatively charged particles. All matter — light matter, if you will — is made up protons and electrons, which create atoms. Of course, many atoms also contain neutrons, which have mass but no electrical charge, but are nevertheless bonded by atomic force and surrounded by an electron shell. We are able to see matter because light energy bounces off the electron shell of these atoms. And we are able to touch and interact with matter because the electron shells of the atoms in a given object and the electron shell in the atoms in our bodies oppose each other, as negatively charged particles will do.”

“Negative charges repel each other the same way that the poles of a magnet will,” added Professor. “But were talking imperceptible distances, measured on a subatomic scale. The distance between opposing electron shells is less than the thickness of an atom. It’s certainly not enough to levitate an object.”

“That’s not what I’m suggesting,” countered Dorion. “Rather, I believe there may be a field of dark matter particles surrounding these spheres, acting as a cushion between the electrons. These particles are known as Weakly Interactive Massive Particles—”

“Wimps?” said Jade with a chuckle.

Dorion smiled. “Physicists have a unique sense of humor. Yes, these WIMPs have mass and gravity but are not affected by electro-magnetic radiation or by nuclear force. Gravity may hold them together, but we would not be able to see or feel them.

“Think of them as the packing material of the universe. If you have a box filled with foam pellets and you place something heavy inside, some of the pellets will be displaced, but not all.”

“You said these WIMPs don’t have a charge. Wouldn’t they pass right through the atoms?”

Professor nodded, evidently impressed by Jade’s quick grasp of the concept and the flaw in Dorion’s hypothesis.

“They should,” admitted the physicist. “We know very little about the behavior of these particles. As I said, it’s only an idea.”

Jade turned back to the Earth stone. “Let’s say for argument’s sake that’s what’s going on here. Is it dangerous?”

“No more so than the cosmic rays that constantly bombard us from outer space.”

Dorion’s slight hesitation before answering was just enough to make Jade wonder what he wasn’t telling her, but Professor nodded. “If they exist,” he repeated.

Jade considered the hypothesis. “You say that we can’t interact with the WIMPs at all. How did the ancients manage to do it? How did they make all of this?”

Dorion shrugged. “They may not have understood what they were observing. It must have seemed like magic to them.”

Professor playfully elbowed Jade.

“It would not be the first time an ancient civilization made use of physical forces beyond their comprehension,” interjected Sanchez. “But let’s not overlook the fact that this is an astonishing model of the heavens. It reveals an unprecedented knowledge of the astronomy.”

“Speaking of which,” Jade said. “Have you noticed that something is missing?”

“We haven’t finished exploring the cavern yet. I’m sure we’ll find more planets as we move out.”

“I’m not talking about the planets. Where’s the moon?”

The other men stared at her, dumbfounded and slightly embarrassed at having missed something so obvious.

“The moon was almost as important to the ancients as the sun. It was their clock for measuring the seasons. Are we supposed to believe they just forgot to include it in this map?”

“Perhaps they weren’t able to make a functional Moon stone,” suggested Dorion.

Jade thought even he sounded doubtful, but given the astonishing properties of the model, it was a possibility that couldn’t be ignored.

“Maybe someone took it,” suggested Professor, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the mummified remains of the Spaniard.

“Why take the moon and leave behind the golden sun?”

“I can think of tons of reasons, literally.”

“It’s a big ball,” said Jade. “They could have just rolled it to the door.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t fit.” Professor looked down at the Earth stone. “Maybe it’s not as easy to move these things as it looks. Maybe the WIMPs or whatever makes the solar system model work is also holding them in place.”

“Now there’s a hypothesis we can actually test.” Jade took a step forward and placed her palms against the exterior of the sphere. She thought she felt a slight tingling through the padding of her gloves, but chalked it up to her imagination.

“Jade, are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“No,” she replied grinning. “So maybe you should—”

Darkness swept over her so quickly she didn’t even have time to cry out.

Professor rushed forward and caught Jade before she could fall. He braced himself for a hit of whatever had knocked her out, but nothing happened. He pulled her back several paces before easing her unresponsive form to the ground and checking for a pulse.

“She will be all right,” Dorion stated, confidently. “The effect will last only a few seconds at most.”

“Effect?” snarled Professor. “Are you saying you know what this is? You said it was harmless.”

“It is,” Dorion insisted. “She has not been…harmed.”

There’s that pause again, thought Professor. This guy knows more than he’s telling.

Jade’s pulse and breathing were strong, and there was no sign of injury. To all appearances, it was a simple fainting spell, but what had caused it?

Professor took the radio from his belt. “Brian do you copy?”

There was a long silence — too long, Professor thought, but maybe that’s just because I’m worried — then his partner’s voice came back. “Copy, Pete. I was just helping Dr. Acosta with the rappel. He should be heading your way in just a few.”

“Acosta…? Jade just collapsed. We need to evac her and shut this place down.”

“Shut it down? Pete, what’s going on down there?”

Professor bit back an irritated retort. In Hodges’ place, he would have been curious, too. “Something happened when she touched one of these spheres. I don’t think she’s injured, but until we know more about what we’re dealing with, I don’t want anyone getting close to these things.”

“What are we dealing with?”

Professor heard the unasked question. While Hodges had not been involved with the Myrmidons during the Atlantis crisis, he had been fully briefed on the strange Atlantean technology the Dominion had used to destroy Key West and Norfolk and he knew that there were probably even stranger things in the world yet to be discovered.

“I’m not sure, but….yeah, I think this is going to be one for the X-Files. Tell you all about it when I get topside.”

As he signed off, he spied Acosta ambling in their direction, completely unaware of what had just happened and bursting with excitement. Professor turned his attention back to Jade. He considered simply scooping her up in his arms and carrying her back to the center, but decided that would probably be unnecessarily dramatic. If, as Dorion suggested, she had merely fainted, then she would probably wake up shortly.

He grasped her shoulder and gave her a gentle shake. “Hey, sleepyhead. Wake up.”

Jade’s eyelids fluttered then opened completely. She stared back at him for a moment and then started as if she had received an electrical shock. She looked around with an almost feral expression.

“Hey, you’re okay. It’s okay.”

Her eyes continued to dart from face to face for a moment, then she gave a relieved sigh. “Oh, thank God. It was just a…” She shook her head. “What happened?”

Before Professor could answer her question, Dorion knelt and grasped her other shoulder. “Jade, tell me. What did you see?”

“What did I…?” Her expression darkened. “How did you know?”

“You saw something happening to us didn’t you? A premonition?”

She shook her head again. “It was just a dream.”

“Jade, you must tell me what you saw. It’s important.”

Her gaze flitted from face to face. “I think we all died.”

Professor stood abruptly. “That’s it. We’re out of here now. Everybody, head back to the Sun stone.”

For once, Jade did not argue with him or challenge his decision. Nor did any of the others; even Acosta seemed to understand that now was not the time for questions. Professor oriented on the distant golden sphere, faintly glowing with the reflection of Shelob’s light, and headed out at a brisk pace. Jade, evidently fully recovered, matched him step for step.

“We’re going to have to Jumar out of here,” she said, referring to the mechanical device used for ascending a fixed rope. The Jumar worked on a principle similar to the rappelling devices they had used to come down, with a spring-loaded brake that allowed it to slide up a rope but not back down, and attached loops to use as steps. Because the device could only be advanced a foot or two at a time, climbing out of the cavern was going to be a time consuming process, especially for the less experienced members of the team.

He shook his head. “No time for that. I’ll go first. Once I’m up, I can pull the rest of you up one by one. It will go a lot faster.” He gave her a sidelong glance. “Listen, I’m not saying I believe in psychic visions or anything like that, but in your dream, how exactly did we,you know…get dead?”

She looked away. “You’ll laugh.”

“Probably, but tell me anyway.”

She pointed ahead toward their destination, now just twenty yards away. “That thing.”

“The Sun sphere?”

She shook her head, but before she could elaborate, Professor caught movement in the corner of his eye. He turned toward it just in time to see a dark spindly shape, trailing a pair of loose serpentine threads, drop from the ceiling. There was a gonging sound as it impacted against the top of golden orb and slid off the far side, out of view.

Professor stopped dead in his tracks, stunned speechless. Shelob, the anchor for the rope that would get them out of the cavern, had just fallen out of the shaft. Now they were stuck here, at least until Hodges could rig something else up. He held the walkie-talkie up and keyed the transmit button.

“Brian, your robot just burned in.”

No reply.

Duh! The robot had also been relaying the radio signals through the coaxial cable which had evidently broken or come unplugged. Now they were stranded and incommunicado. It never rains…

Jade’s hand clamped tight against his forearm. Her other hand was again pointing at the golden sphere…No, at something scuttling out from behind it.

“That,” she said in a grave voice, “is what I saw.”

SIX

Jade had experienced déjà vu before, but nothing like this. When she’d come to, she had been unprepared for the shock of seeing Professor and the others alive and uninjured, when she had, only moments before, watched them die… and died with them.

And now, it was all happening, just as it had in her…dream?

No way. No way was that a dream. I saw the future. I don’t know how, but I did.

Paul Dorion knew, too.

I’ve seen you before. It was in a dream, I think.

Now his bizarre manner during their first meeting made a little more sense. He hadn’t been attempting to flirt and failing miserably; he had been serious.

She was going to have a long talk with Paul Dorion, if, of course the robot spider shuffling toward them didn’t kill them all first.

“What the hell?” Professor took a step toward the robot. “I can’t believe it’s still working. That was a fifty foot drop.”

Jade grabbed his arm again and pulled him back. She again felt the surreal mental dislocation of déjà vu, except this time instead of the sensation that she was reliving a moment, she was acutely aware of the differences between her premonition and what was happening. “No. Keep away from it.” She turned back to the other three men. “Get back. You don’t want to be anywhere near this thing.”

The robot kept advancing, its eight legs moving with a steady mechanical rhythm. It was less than ten yards away and moving directly toward them. There was nothing particularly menacing about its movements, but Jade remembered all too clearly what would come next. Except this wasn’t how it had happened.

This isn’t how it happened.

We were just starting to climb when it dropped down on us and then there was a flash….

“It’s going to blow up!”

“That’s crazy,” countered Professor. “It’s a computer on legs, not a walking IED.”

“I think you should take her word for it,” said Dorion, unexpectedly. “She has lived this before.”

Wonderful, thought Jade. Leave it to the creepy guy to back me up.

Professor wisely yielded to her exhortation and the group retreated together, running all the way to the Earth stone. Shelob could not keep up, but a backward glance showed its single head-lamp, steadily getting brighter with its approach.

Acosta seemed to remember that he was supposed to be in charge. He turned on Professor. “What is happening to the robot? Why is it chasing us?”

“It’s in autonomous mode,” Professor said. “It came unplugged. Maybe its default program is to come find us. But it can’t hurt us and it certainly isn’t going to blow up.”

“Why did it fall? Is it malfunctioning?”

“I don’t know. Brian is the expert.”

Jade felt her grip on the strange premonition slip away, exactly like a dream on waking. The door to whatever it was she had experienced was closing, and yet her sense that the robot was dangerous remained. Maybe Prof was right. Maybe I do have a phobia.

The one image she could not shake was the flash, and the oblivion that followed.

She turned to Professor. “Give me the walkie.”

He passed it over. “You won’t get a signal out,” he warned.

“I’m not trying to.” She keyed the mic and held it down. “Is it my imagination, or did that thing just perk up its ears?”

“It’s your imagination.”

Jade flung the radio toward the approaching robot. “Get down.”

“Hey!” Professor stifled his protest. “What exactly was that supposed to—”

There was bright flash and an imperceptible moment later, the blast hit them. A wall of energy — heat and force — slammed into them. If the men had not heeded her advice, they would have been knocked down, and likely shredded by pieces of shrapnel and chips of stone that surfed the leading edge of the shock wave.

The blast resonated through Jade’s body, pummeling her intestines. Her ears rang with the noise of the detonation, and she felt particles of debris stinging her exposed skin. For a moment, she wondered if she had delayed too long, given the warning too late. Was this her premonition coming true after all? Were they all dead?

A cough broke through the shrill constant pinging noise, and then she heard confused mumblings. Someone was alive…she was alive.

She raised her head and looked around. The cavern seemed darker, and not just because Shelob’s light had been extinguished. The flash had momentarily overloaded her retinas and now everything was shrouded in a pinkish haze.

She saw the others. They were all intact, covered in a fine layer of dust, bleeding from minor cuts just like her, but there was no evidence of serious injury. Professor recovered faster than the others — it probably wasn’t his first explosion — but, his expression was no less shocked than hers.

“Impossible,” he said, or at least that was the word his lips formed. Jade couldn’t tell if he had spoken it aloud. His eyes met hers. “Are you okay?”

He must have shouted because she heard that. She nodded and he immediately turned his attention to the others. She joined him, verifying that no one was seriously hurt, rousing them all. When they had finished, he turned back to her.

“That was a bomb.”

“No kidding.”

He shook his head. “No, I mean a real bomb. High explosives. Probably C4.”

“Does it matter?”

“You knew the robot would follow the walkie-talkie signal. Was that another premonition?”

“No. It was a hunch.”

“Well, either way, it saved us.” He gripped her arm as if trying to squeeze his revelation into her. “Jade, this was an attack.”

“You think Hodges is working for…them?”

Even though he must have already believed that, her statement seemed to catch him off guard. “It doesn’t make sense. The Dominion killed his family.”

She could see the gears turning in his head, running through scenarios that might explain how his partner had been turned. What if the story about his family was a lie, planted to ensure that he would be accepted into the Myrmidons? What if he was a sociopath, so driven to support his secret masters that he had willingly sacrificed his loved ones?

“We’re not going to figure it out down here,” she said. “We have to find another way out.” Without waiting for an answer, Jade turned to the other men. “We’ll go the edge of the cavern and skirt along it until we can find the other entrance.”

“What if there isn’t one?” asked Acosta, a nervous quaver in his voice.

“There has to be. That Spaniard found a way in.”

“And never got out. What if it’s sealed?”

“Then we dig. What we’re not going to do is give up. Got it?”

The men nodded, and she noted that while Acosta and Sanchez looked thoroughly beaten, the physicist seemed eager, almost triumphant.

Jade reminded herself to have to have a long talk with Paul Dorion.

After the initial shock of the explosion wore off, the enormity of the task before them settled upon the group with the weight of the earth that separated them from freedom. No one spoke. They all just trudged forward into the open endless darkness. Even the discovery of another huge sphere — this one made of a granular stone that might have been granite or gabbro, and almost as tall as Jade herself — failed to buoy anyone’s spirits.

“Jupiter or Saturn?” Sanchez asked with all the enthusiasm of a grocery clerk asking about a bagging preference.

“Hopefully Saturn,” Jade replied, trying to sound upbeat. “That would mean we’re close to the edge.”

They could no longer see the golden orb at the center. Without a light source, it had been swallowed up completely, though Jade suspected that even if it had been illuminated, it would have been a pinprick of light. The chamber was that vast.

“Do you think this cavern is natural, or did they dig it out?” She had hoped to engage Sanchez or Acosta with the question, but Professor answered first.

“Probably a little of both. They found a natural cave and made it bigger. Unless I’m mistaken, we’re not under the pyramid any more. That might explain how the entrance we’re looking for remained hidden for so long.”

“If it even exists,” mumbled Acosta.

“It exists,” Jade insisted. “They had to have a way to get those spheres in here.”

Professor seized on her assertion. “Jade, about the spheres. When you tried to move the Earth stone—”

“Please. Let’s talk about something else.”

“That’s not what I meant. Were you able to move it at all?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. As soon as I tried…”

Professor nodded. “It was more than just contact. We were all close to the spheres. I’m sure I must have touched them at some point. It was only when you tried to move it that something happened. And it didn’t move.” Jade realized he was looking at Dorion.

The physicist shrugged, but Jade again sensed that he was intentionally holding back. “If we are dealing with some kind of dark matter field, it would affect the density of the object, making it more massive than it would appear.”

“Which raises a lot of questions about where these spheres came from in the first place, and how the ancients were able to move them into position.”

“I don’t know about dark matter,” Sanchez said, finally warming up to the discussion. “But the spheres themselves are very reminiscent of those found in Costa Rica.”

Jade nodded, making the connection. Although spherical representations were mostly absent from Mesoamerican cultures, there was one significant exception. The river valleys of Costa Rica were littered with enormous stone spheres, more than three hundred of them, the largest of which measured over six feet in diameter. The spheres were unquestionably artifacts of a human civilization, but beyond the fact of their existence, little was known about them. Most scholars attributed them to the extinct Diquis culture which vanished with the arrival of Spanish colonists, but their purpose and the means by which a primitive culture had successfully crafted nearly perfect spheres using only stone tools remained a mystery. UFO enthusiasts often pointed to the spheres as evidence of alien visitation, while others speculated a connection to Atlantis. Given her own recent adventures, Jade could not completely discount either idea. Indeed, an Atlantean connection might explain why the Dominion — assuming that’s who Hodges was working for — had taken an interest in the investigation at Teo.

“That’s a long way to roll a stone,” Professor remarked. “Costa Rica is fifteen hundred miles away, and there’s a lot of rough country in between.”

“They would not need to transport the stones,” Sanchez countered. “Just the people with the skill to make them here.”

“Or it could be the other way around,” said Jade. “Maybe the people who made these spheres went south when Teotihuacan was abandoned. It’s worth looking into…when we get out of here.”

As if responding to the forcefulness of her statement, the floor of the cavern began sloping up in a gentle curve, which abruptly became a wall. The stone was smooth, clearly worked by hand, but completely unadorned.

“It would seem we’ve reached the end of the universe,” Professor remarked.

Jade gestured to the right. “Let’s start orbiting and see where it leads.”

No one objected and the trek resumed, this time following the cavern perimeter. The chamber was so large that it felt like they were walking in a straight line, and without any other points of reference, there was nothing to suggest that they were not.

“Really makes you appreciate the vastness of space,” Professor said.

Jade thought he was probably just trying to fill the silence, but she welcomed anything that distracted from the ceaseless thud of their footsteps on the stone floor.

“I am more awed by the work that went into carving out this chamber,” replied Sanchez. “It must have taken decades, even if there was an existing cavern. I would imagine some of the material removed was used in the construction of the pyramids.”

“They may have discovered this cavern while mining for obsidian,” suggested Acosta, warming to the topic.

Jade listened with mild interest to the discussion until, without any real warning, they found what she was looking for.

The mouth of the tunnel was, like everything else they had encountered in the cavern, round and worked smooth by its builders. The top of the perfect circle was at least twice as tall as Jade, easily large enough to accommodate even the Sun sphere. The discovery however was met with stunned disbelief.

“I guess now we know why the Spaniard didn’t leave,” Professor said, his voice barely above a whisper.

Just a few steps into the passage, the perfect symmetry was marred by a wall of loose dirt and rock that could only be the result of a catastrophic cave-in. A second entrance to the cavern did exist, just a Jade had known it would, but it would do them no good. The way out was completely blocked.

SEVEN

Hodges admired the precision with which the soldiers of the Mexican Army deployed across the Teotihuacan archaeological preserve, establishing a secure perimeter. Because it was after hours — nearly midnight in fact — there were no tourists to evacuate, only a small staff of guards and caretakers who had been quickly escorted away. None of the soldiers had ventured near the Pyramid of the Sun or made any effort to establish contact with him. He wondered if any of them had the faintest idea what was going on at the center of the ancient city, or more precisely, under it. They had arrived swiftly, seemingly within minutes of his decision to make the call and take pre-emptive action, just as the protocols demanded.

When he had joined the cause, just a few short weeks before, he had secretly wondered if those protocols were not overly alarmist in nature. An Alpha level event seemed about as likely as an alien invasion or a zombie apocalypse. Even when Chapman had warned him that Jade Ihara had a way of finding “weird stuff,” even when he had secretly wired an improvised explosive device into Shelob’s thorax, he had not believed things could escalate so quickly, or that he would be at the center of the storm.

He would never have believed that he would have to make a decision that would result in the deaths of five people.

He had joined the cause to save lives, not take them.

The sound of another helicopter approaching snapped him out of his dark mood. He watched from the shelter of the passage entrance as it passed over the outer cordon and settled to the ground nearby, so close that he had to blink away the grit stirred up by its rotor wash. He saw that it was a civilian bird, not one of the UH-60s used by the Mexican troops. He took a moment to compose himself, and then headed out to meet it.

Hodges didn’t recognize the face of the man who stepped down from helicopter, but he knew his name — Andres Gutierrez, oil billionaire and the second wealthiest man in Mexico — and he knew, in a general sense who the man was. All senior leadership of the cause might have been cast from the same mold; intelligent, driven, richer than God, and a control freak. Gutierrez’s very presence was evidence that he did not believe in delegating authority.

“Hodges?” the man shouted from beneath the still turning rotors.

“Yes, sir.” He broke into a jog, and reached the man a few seconds later.

Gutierrez was tall and lean, and to Hodges’ surprise, looked about as Mexican as Brad Pitt. In fact, Hodges thought, he looked a lot like Brad Pitt — blond hair, blue eyes and the best rugged movie star good looks money could buy. He did not offer his hand, but looked past Hodges at the massive pyramid behind him. “Piramide del Sol is a symbol of my country,” he said, gesturing expansively. His English was as perfect as his appearance, with only his accent betraying which country he was referring to. “This had better not be a false alarm.”

“Yes, sir. I mean no, sir, it’s not.”

Gutierrez finally looked at him. “An Alpha event? You’re sure?”

Hodges briefly recounted what he knew of the discovery, realizing that all he really knew about the mysterious floating spheres was what Chapman and Jade Ihara had reported back to him. What if he had overreacted?

Gutierrez however just nodded. “You made the right decision.” He turned and waved to someone in the helicopter. A man wearing combat fatigues with three stars on his epaulets and carrying an olive drab duffel bag, got out and moved to join them.

“What’s that?” asked Hodges, eyeing the officer’s pack.

“I believe it is called a thermobaric device,” Gutierrez said. “It is a very powerful explosive device.”

Hodges knew exactly what a thermobaric device — sometimes also called a fuel-air bomb — was, and what it would do when it was detonated. The device functioned in two stages, the first blast scattered a cloud of fuel, usually some kind of reactive metal, into the air where it quickly mixed with oxygen to become extremely volatile. The fuel mixture permeated the target area; there was no defense against it, nowhere to take shelter. A second detonation would ignite it in a massive explosion that could collapse a hardened bunker, and set the very air on fire. Anyone surviving the blast would quickly suffocate, and if they survived that, the resulting vacuum created at the center of the blast could literally suck a person’s lung out through their mouth.

“If you use that down there, it could very well destroy the pyramid.”

Gutierrez gave him a cold stare. “I think now you understand just how serious we are about this. We must ensure that no trace of this discovery remains, and that there be no one left to tell the world about it.”

Hodges felt a surge of panic shoot through him. Had he overreacted?

Then he thought about Norfolk, and everything that he had lost, and knew that Gutierrez was right. He had made the right call.

Despite Jade’s insistence that even a blocked exit was better than nothing at all, and that the only way to win their freedom was to start digging, the mood quickly devolved.

In reality, it was mostly Acosta, trumpeting a litany of pessimism. Was it even possible to move so much earth? What if there was another cave-in right behind it and another? What it the entire passage back to the surface had collapsed? But his defeatism was spreading to the others. Sanchez was the first to succumb; Jade noticed that instead of actually moving dirt and rocks out of the way, the normally effusive scholar seemed to be pushing his burden around, like a child trying to conceal the fact that he wasn’t eating his vegetables by scattering them across a plate. Dorion, too started flagging after just twenty minutes of work.

The atmosphere of negativity just made Jade angry, which was almost as counterproductive. She kept her emotions at bay only by contemplating how she would gloat when she led them all to freedom. Only Professor seemed immune to the pervasive attitude of failure, working at the top of the earthen mound, using his knife to loosen the packed soil. Jade suspected his relentless industriousness was his own way of coping with Hodges’ evident treachery, but there was nothing to be gained by pointing that out.

Professor made a triumphant sound. “Just broke through.”

Jade climbed up behind him and peered into the small cavity he had created. He continued hacking with the knife, pushing the loose dirt forward into the hole where it disappeared. She was just turning back to let the others know when she heard Acosta cry out.

“They’ve come to rescue us!”

The administrator was pointing into the darkness behind them, except it was no longer dark. A light was shining in the distance, reflecting Jade assumed, from the polished golden sphere in the center of the cavern. Acosta immediately started running toward it, waving his arms and shouting. Sanchez took a few tentative steps after him.

Jade slid down to the bottom of the rock pile. “Dr. Acosta, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea…”

Professor was right beside her. “Come back here, you fool. They tried to kill us. No one is coming to rescue us.”

His words stopped Sanchez, but Acosta was beyond the reach of his voice, figuratively if not also literally.

Jade turned to him. “You think Hodges is coming to finish what he started?”

“I don’t think we can afford to take the chance that he isn’t.” He scrambled back up to the top of the cave in and peered into the hole he had made. “I think it’s big enough to get through. Come on.”

Jade turned to the two men still waiting below. “Paul, Noe. Let’s go.”

“But Dr. Acosta…?”

Jade felt a pang at abandoning the administrator to an uncertain fate, but she knew that nothing she could say would dissuade Acosta. She found herself wishing that the Earth stone — or whatever strange phenomenon had been at work — had shown her this outcome. What if the light was from a rescue party?

“Jade!”

Professor’s shout snapped her out her reverie. She knew that Professor, with his quaint ideas about chivalry, would not go through until she was safely on the other side, so she climbed up, plunged head and shoulders into the narrow gap and started crawling.

It was a tight fit, so tight that she wondered how the larger men would get through, but after scooting just a few feet, she felt the dirt move beneath her, and then she was sliding down a steep slope.

The air beyond was stale and smelled of dampness and decay. Her headlamp revealed only a little of what lay beyond, but it was enough for her to see that the tunnel, unlike the vast cavern, had not been sealed off from the outside world.

There was a scrabbling noise behind her and she turned to see Dorion struggling to get through the opening. She reached up, caught one flailing hand, and pulled.

Dorion shot forward like a cork from a champagne bottle and they tumbled down the slope together, landing in a tangle at the bottom. She was back up in an instant, ready to help the others through, but no one came. She could hear Professor shouting to Sanchez, urging him to move. She ascended to the opening once more and peered through, adding her own voice to the effort.

There was a bright flash at the center of the cavern.

Jade heard Professor shout a rare profanity and propel himself into the mouth of the dugout tunnel with such forcefulness that when he burst through, it triggered a small avalanche.

“Get down!”

Jade did, covering her head, but not before she caught a glimpse of another figure struggling to get through the opening. It was Sanchez. Professor threw a hand up to pull him through, but as their fingers touched, Sanchez’s eyes widened in alarm.

The world jumped, as if God had banged a fist down on the earth’s crust. Dirt flew up, fine dust particles creating a choking cloud, and suddenly the air felt as hot as the throat of a dragon. The shockwave of an explosion — not a mere firecracker like the IED in the robot, but a detonation that felt like the end of the world — vibrated through every fiber of Jade’s body. It was like being hit by a bus while in free fall.

She saw Sanchez writhing in agony, Professor struggling through the chaos to pull him free and then, he was gone, snatched away by some invisible force. Through the opening, she could see nothing but fire.

Jade felt the air sucked out her lungs. She couldn’t cry out, couldn’t even gasp. A gale force wind swept out of the unexplored darkness behind them, carrying with it a dust storm that scoured her exposed skin as it was sucked through the opening where Sanchez had been only a moment before.

Then, only silence.

Half a mile from the pyramid, Hodges felt only a faint thump rise up from the earth. He held his breath, half expecting the enormous man-made mountain to fly apart or crumble into a heap of stones, or perhaps simply sink into the earth in one piece, filling the void where the strange cavern had been.

When it became evident that none of those things would happen, Hodges felt strangely relieved. At least he would not add the destruction of the one-of-a-kind historical monument to his list of crimes.

The thermobaric weapon had been relatively small and if the cavern was indeed as large as Chapman had indicated, most of the bomb’s explosive force would have been diffused, compressing the air in the chamber without necessarily weakening the surrounding rock.

Gutierrez nodded in satisfaction. “It’s done.”

“How will we explain what happened here?”

“Tomorrow morning, the news will report a minor earthquake. No one will question this; I will see to it. The site will be closed to the public until the extent of the damage can be assessed. I doubt there’s anything left down there, but we will fill the cavern with concrete to ensure that every trace of this discovery is sealed away forever.” As if sensing Hodges next question, the billionaire continued, “When you report to your superiors, you can tell them that your colleagues were killed in the cave in. That should ensure your cover remains intact. You may wish to remain here for a few days.”

“Surely you don’t think they survived that?”

“No, but for appearances sake, you should make a token effort to search for them.”

“And then?”

“Then? Go back to your assignment. Our war has only just begun.” Gutierrez clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t look so depressed. You may have just saved the world.”

EIGHT

Jade’s first breath burned in her lungs like acid. It seemed as if the oxygen in the air had been used up, replaced by some poisonous vapor, but her body demanded that she inhale. She coughed, feeling grit in her mouth and throat, and tried again with only marginally more success.

She sat up and straightened her headlamp, which miraculously had survived the blast. She saw Dorion and Professor — the latter was already on his feet and climbing up to look through the hole leading back to the cavern. Jade shuddered as the image of Noe Sanchez, sucked through that hole and into the heart of the firestorm, came unbidden into her mind.

“What the hell was that?”

“A bunker buster,” snarled Professor without looking back. “A fuel-air explosive. Military grade. When I get my hands on Hodges…” He faltered, unable to conceive an act of retribution sufficient to balance the scales. “Are you okay?”

“Hard to breathe.”

“It’ll pass.” He slid down to join her. “The bomb burned most of the oxygen in the cavern, but the resulting vacuum sucked fresh air, relatively speaking, up from this tunnel. That’s good news at least. It probably means there’s a way out.”

He sighed, looking defeated. “Jade, I’m sorry. I didn’t see this coming.”

She stared back at him, wondering if she had any right to be angry with him. “Forget it,” she said, hoping it didn’t sound as insincere as it felt. She coughed and tried again. “If it hadn’t been Hodges, it probably would have been someone else. You saved us.”

“Not all of us,” he muttered.

Jade turned away and knelt to rouse Dorion. The physicist was awake, but had a wide-eyed, shell-shocked expression, and Jade thought it best to use a light touch. “Paul, we have to keep moving, okay?”

Dorion looked past her as if unable to focus, but nodded.

Jade turned her light into the depths of the tunnel ahead. The walls were rough, cut from the surrounding igneous rock, much like the tunnel that had led from the surface into the first chamber beneath the pyramid, but broader, more open. There was evidence of further collapse along the length of the tunnel, but nothing of the same scale as what had blocked the opening. As they advanced, Jade tried to imagine the ancients rolling the enormous golden sphere through the passage to its final destination, and then wondered if there was anything left of it now.

She wanted to ask Dorion about the spheres and dark matter, and how he seemed to know about her prescient vision, but he seemed in no state of mind to answer such questions. She turned instead to Professor. “What I don’t get is this: if Hodges is working with the Dominion, why destroy the spheres? That’s not their style.”

Professor pondered this for a moment. “Someone else then? It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Wonderful.”

“Well, at least now we don’t have to worry about the Dominion using those spheres to power some new apocalyptic weapon.”

“Look at you, finding the silver lining.” She meant it to be playful, but in her own ears, it sounded sarcastic, so she quickly added. “Except of course that there’s still one out there.”

He gave her a sidelong glance. “What do you mean?”

“The Moon stone.”

“We don’t even know that there was a Moon stone.”

“What happened to Mr. Sunny Optimism?”

He gave her quizzical glance. “Why on earth would you want there to be another one of those things out there?”

The question caught her off guard only because she thought Professor knew her better. “Because if it’s out there, I want to find it.”

“I repeat, why on earth, et cetera?”

She shook her head. “Because it’s there.” Even as she said it, she knew that was not the whole answer. “And because I need to know if what happened back there really happened. I need to know that I’m not going crazy.”

“You are not going crazy,” said Dorion, breaking his long silence. “It really happened. I know because it happened to me.”

As they kept moving forward through the serpentine tunnel, their way lit only by Jade’s headlamp since it seemed prudent to conserve the batteries in the others, Dorion related his story of a strange day at CERN. Both Jade and Professor listened without comment as the physicist told of the strange premonition of his co-worker’s death in a climbing accident.

“The memory of attending her funeral, of knowing that she was dead, was so intense that I could not dismiss it as a coincidental dream,” he said. “I do not believe in psychic abilities, much less a deterministic universe where the future is already written, but I was at a loss to explain it any other way.

“Then it occurred to me to consider the circumstances surrounding the event. It had happened inside the CMS — the Compact Muon Solenoid — which I helped design and which had only just been powered down after months of operation in which thousands of high speed particle collisions had been observed. Our experiments were, quite literally, recreating the Big Bang on a very small scale. The detectors were looking for very specific particles, but it stands to reason that other particles, similar to those that came into existence at the moment the universe began, might also have been produced.”

“Like dark matter?” suggested Professor.

“Exactamente,” replied Dorion, slipping into his native tongue.

“When we first met,” Jade said, “you said that you had seen me before. This happened years ago. So, you weren’t just limited to a peek at the near future. How does this work exactly?”

“You must understand that, for a physicist, there is no such thing as ‘the future.’ Einstein said, ‘People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.’ Time is often referred to as a fourth dimension because everything in the universe takes place not only in a physical location, but also a temporal one. We believe the earth is fixed in its orbit and every year comes back around to where it was the year before. However, during that year, the entire solar system has moved many thousands of kilometers as the spiral arm of the Milky Way orbits around the galactic core, and the entire galaxy itself moves an even greater distance as the universe continues to expand.

“If it were possible to travel backward in time, we would not only have to move to a different temporal location, but also travel to a different physical location, light years from where we are at present.”

“I don’t think that was the point Einstein was trying to make,” countered Professor.

Dorion nodded. “You are correct. I merely point that out as a way of showing how facile the belief in time travel really is. But a common theme of time travel stories is the notion that, if it were possible to travel in time, we might effect a change that would alter history. Even a minor change, such as stepping on an insect, might have catastrophic consequences.

“Since the advent of quantum mechanics, most physicists have come to believe in the existence of what has been termed the multiverse hypothesis in which all possible permutations of reality exist as parallel universes. In such a scenario, our time traveler would not return to a changed present, but rather enter an alternative universe.”

“I believe another variation of that hypothesis suggests that those parallel universes exist as probabilities, and cease to exist based on what we observe. Like Schrodinger’s Cat, where two equally possible universes exist until we open the box and find out whether the cat is alive or dead, at which point one of those universes vanishes.”

“Does it? Or are we limited by our ability to perceive only one universe?”

Jade felt a little lost by the discussion. “What’s this got to do with dark matter?”

“Ah, forgive me. I shall try to explain. As I said earlier, physicists believe that time, as we understand it, is an illusion. Einstein proved this. We all perceive the passage of time as a constant because we are all traveling through space-time at the same constant velocity, but if we could travel faster, we would perceive time passing more slowly. The equation of space-time, and of matter and energy, must balance.”

“You’re losing me again.”

“He’s talking about black holes,” intoned Professor. “At the event horizon of a black hole, the gravitational energy is so strong that time would appear to stand still.”

“Yes, and if it were possible to survive the journey through a black hole, we would find ourselves in a different universe, a different permutation of reality. However, black holes are an extreme example. Recent experiments have demonstrated that the farther you move away from the earth’s center of gravity, time passes slower. Believe it or not, your head is aging slower than your feet. You are moving faster in space-time — the difference is measured in nanoseconds — the closer you get to the center of the earth. Any object with sufficient mass may cause local relativistic space-time effects.

“Following the…ah, episode in the CMS, it occurred to me that perhaps I had inadvertently interacted with a deposit of dark matter created by our experiments with the Large Hadron Collider. The super dense WIMPs altered my perception of space-time just enough that, for a few moments, I experienced an alternate universe, and at an accelerated rate, so that I quite literally saw the future.”

Jade glanced at Professor. If anyone could understand what Dorion was saying and offer a rational rebuttal, it was he, but Professor was listening with rapt attention and not a trace of skepticism. She turned back to Dorion. “And did you?”

“Not exactly. Lauren went climbing in Chamonix and there was an accident, but she was not killed. Nevertheless, I could not dismiss what had happened. Had I seen one possible universe? Had my warning to her somehow changed the outcome?

“It occurred to me that this incident might not be an isolated event. Even discounting the fraudulent claims of charlatans, there is an overwhelming amount of anecdotal evidence to suggest that precognition does occur. Moreover, since dark matter may be all around us, accumulating into small pockets of increased density that we are unable to detect, might that not be a plausible explanation for these allegedly psychic premonitions.

“Of course, my hypothesis was not exactly embraced in the scientific community.” He paused as if this was a painful admission. “After I…left CERN, I was able to find independent funding to continue my research. I decided to begin with an examination of the historical record, looking more closely at accounts of seers and oracles, particularly those associated with a specific geographical location — the Oracle at Delphi, for example. That is how I came to be here. There are numerous accounts of oracles and accurate prophecy throughout Mesoamerican history. You are aware, I am sure, that the Aztecs were expecting the arrival of Quetzalcoatl at the exact moment in history when Cortez arrived.”

Jade and Professor exchanged a look.

“And of course, there is the Mayan prophecy of the end of time.”

“Umm, check your calendar,” Jade said. “That didn’t happen.”

Dorion gave a coy smile. “That the prophesied apocalypse did not occur may be due to the fact that we were alerted to it and took appropriate precautions. Or, it may have occurred in a parallel reality, right on schedule. Did you know that there was a solar storm in 2012 that just missed the earth by a week? Scientists at NASA believe it would have destroyed modern civilization if we had been in its path. Perhaps in another universe, that’s exactly what happened, just as the Maya foresaw.”

He shrugged again. “Who can say? I was not looking to make these old stories fit my hypothesis, but merely investigating all the possibilities. My expertise — and a generous contribution from my benefactor — made it possible for me to get work as a technician for the muon tomography project here in Teotihuacan.”

“What were you hoping to find?” asked Professor. “Since there’s no way to detect dark matter, how would you know if you were right?”

“With another vision,” said Jade, before Dorion could answer.

The physicist nodded. “And it would seem that is exactly what happened.”

“So I got too close to the WIMPs and caught a glimpse of a possible future, but because we were warned, we changed the outcome?”

“Just so.”

Professor drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “Well, it’s an interesting idea. Too bad all the spheres were undoubtedly destroyed in the blast. Except for the Moon stone,” he added hastily before Jade could say it. “If it exists.”

“If the spheres were somehow employed as collectors for the WIMPs,” Dorion said, “then it would also explain why Jade was unable to move the Earth stone. It would have been much more massive than it appeared. However, it might have been possible to remove one of the smaller spheres. Perhaps the ancient inhabitants of the city took it with them when they abandoned Teotihuacan, or perhaps the Aztecs relocated it when they arrived centuries later.”

“Or the conquistadors got it,” said Jade. “Maybe our friend back there got trapped by the cave in after his buddies took the Moon stone.”

Professor held up the leather bound book he had taken from the mummified corpse. “Might be something about that in here.”

“As much as I’d love to stop for story time, I think maybe that will have to wait until we’re out of here.”

“Seconded,” replied Professor, tucking the journal away again in a pocket. “Incidentally, at the risk of being labeled a pessimist again, has anyone else noticed that we seem to be going down?”

Jade whipped her head around, pointing her light back in the direction they had come. In the fifteen minutes or so that they’d been walking, there view had not changed much, but she certainly had not been aware of a change in elevation. Looking back, she could not tell if they were actually going down or not. “Are you sure?”

“Trust me, I’ve humped up and down enough hills to recognize the difference. It’s slight, but we’re lower now than when we started.”

After considering this news for a moment, Jade shook her head. “It doesn’t change anything. This is the only way to go. The builders must have followed the course of a naturally occurring passage when they cut this tunnel, but we can see the evidence that they were here all around us. It has to go somewhere.”

“You’re assuming that it leads back to the surface,” Professor replied. “What if they used that shaft in the pyramid to get in? What if this was their passage to the Underworld?”

“Well, we can’t very well go back, can we? Instead of always playing devil’s advocate, why don’t you limit yourself to constructive comments?”

Professor shrugged and, evidently unable to offer anything useful, lapsed back into silence. A few minutes later, he was proved right. Half right, at least.

The passage had continued its gradual decline for perhaps another half-mile, during which time Jade began to hear a sound like white noise.

“Running water?” suggested Professor. “We must be near an underground river.”

He said nothing more, perhaps worried that his statement might be misinterpreted as defeatism, but it soon became evident that the source of the sound was indeed water moving through the surrounding rock, and they were getting closer to it with each step.

The passage abruptly opened into a cavern that would have been considered large by any standard, except compared to the expansive chamber where they had found the model of the solar system. Unlike that vast but austere hall, this cavern bore clear evidence, not merely of use by the ancients, but inhabitation.

They found themselves in what appeared to be a temple complex devoted to the Great Goddess. The deity, in all her spidery glory, had been carved into the wall in such a way that the goddess’ mouth was the tunnel entrance; they had, in a manner of speaking, been vomited out of her mouth. Water fountained from several other openings in the wall, which had been incorporated into the sculpture as well, each one situated at the end of one the goddess’ eight limbs. The water collected into six-foot wide channels that framed a rectangular courtyard below the dais upon which they now stood. On either side of the courtyard, just beyond the waterways, were long stone steps that looked remarkably like the bleachers in a stadium. Looking down, Jade could see that the floor of the courtyard was not a flat surface, but sloped gently from each side, like an inverted pyramid, meeting at a narrow trough — about a foot wide and six feet long — in the center. Scattered around the courtyard, at intervals which appeared almost random, were a dozen carved stelae — stylized human-animal hybrids that gazed out with fierce expressions — and everywhere the floor was pock-marked with tiny holes about an inch in diameter.

“Could that be your missing Moon stone?” asked Professor, pointing to a waist-high cylindrical pedestal at the center of the dais, upon which sat a dull black orb, about twelve inches in diameter.

Jade laughed in understanding. “This isn’t a temple. It’s a ball court.”

“Ball court?” asked Dorion, disbelieving. “You mean like football?”

Professor nodded, immediately catching on to Jade’s revelation. “Close. The ball game was played all over Central America. Just like with soccer today, everyone was nuts about it, though there were variations from place to place. The big difference though, at least from what we’ve been able to draw from contemporary accounts and artwork of the period, is that you weren’t allowed to touch the ball with your hands or your feet.”

“What then?”

“You had to use your hips.” He gave a little shimmy that Jade thought would have made Elvis envious.

Jade laughed in spite of their predicament. “The ball game wasn’t just a sporting event. It was part of their worship and a way of determining who the gods favored. We know from wall paintings at Tepantitla that they played the ball game, or at least a version of it, in Teotihuacan, but no court has ever been discovered. I think now we know why.”

Dorion raised his hands inquisitively. “We do?”

“They played it here, in the presence of the Great Goddess.” Jade looked back at the tunnel opening from which they had emerged. “The Goddess of the Underworld.”

“It’s a ball court and a temple,” Professor realized aloud. “They would come down here, probably for special celebrations, and only after appeasing the goddess by winning the ball game would a person be permitted to enter the tunnel and make the journey to the room with the spheres. Or maybe the winners were sacrificed by the priests, who would then enter the tunnel.”

“They sacrificed the winners?” asked Dorion, incredulous. “Hardly an incentive to play your best game.”

“Being offered to the gods was the highest honor. At least that’s what the priests told everyone. It’s the same kind of logic that gets people to blow themselves up with suicide bombs; be a martyr, virgins waiting in the afterlife—”

Jade quickly cut him off. “There’s some evidence of that happening in the late Maya Classical Period and perhaps in Aztec society as well, but probably only on rare occasions. The game had different meanings in different cultures, and sometimes different meanings for different groups within a culture. It was recreation for the average citizen, could be used as a proxy for war, and as we see here, may have had religious significance.”

Dorion pointed at the black orb. “And that is the ball?”

Jade nodded. “Solid rubber. It probably weighs about ten pounds, so you can imagine that players got pretty bruised. Some of the wall art shows players wearing elaborate costumes which may have also been protective equipment, and in the murals at Tepantitla, the players are shown hitting the ball with sticks.”

“It’s a sphere.”

Jade saw what he was driving at. “You think there’s a connection between the planet spheres and the ball game?”

Dorion spread his hands in a gesture of uncertainty. “You are the expert. What do you think?”

“Sometimes a ball is just a ball,” muttered Professor.

“A sphere is not just a ball. Its shape is determined by gravity. The planets are spherical because particles of matter — including dark matter — will coalesce into spherical shapes. That is why planets and stars are round. I think it’s remarkable that the ancients understood this.”

“Or maybe the ancients just realized that spheres happen to bounce a lot better that cubes.”

“Even that is not something to be discounted lightly. The reason the sphere bounces better is because of the way energy is distributed throughout.”

“Guys,” Jade said sharply. “It’s a great debate, but let’s have it somewhere else, okay?”

She hopped down from the dais and onto the floor of the courtyard. Dorion however reached out for the ball.

“I don’t think you should—” Before Professor could finish uttering the warning, and a heartbeat before Dorion’s hand could touch the ball, something clicked underfoot. The center of the pedestal upon which the ball rested abruptly fell away and the ball dropped down the center like water down a drain.

Jade heard Professor’s shout and whirled just in time to see the ball shoot from a hole in the side of the wall beneath the dais. She didn’t need the gift of prophecy to know that something very bad was about to happen.

NINE

The ball arced out over the courtyard floor and hit, bouncing with a loud thwock. Jade thought that might trigger whatever nasty surprise the ball court had in store, but aside from the ball continuing on its journey, nothing happened.

In a rush of intuition, Jade saw the reason for this, and just as clearly saw that the danger was far from past. The point of the game was to keep the ball from reaching the goal, which given the sloping floor, had to be the trough at the center. If a player could do that, they would stay safe. If they failed….

Jade knew from bitter experience that ancient architects had delighted themselves with devising wonderful methods of dealing with unwelcome visitors; there was no telling what sort of death trap they had created here. The ball court was like an enormous pinball game, and if she made the wrong move, it would be game over.

In a split-second, she weighed her choices. She was just a couple steps away from the dais. She could make it back up to that place of relative safety before the ball reached the center… but it would reach the center, and under the circumstances, that seemed like a very bad thing. The only other option was to try and play.

The ball was about ten feet away, already descending for a second bounce. She dove forward, throwing her clasped hands out, trying to get them in between the ball and the floor in a classic volleyball bump.

Her timing was perfect, but that was about the only thing she got right. The solid ball hit like a blow from a hammer, slamming her arms into the floor even as the rest of her body hit the rough surface and, carried forward by her momentum, slid toward the center of the courtyard. The friction tore at her, burning hot through the fabric of her clothes, scraping bare skin raw, though she barely felt any of it. The pain of contact with the ball had left her arms completely numb.

The glancing impact was enough to divert the ball’s course, if only slightly. Jade caught a glimpse of its next bounce. She had managed to knock it onto the section of floor that sloped down from the side of the courtyard. It bounced again, though just barely, and continued rolling along across the slope at a slight curve as gravity began drawing it once again toward the final destination.

Jade struggled to get up. Her arms were nearly useless, so she had to roll to a sitting position to get her feet under her. There was no way she would be able to intercept the ball a second time, but she knew she had to try.

Something moved in front of her; Professor, charging headlong toward the center of the court in a desperate effort to do what she could not. Before he could reach it, the ball hit one of the stelae and rebounded back up the slope, away from his direction of travel. He skidded to a stop even as Jade managed to get back to her feet.

A measure of sensation was returning to her hands, all of it bad. She felt like she’d been smacked with a baseball bat; nothing was broken, but the throb of pain was almost paralyzing. She realized now why the ball game was played without hands or even feet; the ball was so heavy, so dense, that trying to hit or kick the ball might easily break the small bones in the extremities.

“You okay?” Professor shouted as he spun around trying to track the ball’s new trajectory.

“Fine!” she lied. “Don’t let it reach the center.”

The ball deflected off another stela — the decorative columns suddenly seemed to be everywhere — and shot straight toward the center as if from a cannon. Professor made a grab for the ball but was half-a-second too slow. Jade threw herself flat across its path trying to catch it with her body.

The ball struck her hip — another stinging impact — and then bounced into the air. She rolled over just in time to see it begin its downward arc and watched helplessly as it struck just above the trough, bounced across to the other side, and then rolled down the slope and in.

The trough was not very deep — the top of the ball protruded out of it — but as soon as the ball struck the bottom, there was a distinctive thump from within. A rhythmic tremor, almost like an engine idling, began to vibrate up through the stone floor.

“Not good,” Jade muttered.

There was a rasping noise and a small puff of dust as something sprang out of the nearest stela.

No, she realized, not just that one.

Each of the stelae throughout the ball court suddenly sprouted arms — or more precisely, a pair of wooden war clubs, lined with razor sharp obsidian blades. None of them were close enough to pose a threat to Jade or Professor, even when, after more eruptions of dust and noise, they all began spinning in place, their arms whirling like lawn mower blades.

Jade caught a glimpse of sudden movement at the back end of the court. Spikes now protruded up through the holes in floor, row after row of three-foot long sharpened stakes, which had shot up in an instant, and then just as quickly disappeared back into the holes.

“Watch the floor!” Jade shouted, heeding her own advice, quickly sliding her feet away from the holes.

There was a loud snap as the entire left flank of the ball court — where both Jade and Professor were standing — bristled with sharpened stakes. Jade felt the air moving around her, felt one of the spikes strike the side of her shoe as it stabbed the air. Then the deadly spears drew back into their holes.

“Jade!”

“I’m okay,” she replied. “You?”

More spikes shot up from the right flank.

“Not a scratch.”

The spears on the left side shot up again, confounding Jade’s expectation of a pattern. Fortunately, neither she nor Professor had moved an inch and they were once again spared.

“The center looks safe,” she called, and as soon as the spikes disappeared back into the floor, she made the short dash to the trough. She wasn’t ready to risk stepping into the well where the ball now rested, so she straddled it. Professor reached the trough a millisecond before the spikes popped up again.

“They’re coming up totally at random” she panted.

Professor shook his head. “There’s a pattern. It’s a mechanical system; there has to be a pattern. It only seems random.”

“Mechanical?”

“Sure. They must have tapped the hydropower.” He jerked a thumb at the dais where water poured from the hands of the Great Goddess. Jade also saw Dorion there, frozen in place and looking utterly helpless.

“Paul! Stay there!” She turned her attention back to Professor. “You figure the pattern out yet?”

“I think so.” He did not sound very confident. “If we stay close to the corners, we can jump back and forth. The timing will be tricky.”

Too tricky, thought Jade. She and Professor might be able to make it, but she doubted that Dorion had the instincts or the coordination to beat the trap. But it isn’t a trap; it’s a test.

“We’re supposed to beat the game,” she said, thinking out loud. “That’s why they built it this way.”

Professor’s eyebrows drew together in a frown, but then he nodded slowly. “How do we win?”

Jade looked around the ball court, trying to put herself in the role of an ancient supplicant seeking entrance to the Underworld domain of the Great Goddess. The priests would have launched the ball out into the court, and the players would have done their best to keep the ball from reaching the center well and activating the trap, but even if that happened, the game would not be over. Maybe it was supposed to happen; maybe the game didn’t start until the stelae started whirling around with their deadly war-clubs and the spikes began popping up out of the floor. But where was the goal?

“We need to get the ball back up there,” she said, pointing to the pedestal.

“Paul! Think fast!” Professor bent down and scooped up the ball in both hands and hurled it toward the dais.

In ancient times, this would have been an unthinkable violation of the rules; fortunately there were no priests around to assess a penalty. Here, the only liability was Dorion’s athletic ability. The physicist opened his arms to make the catch but was promptly bowled over by the mass of the solid rubber sphere. The ball bounced away and rolled across the dais, splashing into one of the water channels where it was instantly seized by the current and swept along the outer perimeter of the ball court.

Jade bit back a curse and launched into motion. She hadn’t quite nailed down the pattern that governed the rise and fall of the spikes, but reasoned that if she kept clear of the holes in the floor, she would be safe.

“Look out!”

Professor’s shouted warning didn’t include information about what exactly she should be looking out for, but it was enough to make her raise her eyes just in time to see that her she was about to blunder into the reach of one of the stelae. There was no way to stop, so she did the next best thing. She ducked.

Twin bladed war clubs whooshed through the air above her head, and then suddenly a wall of spikes appeared in front of her, just beyond the radius guarded by the spinning column. She tried her best to duck and dodge simultaneously, but instead crashed into the extended stakes, which snapped apart like pretzels. The rest retracted into the floor, resetting for another upward thrust. Jade sprinted up the sloping flank of the court, keeping her eye on the ball as it rolled toward the far end, while trying to remember how long she had before the spikes would pop up again.

“Five seconds!” shouted Professor, as if tuning into her thoughts. “Four… three…”

I can make it. When she heard him say: “one” she launched herself forward, up and over the low wall that bordered the court. She felt the snick of spikes stabbing up at her, glancing harmlessly off her hiking boots, and then she was hit by a shocking blast of cold.

The channel was shallow, only a few inches deep, and while the water was moving fast, there wasn’t enough of it to sweep her away. Instead, it splashed up around her in a froth that soaked her to the skin and chilled her to the bone.

Her muscles had clenched with the frigid baptism, but she forced herself into motion, splashing after the ball as it continued toward the end of the channel. The disruption of the water flow had actually slowed its progress, but it was still rolling toward the unknown. Still on all fours, Jade splashed after it, half-crawling, and launched herself out of a crouch just as the ball started to go over the edge. She slid the rest of the way forward, wrapping her arms around the black orb and hugging it to her chest, even as it rolled off the end of the channel.

Beyond the drop-off, there was a lot of nothing. Even though it wasn’t powerful enough to sweep her over, Jade was conspicuously aware of the water splashing over her and cascading out into a chasm that went deeper than the light of her headlamp could reach.

She wriggled backward, away from the precipice, and sat up, tightly clutching her prize. Professor was still stranded, but safe at the center of the ball court. Jade rolled over the edge of the channel and dropped down onto the first tier of the seating area and ran down the length of the court toward the dais. The water was deeper close to the statue of the goddess and she wasn’t willing to risk wading into it.

She spotted Dorion, now standing on the far side of the channel, staring at her expectantly. “Paul! I’m going to throw the ball to you. Put it on the pedestal. That should shut everything down. Okay?”

He nodded, still looking a little chagrined at his earlier fumble. Jade thought about offering words of encouragement, but decided that the only salve for his bruised ego was a successful catch. She bent over, the ball in both hands between her knees in a classic basketball granny-shot pose, and gently lobbed it over the six-foot wide waterway. Dorion caught it easily.

“Watch your step,” she cautioned as he turned away. “There must be some kind of trigger mechanism on the floor. We don’t want to have to do this all over again.”

He nodded without looking back and moved directly to the pedestal where he held the ball out and, with perhaps more caution than was warranted, gingerly set it in place. Jade was a little worried that she’d gotten it wrong, and that the ball would once again drop through the center of the pedestal and shoot back into play, but for once everything went exactly according to plan. With another ground-shaking thump, the automated defenses on the ball court shut down. The floor spikes retracted. The stelae stopped spinning and, with one or two exceptions, their war club arms folded back into niches in their carved exteriors.

Professor heaved a sigh of relief and stepped away from center court, hurrying back to the edge of the dais to join Dorion. “Well played. Does this mean we win a free trip back into the tunnel? Or should we just take our ball and go home?”

Jade rolled her eyes. “I vote home but let’s leave the ball. I don’t ever want to play this game again.”

Professor grinned. “But you’re so good at it.”

TEN

Jade stared at the enormous stone sphere and felt the memories of the underground ordeal come flooding back.

After nearly three days, her recollection of the events of that night had mostly faded to something like the memory of a bad dream. What most occupied her thoughts and filled her with anxiety was not the terror she had experienced when the bomb had detonated, killing Acosta and Sanchez, or the ball court, or hours spent making their way back to freedom, but rather the lingering uncertainty that surrounded the attempt on their lives. Why had Hodges turned on them? Who was he working for, and perhaps more importantly, working with? Until they knew that, they had to let the world believe that they were dead.

They had emerged from the labyrinthine cave system about an hour before dawn. After surviving the ball court, the rest of the journey was almost anticlimactic. They found another passage leading away and soon Professor reported that they were ascending. As before, the tunnel was wide and easy to negotiate. More than once, the way forward was blocked by cave-ins, but the knowledge that they were getting closer to escape supplied them with the energy to dig their way out. As they broke through one collapsed section of tunnel, Jade felt cool air rush in, and knew they were nearly free. A few minutes later, they wriggled through the opening and found themselves on the lower flanks of a stone pyramid — the Pyramid of the Moon. Their long undulating journey through the Underworld had brought them back to the surface a mere stone’s throw from where it had begun.

The exit hole let out almost directly above the Plaza of the Moon, where the ancient inhabitants of the city had made sacrifices to the Great Goddess. The altar to the Great Goddess had, it seemed, been a literal passage to the Underworld. Whether the entrance had been sealed by the original inhabitants as a way of protecting the power within, or by future inhabitants, was a question that would have to wait for another day. Jade and the others had carefully concealed evidence of their escape route before sneaking away from the archaeological preserve.

The site was swarming with activity — military vehicles and patrols — but there was no way to determine whether it was a search-and-rescue effort or a sweep to ensure that no one had survived the explosion. Inasmuch as the bomb had almost certainly been military ordnance, they had to assume the latter, and furthermore, that Hodges had the support of the Mexican Army or someone with influence over the government.

She and Dorion had spent a frustrating day sequestered away while Professor somehow procured fake passports and funds for travel. “I know a guy who knows a guy. It’s a SEAL thing,” he had explained when she had asked, as if that answered everything. By afternoon of the following day, the trio that had escaped the Underworld realm of the Great Goddess were fifteen hundred miles away in Costa Rica.

Now however, as Jade stared at the enormous stone ball, she couldn’t help but think about the strange discovery that had lit the fuse on this entire nightmare. Yet, this enormous sphere, which adorned a rooftop courtyard at the Museo Nacional de Costa Rica — one of more than three hundred such spheres, ranging in size from about two feet in diameter to well over six, uncovered in an overgrown river delta near the Pacific Coast over the course of the last century — was the reason they had come to the Central American country.

A walk through the museum had supplemented Jade’s prior knowledge of the pre-Columbian history of Costa Rica. Because of its remote location and rugged terrain, the narrow isthmus had not supported the rise of advanced organized societies like its neighbors to the north, and so had remained outside Jade’s area of academic interest. For the most part, the physical remains of ancient cultures that had made the narrow strip of land between two oceans their home had been swallowed up by the jungle. One notable exception was a culture known as the Diquis, which had flourished from about the year 700 C.E. only to be wiped out completely, shortly after contact with European explorers in the sixteenth century. The Diquis were best known as the artisans who had created — probably, at least — the enormous stone spheres.

Little was actually known about the spheres, which had first been discovered in the 1930s by workers clearing the jungle to make room for banana plantations. They did not appear in the historical record, apparently forgotten by the last of the Diquis and overgrown by the rain forest long before the arrival of the Spanish colonists. The only way to estimate their age was by dating the soil horizons in which they had been found — a fairly reliable technique known as stratigraphy. It was believed that the earliest spheres had been carved about 600 C.E. but many of them had been disturbed or even destroyed by workmen and treasure hunters. What stratigraphy could not reveal was the reason why the primitive Diquis had made the enormous stone sculptures that were very nearly perfect spheres.

It was certainly possible that the orbs beneath the pyramids of Teotihuacan had no connection whatsoever to the Diquis spheres, but Jade wasn’t a believer in coincidence. This wasn’t as simple as disparate cultures discovering pyramidal architecture thousands of miles and hundreds of years apart; spheres were extremely rare in the ancient world. Unfortunately, trying to prove — or for that matter disprove — a connection was proving to be a tough nut to crack, especially since so little was known about what the locals called “Las Bolas.”

Jade reached out cautiously, placed her palm against the sphere, and closed her eyes.

“Well?” asked Professor.

She smiled without humor and drew back her hand. “As they say around here, nada.”

“So what’s the next move?”

“There are several active archaeological sites in the south where the spheres were discovered. Most of them are in the Oso region, close to the town of Palmar Sur. I say we head there and look for anything that might indicate a connection to Teotihuacan: trade goods, artwork…” She glanced over at Dorion. “Maybe catch some WIMP vibes.”

She expected the physicist to correct the mischaracterization, but he surprised her by letting it pass. “It may be that something about the shape of a sphere facilitates the collection of dark matter. We may very well experience more space-time distortions, particularly if a sphere has been undisturbed for a long period of time.”

From their tour of the museum, they had learned that nearly all of the spheres had been discovered in the valley of the Rio Grande de Terraba, just a few miles inland from the Pacific Ocean. Hundreds of them had already been removed and relocated so that they were now scattered all across the country, adorning parks and private gardens. Some had been destroyed, either because they were seen as an impediment to agricultural pursuits or because of an unfounded rumor that the spheres concealed golden treasure. Nevertheless, new sphere discoveries were happening all the time in the surrounding area and four archaeological sites in the Diquis Delta had been granted UNESCO World Heritage status. Jade hoped that, by viewing some of the spheres in situ, and relatively undisturbed, she might be able to formulate an answer to the riddle of the Teotihuacan spheres.

But secretly, she was also hoping for another glimpse of the future.

She did not pretend to understand Dorion’s explanation for the strange effect, but if it was true — if the phenomenon could be reproduced — it would open up a whole new understanding of ancient belief systems.

Maybe that was why Brian Hodges had tried to kill them.

They made their way back through the museum, a converted military fort located in the bustling downtown section of the capital city, and headed for their hotel just a few blocks away. As soon as they were on the steps outside, Professor begged off.

“Hey, you two go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”

Jade raised a suspicious eyebrow. “More SEAL stuff?”

Professor laughed easily. “I could tell you, but…you know.” He drew a finger across his throat and made a gagging sound. “Don’t worry. I’ll be back in time for happy hour.”

Without further explanation, he headed back up the steps and vanished behind a gaggle of tourists. Jade felt a twinge of irritation, mostly because he hadn’t deigned to consult with her before running off, but she shrugged it off. She had Dorion to keep her company, and now that she knew him a little better, and understood the reason for his awkwardness during their initial meeting, she almost found him charming, in a brainy nerd sort of way. Jade had decided to forego company in favor of a little indulgent luxury. She hadn’t even had a proper shower since their escape from the Teotihuacan Underworld.

Their hotel, the New Balmoral, was just a few blocks from the museum, walking distance along an avenue crowded with pedestrian traffic and street merchants hawking everything from handmade decorative ribbons to bootleg DVDs. San Jose was a pretty typical example of an old New World colonial capital. The architecture was like a mosaic of the city’s history, from the 1850s to the 1950s, strongly influenced by the Spanish presence, but in between old churches and historic buildings, were the ever-present signs of twenty-first century encroachment: advertisements for Pizza Hut, McDonalds and the like.

Once back in her room, Jade started running a bath, but while she waited for the tub to fill up with hot water, she decided to have a look at the leather bound journal they had taken from the mummified remains of the Spanish explorer. Professor had entrusted it to her back in Mexico, but she had postponed reading it in the vain hopes that she might be able to do so in a climate controlled restoration laboratory. Since that wasn’t an option, her air-conditioned hotel room would have to do.

The book seemed to have held up well despite the passage of centuries, probably because no one had touched it in all that time. She opened to the first page and started reading, translating as she went along.

Jade flipped through the book until she found the last page, which included a signature: Gil Perez.

She thought the name sounded familiar, but since it was about as generic as John Smith, odds were good that she was merely confusing the author of this record with someone else. She flipped back to the front and found the words that had immediately aroused her interest.

The Heretic Queen’s conjurer whose eyes see all.

In 1593, or rather 1589 when the Spaniard had embarked on his mission, only one person would have been described as the Heretic Queen: Queen Elizabeth of England. England and Spain had been in a state of undeclared war for years, with English privateers raiding treasure galleons on the Spanish Main. The hostilities had reached a boiling point in 1588 when Spain sent an armada of ships to attack the British Isles, but in one of the greatest upsets in military history, English forces had devastated the Spanish Armada.

Historians had written volumes on the subject of the defeat of the Spanish Armada, analyzing the strategic situation and the military tactics employed, but one undisputed contributing factor had been the weather. A southwesterly wind had driven the Spanish ships into the stormy North Atlantic where nearly a third of them had been wrecked. King Phillip II had blamed the defeat of his forces on a “Protestant Wind.”

What very few legitimate historians mentioned was the role played by Dr. John Dee, alchemist, court astrologer and adviser to Queen Elizabeth in all matters relating to science and the occult, which in the sixteenth century, were effectively indistinguishable. According to some contemporary sources, Dee had predicted the coming of the decisive wind, and had used that foreknowledge to plan the English defenses.

Gil Perez had evidently bought into the hype, believing that Dee had not merely made a fortuitous meteorological prediction but actually employed uncanny power to give the English a strategic advantage. His mission to “defeat the Heretic Queen’s conjurer” had been the start of a journey that had ended three hundred feet below the Pyramid of the Sun, surrounded by orbs that imparted the ability to see the future, just as Dee had claimed to do. That cast everything Jade thought she knew about John Dee, not to mention science and the occult, in a new light.

With the book still in hand, she went to the tub, turned off the spigot, and let the water drain out. She could soak in a hot bath anytime; right now, she needed to know how Gil Perez had wound up in Mexico.

She had just settled back in to read more when the room phone started ringing. The noise startled her; who used regular telephones these days? It had to be the front desk, but why they would be calling, she couldn’t imagine. She picked up and answered tentatively in Spanish. “¿Bueno?”

“Jade?” It was Professor. He spoke quickly, not waiting for her to acknowledge. “Listen. You need to grab Paul and get out of there, now. They’ve found us.”

Professor noticed the blonde woman right away — not a surprise really — but it took him a while to realize that she wasn’t merely another foreign tourist idling an afternoon away in the National Museum. From a distance, she looked drop dead gorgeous; super model thin but with the kind of noticeable assets that could only be the product of silicone and a surgeon’s knife. A closer look, which wasn’t easy because she seemed to be making a real effort to keep her distance, revealed that, despite her rather plain attire — a simple silk blouse and cotton slacks, both in hues of beige — she was every bit as glamorous as he had thought she would be, and that the rest of her beautiful appearance was as artificial as her bust line.

Jade probably would have noticed as much at a glance; women had a way of mentally dissecting other women, pinpointing all the flaws and perceived weaknesses in an instant, sizing them up as potential rivals, or at least that’s what Professor assumed. It took him a little longer to spot the plastic surgery scars and the unnaturally smooth forehead that hinted at botox treatments. These things didn’t necessarily diminish her beauty, but they did reveal a little about her character, which seemed important since he was now quite certain that she was following them. Twice, he caught her craning her head to look around other museum visitors, and then looking away quickly to avoid being noticed.

Definitely following us. Not very good at it, though.

That realization had hit him like a slap. The blonde was a distraction to keep him from noticing the other shadows they had picked up. He quickly picked out two more observers, both men, both trying a little too hard — and failing — to look inconspicuous in their dark suits. Professor thought they looked like Secret Service agents — the kind in movies though, not the real deal.

Either this is amateur hour, or those guys are also part of the distraction.

He had to assume the latter, but if there were others, they eluded his best efforts to detect. As their tour of the museum ended, he noted Blondie and the two suits heading out as well, making no effort to conceal the fact that they were all working together.

That was when he had decided to break away from Jade and Dorion for a little covert surveillance of his own. He had expected one of the suits to split off and follow him, but the trio kept their spotlight-intense gaze on his companions. He ducked into the museum gift shop, purchased an overpriced brown felt “Explorer” fedora for a quick disguise and a city map, and then headed back out in time to see the procession — the followed and the followers — heading down Avenida Central.

He fell into step behind Blondie and her two stooges, and using every trick he knew to make sure that he wasn’t secretly being followed, made his way back to the hotel. Blondie entered less than a minute behind Jade, and when Professor went in, he saw her at the reception desk, conversing with the clerk.

He thought the woman might be trying to pry some information out of the clerk, but after a few minutes, it became apparent that she was booking a room of her own.

For the first time since noticing the blonde, Professor felt a twinge of doubt. Had he read the situation wrong? Was the woman just a rich tourist with a pair of bodyguards, who happened to be spending the night at the same hotel? Was he just being paranoid?

Is it paranoia if they’re really out to get you?

Hodges betrayal had caught him completely flatfooted; he still had no idea why it had happened, or whether his former partner was working with the Dominion or someone else. Given the current situation, paranoia seemed like the appropriate response.

He moved to the lobby phone and started making calls. The third call he made was to Jade’s room.

“¿Bueno?”

“Jade? Listen. You need to grab Paul and get out of there, now. They’ve found us.”

“That’s impossible.”

Her reply was so immediate that he knew it was merely a defensive reaction. Denial remained the most basic response to a threat. “No time to debate it. Get Paul and take the stairs to the restaurant. I’ll meet you there. We won’t be coming back.”

He hung up before she could say anything more and made his way through the hotel to the luxurious patio restaurant. He had been hoping for a nice relaxing dinner here; now there was no telling where or when he would get his next meal.

He checked again to make sure that he had not been followed. There was no sign of Blondie or the others, but that only made him even more suspicious. A basic rule of life and especially combat, was that the threat you saw was rarely the one that killed you.

He positioned himself near the doors to the kitchen, but where he could maintain line of sight with the stairwell. When Jade and Dorion showed up, he would lead them through the kitchen, making sure to stay just a step or two ahead of Jade in order to keep her from asking too many questions. He wasn’t too worried about the staff accosting them. That was the great thing about the denial tendency; when confronted with something out of the ordinary, most people automatically tried to find the simplest possible explanation, or just pretended not to notice. If they walked through the kitchen like they knew what they were doing, the cooks and servers would probably leave them alone, at least for the thirty or so seconds they would need to reach the service entrance.

The door to the stairwell swung open and Jade stepped out into the foyer, followed by Dorion. As soon as she spied Professor, Jade’s expression twisted into something that was equal parts irritation and concern, and Professor knew a storm of questions was headed his way.

A chime sounded to signal the arrival of the elevator, and in the corner of his eye, Professor saw the blonde woman stride out of the car and into the foyer. He saw her eyes lock on Jade, saw her go rigid in recognition, saw her start to reach into a pocket.

Damn!

“Jade! Run!”

Jade moved without hesitation, almost without conscious thought. When someone, especially someone you trusted, told you to run, you didn’t ask questions. She had questions of course, and she hated not having answers, but she knew better than to stop and ask. She grabbed Dorion’s arm and dragged the man toward Professor.

Except now, Professor was moving toward her. “This way.”

Jade hauled Dorion around and followed, glancing around quickly to see if she could spot Hodges. If he was there, she didn’t see him.

Professor headed through the lobby and out the main entrance. Jade felt the eyes of everyone in the reception area on her, but quickened her pace knowing that it was too late to try for inconspicuous.

She burst out onto the sidewalk with Dorion in tow and saw Professor, waiting a few steps away. As soon as she met his gaze, he spun on his heel and headed up the side street, pushing through the crowd of pedestrians and blazing a trail for Jade and Dorion to follow.

Jade let go of Dorion’s arm. “Try to keep up,” she told him, and set off at a run.

Despite her faster pace, Professor remained several yards ahead of her. She had no difficulty picking him out of the crowd, mostly because of the ridiculous hat he had somehow acquired since they’d parted company in front of the museum. He reached the corner and charged out across the intersecting avenue without slowing. Jade followed, dodging cars and motorcycles, ignoring the shouts and honks of irate drivers, and once she was across the intersection, risked a look back. The crowd they had pushed through was already closing and she couldn’t tell if anyone was actually following them, but Professor wasn’t slowing.

They raced up the block, crossed another busy street, and found themselves in a city park, crowded with people enjoying the island of greenery floating in the midst of the city’s busy downtown district.

The park was a surreal experience, a jungle in the midst of a modern city, dotted with anachronistic ruins. A paved path led to an open structure, an enormous dome resting on a ring of Ionic columns, like a Roman temple, only without anything inside. They were quickly enfolded by greenery, but looming above them just a few blocks away was a towering hotel with the easily recognizable Holiday Inn logo. They passed a pewter-colored statue of a Spanish conquistador, which evoked a memory of the mummified Gil Perez in the chamber beneath the Pyramid of the Sun, and thirty seconds later went through another freestanding structure — a pergola resting on columns that looked like it might have been transported from ancient Rome.

Jade risked another glance back and once again saw no evidence of anyone behind them. Dorion however was out of breath and struggling to catch up.

“Slow down,” she shouted to Professor. He looked back, and then slowed to a brisk walk.

“Who did you see?” Jade asked when she was close enough to speak without yelling. “Was it Hodges?

He shook his head. “It wasn’t Brian, but someone picked up our trail at the museum.”

“How did they find us? We were so careful.”

He shook his head uncertainly. “You know how these people work. Agents everywhere. Maybe someone in Mexico recognized us when we were getting on the plane. There’s no telling who might be watching us, so we have to keep moving.”

“So we’re changing hotels?”

“No.” He kept walking briskly offering no further comment until they emerged from the park and onto the side of another busy street where he immediately raised a hand to flag down one of the city’s ubiquitous red taxis. “We have to get out of the city.”

“Nice of you to include me in your plans,” Jade said, irritably.

“There wasn’t time—”

“There never is.” She took a step back, hands on hips, and struggled to keep her frustration in check. The abrupt dash from the hotel had reawakened all her unresolved anger over what had happened in Teotihuacan, and even though she knew that Professor wasn’t to blame for any of it, she couldn’t help but equate his presence with disaster. She knew that what she was really angry about was the loss of control. Hodges had taken it away in Mexico, and now Professor was doing it here.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” she said, trying but not succeeding to keep her tone diplomatic. “I’m not working for you or Tam Broderick. I’m working for me, and if you plan on sticking around, then you’re working for me too.”

Professor appeared visibly taken aback. “Jade, I’m trying to save us.”

“I don’t need you to play hero,” she countered. “I can take care of myself. If you want to help, then you need to start sharing what you know, and stop making all the decisions.”

A taxi pulled to a stop in front of them. The driver got out, circled around, and opened the rear door for them.

Professor stared back at Jade. “Oookay,” he said slowly. “We came to Costa Rica because you said you wanted to investigate the spheres, right? And then you said you wanted to visit the site where they were discovered? Am I still on track?”

She frowned, but nodded.

“Do you still want to go there? Because I’ve made arrangements to get us there, but if that’s not what you want to do anymore, I can cancel them.”

Jade could not tell if he was being accommodating or condescending. “What arrangements?”

“A rental car. If they’re watching the airports, which is probably how they tracked us here, then we can’t very well fly out. Palmar Sur is about a four-hour drive; if we leave now, we might make it before dark. And it will be a lot harder for anyone to pick up our trail if we’re driving.”

“That’s a pretty good plan,” Jade admitted, grudgingly. “We’ll go with that.”

“I’m glad you approve.” He gestured for her to get in the cab. Dorion slid in beside her, and after telling the driver their desired destination, Professor joined them.

The drive to the car rental agency took only a few minutes, barely enough time for Jade to calm down. The only thing worse than not having any control over the situation was the patronizing way Professor was treating her. Must be that military mindset. Take charge, be the hero. Just like Maddock…

That thought made her even angrier.

“Here we are,” Professor announced as they pulled into a Budget rent-a-car lot. “I asked for one of those.” He pointed at a silver Ford Everest, a big sport utility vehicle that looked perfect for negotiating paved roads and mountain trails alike. “But if you’d rather pick something else out, please be my guest.”

She shook her head.

Professor paid the cab driver and then went to meet the lot attendant. He returned with the keys and gestured to to vehicle he had pointed to earlier. “Would you like to drive?”

“Knock it off,” she growled.

“I’m serious,” he said, without the least hint of mockery. “If you drive, I can keep an eye out for anyone following us.”

“Fine.” She took the keys and, without further comment, slid behind the steering wheel and started the engine. Dorion stood by dumbly as if unable to process anything that had happened, until Professor suggested he take shotgun.

“Shotgun?”

“Up front with me,” Jade said over the soft rumble of the idling motor.

Dorion climbed into the passenger seat, still looking somewhat befuddled, and buckled his safety belt. Professor got in the back and started rooting around in a backpack that appeared to have been left on the seat.

“Where’d that come from?” Jade asked, curious.

“Just another one of those arrangements I made without consulting you first,” he answered. “I hope that’s okay with you.”

Jade craned her head around in time to see him release the slide on a matte black semi-automatic pistol.

“How did you manage to pull that off?”

“I know a guy who knows a guy. I figure since they already know we’re here, no sense in staying completely below the radar.” He stuffed the pistol into shoulder holster rig and passed it to her. “Here. This one’s for you.”

“Oh. I don’t know what to say.”

He grinned and winked. “You might go with ‘thank you.’”

ELEVEN

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

Jade stared in disbelief at what waited for them at the end of the road they had been told would lead them to the archaeological site known as Finca 6 where several of the stone spheres had been discovered by workmen in the 1930s. After the long drive down the Pan American Highway, through a lush verdant landscape that reminded her of her childhood home on the island of Oahu, Jade had been expecting a remote site, accessible only by an arduous trek up an overgrown jungle trail, accompanied by the song of tropical birds and the chattering of insects underfoot.

“Is something wrong?” asked Dorion.

Jade pulled the Ford to a stop in the parking area and pointed to the very modern looking building nearby. “That. I thought this was an archaeological site. It looks more like a golf course. This is just a tourist trap.”

“Archaeologists need to eat too,” Professor reminded her. “And tourists bring the money in. Just like at Teo.”

“I can understand Teo. It’s huge; of course it brings the tourists. But this…” She waved a disparaging hand. “We’re not going to find anything new at place like this. It’s all staged for visitors.”

“We’re here. Might as well have a look?” He checked his shoulder holster and then made sure it was covered completely by the lightweight windbreaker he had purchased before leaving San Jose. Jade had one just like it, and for much the same reason. They had risked the stop to purchase supplies and equipment, the sort of things they might need if they had to spend a night in the jungle, though it was starting to look like that wasn’t going to be a concern. As Professor reached for the door, he settled his fedora atop his head.

“You’re not actually going to keep wearing that thing, are you?”

He grinned. “Why not? I think it suits me.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit…cliché?”

“The word you were looking for is ‘iconic.’”

“If you start packing a bullwhip, I won’t be seen with you in public,” she growled, even though she knew her irritation was misplaced. She was frustrated at what looked like another dead end, and was starting to wonder if the whole endeavor wasn’t a colossal waste of time. She was also probably feeling a bit cranky from spending hours on the road, and crashing at one of the rustic “eco” hotels that catered to adventure tourists looking for that “authentic” travel experience.

Still, something about all of this felt right, as if it was what she was meant to do. Archaeology was a lot like detective work, and like a detective, Jade had long appreciated the importance of trusting her instincts. Those instincts had brought her here; the least she could do was check the place out.

She got out and led the procession up to the building, which turned out to be an interpretive center for the site. They spent a few minutes browsing the collection of stone artifacts and graphic displays describing the discoveries made at the site. In addition to the spheres, archaeologists had uncovered cobblestone foundations and stone tools, which showed that the giant stone orbs were important to the primitive culture that had inhabited the region, but offered no clue as to why, or how they had been used. Behind the building, a network of walking trails crisscrossed the site where the stone spheres lay scattered like marbles left behind by a giant child. A few were still buried, with the just the tops protruding above the ground. Several were badly eroded and could hardly still be called spheres, while others had been carved with primitive glyphs; historians had yet to determine if the markings were from the time of the spheres’ creation, or some later addition, like Stone Age graffiti.

They visited each in turn, looking for anything that might provide a revelation, but after nearly two hours, even Professor was ready to call it quits. They returned to the visitor’s center to get information about the other sites in the area.

The woman at the information countered shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said in passable English. “But the other sites are not open for tourism.”

“We’re not tourists,” Jade explained, patiently. “We’re archaeologists.”

The woman looked pointedly at Professor in his “adventurer” hat, and then back at Jade. “I’m sure that you are,” she said in a dubious tone, “but you would need permission from the National Museum.”

“We were just there,” Professor said, quickly. “They sent us here.” It was almost the truth.

“If you have permission to visit the sites,” said the woman. “Then there’s nothing more I can do to help you.”

Jade shook her head, no longer feeling quite so patient. “Can you at least give us some information about the other sites?”

The woman sighed. “There is El Silencio, a few kilometers up the Terraba River on the south bank, at the foot of the Coastal Range. The largest sphere we have found is there; two and a half meters in diameter. There is also a cobblestone pavement there. Batambal is just north of here, right off the highway. Four spheres have been located there as well as mounds and other cobblestone structures. Then there is Grijalba, further to the west on the Balsar River. There are more pavements and structures there. There are other sites as well, more than forty-five in total, but those are the most significant. Oh, and of course there’s Isla del Caño.”

“Isla del Caño?” Jade didn’t recall that name from her earlier research, and the idea of finding the spheres on an island intrigued her. “Tell me about that.”

“Isla del Caño is in the ocean, about twenty-five kilometers from Bahia Drake. It is also a very popular tourist destination,” she added with more than a trace of haughtiness. She produced a colorful tourist brochure with a photo of a gray and green tropical island protruding up from an azure sea, and bold yellow letters that advertised boat tours.

Jade took the pamphlet and stared at the image on the cover as is in a trance. “There are spheres there?”

“Two small spheres. Other sites have been identified but not thoroughly explored.”

Jade turned to the others. “I’ve seen this place before.”

“Sure you have,” replied Professor. “It was in Jurassic Park, only they called it something else; Isla Sorna, I think.”

The woman at the counter clapped enthusiastically at this bit of trivia, but Jade put a hand on Professor’s shoulder. “No. You don’t understand. I remember this island. I remember being there.”

Dorion stepped forward and took the brochure from her. His eyes went wide in recognition and he nodded slowly. “Yes. This was where we found…” His forehead creased as if the memory had slipped away.

“We found…” Jade stopped and corrected herself. “We will find something there. Something important.”

“What?”

She searched her memories, memories of something she hadn’t even done yet. How was that possible? Until she’d seen the picture of Isla del Caño, she hadn’t even been aware of a memory associated with the island. Yet, evidently it had been something glimpsed in the blackout episode when she’d touched the Earth stone. Now, she could vividly remember the boat ride, the salt air, that first glimpse of the rocky nub sticking out of the sea. But nothing more. The rest of the memory was still shrouded, an outline of something barely glimpsed from a distance. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out when we get there.”

Because the Diquis Delta was a mangrove jungle through which snaked dozens of braided river channels, there were no roads connecting Palmar Sur to Agujitas, the resort town on Bahia Drake where they would be able to charter a boat to Isla del Caño. To get to Bahia Drake, they would first have to take a boat ride through those channels in the imposing mangrove forest. They left the Everest with a rental agent in the village of Sierpe — evidently, this was a common practice for tourists trying to reach the coast — and boarded the afternoon speedboat ferry for the twenty-five mile journey.

The scenic riverboat ride would have been enjoyable under any circumstances, but as Jade gazed out at the passing greenery — the spindly roots of mangrove trees reaching down like octopus tentacles into mud flats exposed by the outgoing tide, caimans lounging on sandbars, too many birds to count — she felt a different kind of excitement. The excitement of seeing something that was already intimately familiar, for the very first time.

“I don’t get it,” she finally told Dorion. “In that original vision…premonition…whatever you want to call it. I died. We all did. And when we changed that future, all of that just kind of faded away. I barely remember it now. So how did I also see this future, too?”

“The space-time distortion caused by the dark matter field might have exposed you to several different possible futures. You wouldn’t remember them, so to speak, until you encountered some trigger, which in this case was seeing that picture of Isla del Caño. I felt it too, and I felt the same thing when I saw you for the first time in Teotihuacan, even though it’s been several years since I encountered the dark matter field.”

“So this might happen again? I’ll keep having déjà vu for the rest of my life?”

Dorion shrugged. “Is it such a bad thing? I would thing think that, in your profession, it would be particularly fortuitous.”

Professor cleared his throat. “You do realize that we’re caught in a Bootstrap Paradox.”

“A what?”

“The Bootstrap Paradox is a time travel problem where a person travels back in time and gives himself important information — like the plans for a time machine — which then makes it possible for him to travel back in time to give himself the plans, ad infinitum. Where did the knowledge of how to build the time machine really come from? It’s like lifting yourself off the ground by pulling on your bootstraps.”

“He speaks of a temporal causality loop,” Dorion explained. “It is a theoretical question that physicists and science fiction writers often concern themselves with.”

“I don’t think we can dismiss it as simply theoretical anymore. We’re going to Isla del Caño because Jade remembered going there in the future. Without that little nugget, we would still be fumbling around, clueless.”

Dorion shook his head. “The multiverse hypothesis allows that in one or more possible worlds, we discovered something without foreknowledge. We were already investigating locations where the spheres have been found, so it is not merely possible but probable. The space-time effects of the field do not show us our own future, but rather what is happening in parallel realities — just like watching a program on television. It only seems that we are watching our own future because so many of these alternative universes are almost completely indistinguishable from our own.”

Jade was not sure she understood but was grateful that Dorion had come to her rescue. She punched Professor playfully in the arm. “Yeah. So there.”

Professor grinned but then immediately countered the physicist’s argument with something even more esoteric, and soon the two men were lost in a discussion that was almost completely incomprehensible to Jade. “Young nerds in love,” she muttered, turning away to look at the passing scenery.

The idea that she had somehow been given special knowledge of the future was not what bothered Jade. Her first vision had been of something bad happening and they had only narrowly escaped that outcome. Now, she was being guided by an even more ambiguous premonition. But toward what? She thought she understood what Professor meant by Bootstrap Paradox, but what if this was something more like those Final Destination movies, or that old story Appointment in Samarra, where a man tries to escape his appointment with Death by running away to another city, only to find out that’s where Death was planning to meet him.

What if the universe is trying to correct the fact that we survived the explosion in Mexico?

This was why Jade hated not being in control, hated being swept along by visions and impulses that didn’t make any sense. The fact that there did not seem to be a better choice was even more frustrating.

At the mouth of the Sierpe River, they passed out into the choppy wind-swept waters of Bahia Drake — Drake’s Bay, where according to local lore, famed English privateer Sir Francis Drake had harbored his ships and possibly cached his treasures. Drake of course had been highly favored in the court of Queen Elizabeth, and that connection reminded Jade that she had not finished translating the last confession of Gil Perez. As Professor and Dorion continued to debate the finer points of causality loops, Jade opened the journal and indulged in a different sort of time travel.

A gasp escaped Jade’s lips as she read Perez’s account. She looked up and saw that Professor and Dorion had ended their discussion and were now looking at her expectantly.

“Well?” asked Professor.

Jade just shook her head. “You are not going to believe this.”

Before Jade could embark on her summary of the account in the journal, their speedboat arrived at its destination and they spent the next half hour making arrangements for the rest of the journey. There, they learned that the only way to visit the island was by first obtaining a permit and traveling with one of the government approved tour agencies. A few casual inquiries however led them to a dive boat operator willing to shuttle them out to the island and put them on a remote beach, far from the watchful eyes of the park rangers. For the right price of course. Professor paid him in cash. He was glad that Jade had not asked where he’d gotten the money; he wasn’t sure how much longer he’d be able to deflect her enquiries with “It’s a SEAL thing,” though in fact, that wasn’t far from the truth.

Tam Broderick had established secret, discretionary bank accounts for use by Myrmidon agents operating internationally. If Hodges was monitoring the account, looking for activity, then he would know that they weren’t really dead, but the harsh reality of their situation was that they needed money to survive. Besides, even if Hodges figured out that they were alive, there was no way he could use the bank records to track their location, so it was a risk worth taking. It was probably a moot point since someone had evidently found them out anyway, but he didn’t want to have to explain all that to Jade, especially given how much of a control freak she was turning into.

Once they were underway, Jade eagerly began relating the last confession of Gil Perez. The name was maddeningly familiar to Professor; he was certain that he’d heard it before. Now I’m the one getting déjà vu. Too bad I don’t have Internet access. I could clear this up with one Google search. The question of the account’s author was soon forgotten as Jade went on with the story.

“The conjurer is almost certainly Dr. John Dee,” she explained. “He was Queen Elizabeth’s occult advisor.”

Professor nodded. “He also claimed to have received visions from angels and was known to use a crystal ball — he called it the Shew Stone — for divination. That’s the ‘Eye’ Perez was talking about.”

“I don’t get this reference to Grey Sisters. Maybe I translated it wrong. Hermanas could also mean ‘nuns,’ like sisters of a Holy order.”

“The exact words were ‘Eye of the Grey Sisters.’ I think that’s a reference to the Graeae — three blind witches from Greek mythology who shared a single crystal eye, which in some versions, gave them the power to see the fates of men.”

“So now we’ve got Greek mythology added to the mix.”

He shrugged. “If this Alvaro received a Classical education, he might have known about the Graeae, but I’m sure he only meant it as comparison. It doesn’t mean there’s a connection, In any case, the Shew Stone is real. It’s part of the collection at the British Museum. And that manuscript was probably written in Enochian script, a language Dee claimed was the language used by angels, and which only he and his initiates could interpret. Maybe the crystal ball polarized the light and revealed something written in invisible ink.”

Jade frowned as if he had overlooked the most obvious explanation, which in fact he had, and not by accident. “Somehow, Dee knew about Teotihuacan, about the stone spheres and what they could do. And this explains how Perez came to be in that cavern. He followed the clues Dee had left in that manuscript and ended up down there.”

“What clues?”

Jade wrinkled her nose in irritation, then looked back at the journal. “It says here that the angel told Dee that these stone orbs could be found in the Navel of the Moon.”

“Lunar belly button lint?”

“Orphaniel is the angelic ruler of the moon and stars,” Jade continued. “And more importantly, in the Nahuatl language, the word for ‘moon’ is mētztli and ‘navel’ is xīctli, which combine to form the word Mēxihco — Mexico literally means ‘navel of the moon.’”

“I’m impressed,” he said, and actually meant it.

“You’re not the only one here who’s ready to play Final Jeopardy,” she retorted.

“Still, that doesn’t exactly narrow it down to Teotihuacan.”

Jade scanned the journal again. “Perez just seemed to know where to go. He and Alvaro traveled to the New World and somehow knew exactly where to look to find the entrance.” She snapped her fingers. “The entrance was in the Plaza of the Moon. And which stone was missing from the map of the solar system? The Moon stone! It all fits.”

Professor wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about the web she had spun to connect the disparate facts, but he couldn’t deny that it was a near-perfect fit.

“Listen to this,” Jade continued. “‘In the bosom of the earth, we found the orbs just as described in the vision. Blinded by pride and ignorance, we believed that we had discovered a great prize and decided that we would bring one of the orbs with us, so that our King might at last have an advantage in the war with Heretic Queen. We chose to bring along the smallest of the orbs, that which circled another just as the moon circles round the earth.’

“That’s why there wasn’t a Moon stone,” she said, looking up. “They took it. Or rather, Alvaro took it. Perez was stranded.”

“How were they able to move the stone?” asked Dorion. “We weren’t able to budge the Earth stone out of the dark matter field.”

“It explains that here. ‘When first we laid hands upon the orb, a dark sleep came upon us. Alvaro awoke first and roused me with the story of a dream in which he presented the orb to the King. I had dreamed as well, but my dream was strange, as if I had dreamed the dream of another man. We feared to touch the orb again, but Alvaro proposed that we place it in a casket in order to convey it away without having to touch it. This we did, though the orb was heavier than lead shot and when we began to move it, the earth began to shake. The earthquake caused the tunnel to collapse. Alvaro escaped with the orb, but I was trapped.’”

“The dark matter field would have added mass to the Moon stone,” Dorion conceded, “but I don’t know why it would have caused an earthquake.”

“Maybe it was a coincidence,” replied Jade. “The point is that Alvaro escaped with the Moon stone. It’s out there somewhere.”

“Where?” asked Professor. “Did Alvaro’s vision come true? Is the Moon stone in Spain? If so, don’t you think we would have heard about it?”

For a moment, the only sound was the low hum of the boat’s engines and the wind blowing across the water. Then Jade resumed reading. “‘Pride is a deadly sin, and this is my punishment. Yet, I have gazed upon the life that might have been, as one might gaze through a window. It is there, so close yet just out of reach. If only I could open the window and step through, I would.’” She raised her eyes. “That’s it. Nothing more but his signature.”

Professor nodded slowly. “I guess just knowing the future isn’t always enough to save you from it.”

Dorion said nothing.

The mood of the group improved somewhat when the skipper of their boat pointed out a pod of bottlenose dolphins splashing along beside them, riding the boat’s bow wave like surfers shooting the curl at Pipeline. Jade briefly forgot about Gil Perez, trapped forever beneath the Pyramid of the Sun, and found herself laughing at the antics of the highly intelligent cetacean mammals.

“Costa Rica is the dolphin capital of the world,” the skipper announced proudly. “More dolphins here than anywhere else.”

Jade sensed that Professor was about to contradict the man and quickly laid a restraining hand on his forearm. Before she could say anything though, she caught her first glimpse of the island, and forgot completely about the dolphins.

It looked exactly as she…remembered? Was that the right word? It seemed as familiar to her as Diamond Head in Hawaii or the Pueblo ruins at Chaco Canyon where she had done field research for her graduate studies. The memories became even more distinct as they drew closer.

The skipper brought the boat in close to the beach then deftly came about, so that the bow pointed back out to sea for a quick exit. He reversed the outboard, nudging the craft closer to the island, then raised it out of the water so that it wouldn’t drag in the sand. A moment later, there was a crunch as the keel rode up onto the shore and the he jumped out to hold the boat steady.

Jade recalled that this was as close to dry land as the boat would go, and without further prompting, she hopped over the gunwale and splashed up out of the surf. Dorian was right behind her, and Professor, with less assuredness, brought up the rear. The boat’s skipper gave the craft a push and then leaped back aboard. He would return, or so he had promised, just before sunset to pick them up. Jade was barely aware of his departure.

“This way,” she said, pointing to a rock fall that formed a natural staircase leading up into the verdant wall of the forest.

The jungle was almost preternaturally quiet. From time to time, Jade could hear the croaking of tree frogs, but these sounds would vanish at the sound of a foot snapping a fallen twig or the rustle of their passage through the undergrowth. Despite her memories of this journey, there were few distinguishing landmarks to help her recall exactly where they had found…what exactly, she didn’t recall, but there was something here, something that had not yet been uncovered. When they abruptly emerged onto one of the designated trails, Jade felt not only a sense of profound relief, but also a return of her certitude.

The trail soon brought them to the two stone spheres that had been discovered on the island — small orbs of igneous rock, pitted and weathered by years of exposure to the weather. The smaller sphere had been completely exposed and sat on the surface, while the other was still partially buried. Nearby, other stones had been stacked and deliberately placed to form what looked almost like a primitive shrine. The brochure Jade had been given at Finca 6 indicated that the island was believed to have been a sacred burial ground for the pre-Columbian inhabitants of Diquis Delta. Yet her instincts — or was it something she was about to discover? — told her that those ancient indigenous people had merely repurposed the stone spheres as grave markers, without any knowledge of their origin or original purpose.

Jade turned slowly, trying to recall where to go next, and then pointed once more into the tangle of foliage. Ten minutes of slow bushwhacking brought them to a tall evergreen tree that did not look much different than the hundreds like it they had already passed.

“This is the one,” Jade announced.

Professor looked around at the other trees. “The one what?”

She shrugged out of her backpack and dropped it on the ground. “This is where we need to dig.”

The waterlogged tropical soil was no match for the collapsible entrenching tools they had picked up in San Jose. Jade felt a little professional shame at the amateurish exploration — this kind of treasure hunting was more Maddock’s style — but circumstances had given her little choice. She consoled herself with the knowledge that she wasn’t just digging random holes like a relic hunter; she knew precisely where to look, even if she didn’t know precisely what she was going to find.

There was a scratching noise as the tip of her digging tool scraped against something hard, not one of the tree’s sturdy roots, but something made of stone. With even more eagerness, she began scooping dirt away from the spot and soon revealed a large stone surface, curving gently away in every direction.

“Another sphere,” Professor observed, not without a trace of admiration. “A big one by the look of it. At least four feet in diameter.”

“It must have been buried centuries ago. The tree grew right on top of it. No one was ever going to find this one.”

Professor put his hand over his mouth and coughed, though Jade distinctly heard the word: “Bootstrap.”

I can’t disagree. Without the premonition, there’s no way we would have ever known where to look.

In any case, this was exactly the way she remembered it.

She kept shoveling, exposing more of the sphere. Unlike any of the others they had encountered since arriving in Costa Rica, this one was in pristine condition. It was astonishingly smooth and when she brushed away the dirt with her gloved hands, it shone like a piece of polished granite.

She glanced up at the others and then took off her gloves. “Ok, I’m going to try touching it. I have no idea what’s going to happen.”

She reached out, laying a fingertip on the dark stone surface. It was warm, much warmer than she expected, though she couldn’t tell if it was a real effect, or just her nerves reacting with her imagination. She placed both palms against the sphere.

“I’m definitely feeling something,” she said. “Heat, and a tingling, like static electricity.”

“There have been similar reports about the spheres on the mainland,” Professor said. “They retain heat and may even have their own magnetic field. That might account for what you’re feeling.”

“But no visions?” asked Dorion, sounding almost disappointed.

She shook her head.

“What’s that?” Professor pointed to the still covered top of the sphere. Jade cleared away more of the dirt to reveal something carved in the surface.

“It’s a petroglyph.” They had seen carvings on the spheres at the museum and at Finca 6, mostly spirals and other curving lines that looked like they might have been constellation maps, all of them badly weathered, so as to make interpretation a guessing game. This one was in much better shape. “It looks like a fish,” Jade said.

“Or a dolphin,” Professor said. “In fact, it looks a lot like the dolphin petroglyphs at Easter Island. What’s that on the right side? Waves?”

Jade brushed away more dirt to reveal a zigzag line that looked like a W but in the process, uncovered more lines carved in the sphere. Soon, she had uncovered a row of symbols that curled around the top of the sphere:

Jade felt her earlier excitement vanish like a candle flame in a stiff breeze. “W C O M? ‘Welcome’? Is this some kind of joke?”

Professor stared at the letters without even a trace of amusement. “Jade, that’s Phoenician writing.”

She looked at the carving again in disbelief. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Why is that important?” asked Dorion.

“A lot of people believe that the Phoenicians discovered the Americas two thousand years before Columbus,” Jade explained. “There’s never been anything approaching definitive proof though.” She turned back to Professor. “What’s it say?”

“Jade, I know a few things, but I’m not Wikipedia.” He nevertheless screwed his face up in concentration. “The Phoenician alphabet — technically it was called Proto-Canaanite — was a precursor to the Greek, so there are a lot of similarities. That last letter for example is exactly what it looks like, an ‘M.’ Mu in Greek.”

He studied it a moment longer. “Sigma… That hook shape might be lambda. Phi? Or maybe something else. The Greeks added some sounds and tossed out others. Could be a ‘Q;’ the Greeks didn’t have one of those. And of course, mu. I think ‘slphm’ or maybe ‘slqm’ is probably closer to the mark. The problem is that Semitic languages were written without the vowels, so it’s like an abbreviation, the way we might write ‘bldg’ for ‘building.’ Oh, wait. Semitic languages were also written right to left, so we have to reverse it. ‘Mqls’ or ‘mphls.’ Hard to say what the vowel sounds were supposed to be. If we had a computer, we’d crack this in about two seconds.”

“M-ph-l-s,” Jade enunciated each letter as a separate syllable, and then it hit her. Professor’s eyes went wide as well; he had heard it too.

“What?” Dorion’s gaze flitted between them. “What does it say?”

“Omphalos,” Professor said, almost reverently. “It’s the Greek word for ‘navel.’”

“And Gil Perez wrote about the ‘navel of the moon.’ This can’t be a coincidence.”

“Wait,” Dorion said. “I know this word, ‘omphalos.’ There is a stone artifact at Delphi called ‘Omphalos.’ I visited there when I began my search. It isn’t a sphere, though.”

“The Greeks believed the Omphalos — the navel of the world — was at Delphi,” Professor explained. “What you saw was their representation of it. It’s supposed to resemble an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes. Rhea, the mother of Zeus, made it to fool her husband Cronus, who wanted to devour his own children. There are several more like it all over the region. No telling which, if any, is the original.”

“Could there have been a dark matter field there at Delphi?” asked Jade. “Maybe that was the true source of the Oracle’s visions?”

Dorion shook his head. “I was there. I felt nothing.”

“Or maybe it was once there and somebody took it,” Jade suggested.

Professor pointed at the sphere. “You think that’s the original Omphalos?”

“Or another representation of it. Think about it. The Phoenicians were sailing the eastern seas at least a millennium before the time of Christ. The Bible talks about the Phoenician King Hiram sending a fleet out from the Red Sea on a two year long voyage to the land of Ophir to bring back gold for Solomon’s temple. No one has ever been able to figure out where Ophir is, but it was located somewhere to the southeast off the Red Sea. What if Ophir was in the Americas? The Phoenicians could have sailed that far.”

“So this sphere, and all the others, were supposed to be copies of the original?”

“They may have been more than that,” suggested Dorion. “The spheres might have acted as dark matter collectors, especially if they were in close proximity to an existing field. The original Omphalos, if that’s what it was, may have seeded additional spheres with enough dark matter to begin accumulating additional particles on their own.”

“Of course, that’s just a hypothesis,” he added sheepishly.

“Okay,” Professor said. “Let’s say I buy that. How does that explain what we found under the pyramid?”

Jade considered this for a moment. “Okay, we know there’s no trace of a Phoenician presence in the Americas, aside from this.” She gestured at the sphere. “And a handful of artifacts of suspicious provenance. Whatever they tried to do here didn’t work out. Maybe the locals wiped them out, took the Omphalos, and headed north, where they folded it into their own religious worldview. The Omphalos became the Great Goddess.”

Professor wagged his head uncertainly, then grinned. “Well, it’s not a bad start, but there are a lot of holes in it. If you were one of my students, I’d tell you to prove it.”

“Your students hated you,” she retorted. “That’s why you’re not teaching anymore.”

But she knew he was right. She was still trying to think of a better answer when Professor suddenly turned his head sideways and peered off into the jungle. “Do you hear that?”

Jade listened. She could make out the croaking of frogs and scattered birdsong, fainter still the sound of surf pounding the rocks, but after a moment, she too heard the sound that had caught Professor’s attention, the whine of a distant engine and a faint rhythmic thumping sound.

Professor turned away slowly, as if merely curious to see what was causing the noise, but after taking just a few steps, he broke into a run. Jade started after him, then almost as an afterthought, shouted back to Dorion, “Come on!”

She caught up to Professor just a short distance away, on a rocky point that jutted up from the landscape like a broken tooth and gave an almost unrestricted view of the entire island. He motioned for her to take cover, and she pulled Dorion down behind a tree, but not before she caught a glimpse of two dark shapes out over the water, moving in from the east.

Helicopters.

It took less than two minutes for the two aircraft to reach the island. They were civilian birds, big enough to hold several passengers, the sort that might be used for island hopping with groups of tourists, but it was immediately clear that the men inside were not day-trippers.

With the two aircraft hovering just a few feet above the water, the side doors slid open, and bodies began pouring out, at least ten men from each helicopter. They wore military style fatigues and tactical gear, and carried a variety of weapons — mostly assault rifles outfitted with various scopes and other attachments. The total lack of uniformity suggested they were almost certainly hired guns, and the question of who had hired them was answered when, even at a distance, Jade recognized one of the men splashing up onto the beach, rifle at the ready.

“Hodges?” she asked.

“Hodges,” Professor confirmed. “I guess you didn’t see that coming.”

TWELVE

Professor drew his pistol as if just having it in his hands gave him the confidence to meet this new overwhelming threat. It didn’t.

“Take Paul and head for the eastern side of the island. Find a place to dig in. I mean that literally. Cover up and stay hidden. Our only chance is to hold them off long enough for someone to come investigate.”

Jade drew her own gun. “No.”

“Damn it, Jade, this is no time for a pissing match. I have experience with this sort of thing.”

“You have experience with twenty-to-one odds?” She shook her head. “No way. We stick together.”

Professor growled under his breath. “Will you at least follow my lead?”

“Sure. You have experience with this sort of thing.”

He let that pass without comment. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do.”

Hodges flinched as the report of a Kalashnikov echoed across the beach. He had only just waded up onto the sand and already the first shots had been fired. He raced toward a cluster of the hired gunmen to see if they had, by some lucky chance, taken out Chapman or one of the others. They had not. The men were gathered around the bullet-riddled corpse of a park ranger.

A man holding an AKS-74, smoke curling from the muzzle, shrugged. “No witnesses, right?”

Hodges frowned, but nodded his assent. He wasn’t happy about having to utilize this ad hoc collection of mercenaries that Gutierrez had foisted on him. Some of them, he knew, were former Mexican Army and federales — at least he assumed they were “former” — while others were contract killers who ran errands for the narcotraficantes. It was a motley collection, but evidently the paycheck Gutierrez had promised was more persuasive than former loyalties. Although Hodges was nominally in command, they responded to his directions about as well as a pack of wild dogs.

The helicopters had moved away from the drop zone and were circling the island to provide aerial surveillance. Not that it would do much good; the forest canopy afforded good cover, and Chapman was, after all, a former SEAL. He was in his element.

If, of course, he was here at all.

Hodges had to give Gutierrez credit. While he had been cooling his heels at Teotihuacan, the Mexican multi-billionaire had cast a wide net, just in case the targets had somehow escaped the fuel-air bomb. Sure enough, an informant had reported seeing people matching the description of Chapman and Jade Ihara, boarding a flight to Costa Rica. Hodges had been dubious about the report; informants made their money by telling people like Gutierrez what they wanted to hear, regardless of whether it was factual. Nevertheless, it was a lead that couldn’t be ignored, and Hodges had headed south to see if, by some miracle, Chapman and the others had survived.

He had not yet attempted to contact Tam Broderick, and if Chapman really was alive, his cover was already blown. Worse, Broderick would know that the organization had been infiltrated. Still, it couldn’t be helped. This was war, and sacrifices had to be made.

More shots rang out of the jungle, not the crack of supersonic rounds from an assault weapon, but the throatier bark of a handgun report. The pistol shots were answered by semi-automatic fire, and Hodges hefted his own AR-15 and headed in the direction of the battle.

Well, that answers one question. Chapman had survived. If there was even a chance of salvaging his cover, it would depend on a swift resolution to the immediate situation.

He charged up a trail leading into the interior of the island and soon found the body of a fallen mercenary. There was more scattered shooting from up ahead but no more pistol shots. The mercenaries didn’t have a target. Hodges kept going.

He soon caught up to two more of his men. They were scanning the area, focusing their attention on a slope that rose above the trail.

“Did you see them?”

The nearest man shook his head and spat indignantly. “The bastard ambushed us. Killed Raul and ran. We never saw him, but I think he’s up there.”

“Then let’s—”

A shot rang out from above and the mercenary spun half around in a halo of red. Hodges bolted for cover behind a nearby tree as did the surviving mercenary, but no more shots came. Hodges leaned out from behind cover, just far enough to sweep the hillside.

Chapman was probably already gone. Outnumbered as he was, hit and run tactics were the only way the man could hope to stay alive, and if he had enough bullets, it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that the former SEAL might actually win the fight, or at least stay alive long enough to put one of those lucky shots through Hodges skull.

Swift resolution, he thought. “Pete! Can we talk about this?”

Several seconds passed and Hodges was about to give up on the idea of a parlay when a voice, loud and closer than he expected, came out of the jungle. “A little late for that, don’t you think?”

Hodges drew back. He quickly found the other mercenary and, gestured for him to attempt a flanking maneuver. The man seemed to understand and slipped stealthily into the woods.

Hodges took a deep breath, then called out again. “I hope not. I’m sorry about the way things went down. I had to make a judgment call.”

Silence.

Hodges knew he had to keep Chapman engaged, keep him talking, in order to give the mercenaries a chance to fix his location.

“I’m going to show my cards, Pete. Maybe then you’ll understand. Maybe you’ll even consider joining me. We could use a guy with your skills.”

“We? You got a mouse in your pocket?”

Hodges jerked. The voice had come from a different place. Chapman was moving, flanking him and getting closer, and now he was alone. He picked up and fell back, racing parallel to the trail. Fifty yards later, he spotted four more mercenaries coming up the path.

Thank God! He got down behind a tree and called out again. “You deserve an explanation, Pete. No matter what you might think, we’re on the same side.”

“That doesn’t sound like an explanation.”

Still close. What’s he trying to do? The mercenaries, alerted by the exchange, fanned out to either side of the trail and started searching for a target.”

Chapman called out again. “How can you be working for them, after what they did to your family?”

“Pete, you don’t think I’m actually working for the Dominion?”

“Who else?”

Hodges weighed his options. If he could convince Chapman to hear him out, to join him, that would be a win-win situation. If not, he might be able to flush his foe out so that the mercenaries could finish him off, but doing so would mean putting himself in Chapman’s sights.

No victory without sacrifice.

“Pete, I’m going to step out in the open. Flag of truce. I just want to talk.”

Chapman didn’t answer.

Hodges waved one of the mercenaries over. “I’m going to step out in the open. If he shoots me, watch for the muzzle flash and let him have it.”

The mercenary tipped him a nod of grudging approval. “You got some cojones, amigo.”

Hodges wished he felt as brave as the gunman seemed to think he was. With his heart pounding furiously in his chest, he slung his rifle across his back and walked out onto the trail, hands raised.

“Flag of truce,” he repeated. “I know you’re an honorable man.”

There was a sound like a cough or maybe harsh laughter from somewhere in the trees, but Chapman said nothing. When Hodges spoke again, he did so at a softer volume, so that his voice would not be heard by the mercenaries at his back. “It started in Norfolk…”

Jade put the last fig leaf in place and then took a step back to view her handiwork. The leaves were spread out to cover a rectangular area about four feet wide and eight feet long. Perfect. They won’t be able to miss it.

She glanced up the hill to where Dorion waited behind a screen of leaves and branches, waved, and then headed into the jungle to check on Professor. There had been a lot of shooting earlier, but after that she had heard talking and figured Professor had made good on his plan to stall Hodges and buy them enough time to finish laying in their defenses, such as they were.

As she crept through the trees, she could hear Hodges’ voice, but he wasn’t speaking loud enough for her to make out more than the occasional word. There was a very good chance that Hodges was also stalling, trying to give his men a chance to sweep around their flanks, so instead of trying to get closer, she hunkered down behind a tree, gun drawn, and waited.

Suddenly, a hand clamped over her mouth, and another caught her hand, preventing her from discharging the pistol. She started involuntarily, trying to twist free, and then saw Professor’s face above her own. He let go of her hand and held a finger to his lips, then let go of her altogether and motioned for her to follow.

He led her through the jungle, closer to the sound of Hodges’ voice, stopping only when his words became distinct.

“—could not allow something like that to happen again,” he was saying. “It’s not just the Dominion. You get that right? It’s everyone. Muslim extremists… Christian fundamentalists with an apocalypse fetish. Hell, even those kooks waiting for the mother ship to come out of the comet. These people are out there and they’re just waiting for something to light their fuse.

“It doesn’t even have to be something like what you found in Teo, or what the Dominion found at Atlantis. These people operate in a fact-free environment, but when it does turn out to be something really special? Something supernatural? Then it’s a thousand times worse. That’s why the Norfolk Group was formed.”

Up to that point, Jade had not understood what Hodges was driving at, but with his mention of “the Norfolk Group” the pieces fell into place. Not content merely to work with the Myrmidons against the Dominion, he had chosen to align himself with a different kind of secret society — one dedicated to suppressing discoveries that might embolden religious radicals and opportunists like the Dominion to launch terrorist campaigns, or even make a bid for world domination.

Professor touched a finger to his lips again, and then cupped his hands around his mouth so that the sound of his voice would travel up into the tree tops. “So you’re the good guys, is that it?”

As soon as he was done speaking, he gestured for Jade to follow again, moving fifty feet further down slope, just in case Hodges’ men were trying to pinpoint the sound of his voice.

“Look, I won’t lie to you. The Group was formed by wealthy men who know that another Norfolk or 9/11 will crush the world economy. They’ve worked hard to get where they are and they don’t need a bunch of crazies turning the world upside down. So yeah, maybe they’re doing it for the wrong reasons, but it’s the right thing to do, Pete.

“What you found down there under that pyramid? That’s exactly the kind of thing that could touch off the next firestorm. Thousands dead. Maybe millions. Maybe a lot more if the economy goes. It’s better just to bury these things.

“I know you must feel like I betrayed you. I wish there had been time to do things differently. Hell, I wish that there had been nothing at Teo but rocks and bones, but wishing won’t make it so.”

He stopped as if waiting for Professor to respond, and when that didn’t happen, he went on. “I don’t want to kill you, Pete. We’re on the same side; we both want a world safe from the Dominion and everybody else who wants to flush it down the crapper. What do you say? There’s always room for one more.”

“Just one more?” Professor called back. “Let me guess. Part of the deal is that I give up Jade and Paul.”

He flashed her a look that said, Not a chance. Jade was surprised by just how much that reassured her.

“Loose lips sink ships, Pete. I know you can keep a secret, but the others?”

Professor pointed up the hill and mouthed the word “Go!” Even though Hodges didn’t know it, the parlay was over; the war was back on.

With Professor behind her, Jade crept up the hill, making certain to keep lots of forest cover between herself and the mercenaries. She could still hear Hodges, droning on about sacrifices for the greater good and the need for absolute secrecy, but his voice became fainter with each step she took. By the time they reached the top of the slope, where Dorion waited, she could no longer even distinguish him from the ambient jungle noise.

“You believe all that?” she whispered to Professor.

“The Norfolk Group? A bunch of rich men trying to protect their wealth by destroying anything that might upset the apple cart? Sounds pretty plausible to me. The thing is, a lot of regular people probably feel the same way; people like Brian who lost loved ones in the attacks. They’d do anything to keep it from happening again.”

“That’s insane. The truth doesn’t go away just because you cover it up.”

Professor simply inclined his head in agreement. “You ready?”

“What are our chances of making it through this?”

He regarded her with a sardonic grin. “You want the truth?”

“I see what you mean.”

“Ok. Get ready.” He aimed the pistol down the slope in the general direction of the mercenaries and fired two shots into the trees. The noise seemed deafening after the brief lull in the fight. It would have taken a miracle for him to score a hit, but Jade knew that wasn’t his intention. “Wait for it.”

There were shouts and then Jade saw movement as the mercenaries started advancing in quick bursts, moving from one tree to the next. The terrain forced them to move almost single file, which was one of the reasons Professor had chosen the top of the hill for their first fighting position.

The first man in the line pulled up short when he spied the covering of leaves Jade had laid. “¡Ten cuidado!” he shouted. “¡Creo que es una trampa!” Be careful. I think there’s a trap. Then, heeding his own advice, he cautiously started up the slope.

“Now?” whispered Dorion.

“Not yet.”

A second man emerged, sweeping the barrel of his rifle toward the hilltop, but keeping one eye on the leafy camouflage, clearly wary of a concealed pitfall or some other snare.

“They fell for it,” she whispered back. “Two coming up.”

“Let’s try for a triple-play,” Professor answered back.

A third man stepped out from cover. It was Hodges, and like the others, he was dividing his attention between the hilltop and the narrow strip of ground where it was, presumably, safe to walk.

“Now,” Professor whispered.

Dorion pushed on the handle of the entrenching tool they had wedged under the stone sphere, levering it into motion. It smashed through the screen of fig leaves, and started rolling down the slope, gathering momentum as it went.

The first man spotted it and froze in place. His eyes darted to the side, perhaps weighing the threat of whatever lay beneath the leaf cover against the small boulder rolling toward him. His hesitancy cost him the opportunity to make the choice. The sphere may have looked like an over-sized beach ball, but it hit the man’s legs like a pile driver, knocking him back and continuing over him like he was nothing but a speed bump. The second man, his view blocked by his comrade, never saw it coming.

Hodges, forewarned by the cries of the two men and the crunch of the stone ball breaking their bones, reflexively threw himself to the side, right into the leaf cover. The sphere clipped his foot as it rolled past and then crashed into the trees where it continued to carom noisily down the hillside. Hodges lay motionless for a moment atop the leaf cover, as if hardly able to believe that he was alive.

There was no trap, at least not of the sort the attackers were expecting. There hadn’t been time to dig a pit or create spring-tension spear traps with tree branches. “It would take us a couple days to set up all that Rambo stuff,” Professor had said. “That’s time we don’t have. But they won’t know that.”

Instead, he and Dorion had undertaken the tricky and somewhat Sisyphusian task of rolling the stone sphere they had discovered out of its hole and up to the perch on the hilltop, while Jade had gathered leaves to create the illusion of a concealed pit trap. And it had worked beautifully. Mostly.

Well, two out of three ain’t bad, Jade thought.

Professor however, wasn’t ready to call it a failure. He rose up from cover and started firing down at Hodges, but right away, the mercenaries spread out below started firing back. The tree line erupted with muzzle flashes and veritable wave of lead rolled up the slope. Jade caught a glimpse of Hodges scrambling for cover and then was herself driven back as tree branches began splintering all around her.

“Go!” Professor shouted.

They had known, even as they labored to set up their hilltop defense, that it would be only a temporary position. They had hoped for nothing more than to slow their attackers down a little, break their spirit, and if they were lucky, thin the ranks a little. They had succeeded in the last at least, but the odds were still stacked high against them. Their plan then had been to accomplish what they could at the hilltop, and then make a desperate retreat for the east side of the island. They had not discussed what would happen then; Jade knew they would have to make a last stand, go out in a blaze of a glory, but saying it aloud would have been too much to bear.

They ran and slid down the back slope, plowing headlong into the jungle thicket. When possible, Jade tried to duck under or sidestep around branches and vines, but more often than not, they appeared so suddenly, there wasn’t time for evasive maneuvers. Their escape sounded like a stampede of elephants trampling through the forest.

Much sooner than Jade would have thought possible, the jungle ended at a precipice, and she found herself staring out at the blue-gray water of the Pacific Ocean. She lowered her gaze and saw the whitecaps of surf breaking against the face of the cliff, at least forty feet below. There was a boat out on the water, a big motor yacht, maybe two hundred yards out to sea; it might as well have been two hundred miles.

Dorion broke out of the trees behind her and would have charged right off the edge if Jade had not tackled him.

Professor called out to them. “This way!”

He was waving frantically, about twenty yards to the south. Jade got up and, half-dragged Dorion along behind her. She got about halfway to him when the sound of a helicopter filled her ears.

There wasn’t even time to hide. The aircraft appeared suddenly, moving out from behind the rocky promontory that had muted its approach, pouncing on them like lion leaping out of the tall grass.

The rhythmic beat of rotor blades was abruptly punctuated by the staccato roar of a machine gun. Jade threw herself flat as the hillside all around her exploded in a cloud of brown and green. She thought she could feel the heat of the rounds sizzling through the air, striking the ground mere inches from where she lay.

The gunner was firing in bursts, three to five seconds of fire, and maybe as many seconds of letting the gun cool while he assessed the results. She didn’t know if the others had been hit, didn’t dare raise her head to look, and yet she couldn’t stay where she was. She bit her lip, playing possum, and waited for the next burst. If it didn’t kill her, she would make a run for the tree line.

The helicopter continued to beat the air, hovering about fifty feet above and perhaps twice that far beyond the edge of the cliff directly, but the gun was silent. Jade counted the seconds — ten, twenty… an excruciating half minute, before she realized why. The helicopter wasn’t hunting them any longer; it was keeping them pinned down. She lifted her head up, and scanned the trees.

Professor must have realized it too, because even as Jade was drawing her pistol, she heard the report of his, and then the roar of answering fire — not just one, but a dozen guns — from out of the jungle.

Damn it! There’s no way out of this.

Jade could not recall ever feeling so helpless, so hopeless. It was not just that she would probably be dead in a minute or two; it was the sense of absolute futility, of seeing the danger coming, but having no way at all to avoid it.

Fine. But I won’t go alone.

She listened, cocking her head this way and that until she thought she knew where the nearest mercenary was, and then curled her finger around the trigger.

“Blaze of glory time.”

THIRTEEN

Suddenly a deep boom, like close thunder, sounded behind her, from just out past the cliff.

What now?

And then half a second later, another, but this one was in the sky.

Jade felt heat against her back, and a wave of energy — like a punch to the gut — passed through her body.

That was an explosion.

She rolled over and saw a black smudge in the sky where the helicopter had been just a moment before.

What the hell?

The destruction of the helicopter stunned the mercenaries into paralysis. The withering fusillade ceased as abruptly as if someone had slammed a door on the attackers.

“Jade? Paul?”

Professor? Still alive. Thank God. “I’m here.”

Dorion’s weak voice shouted a moment later. “Yes?”

“Get to the cliff. We have to jump.”

Jump?

But he was right. The ceasefire wasn’t going to last. Maybe the leap would kill them. Maybe it was just postponing the inevitable.

I’ll take ‘maybe’ over a bullet any day.

She stuffed the gun back into its holster and sprang to her feet.

The cliff was just a few steps away, but despite the dire urgency of the situation, she couldn’t bring herself to make a blind running leap. She stopped at the edge, just for a heartbeat, and looked down.

There weren’t any rocks, at least none that she could see, but there was no way of knowing what lay just below the turbulent surface. And it seemed a lot further away than she remembered from that first glimpse.

Then she saw the boat.

It was a lot closer than she remembered; close enough for her to see a man standing on the aft deck with something that looked like a very long rifle with a strange conical attachment at one end.

An RPG launcher. So that’s what happened to the helicopter. Jade felt an ember of hope flare bright within her.

The man shouldered the grenade launcher and began scanning the skies for another target. He wasn’t alone. Another figure stood on the deck, waving frantically, waving up to the trio on the cliff.

Only then did Jade realize that the others were still with her. Dorion stood half a step behind her, as if afraid to get any closer to the edge. Professor just stared at the boat, an incredulous look on his face.

What are they waiting for?

“What are you waiting for?” she snapped. And when neither man reacted, Jade did what she knew she had to do. “Do I always have to go first?” she muttered.

Then with a whoop, she jumped.

“Jade, wait!”

Professor’s shout came a millisecond too late. Jade had already leaped from the precipice and arced out over the crashing surf. She vanished into the turbulence, and then after an interminable moment, bobbed up and started swimming toward the boat.

“Damn it.” Jade hadn’t seen what he had, but maybe it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like they had much choice.

“Time to go!” He grabbed Dorion’s arm and unceremoniously hurled him out into space. Then he jumped too.

It wasn’t the height of the fall that worried him; he had made jumps into open water before, from greater elevations and packing a hundred pounds of gear. The water was littered with pieces of the destroyed helicopter but most of it was further out than he could jump anyway. The fuselage had sunk completely, which probably meant the water was deep enough. If there were rocks hidden below the surf…well, it wasn’t as if there was anything he could do about it.

No, he was worried about what would happen if he survived.

He kept his arms close to his body, knees slightly bent. The impact with the water definitely felt like hitting solid ground, but he knew better. Pain shot through his legs as the surf enveloped him, and then he felt another jolt as he slammed into the submerged sea floor, but he was still conscious and pretty sure that nothing was broken. He thrust out with his legs and rocketed to the surface.

He bobbed up a moment later and turned a slow circle until he spotted Dorion, splashing frantically a few yards away. He swam over to the struggling man and gripped him by the collar, dragging him up so he could take a breath.

Within minutes of their leap, a launch deployed from the yacht. It motored toward them, fishing Jade out first, and then came to collect Professor and Dorion. As he was helped up and over the transom, he heard Jade laughing.

“You still have that damned hat.”

He reached up and touched the sodden felt, verifying that it was true.

“It must be your lucky talisman,” said a voice from the front of the small boat.

Professor glanced at the speaker, who sat next to a thoroughly bedraggled Dorion. “I knew there was something I liked about it,” he said, and then turned to Jade. “We may have just jumped out the frying pan and into the fire.” He said in a low voice. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you earlier, but…”

He gestured to the blonde woman sitting with Dorion. “These are the people that were following us in San Jose.”

Jade just smiled. “Yeah, I know all about that.”

“Dr. Chapman,” Dorion said, “May I introduce my benefactor, Ms. Ophelia Doerner.”

The blonde woman, who had complimented him on his hat, flashed a radiant smile and then extended a hand.

Jade just smirked. “Try to keep up, okay?”

Although they had left Isla del Caño behind, safety was not a foregone conclusion. There was still a second helicopter and more than a dozen mercenaries with enough firepower to turn the yacht into Swiss cheese if they so desired. Of course, the rescuers were not defenseless; they had shown as much with the RPG strike that had knocked one of the helicopters from the sky.

It was that threat, Jade surmised, that kept Hodges from chasing after them. As for Professor’s assertion that they had left one bad situation for another…well, the jury was still out on that. As the yacht powered back toward the mainland, Dorion brought them up to speed on his relationship with Ophelia Doerner.

Although Jade had never heard of her, Ophelia was one of the richest women in the world. She might actually have topped that list but because her wealth was shared with her twin brother, Laertes, her personal net worth was only part of a much larger family fortune.

“Ophelia and Laertes,” Professor mumbled. “Dad must have had a sick sense of humor.”

Not surprisingly, Professor knew quite a bit about the Doerner family and their wealth, and surreptitiously supplied this background information while they dried off and drank hot beverages in the main salon.

Despite the German surname, the Doerner twins were the scions of a Gilded Age Pennsylvania coal baron. Over the years, the family empire had grown larger and stronger through careful diversification and, perhaps more importantly, influence peddling. Even as America plied the uncertain seas of an oil-based economy, lobbyists in the employ of the Doerner patriarch had seen to it that coal remained an integral part of the nation’s energy infrastructure, and that tiresome labor and environmental issues were never much of a problem. Papa Doerner had also been a rabid anti-communist and an opponent of the United Nations, though it was impossible to say whether his motives were political or personal. For the last twenty years or so, following the death of Laertes’ and Ophelia’s father, the family had made a concerted effort to reduce their public profile; even Professor, with his encyclopedic knowledge of the world, had never heard of Ophelia or her brother. Their political influence however, remained considerable.

Jade turned to Dorion. “So how did she get involved with your search for dark matter?”

“Quite simple, really,” said Ophelia as she swept into the salon and took a seat at the table with them. “Dr. Dorion made me into a believer.”

Jade did not fail to notice the subtle shift in the posture of her two male companions. Even Professor, who had verbalized some reservations about their hostess, sat up a little straighter.

Jade was grateful of course for the rescue, but she wasn’t so easily seduced by Ophelia’s charms. The woman was about as fake as an airbrushed Vogue magazine cover, and unfortunately, just as beautiful. The blonde hair appeared natural, or perhaps expertly bleached within the last couple of days, but everything else — the smooth forehead, the complete absence of laugh lines, the full lips, the gravity defying C-cups and svelte physique — was not. Jade guessed she was probably older than she appeared, maybe even in her fifties, but there wasn’t a shred of visual evidence to support that guess.

Ophelia’s appearance was not the only thing about her that was impeccably manufactured. Her bearing, her speech, everything about her, was refined, practiced. In a word, fake.

Oh, who cares? She saved us. Maybe that’s all that matters. “A believer?”

“Following the incident at CERN,” Dorion explained. “I wrote a paper addressing the potential for space-time effects near a dark matter event horizon. It was, ah, not very well received.”

“Not by the academic world, at any rate,” Ophelia said. “I, however, thought it was a fascinating article. I do not have the technical background to judge the science, but the premise is compelling and, well, I just had to know more. I approached Paul and he told me of his experiences. He’s been working for me ever since, traveling the world, investigating ancient oracles to see if the effect he witnessed at CERN might be present.”

“How did you find us?” asked Professor.

Ophelia appeared surprised by the question. “Paul contacted me from Mexico. He told me about what happened at Teotihuacan, and said that you were in danger. I came immediately.”

“Now we know how Hodges was able to track us,” Professor muttered.

Jade shot an accusing look at the physicist. “You think maybe you should have checked with us first?”

Dorion hung his head, but Ophelia quickly interceded. “Please, do not blame Paul. What’s done is done. I do not believe that your enemies learned of your whereabouts through me, but regardless, my arrival here could not have been more fortuitous.”

Jade glanced questioningly at Professor and got a shrug in return. “Well, as you say, what’s done is done. At least we don’t have to hide anymore.”

“You most certainly do not,” replied Ophelia. “If you are willing to continue your search, I can guarantee protection and whatever else you may require.”

“What’s in it for you?”

“I should think that’s obvious.” Ophelia leaned forward, her face showing something almost like hunger. “I want to know the future.”

“I’ve told you that it doesn’t work that way,” Dorion said quickly. “The space-time effects created in a dark matter field do not show the literal future. Instead we are able to look through a window to other universes that may or may not be similar to our own.”

“A window,” Jade murmured, thinking back to the closing words of Gil Perez’s confession.

Ophelia made a dismissive gesture. “That is merely a matter of semantics. We all make predictions about what will happen, yet our grasp of the future is limited by the scope of our prior knowledge. This window you speak of will allow us to see possible outcomes influenced by factors of which we are unaware.

“I am, as Dr. Chapman has pointed out, a very wealthy woman, but my ability to remain that way is dependent on the decisions I make — where to invest, when to sell — but it is guesswork. All it takes is a natural disaster, an unexpected political upheaval, another 9/11, and millions of dollars vanish in the blink of an eye.”

“Right,” snorted Jade. “So if you know that thousands of people are about to get killed, you can invest accordingly and cash in.”

Ophelia tilted her head indulgently. “I am not as callous as you think, Dr. Ihara. While it is true that there are unscrupulous people who might seek to ‘cash in’ as you say, from such tragedies, I can assure you that I am not one of them. If I had foreknowledge of such an event, I would of course do everything in my power to prevent or mitigate the outcome. Long term stability — economic, political, social — is the surest path to success.”

“Where have I heard that before?” Professor said.

Jade knew he was referring to what Hodges had revealed about the goals of the Norfolk Group. Ophelia just looked at him, uncomprehending. “I think you would be distrustful if I told you my motives were purely altruistic, but I assure you, I’m not the devil you seem to think I am. It is quite natural for people to want to know the future. That is the very reason why there have been countless oracles and prophets throughout history. It is why people read their horoscope every day. I mean to continue with this search, and I hope that you will join me. My jet is waiting at the Drake’s Bay airport and can take us wherever we need to go. If you do not wish to accompany me, I will take you back to the United States. But I will keep looking.”

Jade looked at Professor again. “What do you think?”

Professor shook his head. “It’s your call. My mission is in shambles, and for the time being, I’m not sure who to trust. I can give Tam a call, but until she can thoroughly vet the Myrmidons and purge any agents of the Norfolk Group, I think it’s best for us to keep a low profile. Hole up in a safehouse somewhere and wait until this blows over.” He paused, as if hoping that Jade would show some enthusiasm for that idea, and when that did not happen, he continued. “But, I guess part of me really wants to know the truth about all this.”

Despite her reservations, Jade felt the same way, maybe even more so. She turned to Ophelia. “Okay, count us in.”

The blonde woman gave a satisfied smile. “Then I guess the only remaining question is the matter of where we should go next?”

“I want to know what happened to the Moon stone,” Jade said quickly. At Ophelia’s questioning look, Jade launched into an account of their experiences beneath the Pyramid of the Sun. When she touched on the subject of the dead Spaniard, Jade reached into her backpack for Perez’s journal, only to discover that it had been soaked through by the leap in to the ocean. She carefully tried to separate the pages, but the parchment fragmented at her touch.

“Well, there goes our last piece of physical evidence.”

“But you did read it?” Ophelia asked. “You remember what it said?”

“Unfortunately, what it said doesn’t help us find the Moon stone,” Professor countered. “Perez was left behind. I think we can assume that his partner, Alvaro, made it out since we didn’t find his body down there, but there’s no way of knowing what happened then.”

“What if we work backwards,” suggested Jade. “Follow the trail to its source?”

“You mean Delphi?” Dorion said. “There’s nothing there. That was the first place I looked.”

“Actually, I was talking about the John Dee manuscript. Perez used Dee’s crystal ball…what did you call it Prof? The Shew Stone? He was able to use it to read Dee’s manuscript. The Shew Stone might lead us to the Moon stone.”

Professor offered a dubious frown. “That sounded more like an optical effect to me.”

“Maybe, but how did Dee know about the orbs under the Pyramid? We need to get a look at that crystal ball. You said it’s in the British Museum, right?”

“And if that doesn’t work?” Professor looked at Dorion again. “When you visited Delphi, you didn’t really know what to look for. Maybe that’s why you didn’t find anything. I think it might be worth a second look. There may be something there that supports the hypothesis that the original Omphalos was a sphere, taken by the Phoenicians.”

Ophelia leaned forward. “If I may make a suggestion, why don’t we do both? Paul and Jade…”

She reached across the table and laid a hand on Jade’s forearm in what seemed like a calculated move. “May I call you Jade?” She pressed on without waiting for an answer. “Paul and Jade, who have both experienced the space-time effect, can go to London an investigate Dee’s crystal ball. Dr. Chapman and I can go to Delphi and look at it from a fresh perspective.”

Oh, he’s Dr. Chapman, but we’re BFFs? Jade bit her lip to keep from saying it aloud. She looked to see what Professor’s reaction would be.

“I’m not sure splitting up is such a good idea,” he said, though Jade thought he sounded reluctant to disagree with Ophelia. “There are people trying to kill us, after all.”

“I don’t think we need to be too concerned about that,” Ophelia said. “As you may have noticed, my security team is up for any challenge.”

Professor turned to Jade. “It’s your call.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Jade replied quickly. “I can take of myself.” Why did I just say that?

“Are you sure this is what you want?”

No, she wanted the scream. What I want is for you to take charge, to tell me that you don’t want to let me go off on my own. But I’m too proud to admit it.

Instead, she just shrugged.

“Then it’s settled,” Ophelia announced, rising from the table. “I’ll call ahead to my pilot and tell him to get the jet ready.”