Flashlight beams stabbed the darkness as Sebastian and Lex cautiously entered the new chamber. From the cavernous way their footsteps echoed, they deduced the room was vast.
“We’re at the heart of the pyramid,” Sebastian declared.
Lex spied a soft glow ahead of them. As she moved closer, she realized it was a flare. Looking up to the ceiling, she saw a stone grate and realized that the chamber they were in was directly beneath the sacrificial chamber.
Passing the sputtering flare, Lex moved forward, Sebastian at her side. Weyland, Max and Miller came next, with Verheiden and Connors bringing up the rear. Weyland played his light along the tiled floor, then up at the high, ornate stone walls and the vaulted ceiling. Sebastian paused to study the inscription on a clay urn as Lex continued to move toward the center of the chamber.
“My God,” she cried.
Immediately, everyone trained their flashlights in her direction—to illuminate a large, bullet-shaped crate sitting on a slightly raised platform made of tiled stone. The object was constructed of dully gleaming metal coated by a thin film of glimmering ice. Fifteen feet long, four feet wide, it looked like a coffin. No hinges or joints were readily discernable, but the shape was unmistakable.
“Some kind of sarcophagus,” Sebastian speculated. “Egyptian in design. These were built to protect the dead for their journey to the afterworld.”
Weyland touched the cold surface. His fingers came away glittering with ice crystals. “Can you open it?” he asked.
Sebastian examined the sarcophagus. On what he first thought was a smooth surface, he noticed shallow etchings on the lid—a series of circular symbols, all virtually identical.
Sebastian looked around, to find a larger version of the same design pattern on the wall.
“Look,” he cried. “The symbols on the wall correspond to the face on the lid of the sarcophagus.”
“So it’s a burial decoration to honor the dead—maybe an inscription,” Miller suggested.
But Sebastian shook his head. “It’s a combination.”
“Like on a safe?” said Connors.
“How are we going to get this open?” Weyland demanded.
“I have an idea,” Sebastian replied. He wiped the ice away from the sarcophagus lid. Then, for what seemed like quite a long time, Sebastian compared the pattern on the wall to the one etched into the coffin. As his mind raced, he spoke his thoughts out loud.
“These ancient people would have based the combination on something they could see. It wouldn’t be a number. But what could they have seen? The planets?” Sebastian shook his head. “Only nine planets… the stars, perhaps. But how would they use stars as a combination? Wouldn’t the sky always change—”
“There’s only one clear constellation visible this far south that lasts year round,” Miller interrupted. “That would be Orion.”
“Orion!” Sebastian cried.
Then he reached out his hand and touched one of the circles on the wall. To everyone’s surprise it began to glow with a dull white light. Sebastian pressed another circle, then another, until a map of the constellation of Orion glowed faintly on the wall.
Everyone parted to make room for Sebastian as he crossed the chamber to the sarcophagus. Touching the circles etched on the metal lid, they began to glow like their cousins on the wall. Then the lid began to open.
Miller moved in to get a better look. “How is that possible?”
Sebastian grabbed Miller’s coat and pulled him aside. He pushed the others away as well. “Stand back. We have no idea what is in there.”
From a safe distance, they watched as the lid opened completely and slid to a smooth stop.
Weyland arched an eyebrow. “Well, Professor De Rosa. You’re the expert. What do you suggest now?”
From a safe vantage point, Sebastian tried to probe the black interior of the sarcophagus, but there was no way to see without peering over the edge.
“Everybody else, stay back,” Sebastian commanded as he cautiously moved forward. At the coffin, he paused. Then, leading with his flashlight, he cautiously peeked inside.
“I… I don’t believe this.”
“What?”
“Take a look for yourself, Mr. Weyland.”
The sarcophagus contained three futuristic-looking artifacts, probably weapons.
Sebastian locked eyes with Charles Weyland. “The master culture,” he whispered ominously.
Sprawled on the icy floor, a coating of frost already shrouding his motionless body, Quinn twinkled like a spun jewel in the harsh glare of the halogen lamps. Light stands and wooden crates were scattered about—otherwise the grotto was deserted.
A chilly gust of air spilled out of the mouth of the tunnel. As soon as it passed across his face, Quinn’s eyes opened. He tried to move, but his limbs were numb. He was virtually frozen in place. While unconscious, spittle had run from his slack jaws, and blood had flowed from the gash in his shoulder. The liquids had frozen and now he was glued to the icy floor like a bug stuck to the bottom of a roach motel.
Too cold and too weak to shiver, Quinn opened his mouth to moan for help, but the cry died in his throat when he spied an ominously familiar optical distortion rippling near the mouth of the shaft. The monster that had attacked him on the surface had followed him here—and he’d brought a friend. The two of them had probably come to finish the job they’d started.
Quinn trembled as the shimmering wraiths glided toward him. Moving as one, their invisible feet left their mark in the hoarfrost. He squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath. A heavy boot crunched the ice next to his head as Quinn waited for the fatal blow.
To his amazement, it never came. Long moments passed before Quinn opened his eyes again, but when he did it seemed as if the ghostly killers had gone, their tracks forming a trail that led to the ice-encrusted pyramid on the horizon.
Using fingers nearly paralyzed by frostbite, Quinn tore himself loose from the ice floor. Frozen saliva shredded the skin off his cheek, and the scab that covered his shoulder wound was also ripped away.
He didn’t care much about the pain he felt—not his broken leg, his shattered ribs, or even the frostbite that had claimed his fingers and toes. Quinn simply could not believe his luck: He was alive, and that was all that mattered.
But as he rolled over onto his back, his eyes went wide. A third Predator stood over him, wrist blades unsheathed. Before the roughneck could even scream, the twin blades scythed down, carving deep into his brain.
To Weyland, the found objects looked like guns, but impossibly large ones, making them all the more impressive. The keen eye of the industrialist noted a recoiling barrel configuration swivel-mounted on a rather broad shoulder plate. Two other weapons were in the coffin as well, similar in construction but smaller, and minus the shoulder armor.
Miller leaned close and studied the devices. “Any idea what those are?”
“Nope,” said Sebastian. “You?”
Miller shrugged, then shook his head.
Max Stafford scoffed. “Good thing we brought in the experts.”
“Hey,” Miller cried defensively. “We just found the equivalent of a DVD player in Moses’s living room. Why don’t you give us a second to figure it out.”
Lex noticed Weyland was having difficulty breathing. He signaled Max, who brought him a portable oxygen tank. With shaky hands Weyland held the mask to his face and took great gulps of air.
“Is he okay?”
Lex faced Sebastian. “It’s just asthma. He’s fine,” she said, covering for Weyland.
“Let me see if I can get a base reading off the metal,” Miller said, producing his spectral analysis kit and tablet PC. While they waited for the results of Miller’s test, a debate raged among them.
“Who made these things, and why?” Weyland wheezed. Max remained at his side, feeding the billionaire oxygen.
“Well, if you ask me, the ergonomics are all wrong for these things to have been designed for us,” said Miller. “Whoever made this stuff probably wasn’t human.”
Weyland pulled the mask away from his face. “Spare us your science fictional explanations, Dr. Miller.”
Suddenly Miller’s PC beeped and he studied the readout.
“There are two chemicals here. Tilanium and cadmium 240.”
“Never heard of them,” said Sebastian.
“They’re found in meteorites.”
“Meteorites?” Sebastian cried.
Miller smiled in triumph. “Whatever these are, they weren’t made here.”
“When you say ‘here,’ you mean…?” Weyland’s voice trailed away.
“I mean Earth,” said Miller.
Weyland moved the oxygen mask away from his mouth to speak, but he started wheezing immediately.
“How you doing?” Lex asked.
Weyland nodded up at her, but Lex could see he was not doing well at all.
“We’ve been out long enough for today,” Lex announced. “We’re going to set up base camp tonight at the whaling station on the surface, and we’ll get back at it first thing tomorrow.”
Max Stafford rose and blocked Lex.
“You can go back to base camp, Ms. Woods.” He placed his large hand on Weyland’s frail shoulder. “We’re going to stay here.”
Lex ignored Max and spoke directly to Weyland.
“You wanted to leave without proper prep and we did,” she cried. “You wanted to be the first here, we are. You’ve claimed the find. It’s yours. Now we move as a team, and we’re done for today.”
Weyland looked up at Lex, then at the others. “You heard her,” he said. “Let’s move.”
“What should we do about those weapons, or whatever they are,” said Max.
“Take them,” Weyland commanded. “We can run further tests on the surface.”
Connors stepped up to the sarcophagus and reached inside. His fingers closed on the smallest of the weapons—a flowing, organic-looking metal barrel with a massive handgrip.
“No! Don’t touch them,” Sebastian cried.
Too late. When Connors lifted the weapon from its cradle, he triggered a mechanism hidden underneath it. There was an audible click, followed by a loud boom that reverberated throughout the chamber, shaking icicles loose from the ceiling.
Then the walls began to move.
“Sebastian!” Miller cried. “This happens in all pyramids, right?”
“No,” Sebastian replied nervously.
Like a giant Rubik’s Cube, the pyramid began to reconfigure itself. In an ear-splitting sequence of groans, thunderous claps and rumbles, gears grating and stone scraping against stone, walls slid aside to transform dead ends into passageways leading to more undiscovered portions of the pyramid. Other halls, meanwhile, were sealed by tons of solid rock or trapdoors that slammed tight.
Sebastian grabbed Lex, yanking her out of the path of a giant stone slab that descended from the roof. Other slabs closed off the passage leading to the sarcophagus chamber, crushing the string of glow sticks Lex had used to mark their path and sealing off their only escape route.
The movement in the ancient structure after so many millennia shook icicles, terra-cotta fixtures, and even stone blocks loose. Objects dropped all around them, bursting apart like mortar shells.
In the sacrificial chamber, Thomas and Adele Rousseau, along with several assistants, were instantly trapped when the entrances were shut by mammoth etched stone barriers that rose from the floor or dropped from the ceiling.
In the sarcophagus chamber, Lex gaped at the moving walls, the shapes surreally shifting, her perspective morphing, as if she’d been dropped into an Escher print.
“What the hell is going on?” Connors screamed.
But his cry died out in the cacophony of grinding gears and sliding rock. Within seconds there was no escape.