Should.

  I look up at the peak of the simple, yet, amazing piece of hardware. “Is that just a standard pulley system rigged to the top?” I was expecting something a little more modern and ingenious to be perfectly honest.

  The pulley system is the same one you would find anywhere in the world except, this one is built to handle our gauge of cable, which is really thick. The overall design is basically the same though.

  “Yep,” Kane says. “Why mess with what works? Mankind has been using these for thousands of years, and they almost never fail.”

  “Almost?” I say. He had to say ‘almost.’

  “Well, nothing’s perfect,” he says with a shrug.

  “Thanks for the reassurance, bud.”

  “Look, you dying here and now doing what you love is better than slowly rotting away in a hospital somewhere, waiting for Thanatos to come calling!” Kane snaps.

  I give him a shrug of my own, accepting his simple, yet profound philosophy. Then I playfully ask, “Who’s Thanatos?”

  “The Greek god of death. The Reaper,” Kane answers.

  I’m about to ask how he knows who the Greek god of death is, but I guess it really doesn’t matter.

  My silence puts him on the defensive. “I’m not just the muscle, you know. I read and research stuff too.”

  Now I’m laughing. “No one said otherwise, man.”

  “What’s so funny?” Nicole asks. She must have arrived while I was mid-giggle.

  “Nothing,” Kane says sharply. “We almost ready?”

  She pats her thighs, and not in a sexual way either. She has a gun strapped to each of her legs. Both are in a customized holster, perfect for a quick draw.

  Kane’s eyes light up at the sight of the weapons. “You any good with those—”

  Twin pistols snap up towards his face and load with a click, held firmly in each of Nicole’s steady hands. It’s as impressive a sight as I’ve ever seen.

  “Shit!” Kane yells, tripping backward over some equipment, falling on his butt. Usually, a man with his background wouldn’t even flinch because of something like that, but I don’t think he was expecting her to be able to handle them as expertly as she just did. Even I twitched, and they aren’t even pointed at me.

  “Nicole, please,” Dad says, coming up from her left and Omar from her right.

  Kane relaxes but is visibly embarrassed. He just leans onto one elbow, still on the ground, and looks up at me.

  I’m doing my best not to crack up and burst out laughing at the man.

  “Ruger SR22, lightweight and dependable. These bad-boys hold ten rounds each and come with something a little extra.” Twin beams appear on Kane’s chest as he lay prone on the ground. “A little modification to help with the aiming. Not that I need it.” She holsters the boys, spinning them back into their holsters like an old-timey outlaw. She then leans down and helps Kane up.

  “Damn woman,” Kane says, dusting himself off, “who are you, Lara Croft?”

  I can tell by the blank look on Nicole’s face that she doesn’t get the Tomb Raider reference. Apparently, Kane sees it too.

  “Aw, never mind,” he says a little frustrated. “So, is that a yes? We’re ready to get a move on?”

  “As ready as we’ll ever be,” Omar says, obviously a little disheartened.

  “I believe we can begin our journey to the center of the Earth,” Dad chimes in, quoting the title of his favorite classic novel. There even seems to be a little more pep in his step than normal.

  “You feeling alright, Dad?” His mood change has caught me off guard. I hope the trauma from everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours hasn’t broken something loose in his head.

  He smiles at me, a youthful look in his eyes. “With everything that’s happened, I completely forgot why I got into Archaeology in the first place.”

  “The chicks?” Kane jokingly says, getting a laugh out of Nicole and me.

  “Why yes, Kane. Harrison’s mother was a beauty like none I’ve seen since. A real treasure. But, that’s a conversation for another day.”

  It’s the first time I’ve heard Dad call Mom by the nickname he gave her. They met in grad school on a sponsored dig. He said he found “his treasure” that day and it stuck.

  “Alrighty…” I say. “Mr. Kane lead the way.”

  “Yes, sir!” He mockingly answers me with a salute and grabs hold of the cable extending into the nothingness below us. He sighs and looks back at the rest of our party. “Down the rabbit hole?”

  He gets a nod of encouragement from everyone and grabs his carabiner climbing clip. He then clips it onto the thick cable and quickly re-explains the proper rappelling technique he went over earlier.

  “Don’t forget your gloves either. You’ll have zilch for skin after if you forget them.” Then under his breath, he says, “Let’s do this,” and leaps into the realm of the unknown.

  22

  The ear-piercing scream made me flinch and almost fall when I touched down. Kane led the way followed by Dad, Omar, Nicole, and finally myself, bringing up the rear.

  The plan was for everyone to land and disconnect from the cable. Then, each of us would fan out and draw our weapons, covering the next person as they made their own arrival. Only we didn’t plan on landing on a pile of mangled corpses. I didn’t see that coming.

  When Nicole landed and moved to cover my approach, she tripped and stumbled on what appeared to be someone’s crushed sternum.

  Now, she’s kicking and thrashing, eyes wide in fright…not that I can blame her.

  “Nicole, you’re fine. Breathe,” I say, trying to get her under control.

  What’s left of the rib cage is stuck around her ankle, and it isn’t coming off, even with all the dancing she’s doing. It ain’t budgin’.

  “Gah!” she yelps, but finally starts to get back under control. “Okay… I’m okay… I’m okay.” She sucks in one more deep breath and re-aims her Ruger, obviously embarrassed and not in the mood to hear about it. What’s even more remarkable is that she’s almost back to her cool, calm, and collected self…even with part of a dead body still attached to her foot.

  “Okay,” I whisper, drawing my gun. “Lights.”

  Everyone cracks open their own glow sticks and toss them ten feet in front of themselves. A circle of orange illumination appears around us, joining the remnants of the ones I threw before descending. The area around us is now a veritable light show in an otherwise dark and extremely disturbing space. The good news is we can now see some. The bad news is that we can, indeed, see some.

  What we do see is both horrifying and confusing.

  Bodies. Maybe a half-dozen or so of them—could be more—but the parts are everywhere, making it hard to count. It would be almost impossible to tell exactly how many there are even if we did try to piece them back together. The decay isn’t making it any easier either. It looks like a tornado hit them and tore them apart or like what would happen if you fell from…

  “No way,” I softly say, looking up.

  “What?” Omar asks, visibly twitching in fright.

  I look at Kane who understands. “You don’t think?” I point up.

  “The missing Special Forces team,” he says. “Well, that solves one mystery.”

  “They must have found this entrance and then got hit by a storm,” I say, summarizing what must have happened. “You said there was one the night they went missing, right?”

  He nods.

  “Well, it looks like you’re not the only one to literally stumble upon the trap door,” Nicole says. “Thank goodness your dad was there to catch you.”

  She finally removes the fragments of the long-dead soldier from her boot. As she kicks it aside, making Omar jump at the clatter of bones on stone, she pulls out an LED flashlight clicking it on. Next, Nicole unfolds a Velcro strap and slides it onto her head like a sweatband. It kind of looks like she’s wearing a miner’s helmet—only without the helmet itself. We all follow suit and have a look around.

  “Question…” Dad says, speaking up for the first time since descending. “How did the trap door reset itself and close the last time it opened?”

  “Not sure. Maybe there’s a timer or a pressure plate?” I reply. “Doesn’t really matter right now either way.”

  “What happens if the door tries to close while we’re down here? Omar asks, a valid point and fear. “We’ll be trapped.”

  “It won’t,” Nicole says matter of fact. “I’m confident the truck’s cable is too thick for that to happen. We should be fine.”

  Should, I think. I really hate that word.

  “Yep. Damn...” Kane says. “It’s definitely them.” He’s kneeling beside one of the more intact corpses, inspecting the remains. “Still doesn’t make sense though.”

  “What doesn’t make sense?” Dad asks, cautiously looking over Kane’s shoulder.

  “How do some of the best soldiers in the world fall down a hole that you and Hank survived?” He says, standing. “I mean, at least one or two of them should have survived, right?”

  I shrug. “Ancient booby traps aren’t exactly my forte.” It’s a great question nonetheless. How did I survive the fall, but none of these highly-trained professionals could? Unless…

  “You don’t think the storm the day they went missing had anything to do with it, do you?” I ask Kane.

  “You never know. It can get really ugly, really quick, out here. All that would have needed to happen was for one guy to trip the trap, and the wind and sand would do the rest.”

  “One-by-one they would have plummeted to their deaths,” Nicole says, adding to the already cheerful mood.

  There’s a long silence. The kind that isn’t peaceful by any means. It’s the straight up creepy kind, and considering our surroundings, encompassed by death and the unfamiliar, I really want to get moving.

  “You see this?” Omar asks.

  We all turn to find him staring straight up.

  I join him and have a look myself. The hole we rappelled through is actually a perfectly cut vertical shaft. Our twin beams of light gleam off the bronze colored surface of the walls as we stand beneath it, looking straight up. Then, we stare back to each other in awe.

  “Um, Dad,” I say not taking my eyes off the shining shaft. “You need to see this.”

  Multiple sets of feet make their way over to join Omar and me.

  “Is that…?” Dad asks.

  “Orichalcum,” I say. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire thousand-foot drop is constructed of it.”

  “Why do you say that?” Omar asks.

  “Because,” I say, “why only build the last few feet out of it? I suspect whoever designed this place had the means and the knowledge to basically do anything they wanted at the time. Whoever is responsible for all this was even more advanced in their methods than the Egyptians.”

  More silence follows our first of what I guarantee will be many remarkable discoveries.

  “Um, guys…check out the rim of the shaft,” Nicole says, pointing.

  “What the hell language is that?” Kane asks.

  Around the rim of the vertical exit, of which is ten feet over our heads, is writing etched into the orichalcum. We all gather around and shine our lights up at it.

  “Dad, Omar, you’re up,” I say, stepping aside.

  “It kind of looks like Greek to be honest,” Dad says. “But the wording isn’t right. The nouns and verbs almost read out of order, but not.”

  “Sort of like Yoda, right? All backward and stuff?” Kane asks.

  “Trust in the force, you must,” I say in my best Yoda impression.

  My dad looks over at us with that huh face, like we actually said something that was right. He nods as if contemplating it. “You two may actually be on to something there, even if your imitation of Yoda is terrible.” Nicole laughs at Dad poking fun at Kane and me.

  “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for,” I say, waving my hand in front of Kane like a Jedi, attempting to control his mind.

  “That’s Ben Kenobi, man. Not Yoda,” Kane says, slapping my hand away, laughing.

  “I know,” I say with a shrug. “It’s still funny, though.”

  Dad continues with his explanation over the laughter. “Now that I’ve reread it a few times, it certainly does look like Greek, but written in an old-fashioned verbiage.”

  “Like some versions of the Bible?” Nicole asks.

  “Exactly! Like if you read the King James Version versus the New Living Translation. Two different translations, but both with the same story.”

  “Or like some poetry,” Kane states firmly.

  We look over at the big guy like he just spoke Russian or something.

  “What? I’m more than just a pretty face you know,” he responds.

  “Wait, older than Greek? That’s one of the oldest written languages in history,” I say a little shocked.

  “It could be an older version of the language, or the proper version of it anyway,” Omar comments.

  “What do you mean?” Dad asks.

  “It’s like American-English and English-English. Both are accepted, though one is a far older version, having its own verbiage and everything.”

  “That’s the smartest thing I’ve heard you say yet, Jafar,” Kane says, jabbing an elbow into Omar’s side.

  “What does it say?” I ask, stalling Omar’s response.

  “That…would fall into your father’s talents, not mine,” Omar answers, stepping aside to give Dad a better view. “I’m more apt at the languages of the desert, not of the ancient Mediterranean variety.”

  Dad continues his examination of the inscriptions left by the original inhabitants, jotting down the characters in a small notebook. “Well, well, well, Omar my boy, you are correct. If you reread each engraving a few times and rearrange a few words here-and-there, you come out with a legible text.” Dad then looks at Kane and me. “You too. Good job.” Then he turns back to his notes and clears his throat. “Ahem… For instance…” He scans the one closest to him, reading it out loud in a whisper first, then louder for everyone to hear.

  “Entrance you shall be granted. Exit you shall earn.”

  “Great…” Kane says with a hint of dread.

  Dad moves on to the next one to the left. “Strength you must have, to survive.”

  Then the next one. “The will of the chosen to deny.”

  And finally. “Or the end will soon be had.”

  “Ok,” I start, trying to put together the mysterious warning. “You have to earn your freedom, right? And you do that by being strong enough. So, there is either a physical or mental challenge coming up…”

  “Or both,” Nicole adds.

  “Very true,” I continue my verbal supposition. “The will of the chosen to deny. That sounds like a choice of some kind will have to be made.”

  “What kind of choice?” Omar asks.

  “The will of the chosen?” Kane asks. “Didn’t the guy at the airport call Hank the chosen? You know, before he blew himself up and stuff.”

  “You don’t think…” I say, trailing off into thought.

  “I don’t think this can be a coincidence, Harrison,” Dad says. “There’s been a lot of bloodshed surrounding this and all of it has centered around this discovery.”

  “Or else the end will soon be had,” Kane whispers, biting his lip when finished.

  “The end?” Nicole asks.

  “No idea,” I answer, “but it sort of sounds like an apocalyptic prophecy, doesn’t it?”

  “Shit.”

  We all look at Kane. He looks very uncomfortable, but not because everyone is staring at him at the bottom of a deep dark hole filled with the remains of countless bodies. Something’s bothering the otherwise invulnerable man.

  “The end,” he says.

  “What end?” I ask.

  “It’s not a what, it’s a who.”

  END

  23

  “A who?” I ask. “What’s a who?”

  “The End is a who,” Kane says.

  “Who’s end?”

  “The End’s,” he replies.

  “I’m confused,” Omar says, shaking his head.

  “Who’s the End, Kane?” Nicole asks, getting back on course.

  “The fourth elder,” Kane answers.

  “Oh…crap,” I mutter.

  Kane quickly retells the legend of the four elders and its significance to where we’re standing and why I’m not too excited to hear about the involvement of a genocidal psychopath.

  “So some pissed off archaic senior-citizen wanted to enslave and/or destroy the world, and his buddies didn’t like it,” I say, wrapping up the book club-like discussion.

  “When the fourth elder left his order he changed his name to The End of All Things, vowing vengeance on the others,” Kane adds. He finds a spot clear of debris and body parts and sits, taking a healthy swig from his water valve and sighs.

  “The End, along with the other elders were supposed to have special abilities if you believe in that sort of thing. He, in particular, was supposed to be able to control the elements around the world. Earth, air, water, fire and what not.”

  “Water and air?” I ask. I then quickly relay the events of our flight over. Things are starting to fall into place, things I didn’t think were possible. Things I don’t like.

  “So are we to assume the spouts were this End-person trying to stop the Boyd’s from getting here and the lightning was the three elders keeping him at bay?” Omar asks with a look of wonder mixed with skepticism plastered on his sun-beat face.

  I shrug again, feeling a little disturbed by the gleam in his eyes. I shake it off as a part of the shock of hearing that something like this actually existed. I’m a little awestruck too.

  “I guess so,” I say, “but at least someone is on our side in this supernatural circus.” There’s some weird crap going on, but it all has to be connected. I can sense it.