2041 Sanctuary (Let There Be Light) (25 page)

‘Not for you, it’s not,’ Jason said, ‘get in here!’

Sarah failed to say anything and Trish spoke again. ‘Sarah, you have to come now. The way ahead splits, you wont be able to find us.’

Sarah swore, took one last look at the hidden light and ducked into darkness.

Chapter Twenty Nine

With one eye on her visor’s mirror window, Sarah Morgan ran through the remains of the ancient Anakim building, curious carvings and frightening statues jumping out of the dark as she passed. Ahead, the lights of the Centipede traced the silhouettes of Trish and Jason as they waited for her in the pitch-black. Rejoining her friends moments later, she took charge of the supply vehicle and they ran as one, trying to put distance between themselves and the thing that pursued them: the ethereal shimmering light.

A pile of rubble blocked their path. Panicked, Sarah scrambled over the obstacle, slip sliding down the other side while trying to keep the Centipede moving forward. Trish and Jason soon joined her and they sped into another hallway. Huge, twisted tree roots narrowed their path and shattered masonry hung down from above, forcing Sarah through a myriad of twists and turns. She guided the Centipede before her, following the elusive forms of her friends, their faint shapes appearing and disappearing like mist demons in the fog.

Emerging into another open area, the small fellowship regrouped, each casting fearful eyes back the way they’d come.

‘Where now?’ Trish said.

Sarah pointed up. ‘Your mountain.’

Jason and Trish looked in the direction she indicated. Dominating the view, the grey shades of their visors depicted the single spire they’d seen from the Anakim highway. A slender tower at its peak, the base of the structure bulged out in a spectacular web of supports like the legs of a giant insect, each strand swirling upwards to merge into the single body above. This great, monolithic temple had been built atop a rocky mound wider than a city block which was in turn encircled by a massive, moat-like chasm. But as they drew nearer it soon became apparent that the surrounding obstacle couldn’t have been further removed from said medieval defence. Wider than a football pitch was long, the barrier that prevented them from waltzing up to their intended destination fell away into the depths.

Completing over half a circuit of the fissure revealed it left the temple in perfect isolation, cutting off any access to it and creating a mountain where ninety per cent of its mass stood sunken into the Earth’s crust. Far below, the familiar orange glow of lava flowed in steady spirals along a meandering river.

Despite this massive obstacle to their progress, there was some good news; the fearsome light had yet to reappear.

Jason approached the edge. ‘There’s no way across.’

‘What about that?’ Sarah gestured ahead at a structure that had been built inside the crevasse.

Moving closer, they came to an ornate gateway leading to nowhere, except a one-way trip down to the lava, thousands of feet below.

‘What is that?’ Trish peered out. ‘An aqueduct?’

Sarah nodded. ‘I think so.’

The crumbling structure sat slap bang in the middle of the expanse that prevented access to the temple beyond.

‘I can see bridges down there,’ Jason leaned out further, holding onto a granite pedestal. ‘I think some are aqueducts, too, one still has water flowing across it!’

‘There are tunnel entrances over there,’ – Trish pointed behind them – ‘they probably lead down to the bridges and then go up inside to the temple.’

Sarah didn’t fancy going into more tunnels, especially if the light returned and decided to follow them inside, but something else had grabbed her attention. ‘I think there’s an Anakim device on the aqueduct.’ Sarah zoomed in her visor. At least it looked like it could be part of one, the strange shine of the ceramic-like substance seemed indicative of at least some of the ancient builders’ technology.

‘You’re right,’ Jason said, ‘but it’s a bit closer than you think.’

Sarah followed his gaze down to her feet. The glint of ceramic sparkled from beneath a covering of loose sediment. She scraped her foot across the surface to reveal it further. Dropping to her knees, she swept it clear with her hands. Standing, she looked at a circle indented into a pale flecked surface about a metre square.

Sarah removed her climbing boots and socks, but before she could step onto the circle Trish grabbed her arm. ‘Wait! We can’t just keep activating this stuff; we don’t know what it does.’

‘And the light,’ Jason said, ‘it might attract it.’

‘And you’d both prefer to go through more tunnels, unable to see round the next corner, with nowhere to run?’ Sarah, fed up with their caution, stepped onto the circle.

Nothing happened.

She rolled up her sleeves and looked at Trish and then Jason. ‘I need your help.’

Trish snorted. ‘You’re unbelievable.’

Jason wilted under Sarah’s gaze and grasped her arm. Her pendant warmed against her chest and a tingling sensation spiralled up her legs. A flash of light from the aqueduct transformed into a seething mass of red electricity that flowed out towards them, crackling bolts of blue lightning flashing to Sarah’s platform like a Tesla coil.

Trish backed away and Jason swore as the wave of deafening energy closed in. Sarah flinched before the electricity flickered over the ceramic platform and tendrils of tiny lightning licked at her feet. Light flared and died and the noise subsided. Glimmering in the dark was a pathway to the gods; a bridge of blue light spanning the gap to the aqueduct.

Dumbstruck, Jason’s hand slid from Sarah’s arm.

Sarah raised her visor and gazed out at the incredible vision. She held out her hand and Jason, reading her mind, passed her the cable from the Centipede’s winch. Attaching it to her harness and steeling herself, Sarah stepped out onto the Anakim creation. Beneath her bare soles the pulsating energy rippled and crackled and pinpricks of discomfort like pins and needles attacked her skin. Each step brought with it a swell of electricity, the tiny branches clinging to her feet as she moved.

A distant screech stopped her dead.

‘The light!’ Trish said. ‘He told you!’

Sarah rushed back to her friends. Detaching herself, she clipped Trish onto the cable and pushed her forward. ‘Go!’

Trish resisted. ‘What are you doing? There’s no way from the aqueduct to the temple!’

‘Yes there is, now go!’ With a shove, Sarah thrust her out onto the bridge.

Sarah snatched a rope from her back and secured Jason to the Centipede and sent him after Trish.

Another roar echoed into the chamber, sending fear coursing through her limbs.

Trish had made it across, but Jason was only halfway over. A movement caught her eye. A shimmering glow of blue-green moved towards her at speed. With no time left, she drove the Centipede onto the bridge and no sooner had it touched the surface than steam rose from its tyres. The rubber melted, leaving black trails that smoked until vaporised. Running on its rims, the remote vehicle ploughed onwards chasing Jason onto the safety of the aqueduct ahead. Trish screamed a warning and Sarah felt a guttural growl reverberate through her chest. Stranded in the centre of the bridge without any harness, Sarah glimpsed the stomach churning drop below as she turned to face the thing that dogged their steps.

A shimmering form hovered just above the ceramic platform that had activated the walkway, the air around it distorting and contorting, preventing the eye from resolving what lay beneath. Sarah found herself backing away and she stopped her retreat.

‘What are you doing?!’ Jason shouted. ‘RUN!’

Sarah held her ground. Perhaps this thing was like a wild animal, unable to resist fleeing prey. If she turned tail she could be dead in an instant. She also felt some strange compulsion to look it in the eye, or at least where its eyes should have been. She took a step forward. A sick thrill of horror at her own insanity resonated into a voice within her mind, a voice that sounded like her own.
Am I not what you desire?
it whispered, the silver tongue laced with an insidious hunger,
why do you fear me?

Sarah thought she heard her friends shouting to her, but she only had ears for the crackling electricity beneath her feet, her eyes drawn to the beguiling light.

The spectre glided forward, its indistinct outline inching onto the throbbing bridge of energy. Light flared and an ungodly screech shook Sarah from abstraction. Blinding blue pulses enveloped the entity. Its light flared red and Sarah glimpsed a writhing form within. Terror struck, she turned tail and ran. The bridge flickered in failure. A blast of air threw her forward and she leapt toward Jason’s outstretched hand and grasped it as the support vanished from under her.

Heaved to safe harbour, Sarah turned to see the chasm resumed, the bridge gone and the light nowhere to be seen. Breathing hard, she dropped to a crouch, sweat beading on her brow.

Jason put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Fucking hell, Sarah, what were you thinking?’

Sarah looked up at him and shook her head, she wasn’t sure she’d been thinking at all.

‘I can’t see it anywhere.’ Trish stared out into the black.

Sarah rose and scanned the area.

Nothing could be seen.

‘Perhaps it’s dead,’ Jason said.

Sarah hoped that was the case, but right now they had to reach the temple. With the possibility of an Anakim transportation device so close to hand, the fresh air of the surface beckoned like the promise of Elysian Fields.

Still spooked by the confrontation, Sarah assessed their surroundings. The temple mount was a hundred feet away with only the yawning crevasse between them and it. They were closer than they were before, but not close enough.

She focused on the aqueduct, which had once cut a semi-circular path out over the abyss from the mountain where it originated. Most of the structure had collapsed eons past, leaving just the tip of its arch held aloft by immense curved supports that disappeared down into the darkness below. And it was on this lone section of the aqueduct on which they now stood, stranded in no man’s land.

The shattered ends of the broken structure terminated at the cliff face opposite, its water-bearing channels long since blocked with the debris of fallen rock.

Jason peered over the edge. ‘That looks a long way down.’

‘Too far,’ Sarah said. ‘We lost most of our climbing gear when the light chased us on the highway.’

Trish joined them. ‘And you didn’t think of that before we crossed over?’

‘Of course I thought of it.’

‘But you said there was a way across!’

‘And there is.’ Sarah pointed at a single, stone pillar that stood between their current location and the mountain’s edge. Like the supports that held up their section of the aqueduct, the pillar – a remnant of the same structure – curved up from the rock wall a few hundred feet below. That it still remained standing was a miracle in itself, although its gravity defying design intimated some hidden Anakim wizardry was at work within its otherwise mundane exterior.

Trish stared at her. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘What’s wrong? We can launch the Centipede’s anchor onto it, climb across the cable and then rope over to the cliff.’

Trish raised her eyebrows in a show of disbelief, but rather than comment further, she returned to investigate the other end of the ceramic Anakim device that Sarah had just activated.

‘There’s no circle,’ Sarah said. ‘I already checked. We can’t go back, we have to go forward.’

Trish ignored her and continued shifting aside chunks of stone in the hope of uncovering a way to power the energy bridge from that side.

Jason remained looking at the single support column Sarah had proposed as their route across. ‘It does look unstable, Saz. My visor is throwing up all kinds of hazard symbols.’

‘I know, mine is, too, but it’ll hold. When I crossed the bridge that collapsed it had way more warnings than that and I still made it.’

She could see Jason remained sceptical and with good reason, the pillar looked far from secure; cracks littered its façade and two significant undercuts bit deep into its core. But as she saw it, they had little choice.

Rolling the Centipede into place, its bare rims slipping on the uneven ground, Sarah hopped across the central channel where water had once flowed and synchronised her visor to the winch mechanism. She aimed the targeting graphic at her intended target and pressed a button on the Centipede’s console. A blast of compressed air sent the anchor soaring out over the gap, its mechanical maw arcing down to latch onto the pillar’s top.

With the winch cable taut, Sarah attached herself to it with a carabiner clip and cord.

Trish, resigned to Sarah’s plan, came to stand by Jason’s side to watch.

‘As soon as I’m over to the temple,’ Sarah said, ‘follow me, but one at a time; that rock won’t take two people’s weight.’

‘It might not take one person’s,’ Trish muttered.

Sarah, intent on the job in hand, mounted the cable, balancing on top of it while holding onto Jason’s shoulder.

‘Wouldn’t it be easier to climb underneath it?’ he said, concerned.

‘The faster I go across, the less time the pillar’s under load.’ She gave her safety cord a final tug to ensure it was secure. ‘Don’t worry, the SED had special machines to help train my balance.’ She extended her arms to either side and then walked out into mid-air. Wobbling a little, she gained speed to smooth out her deviation from vertical and reached the pillar without falling. She crouched down and sank a bolt loop into the stone and secured a rope to it before attaching a grappling hook to the other end. Sarah looked over at the far side and then swung the rope round and round, faster and faster, before launching it out. The metal claws clanked down and Sarah pulled it towards her, but the points failed to bite and she had to repeat the process twice more before she found a solid lock. She gave it a few yanks to ensure it would hold and then transferred her safety cord from the winch cable to the rope.

Ready for the final crossing, Sarah climbed down the side of the column, sending loose sediment sifting down into the chasm below. She reached out and pulled herself onto the rope, and a flurry of small stones fell clattering into the depths. Praying the pillar would hold, she hung upside down on the rope and wrapped her legs around it before pulling herself along bit by bit, hand over hand, inch by death-defying inch. After heavy exertion, she reached the far side and clambered onto the solid base of the temple mount, the building’s spire soaring into the heavens behind her. She waved over to Trish and Jason, who seemed to be arguing about who was to go next.