Black Onyx (8 page)

Another room, the same: two suits, a slide, a hole. He sprinted through another wall, and another, and another, all the same. The substance was behind him. Going from room to room like some predator.

Dillon ran to the slide and attempted to climb up again, jamming his fingers into the slide’s material like knives and using it to pull himself up. But it was too slow and when he lost his footing he slid back down. The substance was now in the other room.

Dillon looked up to the hole. He was thinking of what to do when he noticed the oddest sensation: his feet were off the ground. He was levitating.

He lost control the moment he became aware of it and crashed back down. He rolled over several times as the substance was in the room, pulling itself toward him. He looked to the hole in the ceiling again, and started to rise.

“Whoa…whoa…oh holy crap…”

He rose through the hole and kept going, not looking back into the chamber he had just been in. The substance leapt for him, but missed. It could
n’t get up the hole.

The hole was just a long tunnel that led outside. He could feel the cold of
outside as he floated up and out of the hole. He looked down and lost control again and landed on the side of the mountain, rolling several dozen feet before stopping himself. He stood up, shaking his head, and looked down to the suit in the moonlight. Underneath the light of the moon, it glowed an uncanny sapphire.

Dillon saw the light of the campfire. He began running over and felt that he was running to
o fast. The images before him were moving at an incredible speed. He looked down and saw his feet as a blur as they raced across ice and snow. Though the suit was larger than he, it seemed almost to adjust; to somehow shrink, to fit him.

He looked up again, and his feet left the ground. He was up in the air, climbing.
Twenty, thirty, forty feet.

“
Owwwwww!”

James
and George heard him. He saw their tents rustle as the flaps opened and they climbed out, James putting on his glasses and looking up to the sky, his mouth falling open.

“
James,” Dillon shouted, “James!”

He couldn’t think of anything else to say. He spun in
a loop. As his arms came closer to his body, the speed of his flight increased. As they went farther from his body, he slowed. Nothing was propelling him: there was no gas or combustion coming out of his boots or back. He was simply lifted up into the air as if he’d become wind itself.

He spun around, going higher and higher, coming in front of the full moon that was out, the suit lighting up to a powerful shade of indigo, before he tumbled back down and came close to the ground before
zooming back up. It was like walking: he did the action first by thinking about it but once he was in the middle of it, he didn’t have to think.

Spinning like a top, he grew a little dizzy. He felt himself lose concentration and his altitude began to dec
line. “Whoa. Whoa! Suit, suit! Stop…stop!”

He slammed into the earth
like a crashing building. It shook the ground and tore up ice and rock. His body was imbedded into the frozen soil. Slowly, he pushed himself up. He felt pain but not as much as he should have. He looked back to camp and saw everyone standing outside their tents.

“Um, hey guys. So I found something
kinda cool.”

16

James was the first to snap out of shock. He walked over to Dillon and stood silent a while before touching the suit.

“I went back to the city,” Dillon said.

“So I see.”

“This was in that tower. In a chamber underneath the city.
”

“You just put on a strange…artifact?”

“It’s probably more accurate to say it put me on.”

George was walking up now. “What the hell! I told you no one gets anything without me. This trip is over!”

He went to grab Dillon and instinctively, Dillon raised his hand. Without a single touch, George was thrown off his feet, flying back and tumbling head over heels.

“George!”
James said, running over to him.

“Oh crap
, is he okay?”

James
bent over the man, checking his head for wounds. He was fine, though in shock.

“How did you do that?”
James said. “You didn’t touch him.”

Dillon shook his head. “I don’t know. I just thought about pushing him back.”

When George was on his feet, he glared at Dillon and then turned away and headed back to camp.

James
stood. “He knows what it is.”

“What?”

“That wasn’t a normal reaction to what we just saw, Dillon. He knew about it.”

Dillon walked to the tent just behind
James. Inside, George was packing up his gear.

“You knew about this,”
James said.

“Yeah, I knew.”

“But you couldn’t find it.”

“No.”

“What is it?” Dillon asked, his voice echoing in the tent.

“It’s how they mapped the coastline. It’s a weapon. At least I think it’s a weapon.”

“How did you know about it?”

George sat down on a small cot. “My grandf
ather was one of the first Norwegian explorers to this part of Queen Maude Land. He found the city. He called it Atlantis, mistakenly I think, but who knows. He thought the earth had shifted and Atlantis had been buried here, under a mile of ice. He never published his findings. My father and he spent their entire lives exploring that city, and they didn’t find anything. Where did you find it?”

“In the tower. Underneath the city.”

“We searched everywhere, including the tower. There’re no entrances.”

“It…
allowed me in. I don’t know why.”

George was quiet a moment. “That suit was in some of their writings. Reformed Minoan, that’s what my grandfather called their language.
He disappeared here shortly after. My father abandoned it after that. He said something was inside the city and he wasn’t ever going to bring me here. But I found it without him.”

James
said, “Do you know how it works?”

“Magnetic putty, that’s what my grandfather called it in his journals.
The closest translation. It creates a magnetic field around the wearer. You’re not really flying so much as pushing against the magnetic field of the earth, maneuvering around inside it. But these were special suits. Reserved for their priests. Not everyone can wear them. I think that’s what happened to my grandfather. I think he discovered the suits and it killed him.”

“There’s something down there,” Dillon said. “I don’t know what it is. Something…alive.”

“The writings said the suits had a modification. Something that was added to it. It…distorted the user’s mental and physical state.”

“That’s how they were destroyed,” Dillon said.

“What?”

“I saw it. I saw it when that th
ing down there touched me. Their civilization was destroyed by giants. Men in these suits were fighting them…they were killing each other.”

“Why did you need us up here?”
James said.

“I’m bankrupt,” George said. “
I’ve spent everything I had exploring this city…but I had to come back. Those suits…those suits…I mean, who knows how much power they contain. I had to come back. So I went to Henry and he agreed to finance two expeditions.”

“One question,” Dillon said. “Do you know how to get out of this thing? It split down the middle to let me in but there’s no seams or cracks.”

“I don’t know how it’s controlled. None of their writings ever described in detail how they worked. I think they were worried about their enemies getting their hands on the suits.”

“How did you get in?”
James said.

“I told you, it sucked me in.”

“Well, it must’ve responded to you. That means you can get yourself out.”

Dillon straightened up but the tent was too low. He stepped outside and closed his eyes. He emptied his mind, the images of slaughter fresh. He forced them out, counting slowly to ten, his mind blank in between the numbers.

He felt the freezing chill of the Antarctic wind and opened his eyes. The suit was open. He stepped out and it closed up again.

Dillon stood staring at it. “Gentlemen, I do believe all of us just got very, very rich.”

17

The next day, it was decided that the expedition was over. Dillon wouldn’t take them down there again, insisting the black substance was far too dangerous. They decided that the suit was enough of a find to make the expedition worthwhile. Whatever it sold for would be split three ways among them, after Henry’s cut.

On the voyage back, Dillon sat on the yacht, staring at the suit that was set up on the deck.
James had tried to enter it, as had George. It wouldn’t open for any of them. But when he had walked to it, it opened up wide and engulfed him. He tested it several times and the principle held true: He was the only one that could use it. It had…bonded to him somehow.

Henry had been notified that they’d found an artifact unlike anything that had ever been discovered. Though
tentative, once they had described what they were bringing back with them, Henry could not name a figure high enough. What would a government pay to have the ability for their soldiers to fly and have the strength to run through walls? It was, he said, a blank check.

James
stepped out of the cabins and came and sat by him. It was freezing and they were both bundled up tight, a battery-powered space heater in front of them. They didn’t speak at first and instead just stared at the glimmer of the stars off the water.

“I don’t think we should sell it,” Dillon said.

“What?”

“I don’t think we should sell it,
James.”

“What exactly would we do with it otherwise? Use it as a lawn decoration?”

“I ran through walls like they weren’t there. I can fly. Who knows what else that thing can do? Why do we need to sell it?” He leaned toward him. “What if I go to the diamond mines in Zaire? I can bore into the caves and take whatever I want.”

“Dillon, we don’t know how this suit operates. What if it’s dangerous? How is it powered? You could be halfway to the center of the earth when it runs out of batteries…so to speak.”

“I don’t think so. I can feel its…power. George said it uses magnetism; I think that’s what powers it somehow.”

James
shook his head. “It’s too dangerous.”

“Give me a week,
James. Forget that, give me a couple days. Let me show you.”

“It’s half Henry’s and then you and I only have a third stake ownership each. They
may not wish for us to keep it.”

“We’ll buy them out. They’ll be
millionaires, what’ll they care.”

James
exhaled. “The diamond mines of Zaire.”

“How long have we been saying we would go there? I’ll fly in, take as much as I can carry, and get out of there. It’s not like De Beers is going to miss it.”

James looked back to the suit. “We don’t know what it is, Dillon.”

He thought a moment and then stood up. “I’m going to the mainland. I’ll meet you there.”

“We’re over the ocean. Just be patient.”

Dillon walked to the suit. He stripped down to just his thermals and got inside. The suit instantly filled him with a calm euphoria. He looked up and began to drift. Pulling his arms close to his body, he sped over the ship and glanced down to the inky black ocean below. The
Falklands weren’t far and he tilted forward and began heading in that direction. The wind flowed over him like the sea and he drifted upward to the low flying clouds and slowed as he went through them. He then shot up into the sky, gaining altitude so quickly he felt sick.

The ship was just a dot of light below him now. It was amazing how quickly he had lost all fear of this suit. It was almost as if the suit could sense his fear and calm him…sense his sadness and give him euphoria.

He propelled himself forward toward the mainland. Wanting to see just how fast the suit could go, he straightened himself like an arrow and concentrated.

The ocean below him was a blur.
The land raced at him, moving so fast he was barely able to register what he saw.

He shot past the Falklands and continued over the sea. He turned
north, having only a vague sense that he would hit South America eventually. He loved Rio de Janeiro; maybe he would take a quick stop there?