BRAINRUSH, a Thriller (41 page)

Hindu Kush Mountains, Afghanistan

J
ake held the confiscated comm unit to his ear, the volume dialed low. Tony and Francesca crouched beside him, their breathing heavy from running through the maze of tunnels. Sarafina clung to Tony’s chest. 

Marshall’s panicked voice squawked over the comm unit. “Turn back! There’s another group waiting in the main corridor up ahead.” 

“Turn around. Hurry!” whispered Jake. He ushered the group back the way they came. This was the third time they’d had to switch directions to avoid the groups of guards roaming the tunnels to find them. For the moment, Marshall had taken control of Battista’s surveillance system, using it to guide Jake’s movements while scrambling the video images in Battista’s own control room. By remote command, Marshall had temporarily sealed the thick iron door to the security room, allowing him to maintain control of Battista’s security system for a few more precious minutes. But he reported that Battista’s men were at the door with an acetylene torch. They would be through in seconds and Marshall’s help would be gone for good.

Knowing they’d be cut off soon, Marshall issued final instructions. “There’s a narrow unlit tunnel coming up on the left. It looks small, so you may not have noticed it when you passed it earlier. It leads to a small cavern with another exit on the opposite side. According to the schematics, there’s no electrical power or surveillance in that area, so it’s likely seldom traveled. I want you to hole up in there for three minutes while I set off a decoy alarm at the far end of the complex. That will lead the search groups away from your position and clear your path. After that, hightail it out of there. Avoid the primary corridors. Use the service tunnel. It’ll take you to the main entrance. Got it?”

“Understood. But won’t they be able to track us once they regain control of the system?”

“No way, dude. Not after the virus I’m going to unleash as soon as they break through the door.”

“We’re moving into the small tunnel now,” Jake said.

“Remember,” Marshall said, “three minutes exactly. Then move your asses!” There was a brief pause before Marshall shouted, “Shit. They’re through. Gotta go!”

Jake felt a heavy sense of foreboding as they broached this deepest recess of the mountain. The beams from their flashlights danced across the jagged walls of the narrow tunnel, casting ominous shadows beyond the protruding rock formations. Stone outcrops that could have been easily smoothed had been left untouched. It wasn’t because the tunnel had never been used. The floor was so smooth that it reminded Jake of the marble sepulchers in the floors of European cathedrals, the sharp edges of the relief smoothed flat by the shuffling feet of hundreds of years of countless worshipers and pilgrims. There was something special about this space, something that Battista’s ancient tribe must have revered. Or feared.

Jake led the way, holding Francesca’s hand behind him. Whenever they paused, Francesca pressed her body against his, as though she was afraid of losing contact with him again.

Tony followed behind them, Sarafina strapped to his chest. He had rigged a quick harness for her from the straps of his combat vest, freeing his hands for his flashlight and the AK-47. 

After a sharp turn, the passageway opened to an incredible cavern that stopped them all where they stood. The space was about the size of a small country schoolhouse. Its shape resembled the interior of a pyramid, with four equal length granite walls that sloped to a point twenty-five feet above the center of the chamber. It was bathed in a luminescent glow emanating from a swirling constellation of tiny crystals that spiraled to a point in the center of the ceiling. Jake flicked off his flashlight in the well-lit chamber. 

The bottom third of the slanting walls had been ground to a smooth finish, creating a canvas that was covered with hundreds of artful but horrific scenes taken from the pages of man’s violent history in the past thousand years. There were images of fierce battles between invading armies of cross-bearing European knights overwhelming hordes of Muslim tribes during the Crusades, of mass executions of Muslims and Jews, their severed heads being thrown over besieged city walls, of the mutilation of naked cadavers and mountains of dead women and children piled high in city streets, and of cannibalism. The scenes combined to create a grim depiction of man succumbing to his natural warlike instincts, unleashing violence upon one another, and in particular of Western Christians committing savage atrocities on Muslims, all in the name of God. 

There was a Dari inscription centered over the mural on the wall. It read:
He will grant you victory over them.

Except for the haunting mural, the chamber itself showed no indications that it had been created by the hand of man. There was something unnatural about it. It was too symmetrical, as though the mountain had been forced to grow around a dense pyramid that had since vanished, leaving this fossilized void in its place. And unlike the other caverns they had passed through, there were no stalactites or stalagmites protruding from the ceiling or floor. Even the glow from the crystals in the ceiling had an unusual blue hue to them that reminded Jake more of the fluorescent light in a science lab than the bioluminescence normally found in nature’s offspring.

But it wasn’t the glow that stunned him, or the shape of the room, or even the wild-eyed faces of despair and savagery on the mural. What captured Jake’s attention and froze him in place was the black, smooth-as-glass obelisk that sat in the center of the room like an altar to the heavens. 

Like the space that surrounded it, the object was pyramidal, but it was turned upside down. Its point was embedded deep into the rock floor so that only the top two-thirds were visible. It stood chest high; its square top measured about four feet across. The photos from Battista’s office didn’t do it justice. It was unlike anything any of them had ever seen. The feel of the room itself, its symmetry, the lighting, the obelisk—it all seemed...alien.

Tony spotted an exit on the far side of the chamber and headed for it. Jake checked his watch. Marshall had insisted they remain here for exactly three minutes. They couldn’t leave yet.

Jake let go of Francesca’s hand and approached the obelisk.

The photos from Battista’s office had been taken here. Jake had mulled them over in the back of his mind for the past several days, trying to unlock their secret. A series of eight amazingly realistic grayscale images ran along the outside perimeter of the obelisk’s square surface. Each of the rectangular images was finely etched, resembling a tooled printing plate. The detail was incredible, reminding Jake of laser-etched photos on metal that he’d seen in kiosks at the mall. But these exquisitely engraved images could not have been converted photos from somebody’s attic collection. They depicted early man—fur-clothed, bearded
Homo sapiens
in various stages of horrific battle against one another, using rudimentary weapons made of stone, bone, and wood. Each of the scenes was more violent than the last, providing a haunting view of the bloodthirstiness of man’s ancestors. 

The final image in the sequence was different. It depicted three slender, hairless humanoid figures, their backs turned, standing on a rock ledge looking down on a tribe of our ancient ancestors. One of the three humanoids had his hands held out before him, as though he was awaiting a gift from heaven. Hovering in the air in front of his hands was a small black pyramid. Lances of black light shot from its peak and pierced the heads of the men and women below. Their hands were pressed to their temples, their wild-eyed faces frozen in agony.

Jake found the realism of the scenes astonishing. His gut twisted at the barbarity. He recalled the radio-dating report in Battista’s office. This object was supposedly twenty-five thousand years old.
Could it be true?
  

The perimeter images framed a twenty-four-inch square section in the center of the black tabletop. A smaller square—about three inches wide—was etched into the center of the object. The space between this small untouched square and the larger one that surrounded it was divided into eleven trapezoidal sections, each containing odd shapes and patterns. Unlike the etched perimeter images, these shapes were embossed with various textures and vivid colors. To most people, the shapes would look nonsensical, like a child’s renderings of clouds, or snowmen, or a seemingly random scatter of raised dots and smooth indentations. But to Jake’s synesthetic brain, the texture, color, and shape of each pattern represented a distinct number. A couple of the numbers were just a few digits, but some were very large, and all of them were prime numbers. He’d figured that out shortly after he’d seen the photos in Battista’s office. What he had been unable to resolve, however, in spite of his advanced mental abilities, was the riddle behind the numbers, the pattern that would solve the puzzle.

There
was
a puzzle here. He was certain of it.

The seam around the three-inch square in the center of the object was relatively deep, as though it was inset. It contained no etchings. When he leaned over it, Jake could see his reflection in its polished surface.

He felt compelled to solve the riddle of the numbers, but seeing them in person didn’t seem to help, especially with his mind in a fog.

Tony’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Jake, one minute to go.”

Jake nodded, absently brushing his hand along one of the colorful shapes.

A surge of energy ran into his hand the instant he touched it. The sensation was overwhelming, captivating. Instead of jerking his hand away, he pressed his palm into the surface to increase the contact. His abilities rushed back with a clarity and strength beyond what he had experienced before, as though the obelisk supplied him with a surge of pure life force. He could once again feel the familiar thrumming vibration.

  His senses on full alert, he leaned over and laid his other hand on the cool surface. A second, more rapid vibration joined the first, creating a resonance that bounced off the walls of the chamber. 

Jake smiled like a schoolboy at recess. He looked up at his friends, expecting them to share in the awe of the moment. All he got back was confused looks.

“Can’t you feel that?” Jake asked.

“What’re you talking about?” Tony walked over next to Jake, Sarafina still strapped to his chest. “I don’t feel a thing,” he said.

Francesca likewise shook her head.

“The vibrations, bouncing off the walls—can’t you feel it?” Jake said.

Both of them shook their heads.

But Sarafina’s eyes were glued to Jake’s hands, her head cocked to the side. She said, “It sounds pretty.”

Excited, Jake said, “What do you hear, honey?”

“It’s like two chords together on the piano,” Sarafina said, “only it’s much prettier.” She pointed to a symbol on the surface. “What about that key?”

Jake looked down at his hands. He hadn’t realized each was centered over one of the colorful shapes. Through Sarafina’s eyes and ears, the tabletop was an instrument meant to play musical notes. Somehow her savant-like musical ear allowed her to hear something the rest of them could not. Where he felt vibrations, she heard a note or chord, while Tony and Francesca heard or felt nothing. Jake lifted one hand and placed it on the glyph that she indicated.

The vibration shifted and Sarafina smiled. She pointed at a different shape. “Now that one.”

Francesca edged closer to Jake. She placed her hand on his back, as if sensing his feelings of wonder.

Tony kept his eyes on his watch. 

Jake moved his hand to the next symbol. Sarafina smiled again. Without prompting, Jake moved his hands across each of the glyphs. When he was finished, Sarafina pursed her lips and pointed at three of them. “Those three are wrong. They don’t belong.”

His eyes furrowed in concentration, Jake studied the three shapes. He mentally deleted them and shifted the remaining eight around in his head. His mind raced through a multitude of calculations and comparisons. After several breaths it came to him. “That’s it!”

He turned to thank Sarafina when a glimmer caught his eye under the lace collar of her night clothes. He lifted it and found a thin square of pressure-sensitive film stuck to the underside of the lace. It was no larger than a postage stamp. He peeled it off and held it up to the light. It looked like a small microchip.

Tony reacted first. “Damn, it’s a locator.”

Jake and Tony exchanged a quick glance. “Go!” Jake said, sticking the film on his own clothing. “I’ll catch up.”

“But, Jake…” Francesca’s voice trailed to a sob.

Jake released his touch on the obelisk and was shaken as the effects of the drug rushed back into his consciousness. He put his arms around Francesca and squeezed her tight. He whispered in her ear, “You have to trust me.” 

Tears welled up in her eyes. She sniffled and nodded. Jake followed them as far as the exit.

“You sure about this?” Tony asked. 

“I’m sure,” Jake said.

Jake’s parting look said in no uncertain terms,
Don’t wait for me.

Tony grimaced. Then, with a quick nod, he ushered Francesca in front of him and disappeared into the tunnel.