Authors: David Clarkson
‘When shall I initiate the plan?’
He checked his watch.
‘Thirty six hours from now. The team
should be in position by then. If we attack them on two fronts simultaneously
the Chinese will never know what has hit them.’
‘Very good, Colonel. Consider it done.’
As Dr Stark left the colonel’s office,
she felt a great deal more confident about her position than when she had
entered it. She now had the opportunity to prove she was better than Dr Rayne.
And if Constance was really lucky, her rival would not be returning from her
mission at all.
***
The trail Jimmy used to guide his friends
came to an abrupt end at a barrier of what appeared to be solid rock. This
natural blockade extended for as far as could be seen in all directions. There
did not appear to be any way around and trying to scale the mountain without
the requisite safety equipment would be suicide. If they even attempted it the
only help Jimmy would be able to offer would be a few seconds advance notice on
each of their impending deaths.
With less experience of the young
Australian’s gifts, Jack assumed Jimmy had gotten it wrong this time. Emmy and
Esteban both knew better.
‘Talk to us,’ said Esteban. ‘Which way do
you see us going?’
‘Straight ahead,’ Jimmy replied. ‘We pass
through the rock just there.’
He pointed towards a shadowy part of the
rock face, which was untouched by snow.
‘This is crazy,’ said Jack. ‘It’s a dead
end. There’s no way through.’
Esteban ignored him. Instead, he spread
his arm, indicating for Jimmy to show him the way, whilst Jack shook his head
in frustration. Undeterred, Jimmy walked on and into the shadows. And then...disappeared!
‘That’s impossible,’ said Jack.
‘Not impossible,’ replied Esteban, ‘just
very difficult to see. This could be our way through. Come on, and light a
torch. Jimmy may not be under any risk of getting lost, but we are.’
The first hundred metres of the tunnel
was tough going. Even the soldiers found it difficult. The passage was narrow
and the path slippery underfoot. Sharp protrusions of rock jutted out from the
ceiling, sometimes leaving less than three feet of clearance underneath. Jimmy
traced a perfect route through and the others were careful to follow his
movements exactly. When their guide came to a large wooden door he was stopped
in his tracks.
‘It’s locked,’ he told the others,
without even trying the handle.
‘That’s not a problem,’ replied Esteban.
He nodded to Jack, giving an unspoken
order, to which the sergeant responded by attaching a small amount of plastic
explosive around the lock. A wire was then inserted, which was unravelled to a
distance of roughly ten metres.
‘I hope you know what you’re doing,’ Emmy
warned them. ‘It wouldn’t take much to bring the whole mountain down on top of
us.’
‘In that case, maybe you should do the
honours,’ Jack replied, passing her the handheld detonation unit.
She looked to Jimmy as she took
possession of the device. Her friend gave nothing away. So far as his visions
were concerned, no sign was a good sign.
Reluctantly, she pressed the button.
What followed was not the loud bang she
had been expecting but more of a dull thump. A small amount of smoke floated up
from the lock like it would from an extinguished candle.
‘Did it work?’ she asked.
‘Be our guest,’ replied Esteban, sweeping
his arm toward the door.
Emmy handed the detonator back to Jack
and then walked past Jimmy to the door. She could see no damage other than a
slightly charred mark around where the explosive had been. When she placed her
hands against it, the door gave way to only a slight push and opened into a
large chamber.
Unlike the passageway that led to it,
this room had smooth walls, which had been carefully hand carved out of the
rock. The air within was much drier and carried the faint odour of incense. As
Emmy arced her torch beam in front of her, it picked out statues of brass and
gold, ornate tapestries and intricately painted works of art with the stone
walls themselves as their canvass.
‘Guys, you better check this out,’ she
said. ‘It appears to be some sort of a temple.’
‘We’re on track,’ said Esteban. ‘If our
intel is correct, these tunnels should extend right through the mountain.’
‘You knew about this?’
‘To an extent – yes. We knew that Tibetan
monks used tunnels during the Chinese invasion, but they had never been found.
Of course, nobody who was looking for them had Jimmy. He was the one who guided
my chute, bringing us so close to the entrance.’
‘He’s not guiding us at all, you are. You
manipulate Jimmy like he’s some sort of divining rod. If you make a mistake the
repercussions will be serious. I hope you know what you’re doing.’
‘We’ll find out soon enough. In the
meantime, this is a good place to make camp for the night. Your friend Charlie
will never be able to find us beneath all this rock.’
‘You’re the boss.’
She dropped her bag and then left to
check out the rest of the chamber in greater detail whilst the soldiers set up
some lamps and prepared their rations for consumption.
Once she had established the layout of
the room, Emmy turned her attention to the treasures within. The art and
ornamentation was clearly Buddhist in style and design, but it was the subject
matter of one painting in particular that intrigued her.
‘Esteban, come take a look at this,’ she
called out.
The soldier quickly made his way to her
side. She had already taken a camera from her pack and was capturing images of
something on the wall when he caught up with her. A shudder reverberated up his
spine when he saw what it was.
‘What is that?’ he asked. ‘It looks
eerily familiar.’
‘A little too familiar, don’t you think?’
replied Emmy.
The picture depicted a monk in a posture
adopted for meditation. A line was drawn from his centre (heart), which then
connected with a second being. This second figure was less detailed and could
be seen engaging in various activities. In one depiction it appeared to pass
through rock and in another it stood watchful over the temple like an all
seeing eye. Each time the being was linked to the resting monk by the same
cord. The images clearly alluded to astral travel, but some of the pictures in
the sequence did not fit. The astral being could at one point be seen using
tools and in another diagram it was actively repelling an advancing army.
‘It looks like somebody beat you to the
punch,’ said Esteban. ‘Didn’t you check to see if anybody else held a patent
before building your machine?’
‘Very funny, this is nothing more than
superstition. Religious hokum. They couldn’t actually do any of those things.’
‘So why bring it to my attention?’
She paused for a moment.
‘Is the food ready yet?’ she asked.
‘Don’t change the subject. Answer my
question. Something about those pictures has gotten you a little spooked. I can
read it in your posture. You may as well tell me what it is.’
‘First we eat, then we sleep, and then we
shut down the Chinese base of operations. After that, I may consider holding a
Q & A.’
He decided not to press the matter and
did as she requested of him. They still had a long way to go and it was
imperative that they rested well. The only certainty about the task ahead was
that it would be tough. Just how tough was a question not even Jimmy would be
able to answer.
The others had left. She could not recall
why or even when they had deserted her. All she knew was that she was now
alone. Not that it really mattered anymore. The mission no longer seemed to be
a priority. Her thoughts had swirled into one big, unintelligible maelstrom of
insignificance.
She left the chamber and walked along the
tunnel. There was light up ahead and so long as she traced one of her hands
along the wall she could find her way in the darkness. When she arrived at the
opening it brought with it an unexpected burst of heat along with the light.
Raising her arm to shield her eyes from the brightness, she stepped through the
opening and back into...
...a desert!
Was she home or at the very least,
somewhere close to home? The horizon was entirely flat. Rust from the iron rich
landscape coated the ground under her feet. The sky was a clear blue with not
even the slightest hint of a cloud in evidence.
And there was the sun.
Its radioactive furnace heated the air
around her to temperatures approaching forty degrees Celsius. She slowly
rotated her body three hundred and sixty degrees in order to survey the full
landscape. It was a never changing panorama. Perfectly level and neatly split
in two; blue at the top and red at the bottom. There was no mistaking it. She
was definitely back in Australia.
‘We don’t have long.’
The voice was familiar, but she was
unable to trace its origin. Taking a step backwards and spinning around, she
could see she was alone.
‘This way. You have to hurry.’
Again the origin of the voice was
impossible to peg down. This time, however, she turned to find that her
surroundings had changed once more. A building had materialised as if from
nowhere. It was a small structure, little more than a shack, sitting
incongruously amidst what was otherwise a desert. This had to be where the
voice had come from and she had an idea to whom it belonged.
The entrance to the building was not
locked and she slowly pushed open the door.
‘Lucy?’
She spoke softly for fear of disturbing
the resident should it not be her former lover. A sense of foreboding was
gestating in the pit of her stomach. It reminded her never to take anything for
granted.
As she passed over the threshold she
realised she had been wise to be cautious. It was not Lucy that she encountered
inside.
Not even close.
‘You seem disappointed, child, were you
expecting somebody else?’
‘I don’t understand,’ replied Emmy.
‘You’re dead. I made sure of it.’
‘We are all dead – relatively speaking,
of course. Must I explain the semantics of time?’
‘No, you don’t have to explain anything.
I just want you to go. Go back to whatever Hell you have escaped from.’
He was seated in his wheelchair, but
there was something not quite right. He did not appear as frail and vulnerable
as he had in life. Instead, he gave off an air of restrained power. It was she
who now felt helpless.
She glanced to the door, weighing up the
time it would take for her to escape. As if intuitively aware of what she was
thinking, her grandfather did what he never could in life; he stood, and in
doing so his entire appearance altered.
Gone was the old man and in his place was
the body of Emmy’s former best and most trusted friend, Lucas Black.
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘You have no right.’
‘I have every right,’ he replied,
bitterness coating his words. ‘You must accept that we are the same, you and I.
The same blood flows through our veins.’
As he spoke, his physiognomy altered once
more. This time the face staring back at her was her face. It was like looking
at a reflection.
She took a step backwards.
‘Does this make you uncomfortable?’ he
asked.
‘Just stop!’ she shouted. ‘I’m nothing
like you. You killed people. I could never do that. Do you understand? Never!’
He smiled, cruelly.
‘You cannot stop me. I am a part of you.
I will always be a part of you.’
She turned to go for the door, but it was
no longer there. The small wooden shack had now become a fully enclosed tomb
with no way out.
She spun back around to see that her
grandfather, still in her form, had begun to glow like there was a fire burning
inside of him. Then his face - her face, it began to crack like the surface was
composed of molten rock.
He opened his mouth as if to scream, but
all that came out was light. This radioactive glow was now being expelled from
every aperture of his being. He had become a human disco ball. Before Emmy
could even begin to make sense of it all, there was an explosion of pure atomic
energy bursting outwards from the being once known as Jackson Fox. She felt an
intense blast of heat and the last thing she saw was her own hand dissolve as
she tried to use it to shield her face from the oncoming fireball.
‘Emmy, are you okay?’
Her vision was groggy and she struggled
to make out the shadow looming over her. The air was now cold and damp. There
was no cabin, no Jackson Fox and no explosion. There never had been. She was
still in the mountain tunnels.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘You were having a nightmare,’ replied
Esteban. ‘I heard you whimper in your sleep and then you cried out.’
‘Really?’
‘I am not one to lie. Tell me, what
troubles you?’
She looked around. Jimmy was watching,
waiting for her answer as intently as Esteban, but Jack was paying her no
attention at all. Instead, he was focused on keeping sentry, making sure there
were no others in the tunnel with them.
‘It’s not important,’ she told them. ‘It
was just a dream.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m positive. It’s probably just the
claustrophobic atmosphere in here playing havoc with my subconscious. We should
get moving as soon as possible. It’s not good to be spending so much time
underground.’
‘Relax, we’re safe here. This mountain
could shield us from a nuclear blast.’
A chill ran up her spine.
Did he know what she had just dreamt?
Of course he did not. That would be
crazy.
A person could be driven insane by reading too much into such
things. She needed to clear her head and the best way to do that was to focus
on the mission at hand.
‘Do we know how long it will take us to
navigate the tunnels?’
‘It’s hard to estimate. Jimmy will find
the optimum path, but it’ll still take the best part of a day.’
‘In that case, we should get moving right
away.’
‘You’re the boss,’ said Esteban.
Emmy smiled back at him.
‘Only when it suits you.’