Incarnate: Mars Origin "I" Series Book III (21 page)

My heart beat
out the minutes that we stayed behind that dumpster. And my prayers was that
that car would find us and its occupants would do away with Simon.

Lord forgive
me.

But I knew if
there was an end to Simon, there would be an end to this madness of trying to
kill me because of the AHM Manuscripts.

When we finally
pulled off, Aaron’s car was nowhere in sight.

“I lost them.”
Simon seemed pleased with himself. He inhaled and looked over at me.

“They might
just be waiting for you at your hotel room,” I said.

“Keep it up and
you won’t live long enough to find out.”

He weaved his
way out of the warehouses and through
Zones Libre De Colón
, a street
filled with duty free shops and lots of people. Easy place to get lost. If Logan
and I could only find a way to break free.

He turned out
of Canal’s stores and after a few more turns onto another bridge, the
Centennial Bridge, to get back to the side of the canal we’d originally been
on.

Leaving all the
people at the Canal and losing Aaron, made me lose hope. I would fight Simon
until my last breath, but I just didn’t know how long that would be.

As we were
driving over the six-lane bridge I saw Nikhil. At least it looked like Nikhil.
He was in a car going the opposite direction. My heart skipped a beat. I wanted
to cry. I arched my back and sat up straight, hoping to get a better look.
Hoping if it was him, he’d see me.

Oh my goodness,
I think that’s Micah with him.

I turned
hastily back in my seat and closed my eyes.

How could that
be? Micah and Nikhil on the same road we were on? Micah was supposed to be in
Panama to pick me up. I had plumb forgot. But not Nikhil. And there was no way
they could have found me. Could this be just a coincidence?

Or did God
answer my prayer?

I had to hold
my breath to hold back the tears. I turned around to watch where they were
going and I saw the car do a U-turn and fall in line behind us. I sucked in
air.

“What are you
looking at?” Simon hissed at me. “I’ve saved you from him again. Aaron isn’t
back there.”

“You’re the
only one that should be afraid of Aaron.”

“Don’t make me
shoot you, Justin.” He lifted up the gun from his lap and looked at me.

I didn’t say
anything. I knew that Micah could fight. He’d save us from Simon. I figured
Nikhil probably couldn’t do much. I’d never even seen him move fast, or run. He
probably was on the same level as me when it came to being physical. But he
could, I surmised, still help me and Logan. He could help us scream.

“You may not be
afraid of me, Justin. Yet.” He narrowed his eyes and looked at me. “But I will
shoot your daughter if you don’t do what I say.”

We had parked
in an underground parking lot of a hotel. The one, I assumed, he was staying
in. I looked in the back seat at Logan. She looked really scared. Then I let my
eyes roam out beyond her. Nikhil was out of the car, leaning against it, as if
waiting.

Where was
Micah?

We needed
Micah.

“I’m not going
to let you hurt my daughter, Simon.” I closed my eyes and shook my head. “What
do you want me to do?”

“Both of you,
don’t try anything.” He lifted his shirt so we could see the gun he had placed
back in his waist. “We’re taking the elevator up to my room. Just do what I say
to do.”

I nodded my
head at him and looked at my daughter. “C’mon, Logan.”

“I’ll tell you
what to do,” Simon said through clenched teeth.

I rolled my
eyes. “Okay. So you want to say it?”

He inhaled
sharply. “C’mon. Both of you. Just c’mon.”

We walked over
to the elevator. I didn’t want to look back to see where Nikhil or Micah was,
so I just looked straight ahead. I reached out and grabbed Logan’s hand and
squeezed it.

We got into the
elevator and just as the doors closed, Nikhil got in. He waited until after
Simon pressed a floor key and he pushed one two floors up. The he stood behind
us, up against the wall.

It was the
first Logan had seen of him and she almost called out his name. I pushed my
body into hers.

“Stay calm,
little girl,” I told her, trying to hint not to give Nikhil away. “It’ll be
okay.”

Nikhil got off
the elevator with us. Simon didn’t even seem to notice. We headed down the
hallway to Simon’s room. He pulled out his electronic room key, and as he
concentrated pushing it down in the slot, Nikhil pulled out a gun with a
silencer and stuck it in Simon’s back.

Simon swiveled
his body around to see who it was behind him.

“I don’t want
to have to kill you in the hallway, Mr. Melas. But I will,” Nikhil said and
then smiled. A smile that said he was quite at ease with what he was doing.

I felt safe. We
were on our way to the airport. And with each step I made toward getting to my
house in Cleveland, I felt that much safer.

Nikhil had us
leave him alone with Simon. He had told us to go back down to the car with
Micah and that Micah would know what to do next.

“And do it
now,” he said, without even looking at us or wiping that smile off of his face.
“I’ll take care of things on this end.”

So we went down
and found Micah. He took us to the hotel to get our things and by that time,
Nikhil was in the lobby waiting for us.

“Ma,” Logan
turned to me. I was sitting in the backseat of the car. “We have what we need
for me to get permission for a dig in Panama. And with you in with the Senator
. . . Don’t you think . . .”

“Yeah. I think
so.” I knew exactly what she was asking. We both were so much calmer. It seemed
like the last few hours almost hadn’t happened.

Almost.

“There’s our
plane.” I followed Nikhil’s finger.

“Oh my
goodness. Nikhil. Who’d you steal that from?”

 He
laughed.

“When you said
you had a plane for us, I thought you meant like a little Cessna,” I said.
“This is as big as Air Force One.”

“Not that big,”
Nikhil said.

We climbed
aboard and got settled.

“I have to go
up front,” Nikhil said.

“You’re not
flying this are you?” I asked.

“No. Just
checking in.”

I buckled in
and gazed out my window. I would be glad to leave the jungle. Logan could have
it. It was a good thing for her. And I would help her. I’d talk to the Senator
and she’d get permission to dig in Panama. But definitely I wasn’t going to be
on that team.

“It’ll be a few
minutes before we can take off.” Nikhil stuck his head the door of the cockpit.
“Micah. Come on back. Let me show you around. Justin, you and Logan can get
buckled up. It shouldn’t be too long.”

“I’ve got
reading material.” I pulled out the codex from my carryon and showed it to
Nikhil. He nodded and disappeared back behind the door.

“Ma!” She got
up and stood over to my seat. “You’re supposed to have that safely packed
away.”

“It is.” I
patted my bag. “Right with me.” I opened it up and turned to the first pages. I
hadn’t had a chance to look at it since I took it from the cave.

“What? Do you
think you can just open it up and read it like it’s a library book?” She slid
into the seat next to mine and leaned her head in trying to see inside the
book. I pulled it away.

“I picked my
one
book carefully. I just didn’t grab something convenient,” I said.

“What is that
supposed to mean?”

I opened the
book so she could see it.

“Oh my
goodness. What is that?” She looked at me accusingly. “That isn’t Mayan.”

“I know. It’s
Sumerian cuneiform.

“You can read
that?”

“Yep. I can
read it. Just like a library book. Looks like my part of the world found me
here.” I smiled and waved her away. “Now go so I can read.”

Nikhil was
right, it wasn’t long before we took off. Micah back in his seat, he and Logan
had dosed off almost immediately. Nikhil hadn’t made his way back from the
front of the plane, which was fine. I wanted to read and not be disturbed. With
the blue sky and white clouds out my window, I searched inside the codex to
find out why ancient Sumerian was in the Maya library.

I didn’t have
to read long to find out the reason. After the first ten to fifteen pages of
cuneiform, the language changed. I guess I should have expected it. What I had
already read was something I knew all too well.

It was the Mars
origin story. Written in Sumerian cuneiform, hidden in a Maya cave, in Panama.

But after those
first few pages I found the now familiar mix of Arabic, Hebrew and Latin. Just
like in my AHM Manuscript.

I looked over
at Logan sleeping. This would crush her world. The codex was about our
ancestors from Mars.

I inhaled with
purpose and blew it out.

I started
skipping pages because I soon found that the mix languages were an exact copy
of the AHM Manuscript. And all of that was permanently etched in my brain.

The advanced
knowledge they possessed. Experimentations on Earth. The destruction of Mars
due to some nuclear event. And then the selection of people to send down here
and the rest of the people that found out about it and sabotaged the plan.

But then I
stopped. Stunned. This was something new. Now I understood why only one race of
people was sent. I understood why the saboteurs were left to die. The saboteurs
– the people who refused to be done away with and escaped here to be with the
one race chosen by The Elect. Did they know the truth? Is that why they defied
the edict of The Elect.

The reason only
one race of people were chosen didn’t have anything to do with prejudice as I
had originally thought.

It’s the reason
why the Maya were sacrificing themselves.

They were
running from the Ancients.

Cleveland Heights, Ohio

I had made it back home. I sat in the quiet, the lamp on
my desk the only light illuminating the room. It was dark outside my French
doors. I got up and went to my bookshelf and pulled down a book on ancient
Sumer. Opening the book, I flipped through the pages until I found the ancient
Sumerian mythological god of mischief and creation. Enki.

One story about him tells how he met with gods who had
gathered for a feast. He compelled them all to listen as he explained his new
solution for the problem of human overpopulation, a concern in a 3,000 year old
myth that I never could understand until now. Enki proposed that the gods
create new creatures who would be less fertile than the last ones they made.
Declare that women were restricted in bearing children, allow demons to snatch
infants away and cause miscarriages he advised to the gods. And they could
consecrate all those that remained virgins.

In every
ancient culture there is a story of population control. Some are about
genocide. Mass destruction like the story of the Great Flood, appear not just
in the Holy Bible but in dozens of other cultures, even, I found out, in Maya
myths. And then there are stories, like the one of the god Enik, where its
people are trying to control overpopulation in little ways, like restrictions
on having children or now I knew, through human sacrifice.

I sat with my
eyes fixed, staring at nothing in particular. Just thinking. I was so glad to
be back home. Simon Melas was dead, and Aaron Coulter was a problem to deal
with another day. I felt safe for now from them. But there was a new fear that
was catching hold of my soul and it didn’t stem from physical harm.

I ran my hand
over the cover of the codex. Its smooth leather cover was thousands of years
old but what was inside wasn’t bound by time.

The words I
read in the codex that I had taken from the underground library hit me like a
ton of bricks. Just all of a sudden, all those ancient stories about population
control came together and made sense.

Create the
perfect world.

Those words
were in the AHM Manuscript.

And they too,
now had so much more meaning than ever before.

I looked over
at the closed door to my study. On the other side were Mase Logan, Micah, Greg
and Nikhil. Jack had called and said he was on his way. They were waiting for
me. And I knew I was going to have to tell someone about what I learned, including
my daughter Logan. I had to tell what I knew.

I understood
the first time I read the Mars migration story in those manuscripts I got in
Jerusalem that our ancestors thought themselves gods. And now I’d learned that
their God complex had reached a pinnacle. An all-time high. Creating animals
and people hadn’t been enough. They truly believed that they were God
incarnate. They thought they could not only create as God had, but that God’s
judgment could also be their own. 

God always cleanses. Then He replenishes.  So shall we.

Those were
their words. The words in the codex I found in Panama. Our ancestors, sitting
on Mars, had rid the world of disease and could whip up new DNA like you do a
box cake. But then with no one dying, their coveted advances caused
overpopulation and all the blight that came with it.

So they came up
with a solution.

Our ancestors
had committed genocide. Time and time again. I had learned from the AHM
Manuscript that the Ancients created the dinosaur and when they grew tired of the
creature they injected a virus to kill them off. Extinction of the species
hadn’t come by a haphazard strike of a meteorite as our history teaches us, it
came by design. The same method, I now knew, they’d devised to rid the world of
its too many human inhabitants.

The Ancients
had destroyed their planet, Mars, and sent disease-free, knowledge-free people
here to start again. But too soon, the new inhabitants of Earth learned the old
ways of their home planet. Maybe because of the saboteurs who bought the
knowledge with them, but mostly because our ancestors couldn’t rid us of the
one thing that’s not in those double helix strands – human nature. Man’s nature
would lead him, without even trying, to expand his mind - to always seek to
know more.

“Ma.”

I looked up and
saw Logan. I had to tell her what I found, but now seeing her standing there,
it was making me more nervous than telling the world about man coming from
Mars. I didn’t want to ruin things for her. For her career.

“Hey, little
girl.”

She laughed.
“You know you should probably stop calling me that. I’ll be thirty in a couple
of years.”

“You’ll always
be my little girl.” I stood up. “So is everyone still out there.”

“Yep. Waiting
for you. You just kind of disappeared.”

“I had stuff to
think about. Stuff I needed to try and figure out.” I scanned my desk and
glanced around the room. “But I’m ready to go back out there. I have something
I need to tell you guys.”