Shadowmark (The Shadowmark Trilogy Book 1) (7 page)

“Cummings?”

“Anybody.” He paused to let his words sink in.

Lincoln rubbed his eyes. They burned with exhaustion. “What does that have to do with me carrying a gun?”

“Don’t know what’s going to happen.” Nash held out the sidearm for Lincoln.
 

Lincoln took the gun Nash offered him and clipped it to his belt, moving his phone to the other hip.
Great, I’m a gun-toting engineer.
 

“What about the others?”
 

Lincoln shook his head. “I don’t think they have much experience.”

“Just you, then.”

Nash crossed the tent, opened the flap, and held it for Lincoln. “Word of advice. Having a gun doesn’t mean you should go off on your own. If you can’t follow orders, you’ll be out.”

Lincoln paused to face Nash. Nash’s blue eyes shone sharply in the pale sunshine. They reminded Lincoln of his father—but a wrong version of him. Before Adam died, he had been frail and weak from the cancer that was attacking his body. But he’d still been working to connect to Lincoln, working to keep the bitter young man on the straight and narrow. Nash was making clear he didn’t want to work with Lincoln. Why he was even thinking of his father right now? “You need me,” he said to Nash.

“Maybe.”

Schmidt was waiting for Lincoln outside the tent. Lincoln had hoped he would remain behind, but the kid followed him back to the base of the tree where Lincoln had piled his gear. Lincoln rummaged through the bags, looking for his phone charger. Thankfully, the kid seemed through with asking questions.

Nash had some nerve. If Lincoln’s team was to help at all, they needed to know everything they could about this place. He was glad he’d had the presence of mind to get the video.
But what are we going to do in that mine?
Lincoln tossed his tent at Schmidt. “Go set that up, and make sure it’s nowhere near Nash’s.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hey, and Schmidt—when you’re finished, I don’t need anything else.”

Schmidt trotted off, eager to please. Or to get away. Lincoln didn’t care which. His irritation was growing by the minute. The ARCHIE facility had provided no clues or help thus far. He wished Cummings had told him exactly what he was supposed to find useful in there.

Having found his charger, Lincoln pulled his brown leather messenger bag across his body and the straps of the Army green duffel and sleeping bags over one shoulder.
 

“Lincoln!” He turned to see Alvarez jogging toward him wearing odd layers to ward off the cold spring air: plaid sweater over jeans, and a spring beige coat that flapped out ridiculously beneath the camouflage Army jacket Schmidt had loaned her on the road.
 

Two soldiers sped through the trees in a lightweight all-terrain vehicle that sounded like a buzz saw. Alvarez waited for them to pass. With its tall roll cage and low center of gravity, the ATV looked like the offspring of a golf cart and a four-wheeler. As they watched, it sputtered and rolled to a halt fifty yards away. The soldiers waited a minute in confusion before getting out.

“Did you find something?” Lincoln asked, deciding not to comment on the coat.

“Check your phone.”

“Can’t. It’s dead. What’s up?”

“I sent you the topographical map, but I have the paper copy.”

Alvarez fished an elevation map out of her pocket and handed it to Lincoln. She pulled her jacket closer around her. “Without the right equipment, it’s hard to tell. But we thought something looked off when we were driving in, so we pulled out the maps while you were in the tunnels. The mountain is shaped like a cone.” Alvarez’s voice rose slightly with her revelation.

“What?”

“A cone. You know, a perfect circle at the base and a single vertex . . .”

“I know what a cone is, but how?”

The two soldiers with the ATV opened the hood. One fiddled with the buttons on his radio.

“Looks like they broke down.”

“Yeah.”

Lincoln and Alvarez turned toward camp and walked over to the other members of the team, who had their gear spread out on rocks under a tree. Carter sketched something in the small leather book he always carried with him while Nelson pulled the battery cover off his laptop.
 

“What’s wrong with your laptop?” asked Lincoln.

Nelson pulled out the battery. “It died, just after I sent the map to your phone.”

“You can charge it with my portable battery. I have it with me.” Lincoln dropped the duffel and sleeping bag and opened his messenger bag.

“No. I had full battery. Must be something else.”

Carter opened the map, spreading it out on the rock for Lincoln. He lit a cigarette from the dwindling pack in his pocket. “If you look at the mountain, starting with the base,” he said, “you’ll see it's a circle. From there, the elevation changes regularly in concentric circles rising to the peak, which is directly over the center.” Carter handed Lincoln his sketchbook, where he’d drawn a three-dimensional representation that mimicked the elevation map. The mountain did indeed look like a cone.

Lincoln examined the sketch. “Is this accurate? I was only gone a couple of hours.”

“Yeah, about that,” said Carter. “Next time you go exploring,
Indiana
, you should take your team with you.”

“When we got here, Nash wanted to send a huge team. And to avoid it, I just slipped off while Smith wasn’t looking. I didn’t have time to come get you. I got video, too, and I’ll show you if I can get my phone charged.”

“Uh huh,” said Nelson, separating the CPU from the motherboard and swearing. “Circuits are completely fried.”

Carter walked over to peer at Nelson’s laptop. “Huh. What do you think would have caused that?”

“I would’ve taken you with me . . . ” continued Lincoln.

“Relax, Lincoln, we know,” said Alvarez.

“There he is,” said Lincoln, looking over toward the edge of camp, where Schmidt was standing and watching them.

“He’s just a groupie,” smirked Nelson.

“Or a spy-in-training,” added Carter.

Lincoln flipped through the sketches. “More importantly,
why
is this mountain shaped like a cone? And is there any way to verify and measure it?”

“Don’t know,” said Alvarez, shaking her head. “We aren’t equipped for that kind of measurement.
 
You’ll have to ask Nash if they can do it. But have we considered it’s for communication? That’s what we’re out here for, right? Maybe ARCHIE built it as some sort of signal conductor.”

“Built the mountain?” Nelson looked up from his dismantled laptop. “Do you hear yourself?”

“Last week I would have said it was crazy. Today we have hostile alien towers positioned in every major city across the globe, so it’s not a stretch to assume a lot of impossible things are now possible.”

“Or maybe we’re all going nuts,” said Lincoln. “Hallucinating. Tomorrow morning I’ll wake up in bed and realize I dreamed the whole thing.”

“The math doesn’t lie,” said Alvarez.

“But our eyes do. Let’s check it again tomorrow.” He pulled out the map of the mine and stared at it again. Several tunnels branched off to the left and right from the main tunnel, each side tunnel unfinished on the map. Only the tunnels that led to the ARCHIE facility were completed and marked with small arrows. What was ARCHIE doing down there? Lincoln turned to hand the sketchbook back to Carter, but the man had disappeared behind a tree. Instead, Lincoln shoved the book into his coat pocket to free both hands.

Alvarez nodded at the gun at Lincoln’s hip. “Good thing your sister isn’t here to see that.”

He shrugged. “She knows how to use one, too, but you’d never get her to admit it.” An avid hunter, Lincoln’s father had made sure both his children could handle a weapon. Lincoln hadn’t owned a gun in years, but he was already remembering what it felt like to handle one. Thinking of his sister, Lincoln pulled his phone off the clip and plugged it into the portable battery he’d offered to Nelson. Mina’s plane should have landed a few hours ago. He pressed the power button and waited for the screen to light up with the telltale lightning charge symbol.
 

“Did Nash give you the gun?” Alvarez asked.

“Yes.”

“Why would he do that? We’re surrounded by armed soldiers.”

She was right—arming civilians seemed out of place. “Don’t know. A little weird, but he did say he hadn’t heard from anyone yet, and was still awaiting orders.”
 

“What about Cummings?”

“Nope. No one.”

Alvarez frowned.

Nelson interrupted. “So are you going to tell us what you found?”

“I don’t really know what I found,” said Lincoln. But once Carter returned, he told them everything he had seen, describing the corridors in detail, the locked door, and the large round room.

Alvarez tugged the map out of his hands. “I think we need to go check out the circular room before we explore these other tunnels,” she said after examining it. “We’ll have to wait for them to finish setting up camp. I think they plan on going in tomorrow morning.”

“This whole thing is starting to bug me,” said Lincoln. “We were sent here to finish our program to communicate with the aliens. What does this facility have to do with any of it? I’d like to go back in there with more light to look around.”
 

“Let’s do it tonight,” said Carter, lighting another cigarette.

“At night?” questioned Alvarez.

“Yes,” agreed Lincoln. “It’s pitch-black in those tunnels, anyway. Doesn’t matter what time of day it is down there.”

“Okay,” said Carter. “What do we need?”

“Wait a minute,” said Lincoln. He gestured at the kid. “Hey!”
 

Schmidt jogged over dutifully.

“Yes, sir?”

“Why don’t you set up our other tents. Near mine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“When’s dinner?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“Okay, then, you better hurry.”

“I think,” remarked Carter after Schmidt had hauled away their tents, “that you enjoy having someone to order around, Lincoln.”

“He does, doesn’t he?” said Nelson. “He’d love it if we’d all do that for him—obey his every command.”
 

Lincoln ignored them and turned back to his phone and battery pack.

“He’s just following orders,” said Alvarez as she pulled out a tablet and pressed the power button. “Huh. The tablet’s not working.” She dropped it.

Lincoln looked over at her. “That’s probably why it won’t work. You drop it too much.” The screen on his phone remained black, and he examined the portable battery. The tiny lights on it were dark, too. He unplugged everything and tried again. Nothing.

Alvarez reached down for the device. “It’s hot. Surprised me.”

“Hot?”

“Yeah.”

Carter sat next to Nelson. “Hey, guys. Come here a minute.”

Lincoln and Alvarez walked over to Nelson and Carter, who were bent over Nelson’s laptop. The exposed green motherboard showed blackened pathways along the melted circuits, all charred beyond repair. The rubbery smell of melting silicon emanated from it.

Carter pointed at Lincoln’s bag. “Does your laptop work?”

It didn’t. The four of them spent the next few minutes checking all the electronics they had brought with them. Phones, flashlights, laptops—nothing worked. Alvarez borrowed Carter’s pocket knife and pried open her tablet, removing the LED and backing to expose the logic board. It was fried, too. Nelson left to find Schmidt, and returned to say the rest of camp was experiencing similar outages. Several vehicles, like the ATVs, wouldn’t start; flashlights, phones, and other electronics were out, too. Including radios.

“What d’you think?” Carter asked Lincoln.

“EMP?” An electromagnetic pulse would explain all systems going haywire at the same time.
 

“Really?” Alvarez dropped her useless tablet back into her bag.

“Localized?” asked Nelson, looking up into the clear sky. “You think something’s up there watching us?”

They all paused a minute. Lincoln shuddered. “Dunno. Maybe the colonel knows. Let’s find him before supper.”

Colonel Nash refused to see them. Schmidt said he was busy trying to find out what worked and what didn’t. “Colonel’s got a long-distance, high-frequency radio manned in the Humvee. It’s working, but we haven’t been able to raise anyone on it.”

“No one at all? What about HQ or amateur operators?” asked Carter.

“Nope, not yet.”

The team exchanged looks. Complete radio silence meant trouble. Ham radios could communicate across thousands of miles; an amateur operator in Maine could call someone in California with the proper equipment. How widespread was this blackout?

“Does he know what caused it?” asked Alvarez.

“No, ma’am,” answered Schmidt.

“Call me Alvarez.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mina woke on her back, coughing. Rough concrete scraped her elbow. When she opened her eyes, someone else’s looked back at hers, inches away. Startled, she tried to focus on the blur hovering over her, but the coughing fit caused her to turn over and gasp for breath. Several minutes passed as she struggled to breathe through whatever had filled her lungs. When she opened her eyes, blood dripped from her head onto the cold concrete, mingling with the big flakes of grey snow that drifted through the air.
 

Finally, the coughing fit subsided long enough for Mina to sit up and look around. The person had disappeared. She turned slowly, her whole body shaking—how far could he have gone?—but she was alone. She blinked her burning eyes. Ash, not snow, drifted around her. A grey haze obscured the large concrete building nearby. A hundred questions jammed together in her brain then faded away. The smoke grew darker. Mina stood on quivering legs.
 

She was in some kind of courtyard between two buildings, with walls rising up on two sides and a walkway on a third. The smoke thickened in the walkway. On the fourth side, the air was clearer, so Mina walked to the edge of the protected space. This side of the building was eerily quiet. Somewhere a distant roaring nagged at her, but she tuned it out as white noise. Realizing she had not heard anything else since she woke, she scraped her boot on the pavement to test her hearing. The rough sound echoed dully in the enclosed area.