Chris placed one foot firmly in front of the other, following the turning corners of the decorated hallway. As they rounded another bend, the corridor suddenly opened up into a narrow antechamber, about ten metres high, with a vaulted plaster ceiling. The walls were lined with standing human silhouettes, darkly painted, all squarely facing into the room like a waiting crowd. The chamber ended in a tall, arched door, carved from milky blue marble, veined with ripples of white. Engraved in the double doors, where the handles should be, were a pair of magnificently ornate angel wings.
Luke turned at the sound of an electronic click and found Chris peering through the viewfinder of her mobile phone. She grimaced at the snowy image before tucking the phone back into her pocket.
“I guess this is the Cherubim,” said Chris.
This was it—the first gate, the first trial. Taking a deep breath, Chris and Luke pushed on the tall marble doors. The doors swung open as though on hydraulics, noiselessly parting to reveal a high, pale chamber on the other side.
The room was flawlessly carved blue marble, luminously lit with softly glowing panels which rippled down the walls. The ceiling was about fifteen metres high and flat, polished to a glossy finish. Where the floor should be was a pool of still, black water, reaching from wall to wall, smooth as obsidian. A straight, narrow path of smoky marble stretched from the doorway to an archway on the other side of the room, like a bridge across the inky waters. On the far end of the path, just before the other doorway, a large smear of fresh blood stained the marble.
“That’s ominous,” said Chris.
But perhaps the most disturbing thing about the chamber, more disconcerting than the skeletal remains which littered the path, or the bleached bones poking out of the still water, were the statues. The room was full of white marble statues, rising from the water. Winged angels on pedestals, cherubs lying level with the path, robed, half-clothed, crouched, posed magnificently, wings sprouting from powerful shoulders. Dozens of beautifully carved likenesses lined the length of the room, all facing the path from archway to exit. All watched with glassy eyes like polished topaz, seeming to glint with an internal light.
Chris reached into her satchel and pulled out a balding tennis ball. Staying carefully behind the threshold, she bowled the grubby green ball down the marble path. As it rolled smoothly down the pale stone aisle, a deep, layered humming noise began to fill the room. If the noise were a perfume, it would be described as having a base of monastic chanting, with top notes of an angry apiary, and just a hint of sizzling flesh.
Chris suddenly noticed that the eyes of the statues were changing. They started to glow, not just with reflected light, but like lamps, then like beacons across the sea, and they grew brighter still, like the heart of the sun. As the tennis ball reached the halfway mark on the bridge, the humming burst into a crescendo, and dozens of beams of light shot towards the rolling ball. There was a noise like a piece of charcoal being crushed on asphalt.
When Chris’s eyes recovered from the blinding flare, all that remained of the tennis ball was a tiny pile of soot, which appeared to be vaporising before her eyes. Luke stared at the rising wisp of smoke.
“I suppose you want me to go first?” said Luke.
Chris looked at the eyes of the Cherubim as they faded slowly back to their dull lustre.
“I think you were right,” said Chris. “They’ve harnessed some kind of reflected sunlight. The magnification must be phenomenal.”
Luke gazed across the blank faces of the Cherubim, all staring blindly ahead. They had been carved by human hands, with extremely sophisticated engineering, no doubt, but there was nothing holy, nothing divine about them. They even resembled contemporary renderings of angels and cherubs, with proud faces and detailed musculature.
Eyes, lips, and ears, all human
, thought Luke with faint disdain.
A sense of hollow dread began to seep through him, like a rising chill. Things had been going well, in a sense. He thought they had been getting closer, tracking down Eden, homing in on the answer to his burning question. The truth was supposed to be revealed here, the fate of the Garden, the fate of humanity, the meaning behind the randomness of existence.
This was supposed to be his miracle. This was supposed to be his Tree of Knowledge. This was supposed to be his salvation. Luke gazed at the stone figures in their frozen poses. This was just the work of man, another mimicry of an older belief.
He had followed lies all his life. Lies about the goodness of humanity, lies about justice in the world, lies about the wicked being punished and the good being rewarded. He had chased those lies to the ends of the earth, knowing in his heart that they were phantoms that vanished when you needed them most.
Perhaps it was time to let go.
Luke stared grimly at the ghostly figures flanking the chamber and stepped out onto the marble walkway.
“Maybe if we ran really fast and then jumped—
Luke
!”
Chris noticed too late that Luke was striding down the central bridge, the discordant humming already rising to jarring levels.
There was no time to think, and Chris’s feet were already pounding down the stretch of marble. Luke was almost halfway across the bridge by the time she reached him. She grabbed his arm, desperately trying to drag him forward.
“Maybe if we jump and roll—!”
Luke suddenly grabbed Chris and wrapped his arms around her tightly, his face stony.
“Don’t move,” said Luke calmly. “Just hold still.”
This was not one of Chris’s top ten options. It was actually slightly below diving into the skeletal waters, and she could already see how well that had worked for previous visitors. However, there was a time to walk with someone, and a time to believe in them. Something in Luke’s face told her that the time was now.
As the eyes blazed around them like a private constellation, Chris stayed perfectly motionless, her heart pounding like an orchestra of drums. This wasn’t how she wanted to die, but it was kind of cooler than slipping in the bathtub. She saw Luke close his eyes, his arms tensing around her as the humming reached fever pitch.
A single bolt of burning light shot through the air, winging Chris on the hip.
“Argh!” growled Chris, her eyes widening in shock.
The smell of burning flesh wafted upwards.
“Whoops,” said Luke.
“Frickin’ whoops?” said Chris through gritted teeth, the edge of her jeans smouldering around the neatly cauterised, finger-sized graze.
“I got the rest of it right,” said Luke. “Part of understanding the difference between good and evil is accepting judgement. You have to accept the consequences of your actions, rather than running from them. That’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom.”
“That’s really Zen, and I’m glad you had a little revelation, but you can let go now.”
“Are you going to punch me?” asked Luke.
“Maybe.”
Chris took a slow breath, the scorching pain easing into a dull ache.
“Okay, no,” said Chris. “I’m good.”
Luke unwrapped his arms, and they looked around at the dull-eyed Cherubim.
“Can we run now?” asked Chris.
“I hadn’t thought that far.”
They sprinted towards the far exit as the humming began to rise again. The statues’ eyes lit up rapidly with white-hot brightness as they pounded down the path.
“Being punished once was plenty,” huffed Chris as she dove through the archway.
She stumbled breathlessly onto the dark red dirt of the passageway, and Luke skidded through the doorway after her. Dozens of blazing beams scorched through the chamber behind him, criss-crossing the air.
“We seem to have some communication issues,” panted Chris.
“Would you have let me try if I asked you?”
“We could have tested it with a Hacky Sack first!”
“You brought a Hacky Sack?”
“You expect to just walk into a—” Chris stopped, her gaze drawn to a disturbingly shaped pool of shadow.
A booted foot protruded from a pile of dark clothing, the leg bent at a horrible angle. It was then that Chris noticed the bloodied drag marks across the dirt floor, leading from the bloodstained marble walkway to the rumpled figure by the wall.
It was Roman.
A frayed length of cable trailed from the climbing harness around her waist. A pair of broken sunglasses lay on the ground beside her. Chris knelt on the dirt, not knowing where to start—with the leg, twisted at a nauseating angle, or the blood, seeping through Roman’s clothing.
Here. Start here. Blood had crusted around her nostrils and mouth, and as Chris gently removed the helmet from Roman’s head, she saw blood pooling inside. She touched Roman’s face lightly, and the woman’s eyes opened weakly. Brilliant red irises stared back—not a watery, albino red, but hibiscus scarlet flecked with crimson.
“…mir…” choked Roman, struggling for breath.
“It’s okay,” lied Chris, suddenly finding it difficult to breathe. “It’s…”
Chris couldn’t continue, a tightness strangling her from inside. The woman’s breathing was ragged, as though fighting to seize each breath, her eyes locked on the ceiling. Luke took Roman’s hand gently.
“Just breathe,” said Luke. “Don’t try to do anything.”
He could feel her hand growing cold in his.
“…mir…promise…” said Roman, gurgling slightly.
An expression of faint panic crossed her face, as though all her regrets were flashing before her, her thoughts chasing all the things she still wanted to do. Luke closed his hands around Roman’s, as though trying to press his own warmth back into her. For a moment, her grip tightened, her fingers winding firmly around his. He held her hands, as though physically holding on could stop the spirit from leaving. But it never did.
Roman’s eyes rolled closed. They knelt in silence, and it felt as though the darkness pressed closer.
“There’s nothing you can do for her,” said Luke, still holding Roman’s hands.
Chris rose to her feet and started walking down the corridor, although her mind was still kneeling in the dirt, staring at the blood.
Keep moving
, her body told her,
or you’ll end up huddled in the corner, covered in mess
.
She could feel the blood still warm on her hands.
Scrub up, don’t stop moving
.
It’s almost over
.
* * *
The blow sent Emir hurtling backwards down the stairs, crashing hard against every stone step on his way down. He tried to stay balled up protectively but it didn’t seem to help. He saw the ground rise towards him and managed to shoulder-roll backwards onto his feet, the world spinning.
He heard the scream before he saw her fall. It started as a scream of surprise, then turned to horror, then agony. He saw her fall like a shadow against the marble, the tuft of frayed cord swinging from the ceiling. He saw her hit the walkway with a crack and a spatter of red. By the time he released his own rope, the hum had started—
Emir backed away, but Docker was already at the base of the stairs, his fist slamming into Emir’s stomach like a drill. Emir blocked the next blow, but Docker’s leg kicked out, knocking Emir’s knee from under him. Emir had never been much of a fighter—he could run, he could leap, he could scale a castle wall with bare fingers, but fists and blood and breaking bones—that turned you into something else.
She wasn’t screaming anymore, but a thousand shades of pain tore through her eyes. Her fingers dug into his arms as he dragged her to the wall
.
“Get her pack,” said Docker
.
“Stay with me,” said Emir. “Roman, look at me—”
Her fingers gripped him tighter, her eyes full of desperate imperative
.
“Demi—” she choked. “Promise me— Find Demi—”
‘Roman,” said Emir. “You have to—”
He heard the click of a cartridge loading. Emir turned to see Docker aiming the pistol at Roman’s head. Docker leaned over and pulled Emir’s gun from its holster
.
“Get her pack,” said Docker softly. “Or, so help me, I’llput her out of her misery right now.”
Emir slammed into the pillar and rebounded, twisting away from Docker’s follow-up hook. Docker raised his gun to Emir’s head.
“You signed up for this,” said Docker. “You finish it. You don’t finish the job, you don’t go home. That’s how it works.”
Emir struggled to catch his breath, blood trickling from his nose and busted lip. His eyes followed the barrel of the gun.
“You’ve been doing this too long,” said Emir. “It’s not normal, it’s not right. It’s not—”
His mind reached back to angry words in a sunny plaza.
“It’s not an occupational health and safety thing,” said Emir, ignoring the metallic taste in his mouth.
Docker was unmoved.
“I gave you a chance to walk away,” said Docker. “You chose to stay. You have to live with the choices you make.”
A desert under violet skies—
“You can change your mind,” said Emir. “If you see it’s wrong, you stop doing it.”
Docker’s eyes were flat, the gun perfectly steady.
“There was a time I thought that, too,” said Docker. “I was wrong.”
16
Chris barely noticed the corridor around her, her entire attention focused on taking one step after another. Luke, meanwhile, was paying attention to both Chris and to the disturbing turn the passageway had taken.
The path was now darkly illuminated, with irregular sconces in the ceiling casting an ominous red glow, as though lava flowed behind the quartz panes. The walls were a deep, earthy red, panelled with grey marble bas-reliefs depicting scenes of carnage. Mutilated corpses demonstrated an array of horrible fates, while images of burning villages and decimated cattle had been etched with an impressive degree of detail. Even more eerie was the way some of the reliefs leaned from the walls like sculptures, an arm hanging out here, a clawing hand there.
Luke could almost imagine them crawling out from the walls to attack them. That would certainly be a feat of engineering. He walked a little closer to Chris, the shifting red light creating the illusion that the sculptures were moving in barely perceptible increments.