All three gazes were drawn to one thing.
“That…would be the gate,” said Luke.
Beyond the ring of water, a gigantic set of arched doors had been carved from one entire cavern wall. The archway towered almost to the roof, and the doors were covered with complicated clockwork mechanisms, all carved from the same red stone. The sheer scale of the construction was staggering.
A diffuse light filtered from some unseen source, and the cavern was bare aside from the gate and the pedestal. It was like staring at a console with only one big button. Chris coughed up the last of the water and pulled herself onto the island, dripping onto the red dust. Luke and Emir followed as she walked cautiously towards the pedestal, facing the gigantic stone doors.
The sides of the pedestal were covered with stylised images of devastation and destruction—warring armies, fields of impaled corpses, flotillas of burning ships, the smoking ruins of cities. At the top of the pedestal, in the smooth, flat surface, was a hollow the size of a fist.
The three of them stood around the pedestal, their eyes absorbing the images carved in the stone. Chris wasn’t sure why she had expected anything more welcoming, since humanity had left Eden on somewhat acrimonious terms. However, the carvings were not simply ominous; they were positively dire. They read like a warning, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps these would be the consequences of opening the gate.
Her mother had turned away. After everything she had been through, she had walked, no,
run
away. Chris had run towards this, every step of the way. Now here she was, and all she needed was the key.
“How are you going with that last riddle?” asked Luke.
All the gates had been lessons. They had been tests about being human, about understanding not what life
was
, but what life
meant
. Chris thought of Lien, lying on the scarlet sand. Bale, praying on the triggered panel. Roman, twisted and broken in the corridor. Docker, eyes closing as the flames roared. Life was about choices, consequences, and
sacrifice
.
She had come this far, left important people behind, and risked not only her life but also those of others. They said anything worth achieving demanded sacrifice, and the Tree of Life was a prize like no other. Chris looked at the stone hollow, dry and waiting.
Life was also about changing your mind.
Chris looked across at Luke, who was lost in his own thoughts.
“Luke—” began Chris.
The rest of her sentence was drowned out as the continuous low background rumble suddenly reached a dramatic peak, and the cavern shook with thunderous vibrations.
“This place isn’t supposed to collapse until after we open the gate!” yelled Chris.
“Maybe there was a time limit!” called Luke.
Choppy waves began to seethe in the ring around them, and blobs of water bounced angrily from the surface. Dust shook down from the ceiling, and the ground rocked beneath them like a giant rodeo ride, sending them to their hands and knees. As the rumbling rattled through their bones, it turned finally into a screeching roar, like the sound of aluminium cans being put through a blender, magnified a millionfold.
Suddenly, something the size of a private plane and the shape of a submarine burst through the cavern wall, spraying chunks of rock across the chamber. A wide, spinning drill set at the front of the experimental excavator buzzed aggressively as it pulverised everything in its way. Clearing through the rock, the machine crawled into the chamber on tank-like treads and landed heavily on the dirt floor, the spinning drill bit slowing to a stop.
The excavator was charcoal black with an iridescent green sheen where it caught the light. Impenetrably tinted viewing ports covered the front and sides like compound eyes, and five crab-like legs protruded from each side. Before the dust had settled, gull-wing hatches swung open, spilling a dozen SinaCorp mercenaries into the cavern. They were all identically dressed in black combat gear, similar to Emir’s, and they bristled with firearms.
A fashionable fibreglass plank was thrown across the ring of water, and Chris, Luke, and Emir quickly found themselves in the middle of a prickly circle of sub-machine guns. A pair of soft leather boots stepped from the fawn interior of the Scarab excavator, measured steps treading across the red earth.
“Thanks for the coordinates,” said Marrick with a cold smile.
Emir stared at Marrick in mortification, then realisation, as he pulled out his sleek earpiece. He looked at the tiny device, etched in silver circuitry, and let it fall to the ground.
“I take it you’re terminating your contract with us,” said Marrick as she walked calmly towards the ring of water, flanked by two mercenaries.
Emir looked around at the circle of guns, a dozen trigger fingers behind a dozen loaded barrels. He didn’t trust himself to say anything.
“You’ll still be paid your pro-rata fee,” said Marrick casually. “An agent of your calibre should have no trouble getting another placement. Talent certainly seems to run in the family.”
Emir’s heart pounded against his ribs, tension buzzing through him like an electric current. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn’t spoken to his family in almost two years, and that there was no reason he shouldn’t call them right away once this was all over, and possibly encourage them to leave the country.
“That’s all you do, isn’t it?” said Chris. “People’s lives are just punctuation in your transactions, the brackets that move money back and forth. How many people have died in your quest to live forever? How many people have you had murdered to keep your secrets?”
“I take it those are rhetorical questions,” said Marrick.
“One comfort which can be taken from death is that every monster will be outlived,” said Chris. “So the cycle has a chance to be broken. I won’t let eternal life become a privilege, to be bought and sold and traded. Life is precious, but not like that. That’s something you’ll never understand.”
Luke covered his face with a hand. Dramatic, defiant speeches were all well and good, particularly if you were standing in a public square with lots of witnesses and a hospital close by. However, when you were in the bowels of the earth, surrounded by armed mercenaries, and no one knew where you were, making melodramatic threats lost a good deal of their tactical value. In fact, it was akin to declaring “You’d better kill me now before I thwart your evil plan.”
Luke appreciated the necessity of the occasional diplomatic retreat, and the value of biding your time. Lying low was also one of his preferred strategies, one which had served him reasonably well on campus until the day Chris had walked into his office and shucked him from his desk. He had sought the truth, and here it was. There were no miracles, no trumpeting angels, no gates of golden light. Only humanity through the ages, unchanged and alone, suffering from the same vices and privations as they had millennia ago, and still desperate to believe.
“I’m afraid I don’t have time to grandstand,” said Marrick. “I have one simple question, which I advise you answer honestly. Does the phrase ‘The blood of the blameless man’ mean anything to you?”
There was a cold silence.
Marrick nodded to the mercenaries, who tightened around the three on the island, prodding them to one side and clearing a space around the pedestal.
“So be it,” said Marrick. “Trial and error is so wasteful, but you’ve left me no choice. Proceed.”
One of the mercenaries strapped her submachine gun to her back and stepped towards the pedestal, pulling a plasma pack of blood from her bag. All eyes were on the mercenary as she pulled the plastic stopper from the pack and squeezed the oozing red liquid into the stone receptacle until it filled to the brim. The blood soaked into the stone, as though being drawn into the pores of the rock. There was a familiar hum, and suddenly a narrow beam of blinding light stabbed from the ceiling, engulfing the woman with a soft crackle. The light abruptly vanished, leaving only a small pile of white ash and the smell of fading smoke.
There was a slow, sucking pause as eleven mercenaries suddenly realised that perhaps they should have read the fine-print on their job descriptions.
Chris stared in horror at the tiny mound of ash that only seconds ago had been a woman who had probably already made plans for New Year’s Eve and fretted about what to get her parents for Christmas.
“Chris, just out of curiosity,” said Luke. “Are we just winging it now?”
Chris looked from the pedestal to Marrick, to the mercenaries, to the Scarab, her heart booming in her ears.
“I’ll get us out of this,” said Chris, her voice tight.
“Chris, don’t do any—” Emir began, but stopped as a gangly mercenary loped towards the pedestal.
The mercenary stopped at the stone pedestal, rolling up his sleeve to expose a lean, muscular arm.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Luke, blanching.
The gangly mercenary flicked a hunting knife from his belt and expertly drew the blade across his arm. Fresh blood the colour of poppies streamed from the wound, pouring into the receptacle. Chris heard one of the mercenaries whispering to her colleague.
“That’s why we brought the knife licker.”
Chris wanted to look away as the red liquid splashed into the stone hollow, filling it to the edges. The gangly mercenary was already backing away when the flash of light pulsed, and the smell of smoke trailed through the air. Two small piles of ash now lay beside the carved stand—one of them looked like it had been running. Chris was finding it very difficult to swallow.
The other mercenaries shifted a little uncomfortably, and Chris’s head throbbed. The other gates, the other lessons, her reason for being here—the harder she tried to focus, the more everything blurred into a confusing soup of ambition, revenge, repression, and riddles. Everything she wanted whirled around inside her head, a jumbled mess so thick she couldn’t grab hold of any one single thing.
Choose
.
Choose what you want.
What do you
really
want?
Suddenly, everything receded into a single, bright, burning dot of conviction. She had to get Luke and Emir out of there.
The shot came without warning.
Chris didn’t see Marrick raise the gun, and hadn’t even realise she had a weapon until she heard the shot, saw the smoking barrel, and felt the warmth dripping down her arm. Dreamlike, Chris looked down at the spatter marks on her top and saw the shock of crimson on Luke’s shirt. Luke’s gaze slid down to the hole beneath his ribs, the red stain spreading quickly.
Luke raised a hand uncertainly to the red, burbling wound. He fell in slow motion, and Chris felt as though she were moving through syrup, reaching out, her arms wrapping around him as he collapsed onto the dust.
“That’s taking a bullet,” murmured Luke, his voice catching in his throat.
A blade arced through the air, and a hunting knife clattered onto the dirt beside Chris.
“It looks about the right size for a heart, doesn’t it?” said Marrick.
Chris stared at the knife, horror clawing its way up her throat.
“It’s a metaphor!” screamed Chris. “It’s a bloody metaphor!”
And then she was crying, cradling Luke in her arms, sobs tearing their way through her body like blunt blades. She felt as though a vortex had opened up in front of her and sucked out all her entrails through a tiny hole, leaving her breathless, senseless, hopeless. Her whole body wracked as tears streamed down her face, her hands pressing desperately against the bullet wound.
Luke was turning grey, all the colour draining from him onto the floor.
“Where’s all my blood going?” said Luke, trying woozily to scoop the blood back into the wound.
“I’m sorry,” wept Chris. “Luke, I’m so sorry. Please…”
“Dizzy,” mumbled Luke. “Need a biscuit…”
Luke’s head lolled back, and he stopped moving. The world ground to a halt, hanging in empty silence.
The blood of the blameless man
.
Emir watched as Chris knelt there with her arms around Luke, holding him tightly as though she could will her own life into him. Her whole body shuddered with wordless anguish, as though every part of her were breaking. He could see the grief shredding through her like a poison, like a fire, burning away the world.
“It’s not blood,” said Emir, turning dangerous eyes towards Marrick.
Emir walked past Chris and kicked an object into the air, catching it in his palm with a slap. A dozen guns locked on to him. He held a bottle of water in his hand.
“It’s tears,” said Emir. “Only those who deserve to open the gate would understand. It means when the blood of the innocent is spilled. When blood is spilled, all you see is blood. What
we
see is grief, loss, suffering. Tears.”
Emir strode over to the pedestal and pulled the lid from the bottle.
“Here’s your gate, Marrick,” said Emir savagely. “I quit.”
The bottle turned and salt water poured into the vestibule, bubbling and sparkling as it rose to the lip. Emir looked down at Chris, her tearstained face turned towards him in a mixture of horror and hope. Emir braced himself as the clear liquid soaked into the stone hollow.
There was no hum, no beam of light, no strumming of harps. Instead, there was a low rumble that seemed to come from all around them, growing louder at a furious rate. The walls started to shake and the rumble grew to a roar. Emir raced back to Chris just as the round lapis seals above them burst open with ear-splitting cracks. One by one, the gigantic seals slammed open, releasing enormous, gushing torrents of water. Jets of rushing white water poured into the cavern as underground aquifers spilled from the walls.
As the first crushing wall of water charged towards them, Emir swung his arm upwards. A grappling harpoon shot from his wrist-guard and sank high into the carved gate, trailing a thin metal cable.
Leg out, duck, arm sweep, back step, kick up, and launch—this was what Emir lived for. In the breath between the water crashing towards them and the wave smashing into the wall, Luke was saddled over Emir’s shoulders, and Chris was firmly wrapped in one arm, as the three sailed upwards, drawn towards the retracting cable.