The Thrones of Eden 3 (Eden) (16 page)

She looked at the stone. Following logic, if this Guardian first answered ‘Yes’ and answered ‘Yes’ a second time, then he is the Guardian who tells the Truth since he did not lie about the answer as did the first Guardian. Therefore, you have ‘Yes’ + ‘Yes,’ two positives that equal a positive, the only positive answer among the grouping of crystals. Brilliant, she thought, a mathematical equation hidden within the riddle of a question.

“This is it,” she said, raising the crystal. It was hardly larger than a golf ball.

“You know the consequences if we get this wrong, don’t you.”

She then explained the reasoning behind her decision, which was translated to the ministers, who in turn took a stance like a bunch of Republicans and Democrats disagreeing for the sake of argument, the ministers gesticulating wildly that she was wrong, that the correct answer lie beneath one of the other stones.

They were beginning to drive her crazy, a man’s ego so colossal. As their voices steadily rose to be heard over the other, and without fearing any possible consequence, she placed the crystal on the scale.

And the ministers immediately became quiet.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

At one time Gani Malas could run like the wind. He was so fast, so quick off the line, that he had been prognosticated to make Turkey’s Olympic team in the 1000 meter relay. Unfortunately for Gani, however, he placed sixth in the preliminaries, which disqualified him from the competition squad. But the speed was there—to be the sixth fastest man in all of Turkey. His parents were proud. He was proud. The village he came from looked upon him like a rock star, as the man who ran so fast that his shadow had difficulty keeping up.

But now he lay here in the darkness of Mintaka with two horrifically broken legs, his bones so shattered that rods and pins would not be able to piece him whole. One leg would be shorter than the other, a malfunction that would most likely cause a noticeable limp for the rest of his life and, without a doubt, the end of his career as a Maroon Beret.

Gani grimaced against the pain as he looked upon his smashed legs.

He had taken the fall wrong when he fell into the hole, landing straight down without a bend in his knees, his bones then snapping and collapsing in his legs like the retractable parts of a handheld telescope upon impact, the bones forced upward toward his hip until the sharpened ends eventually punched through his flesh in compound fractures.

Worse, and if he didn’t get help soon, he knew his body would go into shock. He could already feel a certain coldness sweep over him, his body shuddering in intervals that were getting closer to one another, like contractions.    

Often he would pass out, providing him with quick snippets of salvation from pain that was mounting to greater heights every time he came to.

He then realized that he was dying by the inches with horrible slowness.

Gani then allowed the back of his head to rest against the wall as he rode out a new wave of pain, his teeth grinding until muscles in the back of his jaw flexed continuously.

When the wave passed it left behind a heightened sensitivity to touch and feel. Every time he moved or shifted or reached out for something with his hand, it was like striking an exposed nerve in a tooth, the pain was that raw.

Settling back down and taking measured breaths shallow enough not to fire up the pain in his legs, he sat there and listened, allowing his mind to play music in his head, reminisced about the moments he bested his opponents in races, and the time where he nearly grabbed the scepter that would have propelled him to the Olympics.

He thought of anything that would dull the pain.

And he was failing.

Darkness finally swept over him mercifully and rendered him unconscious for a moment, a slight reprieve granted, only for him to awake inside of a world suffused with a far greater pain.

So when Gani could hold back no more he screamed at the top of his lungs with his voice carrying deep into darkness.

And something within the depths honed in.

#

Scarabs, like most
beetles, carry a built-in infrared system to see images in the dark. Whereas their antennae can pick up sound waves and decipher them in a migratory way, their olfactory system directs them as to the direction to follow.

When Gani’s screams reverberated off the surrounding walls, the pores within their antennae processed the waves; their olfactory senses offering them a pinpoint location of the source.

As a collective, the scarabs turned and moved as a single unit the same way that shoals of fish quickly alter their course within a blink of an eye. The solidarity was inbred, the creatures hungering as one.

So they followed the source, their senses registering a wounded life force.

They pressed forward, the mass as long and winding as a river, their shells glistening like tar as mandibles sounded off in anticipation of what awaited them.

Gani had no chance.

#

The Turk was
exhausted, the man screaming as long and as loud as his body would permit without sending him into another state of unconsciousness.

The world was dark. The shadows were even darker. The walls and angles clearly defined in Gani’s light. But something loomed beyond the light’s fringe. It first began with a hum, then a disharmonious resonance of a flat line, the sound long and steady and continuous, the measure heightening with every passing moment, the noise getting closer, getting louder.

Then he saw them.

A rolling black tide that was as alive as he was, a life form that had no sense of contrition or remorse, without any compassion or willingness to absolve the man for his trespasses against the temple of Mintaka, and simply saw him as prey.

They moved in and gathered close, surrounding him as if to study their best approach, building upon one another until a wall was mounting and getting higher, the scarabs like children climbing over one another for a better look, their curiosity piquing.

They were coming down at him from the walls, their scaling abilities defying gravity as they clung to the angled surfaces.

Their mandibles clacked in a deafening manner, a raw form of communication, each message an appraisal of the man who lay against the wall all going off at once, each trying to convey a message where it appeared that everyone was talking but nobody was listening.

Gani reached into his backpack and immediately found what he was looking for by its unique shape. He quickly pulled out a hand grenade and exhibited it to the scarabs, not sure why he did so other than it would somehow provide a possible deterrence.

But it didn’t.

The scarabs were closing in.

From above and around, their mandibles pinched at his feet, testing, teasing, each one examining to see if their foe was a formidable one.

It wasn’t.

They began to pinch off pieces of meat as Gani screamed, the pain immeasurable as they began to climb his legs, their mandibles attaching themselves to the exposed bone and then breaking it off, the insects quickly scrabbling off with its bounty to get at the marrow.

Bones and flesh began to tear away, the man breaking down to nothingness as he reached over and pulled the pin of the grenade.

Gani then waited for what he believed would be the eventual coming of the ‘Light of Loving Spirits.’

#

The grenade had
a four-second fuse.

After having been swarmed over by the scarabs, his body now covered until it was nothing but a black lump in the configuration of a man, the grenade went off.

The detonation was powerful, its explosiveness reaching out to everything in its radius by destroying every beetle and scarab nearby, their carapaces becoming shattered bits as their innards, yellow and white meat, landed against the walls and surrounding floor in gruesome designs. The fiery sparks and burning shrapnel carried to all ends of the hall, some of the hot pieces landing in pools of oil, igniting them. Bonfires quickly arose, flaring into fiery columns of intense heat, the flames licking at the walls, the ceiling, the scarabs scrambling for safer havens that weren’t there, their bodies heating, their shells cracking, the meat spilling through the fissures, bubbling, the creatures dying out, burning. The tunnel became entirely engulfed as a back draft of fire raced down both ends of the corridor and lit more pools of oil. The scarabs then scrambled in a wild panic as self-preservation kicked in, each one possessing the desire to live as their escape routes had been clogged at the thin breaches with some getting through with smoking shells, whereas others blackened and burned.  

The fires crackled on, hardly tempered as they were fueled by oil. Carapaces and beetle shells lay in pyramidal heaps and mounds, the smell of their suffering coming in indescribable aromas far worse than the smell of death and decay.

As many scarabs had been laid waste to the fires, many still escaped the slaughter.

They had gathered in recesses away from the flames, many injured and incapable of moving on, some resigning to die from their wounds and becoming the sustenance for those who would survive.

But many more remained.

And there was prey to be had.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

John Savage stood as impotent as a man could feel.

Hillary was still on his knees, blessing the man who fired the killing shot that saved his life.

Savage on the other hand loathed the soldier, truly believing that he could have saved both lives without firing a single shot. But life is what it is. He’d seen it before—people panicking and the respondents reacting with the conquer-all solution of placing a bullet to the head.

“You’re supposed to be men of elite status,” he told them, knowing that they couldn’t understand a single word he said. “You’re supposed to be men of repose.”

Their answer, however, came by shouldering him off and heading for the archway.

Hillary was just getting to his feet. “Thank you,” he said to Savage.

“I didn’t do a thing,” he said. “They killed a man when a man didn’t need to be killed.”

“I beg to differ.”

“You can differ all you want,” he told him firmly. “The man was afraid. And a man’s fear can be dealt with.”

“Sometimes.”

They looked back at the scene where the dead minister lay. Beside him lay his backpack. Inside his backpack was his camera bearing the photos and schematic of Mintaka—without it, they’d be running blind.

The thought occurred to them simultaneously.

“I’m not going back,” said Hillary.

“Neither am I. We go through Mintaka using our wits from here on in.”

They moved forward. Following the lead of the soldiers, they entered beneath the archway and into darkness.

Just as they reached an opening there was a muffled sound somewhere in the distance.  The noise was unmistakable. It was the sound of a hand grenade going off.

“What was that?” asked Hillary.

Savage waited a few moments and listened for something further, perhaps for another explosion. But nothing came. “That was a hand grenade,” he finally said.

“Perhaps the young man we left behind?”

He nodded. “Now the question is, was the moment effective enough to allow us time? Or is it that whatever it was he was fighting still coming after us?”

Hillary didn’t want to even consider the possibilities.

“We move,” said Savage, and then he ushered Hillary beneath the archway to the next area.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The scale tipped with glacial slowness, as if trying to find an equal balance between the two sides. The side bearing the stones-of-predetermined weight rose as the scale bearing the crystal lowered. The scales seesawed to a mutual level on both sides, vacillating in teasing manner, one side threatening to outweigh the other. But then they stopped when the balances were perfectly aligned.  

At the far end of the room one of the two doors opened, the one on the right.

No one moved. Everyone was waiting for Mintaka to come alive with a sudden shift of weights and balances.

But it didn’t. The world around them remained steady.

“Are you sure, Alyssa, that that’s the correct doorway?” asked Demir.

She looked at the faces of the ministers who were slack-jawed, and at the faces of the soldiers who appeared neutral because it was required of them as military elitists, despite their underlying emotions.

“Are . . . you . . . sure?” he emphasized.

“That particular crystal made sense . . . logically. It had to be the answer.”

“
Had
to be?”

“Look. It made sense. It was the logical choice.”

“And you decided upon the decision without the input of the ministers? Without their counsel?”

“Let’s get one thing straight, Demir. These blowhards have no interest in listening to what I have to say because of my gender. You know that. They live in a world where women are second-rate citizens. Well let me tell you, and them, something. My life, your life, their lives and the lives of your teammates are at stake here. I will not be held back because of cultural prejudices. And neither should they. I made what I thought to be the wisest choice to benefit us all.”

Demir held back. His face was flat and even. His eyes remained steady. Finally, he conceded. “And this door, the one on the right—this is the way?”

“It’s
a
way,” she told him.

“Both doors provide
a
way,” he returned. “But do you know for certain if this particular door will provide us the route necessary to get to the Chamber of the One?”

She hesitated. “All I know is that the door responded to what I believed to be the most logical answer regarding the number of questions given.”

“But you’re not sure?”