The Conduit: Chapter I7

Chapter 17

Jonas and Anu were exhausted. They searched through the mountain structure from one end to the other as they looked for another way into the prison area. The two were getting ready to stop when Anu noticed something along the wall. She stopped Jonas and let out a sigh of frustration. Standing there, staring at the white smudge on the stone carved wall, she took a seat on the ground and started going through her bag.

Jonas looked at her, surprised to see her just stop and sit. He knew they’d been walking for a couple of hours, and as she took a bottle of water and a protein bar from her bag, he realized they needed a break. Jonas joined her alongside the wall, digging through his bag for the rations he packed.

“So, what are we doing?”

Anu pointed to the white mark on the wall. She shook her head, sadly remembering when she marked the wall. They’d worked their way through the mountain in a circular motion. For two hours, Jonas and Anu had walked around in a circle, getting no closer to the section of the mysterious place they hoped to study.

“Well,” sighed Jonas.

“I guess we can go back to the idea of swinging across,” Anu suggested. “We’re not brother and sister.”

The two finished their snack and gathered their second wind before walking back down the tunnel directly leading to the cells. Jonas started rigging his launcher while Anu surveyed the ceiling of the cavern. She was good with cave geology and could spot areas that were softer than others. When she found a spot, Anu pointed it out to Jonas. It was farther than halfway, giving him reservations about the anchor launcher.

“Is that the best spot you could find?” asked Jonas.

“For that anchor system, yes.”

Jonas stepped back and aimed the launcher at the ceiling. He breathed out slowly, squeezing the trigger as he completed the exhale. With a pop sound, the anchor flew through the air striking the stone ceiling and imbedding deeply into the mountain. Jonas strapped the launcher to his back, slung his bag over his shoulder, and tested the line.

“Are you ready for this?”

Anu had her gear slung across her back. She looked down into the cave opening, seeing the skeletons of those who tried getting into the jail section before them. As ready as she felt, the idea of ending up in the pit below with the rest of the skeletons of the past scared her. As much as they joked about swinging across, now that it was time, she was feeling anxious about the idea.

“Is this going to work?”

Jonas told her, “Just hold on tight.”

She relented and wrapped her arms around him. Jonas told her that they’d have to jump into the swing.

“On three.”

Anu nodded, and listened to Jonas count one, two, and then they rushed to the edge and jumped into the swing. The two swung across, Anu’s hair blowing behind her, as she yelled, “Oh my god!” When they landed, the two fell to the ground, rolling until they both slammed into an iron barred doorway.

She yelled, “Well! That was fun!”

Jonas agreed with the sarcasm in her voice. He held onto his left rib cage, feeling the ache caused by coming down so hard. The sounds coming out of his mouth were ugh and oh. Even Jonas knew that they were lucky to be in one piece.

“Yep, let’s never do that again.”

“We’re here, at least. And judging by that, I’d say something else was here not that long ago,” announced Anu, pointing at a barred door hanging open.

Jonas and Anu both got up to look at the open cell, noticing the relatively recent set of fingerprint smudges on the dirt-covered iron. Jonas took pictures of the prisoner area, amazed that anybody would have still been there a thousand or more years after it was last used. The questions flashing in his head were obvious. How was it possible that anybody survived up there for so long? And, if they were prisoners, where were the jailors?

“This is amazing. I suspect we’re the first outsiders to step foot in here, possibly ever. And yet, something might have survived here,” Jonas explained his excitement.

“Look at this place. What would have survived here?” wondered Anu.

Anu began looking around the cavern, wandering away from the cell as Jonas looked for answers. She didn’t understand his preoccupation with the cell. There was more to the story of the mysterious structure than the prisoner area. As she wandered, following the cavern, Anu stopped at an opening. She shined a light down a deep canyon in the middle of the mountain. It was thousands of years old, but what was sticking out at the edge might have been even older.

“Um, Jonas,” she mumbled, shocked by the find. “You might want to come take a look at this.”

“What is it, Anu?”

She didn’t know how to describe what was across from her. Just the other side of the canyon, at least she thought, was the find that would answer their questions. How, she didn’t know, but Anu had discovered something even more miraculous than the mountain carved temple. She’d found the origin of the beings that carved their new home so high in the mountains and so hidden from the world. Now, she and Jonas would have to figure out two more complications.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to tell the world about this,” she sighed, realizing how the powers that be would move the heavens to keep this a secret.

Anu knew that was only the first problem. The second was getting a bird’s eye view of the other side of the massive canyon. They were going to need one of the drones, but that meant they’d have to bring someone else into the loop. Anu liked their team. There wasn’t anybody she wanted to force this upon.

“Why can’t we?” asked Jonas as he finally approached.

“Who in the hell is going to believe us?” she questioned loudly, focusing the high-powered light on the other side of the canyon.

Jonas stopped. His heart pounded loudly, sounding as if it would burst through his chest. Was what he was seeing real, he wondered. How was it even possible?

“You’re more versed in geological formations. How is this even here?” he asked Anu.

Anu couldn’t think straight as she stared into the void that surrounded them. There was nothing but yards of darkness between them and the opposite side, between them and the thing she hadn’t dared to describe. She was looking around for how they got across, trying not to think about what it meant.

“It had to have happened a few hundred thousand years ago,” she said, guessing. “That’s the only possibility that makes sense.”

“And it remained hidden, throughout recorded history,” wondered Jonas.

“Everything past five to six thousand years ago is more or less theory based on archaeological and anthropological studies,” she reminded him. “Long before that, most of the world was considered a badlands area, and there were not one, but five extinction level events long before we began to record history as we lived it. So, it is possible.”

Jonas knew that Anu was right. They weren’t going to be able to share this with anyone, at least not yet. There were about to be a thousand hoops to go through before any of the applicable governments would let them continue, and then there would be the military presence. The entire area was about to be taken over by military forces. Whether it was the Chinese or the Americans, once they caught wind of this, they’d be in there to control the narrative.

No, Anu was correct. This would have to be their secret for the time being, thought Jonas. But they were going to need help to get across to the other side and collect evidence. From the ledge they were on, what they were looking at was likely going to be explained away by some politician.

“Is there anybody on the excavation team that we can trust to work with us?”

Anu knew the team better than Jonas. She’d worked with Smiley, Hack, and Sawyer before, and Lisa was great with the drones and a good researcher. She didn’t want to force this onto any of them but admitted that they were all trustworthy.

“Do you want to choose one of them?” he asked.

The thought gave her anxiety. And when the reality of what they were looking at set it, Anu knew that once one heard about what they were facing the others would want to see it for themselves. They were all adventurers, and each had a skill set that made them optimal for the mission in front of them. So, how could she choose one?

“I say we bring the four into the loop. The guides and the security team can stay oblivious to what we’re doing. But Sawyer, Hack, Smiley, and Lisa will all want to get their eyes on this. As much as I don’t want to put them in this position, those four would already be working on a plan to get themselves over there,” she explained, pointing across the canyon.

The Oceanic had gone dark, leaving Max and his team at the bottom of the ocean with Jane Doe. They were inside of a two-billion-dollar tomb if they didn’t get the power back up and running. Max designed the last level to be cut off from the rest of the station in the case of an emergency, something that assured the prisoner’s fates were sealed if the station even went under. Now, he realized the lack of a redundancy might be what costs the men on the bottom level their lives, as well as his.

He had Han secure Jane Doe in a standard holding tank so they could work on getting the internal power supply restored. Han and Jensen worked on checking the wiring while Max attempted to hot wire the turbo lift. If they could get the turbo lifts going, they’d be able to get to the surface. Otherwise, they were all in serious trouble.

Max knew the designs, and he knew the fail safes. The wiring was designed to be tamper resistant and there were redundant booby traps if anyone without authorization worked on bypassing the systems security. As he stared at the wiring harness, questioning the order he’d have to cut and cross connect to force a charge, he could almost feel the icy cold hand of his own genius coming back to haunt him. If he hadn’t insisted on building the new containment system in such a remote location maybe they’d all have a better chance of surviving.

“Tell me, boss. How many hours of air do we have down here?” Han wanted to know.

“It’s not going to come to that,” Max promised.

So much success at anything is built upon the shoulders of hope. It was something his father told him as a child. Whenever he’d got frustrated or doubted himself, his father told him to hold onto hope.

“Here goes,” he said to himself, cutting through a patch of three wires.

First, Max wired the black to the yellow from top to bottom, then yellow to black. Now he had red and green to run. If he picked the right combination, they’d have power to the lifts and to basic life support. It wouldn’t power the containment units, but they could move Jane from the lower level to one of the standard detention cells in the security office. As his hands shook, he remembered the result of getting it wrong. It would fry the circuits and they’d be stranded at the bottom of the sea in a submerged tin can.

“Well, gentlemen, it’s been an honor,” he said as he clipped the red and green sets. Picking the green at the top and the red at the bottom, Max stripped back the insulation and held his breath. As he brought them together, wrapping the braided copper sections around each other, his heart raced, and beads of sweat began to form.

He stood quietly, waiting. Han and Jensen looked from a secure room down the hall, both standing with their fingers crossed. As they all anxiously waited, Max looked up as if he were praying to the heavens. It gave his two friends reason to worry.

An excited sounding Max asked, “Do you hear that!”

Suddenly, the lights in the corridor brightened and there was a humming sound at the door to the lifts. Max breathed a sigh of relief as Han and Jensen high-fived. The security staff with them all cheered for the station boss as they realized they weren’t dead yet.

“Alright boys,” sighed Max. “That’s just one part of the problem.”

Max told them men to arm up and escort Jane to the lift. As he stood there, watching the security team each grab a weapons pack and communications units, Hanson and Jensen escorted Jane out to the corridor. They were getting off the bottom of the sea, but she seemed to be overly happy about their predicament.

“When we get up to the security station, you do everything we tell you to do or I swear, I’ll bleed you and throw you into the ocean. Do I make myself clear?”

Jane nodded as Hanson’s eyes widened. He’d never seen Max so affirmative with his intentions. He nudged Jensen, who could only tell him to relax. The Max they were seeing was the Max Jensen recalled him being in three theaters of engagement.

“Max was never a saint, and he’s trying to get us all out of here alive without whatever she is interfering. Just go with it,” he assured Han.

As they filed into the turbo lift, Max pushed Jane into the center of the men and entered last, unwilling to take his eyes off of the prisoner. He reached back and pressed the top button, causing the door to close and the lift to head toward level IV. He told the guys to keep their fingers crossed. They had no communication with level IV, or any of the other levels, and still didn’t know what was going on above them that caused the power loss.

“One problem at a time,” Jensen reminded him.

“Aye,” thought Max. “One problem at a time. “

As the lift neared the Level IV marker, the sound of water splashing off the lift got louder. They all readied themselves, and Jensen and Han bent Jane over at the waist to keep her from seeing anything as they moved from one lift to the next. As the door opened, cold sea water rushed into the open container. Jensen and Han looked at the station chief who held a finger to his mouth.

Max investigated the corridor of Level IV, seeing nearly a foot of water flooding the high-tech undersea level of the station. Level IV was in worse shape than the detention center. Max wondered to himself, what the hell happened? He was imagining the worst.

“Security, this is Shepherd, do you copy?” he radioed, attempting to contact anyone else.

As they slowly stepped out of the lift tube and into the open, a loud bang on the outer hull and the entire level shaking like there was an earthquake, startled the men and gave Max chills. Whatever that was, it wasn’t biological. Something large and heavy had struck the outer hull of the floor.

“Any ideas?”

“Something’s happened on the main level,” suggested Han. “That was on the exterior more than an interior section of the hull. And whatever it was, it was bigger than any part of Level II.”

Hanson was right. It felt like it came from the side of the floor they were on. What it was, Max didn’t know. Part of him didn’t want to. The bigger it was the more catastrophic the event happening to his station would be.

“We’ve got to get to the next lift,” suggested Han.

“Dam that nonsense!” insisted Jensen.

Max looked tensely at his old friend, wondering for a moment what the issue Jensen had with getting above sea level was. As he stared at Jensen who was having a debate with Han about them getting out of there, it struck Max that he might be thinking the same thing. He told the two of men to stop bickering.

“Are you thinking what I think you are?”

“Hell yes,” answered Jensen. “Most of my crew is on board anyway, if they haven’t broken away yet. We can get aboard my ship and rise to the surface. Plus, this little thing won’t see nearly as much of the station.”

“Lead the way!”