Journey Through the Mirrors (48 page)

“And why would I ever give them to you?” Logan asked. “I’d more likely burn them myself than do that.”

Simon eyed Logan, then turned a smile on Nadine and crossed his
hands behind his back. “You’ve been awfully quiet back there. Perhaps you could give some meaningful advice to Logan and his girlfriend.”

Suddenly, a gun was in Nadine’s hand and she was pressing it to the back of Valerie’s head. Nadine’s voice whispered in her ear. “I would advise Logan to tell Simon where the books are. Because he won’t be needing them much longer. . . .”

Logan tried to process what was taking place. He felt paralyzed seeing Nadine, Madu’s wife, holding a gun to Valerie’s head. He wanted to cry out at such an absolute betrayal, but his voice was stuck in his throat.

“I would put your gun down, Ms. Perrot.” Catherine was gloating. “As you can see, things are not what they seem. Please hand it over to Rashidi.” She gestured to the tall man with the dreadlocks.

Simon laughed. “I know. I couldn’t believe it myself when Catherine told me that Madu’s loving wife had sold her Madu’s plans and insights about the energy device. I was as shocked as the two of you appear to be right now.” He laughed again.

Too stunned to offer resistance, Valerie handed her weapon to Rashidi, who held his hand out. He motioned for her and Logan to sit next to Chetan. Two more armed men came through the door.

“That’s how they knew about Sumsari,” Logan said to Nadine. “You told them.”

“How could you do such a thing to Madu?” Valerie asked.

“Do you know what it’s like to spend forty years with a man who continually chases a dream and never finds it?” Nadine said, as she walked over to Simon and Catherine and stood beside them. She removed the device on her right temple, clearly a fake. The rumbling grew stronger. “It’s tiring, I can assure you. I once thought like my husband and his grandfather, Shai. I truly believed that we could make a difference in the world and that at some point, we would be blessed by the selfless work we performed. But that never happened. Our work on the original Council went unappreciated.”

“Amen,” said Simon.

“We returned to Egypt with nothing to show for our efforts,”
Nadine continued. “Madu even gave away the most valuable thing we owned: the
Chronicles
. Even then, I still believed what he said, that one day we would find the secret to unlimited energy. But after years of watching him falter and fail, I could not take it anymore. I brought investors to Madu, yet he refused each one.”

“What about Rigel and the Tripod Group?” Valerie asked.

Nadine shook her head. “The money Rigel provided to dig holes and move dirt was a pittance compared with what I received from Dario and Catherine for a copy of Madu’s plans.”

“Rigel Wright is a fool,” Simon interjected. “He is just a rich boy with a lot of toys who doesn’t know how to leverage what he has. Who cares about raising a ship from the bottom of the ocean?” He walked over to Logan and leaned down, putting his face close to Logan’s. “I’m going to ask you again, and this time, please take Ms. Shata’s advice. Where are the books, Ford?”

“Like I said,” Logan replied, “I’m never going to give them to you. You can shoot me right now. As far as you’re concerned, they might as well have fallen into the fire pit.”

Simon sighed deeply as he rose. “You are leaving me with few options.”

Rashidi pulled his PCD from his pocket. The HoloPad at the center of the room was activated, and an image of Logan’s children was displayed. They were sitting on a mattress on the floor of a room Logan did not recognize. Ms. Sally sat nearby.

“What have you done with my children?” Logan yelled. The guard standing behind him pressed his gun to the back of Logan’s head. Both of the children and Ms. Sally had small metal devices on the sides of their foreheads, similar to the one Nadine had just removed.

A man who resembled Rashidi entered the frame. “I would like to introduce you to Kashta,” Simon said. “He is Rashidi’s brother. They look alike, don’t they?”

“How did he find them?” Valerie asked Logan. “How did he know—?”

“You have Nadine to thank for that, too,” Simon interrupted. “Don’t you just love the power of money?” Nadine’s face remained expressionless. Logan watched as Kashta grabbed Jordan and brought him closer to the camera. “Has everyone been behaving?” Simon asked sarcastically.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Kashta said. “But I don’t like this one.”

“Leave my brother alone!” Jamie shouted, as Kashta gripped Jordan tighter.

“We’re OK, Dad,” Jordan said. “They want the books. Don’t give—”

Kashta abruptly swung Jordan around and tossed him onto the mattress next to Jamie. Then he pulled out his PCD and pressed a button. The device on Jordan’s temple was activated, and the boy screamed, grabbing his head. Jamie started screaming, too. Ms. Sally ran over, crying, and tried to comfort him.

“Stop it!” Logan yelled. “I’ll give you the books. Just don’t hurt my kids!”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Simon said.

Kashta released the button, and Jordan and Jamie stopped screaming. Jamie leaned over to hug her brother, and the projection abruptly ended. Simon turned and spoke softly to Catherine and Nadine so that neither Logan nor Valerie could hear.

“We’ll get them back,” Valerie whispered to Logan. “He won’t hurt the children while you still have the books.”

Just then, they heard a grunt. Logan and Valerie turned to Chetan, who motioned downward with his eyes. The necklace he was wearing was somehow floating in the air.

Logan felt the hair on his head rise.

Valerie could feel her ponytail moving.

The rumbling grew louder, and the floor began to shake. Logan glanced out the window. The sky was overcast, filling with dark gray clouds. The HoloPad was suddenly activated, and the image of two short people appeared. One was dressed in white, the other in black.

“Doctors, is everything all right?” Simon asked.

“We have implemented . . .” said the doctor in white.

“The harmonic,” said the doctor in black.

“The energy device . . .”

“Has become overloaded.”

“The island . . .”

“Is not safe.”

“Then shut the device down!” Catherine said.

“We . . .”

“Can’t.”

“The harmonic has caused . . .”

“An unstable standing wave.”

Suddenly, a lightning bolt shot by the window. A moment later another flashed by and then a third. “I don’t think this is what they expected,” Valerie whispered. “It might be our only chance.” She turned and eyed the two guards who were standing nearby with their guns drawn.

“Take these two to the transport dock!” Simon ordered Rashidi. “We will meet you there in ten minutes.”

Simon, Catherine, and Nadine left the room. Rashidi walked over to Logan and pulled him roughly to his feet. The other guards grabbed Valerie and Chetan, and the six of them walked to another door. Two more bolts of electricity flashed by the windows, the sudden light and sonic boom causing the guards to lose their balance for a second. That gave Chetan enough of an opportunity to shove his shoulder into the chest of the guard closest to him, causing him to fall backward. Valerie struck another guard in the throat; he dropped to the floor, unable to breathe, and she immediately snagged his weapon. Shots rang out, and Valerie turned and saw Chetan reel. Valerie fired a round at the guard he’d been struggling with, catching the guard in the head. Rashidi then threw Logan to the side and began firing at Valerie, who dropped to the ground and rolled to safety behind a chair. She fired two rounds, which missed. Rashidi ran to the door, which opened at his approach, an angle-vator waiting outside. Valerie took better aim and fired off three
more rounds, but it was too late; her shots struck the closing doors. After seeing Rashidi flee, the guard Valerie had struck in the throat gave up. He stood with his hands raised above his head.

Logan went over and helped Chetan up.

“Are we going after the tall guy with the dreadlocks?” Logan asked, as he walked over with a limping Chetan.

“I’d like to,” Valerie said. “He still has my gun. But we need to leave.

“What’s the fastest way out of here?” she asked Mr. Pastor, as more bolts of electricity flew by the window.

Before he could answer, a call came in on her PCD, and the image of Sylvia was projected. “What is going on out there? We’re detecting electrical readings from your location that are off the charts.”

“They managed to activate the device,” Chetan said. “And also managed to lose control of it.”

“We’re leaving now,” Valerie said.

“You can’t,” Sylvia said. “We are detecting deadly electromagnetic readings all across the globe. Each time a spike takes place on that island, spikes follow instantaneously in other places. Two massive earthquakes just struck. One northeast of Xi’an, China, and the other near East St. Louis, right here in the Federation. Reports of more are coming in.” Sylvia turned her head as Darvis entered the frame and whispered something to her. Her face grew even more concerned.

“What it is?” Valerie asked.

“People are heading to hospitals in droves,” Sylvia said.

“Complaining about headaches again?” Logan asked.

“Not just that,” Sylvia said. “People are dying from them now.”

Logan bowed his head, thinking about his children, Jamie in particular.

“You have to shut that device down right now,” Sylvia said. “You’re at ground zero.”

The HoloPad at the center of the room was activated. Logan motioned to Valerie to look at it. The image of the two doctors reappeared. “Mr. Simon,” one of them said.

“Are you there?” the other one said.

“We’ll get back to you,” Valerie said to Sylvia, shutting down her PCD. She and Logan rushed over to the projection.

“Where is . . .”

“Mr. Simon?”

“He’s abandoned you,” Valerie said. “You need to deal with us now if you want to survive.”

55

Much learning does not require much teaching.

—THE CHRONICLES OF SATRAYA

AMESBURY, U.K., 3:35 P.M. LOCAL TIME, MARCH 26, 2070

“Are you sure this is the Altar of the Bluestones?” Britney asked. “I don’t see anything blue or anything that looks like an altar.”

“I’m certain of it,” Anita said. They stood outside a chain-link fence that enclosed a ring of standing stones. “The term
bluestones
refers to the smaller dolerite rocks in the inner circle that were brought here from South Wales.”

“Wales?” Britney said. “That’s a long way to drag them.”

“Well, no one is exactly sure how the stones were transported here.”

Britney looked up at a large stone that was about five meters tall and seemed to be leaning forward. It stood a good distance away from the main circle. “Looks like they got tired and figured they’d just leave this one out here.”

Anita smiled and shook her head. “This one is called the Friar’s Heel or Sun-Stone. There’s a lot of folklore about it.”

After leaving Salisbury Cathedral, Anita and Britney had taken a taxi ten kilometers north to a field in a rural area near Amesbury. It was one
of the most famous places in the world: Stonehenge. Clouds scuttled by overhead, as a cool wind blew across the grassy plain that surrounded the circle of twenty-nine stones that had stood there for more than four thousand years. While the site remained open despite the recent earthquake nearby, there were only a few tourists there today, along with a group of about thirty people wearing white robes. Ten of them stood within the ring of stones, holding silver swords and chanting, while the others sat on the grass outside tents they had pitched.

“Who are those people in the robes? And what are they doing?” Britney asked.

“They look like New Age Druids who are carrying out a ceremony. Maybe it’s related to the spring equinox,” Anita said. While Anita and Britney could not make out what the group was chanting, the combination of the sounds and the setting conveyed an aura of mysticism.

“I wonder if there are other places like this around the world,” Britney said. “Prehistoric monuments that were built on those lines Mr. Quinn and the others were talking about.”

“The sonorous lines,” Anita said. “I suspect that most pyramids, temples, and ancient structures were constructed on those energy lines.”

“It’s amazing that people way back then knew about all this stuff that somehow we have forgotten.”

Anita glanced at her friend with a raised eyebrow.

“What?” Britney said.

“Three days ago, you were telling me all of this stuff was hocuspocus.”

“That was before Mr. Quinn started to explain things. So what do we do now?”

Before Anita could say anything, the ground began to shake, and an arc of blue light passed between two of the stones in the circle. The white-robed people standing inside the stone circle cried out joyfully, as if their chants and prayers were being answered. Other members of the group who were sitting by tents or walking in the fields ran over to join them.

“What was that?” Britney asked, concerned. She turned and looked at Anita, whose eyes were closed and hands were pressed against the sides of her head. “Are you all right?”

“It’s happening again,” Anita said. “My head is starting to hurt.”

Three more electrical arcs rent the sky above Stonehenge. Four more followed. One of the arcs hit a couple of the Druids within the ring of stones, catapulting their bodies into the open field. Anita opened her eyes in time to see the charred bodies crashing to the ground. Other Druids rushed over to stamp out the flames running up the stricken people’s robes, while others screamed and ran away. The electrical discharges intensified and now reached all the way to the parking lot, where vehicles were toppled by their intensity.

Anita looked on in horror. “They’re being electrocuted! They’re burning up, just like in my vision!” She put her hand into her blue book bag and pulled out Sumsari’s resonator and tuning fork. “I have to do something!”

“Do what?” Britney asked in panic. “You can’t go in there! Remember how dangerous Mr. Quinn said it was to try to stop these forces?”