Killer Thrillers Box Set: 3 Techno-Thriller, Action/Adventure Science Fiction Thrillers (17 page)

His best guess was that they were spiraling downwards — every few hundred feet the curve of the passage tightened — toward some sort of exit. Eventually they reached a section of the tunnel where the wall bowed inward slightly — Karn assumed that the tunnel at that point had intersected the outer wall of the well shaft they’d seen in the Lower Room. They squeezed past the choke point before picking up their pace again.

Karn and Beka were in pretty solid shape; they each ran five to ten miles most mornings, but they couldn’t measure up to Vilocek. The man was an anomaly — a purely pristine specimen of the human form, and both men were amazed at how their boss pushed forward, even though he was clearly getting tired.
 

Corinne and professor Andrews were having a hard time. Andrews was a pitiful mess; a man who’d clearly spent most of his adult life avoiding any physical exertion. His niece was a little better off — she was much younger — and healthier. Karn didn’t miss any opportunity to steal a look at the pretty redhead, in spite of the pace Vilocek was pushing.

Corinne’s hair, pulled back in a bouncing ponytail, was a deep crimson that contradicted her light complexion. She had the body of a gymnast; broad shoulders for a woman, and the rest of her body thin and tight, curved yet not too full. Karn had more of a taste for women with a bit more meat on their bones and women who had more “experience” in their lives; but Corinne’s youthful nervousness, combined with her defiant and indignant attitude toward Vilocek and his team got Karn’s attention.

 
Maybe after their mission was completed, Karn would have a chance at the young lady. He smiled at the idea.

 
Finally, the curved passageway ended at a solid wall. Vilocek held the stone up to the wall, and another marking appeared in the center. It was the same symbol they’d found on the stone at the entrance to this tunnel. Vilocek placed his hand in front of the symbol, the bluish symbol lit up, and the block slid, grinding out of the way, leaving another hole exactly like the one they’d entered before.

Karn followed Vilocek through the hole and into the space beyond, and both men stood and stared in amazement.
 

CHAPTER 26

9:32 PM - GIZA, EGYPT

The hole was no more than 30 feet square, and seemed to have been cut from basalt, a stone not common to the area.
 

It seemed like a cave — a cave that had been formed into a perfect square. There were no lines showing the edges of individual blocks — the walls were perfectly smooth. The only breaks in the solid interior were two holes, each about four feet in diameter; the first in the ceiling and the second exactly below it in the floor,directly in the middle of the room. Vilocek peered down the hole in the floor, and seeing nothing but pitch blackness, assumed it was a continuation of the well shaft from the room above them. They had no gear for climbing, so he knew they would not be able to discover where the shaft led.
 

Beka scanned the rest of the room for clues. What he was looking for he didn’t know — they were breaking new ground and had nothing to go on.

The room was bare, completely devoid of visible markings. Vilocek took out the piece of crystal and held it down the well. Immediately, the shaft’s sides lit up with the same blue glow as the tunnel, with lines and markings dancing throughout the well’s interior. Likewise, any section of the room’s walls he held the stone in front of displayed the same symbols, arranged in different rows and columns. The strange hieroglyphics were indecipherable, but they had a certain order to them — they seemed to be thoughtfully and delicately placed. The script had the look of long, careful planning and patient implementation over a very long period of time.

Vilocek was becoming visibly agitated, his impatience with the search rapidly wearing him thin. “Look around for anything out of the ordinary — there’s
got
to be something here related to the crystal.”
 

As he spoke, he placed the crystal back in his coat pocket. Expecting the symbols on the wall to fade, he started to turn on his flashlight.
 

Instead, the rest of the room got a bit brighter, bathed in the blue light. “Everybody, turn your lights off,” he ordered. To their amazement, the visibility in the room actually improved. Whatever had activated the blue writing in the chamber had a much more lasting effect than Vilocek’s small crystal.
 

“How is this happening? Did someone touch something?” Beka asked from a corner. Heads around the room shook in denial. They gazed around the room, circling around each other, trying to make sense of the odd symbols and figures.
 

Now every section of the room was lit up. It was as if they’d stepped into a giant planetarium, and cast on every wall, floor, and ceiling were the strange blue symbols. They were getting brighter and brighter, slowly increasing in intensity until the light was not just a dim glow casting deep shadows but an all-suffusing luminescence that filled the entire room. As the light grew there was a sudden jarring noise, accompanied by a grinding and rumbling shake. As if there had been a distant earthquake, the room shook slightly but steadily. Eyes wide, they all searched for the cause of the shaking.
 

Karn was the first to spot it.
 

“Over there!” he shouted, pointing to the corner across the room. A section of wall the same size as the entrance corridor was sliding away, sinking into the wall around it. It gaped wide, looking exactly like the way they’d entered.
 

“It must be the way out!” Vilocek said. “Somehow we activated the chamber — that’s why the symbols lit up, and why this door opened.”

“I’ll bet the builders wanted to make sure they’d have another exit, in case of an emergency,” he continued. He walked toward the new opening, but stopped short of the threshold. “What — “ he blurted out to no one in particular, and at the same moment a head poked out from the opening.
 

Taking no chances, he unholstered his pistol and bent down, putting himself face-to-face with the young man who had just emerged.
 

“Ah, Mr. Reed; how good to see you again! I thought we’d lost you back in D.C., but I see now that you just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Why don’t you and your crew step out of there and give us a hand?”

CHAPTER 27

9:34 PM - GIZA, EGYPT

Bryce stepped out of the tunnel, arms up, with his gun in his right hand. He could see Cole in the opposite corner of the room, weaponless and held at gunpoint by one of Vilocek’s goons. Both Thompson brothers recognized the men with Vilocek immediately from the break-in at Whittenfield Research, and Bryce had to grab Jeff’s wrist as he stepped into the room to prevent the younger man from doing something to put them all in a more dire situation.
 

“Well, well. Seems Whittenfield wasn’t up for the trip himself — old age gets to him, I guess,” Vilocek said, snickering as the group came into the chamber.

“You know, it seems like only yesterday his father and mine would stay up late at night, discussing the possibilities of their latest research. It is a shame they could not be here today, to see the culmination of what they’d sought for so many years.”

“You’re a thief and a liar,” Bryce interjected. “You stole the crystal from Whittenfield Research to further your personal cause.”

“Ha — is
that
what he told you? James is quite the storyteller! Yes, I was given the crystal by my father, who indeed had taken it from Whittenfield Sr. But you must understand, Captain Reynolds,” he continued, “Mr. Whittenfield’s father
needed
my father — and now me — to continue his research.”

“What do you mean?” Cole asked.

“My father and the senior Whittenfield found that by combining the crystal’s components with different elements, strange effects can be achieved. We’ve been able to duplicate many of these effects in our own laboratories, and some of the results have been truly miraculous.
 

“However, they also found that the duplications they tried to make had minor flaws — none were materially ‘perfect’ in their makeup. Any experiments they produced in the lab with the
original,
unaltered crystal, were effective — however weak. But any experiments using the ‘synthetic’ crystal substances were more powerful, but the effects didn’t stay.”

Bryce pondered this for a second. “So the tests they ran with the
real
crystal weren’t strong, but they were effective — and the ones run with the
fake
material were much more powerful, but not lasting? Like after a certain amount of time, the effects wore off?”

“Yes. After 48 hours, the effects of the tests had completely disappeared. However, it was the
after-
effects that concerned our fathers: About 72 hours after the testing, the subjects seemed to enter a state of confusion — they lost their peripheral vision, experienced short-term memory deficiencies, and general degradations of their minds.

“They discovered that the tests caused symptoms similar to Alzheimer's and in rare occurrences, even mild autism. But it didn’t stop there — after a certain amount of time, sometimes months, sometimes years — all of the patients succumbed to the ailments eventually.”

“Meaning?” asked Wayne.
 

“Meaning, gentlemen, that all of the tests were a complete failure. Every one of the test subjects was deceased within five years.”

The weight of the statement hit everyone. Whatever they were all after down here — if it was even here — was dangerously powerful. In the back of Bryce’s mind, he began to hope they wouldn’t find anything here.
 

“Needless to say, the possibilities of this crystal are endless — I’m hoping we can unlock serious potential in the advancement of non-steroid human enhancements. And, of course, the associated health benefits,” Vilocek finished.
 

“But what about Whittenfield’s father? Why did he
need
your father to continue the research?” Wayne asked.
 

“Isn’t it obvious? Like I said — the test subjects injected with the crystal substances all experienced heightened senses, followed by a drastic — and fatal — crash. My father needed to find either an antidote to the crystal synthetic or the pure form of the crystal itself — in order to save the lives of the subjects involved with the study. Whittenfield’s father included.”

Bryce cocked his head slightly. “Wait — you mean — “

“Yes, Captain Reynolds. Whittenfield, Sr. was one of the first subjects who received testing with the crystal material. Like the others, he had a brief period of extremely impressive intellect, and — also like the others — he was gone within five years.

“Before he died, James Whittenfield, Sr. asked my father to continue the research they had started together — and that, Bryce, is why we are here today. I am trying to continue his research and find the answers to life’s most intriguing questions — you, on the other hand, are here to prevent us from doing that. Also, I’m guessing, you have been tasked with tracking down whatever it is we’re looking for, to reach it before we do, and bring it back to your altruistic benefactor.”

He looked down at Bryce with ever-deepening eyes. Vilocek was growing more impatient and upset by the second, and Bryce wasn’t sure if he wanted to be in his line of fire when the man’s wrath became too much to hold in. Staying calm and collected, he looked to the others in the room and then back at Vilocek. “Look, man — we’re not here to hurt anyone. We just want the same thing you want, and it seems to me that it’s not here. I don’t know where it is, just like you don’t, but if we put our heads together we can figure this out. I’m more interested in getting my men out of here alive than in meddling between you and my boss’ petty differences.”

“Well said, Captain. However, I’m failing to see how exactly you are going to be any help to me,” Vilocek responded.
 

“What if I told you I know where the crystal is?”

Bryce walked toward the center of the room, watched closely by Vilocek’s men. “I noticed that when entering this chamber from the passageway, a square stone was blocking the way. On this stone was a symbol that we
also
saw on the door that led into the passageway.” Looking to Vilocek, he saw the man nod in agreement. Over against the far wall he could see Professor Jensen Andrews perk up just a little, his interest in the conversation now heightened.

“Ours was the same — two doors, each with a symbol on the center of it. What of it?”

“Well, at first I thought it was just a simple marking — a method for letting outsiders know the way.”
 

“Like ‘entrance’ or ‘passageway’ or something,” Vilocek said.
 

“Right — except,
both
our passageways had these markings, and they
both
led here. You would think that one would be an entrance, and one would be an exit, no?”

“Go on.”

“So, it must be something more — it must be a way of pointing to the crystal’s hiding place. So in here, if we can only find the same symbol…“ Bryce’s voice trailed off as he looked down into the well shaft.