me.”
“It is Greek.” Alexander read the words and translated to himself: Son, this is your legacy now, and that means it’s yours to protect. If you’ve been forced here against your will, and if you have the chance, tap the pedestal twice, and then…
He lowered the paper, dropped it, then inched his fingers toward the wooden outer frame. In another second, Montross had his back to him and Alexander seized the opportunity. He pressed the pedestal once, then again, and heard a click. And then he did just what the note told him to:
He ran.
Bolted straight for the door — just as another door, a door made of vertical steel bars, came grinding out of a slot in the ceiling, crashing down.
Alexander dropped and rolled under it into the sub-basement. The grate slammed onto the concrete floor with a force that echoed in his ears like a thunderclap.
He turned, about to try to push the outer vault door shut, when he saw Montross standing there, gripping the bars like a prisoner in a cell.
“Caught you,” Alexander said triumphantly.
Montross released the bars and stepped back as the vault door drifted nearly shut. Breathing deeply, calming himself, he turned and scrutinized the room, seeing now the grate opening in the ceiling, the notches he should have noticed in his visions.
The boy continued talking through the gap in the outer door. “Guess you didn’t see that coming, did you?”
Montross stopped, lowered his head and gave the kid a stare, considering all this. Then he pointed through the crack. “There’s my sketch book. Look at the last page.” He turned back and approached the Emerald Tablet, saw it shimmering, giving off a surprising bit of heat, its strange symbols appearing not only three-dimensional, but multi-dimensional. Layers upon layers, hundreds of levels deep.
His head spun and his stomach felt tingly, a little nauseous.
“Oh crap,” he heard the boy say, the words so distant. “You did draw it-this exact scene.” Then he looked through the window, gathered his courage and yelled, “But you’re still trapped in there!”
Montross returned, pressed his face against the thick glass porthole, let his lips pull away into a smile; and before heading back for the tablet, he said, loud enough for Alexander to hear:
“Oh, I’m not trapped.”
6
The air transport left within the hour, Caleb, Phoebe and Orlando sitting in the back with fifteen empty seats, painfully aware of the loss of two of their members, including one traitor. Wiped out again, Caleb thought, holding his head as if he could still hear their screams.
“I was responsible,” he said somberly, staring out the window at the dawn rising over the vast horizon of blue ahead of them. “We need to bring them back, their bodies. Notify Ben’s family, tell them… I don’t know.”
“It’s not your fault,” Phoebe said as Orlando worked on his iPad.
“I feel as callous as Waxman,” Caleb said as he crossed his arms over his bruised ribs, “and as selfish. But we need to get back.”
“We’ve called the police; they’re on their way to our house.”
“It’s probably already too late.”
“Hopefully you were seeing the future,” offered Orlando.
Caleb shook his head. “My visions are usually firmly rooted in the past. Can we connect with the police?”
“Trying,” said Orlando, using the VOIP voice connection on the laptop. “But they keep putting me on hold.” He looked up, and his voice trembled. “I think they’ve got a problem.”
#
The first officer barely got out of the cruiser before he was shot through the heart. The round had punched through the driver’s side window as he was opening the door, and he’d only had a moment to guess where the gunshot had come from before he fell back, sliding along the car and down. His partner, instead of ducking and radioing for backup, pushed his way out the passenger side, and drew his weapon.
He turned, stood up and opened fire at the front of the house, having seen movement in that direction. His bullets strafed the door, shattered four windows and exploded an outdoor light. For a brief second he allowed himself a measure of satisfaction. That got those bastards.
But then the door kicked open and a man in a ski mask, limping on his right leg, swung an HK MP5 submachine gun in his direction and let loose a hail of metallic death.
Lydia hit the deck as soon as the first man aimed out the window. “Robert, down!” she yelled as a barrage of gunfire burst through the house. Glass shattered, wood screamed, and one of the masked guards spun around, half his face a bloody mess.
Cavalry’s here, she thought, as Robert dropped beside her. Then she saw the other guard kick open the door and return fire.
“Robert.” She shook her brother. “Come on, now’s our chance. We can turn them in, and I promise, I’ll confront Caleb, get him to release the tablet, we’ll-”
Robert turned with her touch, rolled onto his back. Mouth open, blood bubbling up from his lips. A red stain spreading on his right breast.
“No…” Lydia grabbed his tie, and not knowing what else to do, fit the edge in the bullet hole, trying to stop the blood flow. “No, no, no.”
“Cops are dead,” came the voice at the door. “But we have to move, we-”
Lydia looked up and saw the man staring at his dead partner. The MP5 wavered. And then Lydia saw the outline of the gun holstered against her brother’s side. Before she knew what she was doing, she had the gun free and was standing, pointing it at the masked man.
He looked up from his partner, saw her and raised the gun, but she shot him first-a direct hit despite the recoil that knocked her back a yard. The man went down. His legs twitched once, twice, then lay still.
And Lydia gave her brother a parting glance before breaking her paralysis and rushing for the door. She had to get to Alexander.
It had been quiet for the better part of ten minutes, with Alexander waiting at the foot of the stairs. Keeping an eye on the vault door, ready to run if Montross had some explosives or something. But what could he have? He didn’t use anything to get in, and the only thing in there is the tablet!
Alexander knew it had power, but thought it was merely something along the lines of knowledge, advanced stuff like the scrolls his mom and dad had found in the old Pharos vault. And surely it was nothing that a novice, someone who might not even know how to read that ancient language, could use to free himself.
A low mumbling sound came from behind him, on the stairs, and Alexander spun, expecting-hoping-to see his mom, or better yet, his father, triumphantly returning to save him and take care of this intruder, but instead he saw what at first he thought must be a ghost, a shimmering, flickering image of him, the man trapped in the vault. But then the vision descended the stairs, into the glimmering light. The shadows peeled from his face, the fierce eyes almost glowing, making Alexander think of a movie he once saw part of on the Sci-Fi Channel, something about giant worms and desert nomads who all had spice-enhanced bright blue eyes.
Montross pointed to him and opened his mouth in a mock laugh.
“Impossible,” Alexander whispered, and when he saw Montross reaching inside his coat pocket for a gun, he turned and raced back to the vault door, the only sanctuary. He cranked the knob, turned it and tugged back the door on its hydraulically fueled hinges. Behind him, Montross shuffled forward across the basement floor, eerily. Alexander paused for a moment, wondering why the effect seemed unreal, but then he saw that gun coming out, aiming at him, and he pushed forward through and under the bars, which were now rising. He had a glance only of the tablet, still in its resting place on the pedestal. That was enough and he ran for it.
