He lunged for the pedestal, planning to slam his palm against it, knowing that would bring the bars crashing down again, stopping Montross before he could get in.
But an instant before his hand touched the surface it was caught, grabbed by Montross himself, who had been crouching behind the pedestal all along.
What!
Alexander jerked his head around to look back at the door, where no one stood. The bars were up, the door swung open, and the chamber beyond was empty.
“How…?”
Montross smiled as he gripped Alexander’s wrists, and then casually tossed him toward the corner farthest from the door. “A little trick I knew the Emerald Tablet could teach me. Ask your dad about it, about what your grandpa had learned to do.”
“What are you talking about?”
Montross grabbed the tablet, hefted it as he lifted it off the pedestal. “Gotta run, sport. Thanks for your help, and hey, tell your dad if he makes it back-well, he’ll know where to find me.”
He took two steps, and suddenly, without the tablet’s weight on it anymore, the pedestal began to drop.
“Uh oh,” Alexander said, and Montross snapped his head around.
“Damn.”
Lydia raced through the backyard, her bare feet pounding on the cold ground, then she burst through the lighthouse cellar toward the open door and the stairs. Damn it, Caleb! Why couldn’t he have trusted her? And to present such a thing, a riddle for their son to solve? She had known about the vault door, but had never been inside because Caleb had told her it was just an old root cellar. It was the Keeper way, she thought grudgingly, but to leave her in the dark about what was really there, after all they’d been through, after what she’d proven to him?
Granted, things had never been the same after their reunion, after he’d learned she had faked her own death under the Pharos-partly to trigger Caleb’s psychic powers, which often emerged only through psychological trauma, but also because she had become pregnant and couldn’t let the impending birth of his son derail his mission. But even afterward, they had spent long months apart, raising Alexander like separated parents, and the rare times they were together, well, it was never like it had been before Alexandria.
She burst down the stairs, gun in hand, sure she would find the worst. And when she heard the tiny shrieks and felt the rumbling in the tower’s foundation, she threw herself down five stairs at a time, stumbling finally upon the chamber floor, where she saw the vault door closing on Montross and her son.
“No!”
The chamber began to rumble, dust falling from the constellation-covered ceiling. The sconces flickered. And through two side vents on the ground, a light oily substance poured into the chamber.
Cursing the continued surprises, Montross lunged for the door, knowing it would be pointless. At least the gate’s not falling. But the hydraulic door whirred and pulled shut as if some monstrous titan pushed on it from the other side. He was close enough to slide through, but hesitated, seeing the door accelerate and not wanting to be caught-and cut-in half. So he did the only thing he could think to do, the only thing that might save him.
Since he was closer to the door hinge than the aperture, he shoved the Emerald Tablet into the slot where the hinge was closing flush with the wall. The tablet’s width fit perfectly, just sliding into place as the door ground into it.
Montross let go and backed up, almost slipping on the slick floor and the flood of oil. The door was still open a crack, large enough for the boy to get through, and maybe himself if he really sucked in his stomach, but he was hoping for something else.
Alexander whistled. He was at his side now, staring. “It’s stopping the door.”
“Unbreakable,” Montross said, “whatever that substance is. I suggest we back up.”
The hydraulics ground and hissed, the door sputtered and ground against the tablet. Then the upper hinges popped and the edge tore away from the frame. Steam burst from the twisted metal, then another series of bolts gave way and the whole wall shook.
The tablet, unsecured now, fell to the floor and plopped into the rising pool of oil.
Alexander lunged for it, but Montross was quicker and scooped it up with one hand. And then, watching his step, he trudged through the now knee-high flood. Out of the vault, he dragged Alexander behind him, both slipping as they stepped over pieces of the broken door.
Then, sensing movement outside, Montross stopped short.
Lydia was there, crouching, aiming a gun at him.
But from behind him, something sizzled and cracked. The sconces broke apart, and the flames dropped like leaves into the waiting pool of flammable oil.
Lydia was about to shout for Alexander to duck so she could get a clear shot at Montross, but she saw a river of some kind of liquid pooling out from behind the shattered door, rolling all the way to her feet. She saw the tablet in Montross’s free hand, saw it shimmering hypnotically in that green-hued aura.
At last, I’ve seen it, actually seen it.
Then she smelled oil and saw flames spreading from the vault.
“Run!” she shouted as the next chamber exploded into a blinding fireball, which then burst out into the next, where Lydia stood. She had a glimpse of Montross scooping up her son and dodging to the side before the inferno roared straight into her.
She had a sudden flashback to another vault, standing before a far more ancient door ten years ago and deliberately setting off a trap that had turned the room into a storm of fire. A trap she had prepared for, a trap she had been able to avoid.
Then, she was ready.
Today, she was not.
“ Mom!” she heard, and turned toward the sound before the fiery tsunami fell upon her. She tried to cry out to him, tried to say something meaningful in that moment. What could she possibly say in her final seconds to the son who would grow up, grow into a man and live his entire life without her?
Instead, she just clasped her burning hands together, lowered her head, and met her fate.
Caleb, now it’s up to you.
Halfway across South America, cruising at top speed, Caleb woke with a scream that ripped Phoebe and Orlando from their trances. They stared at him wordlessly.
His mouth was dry as a desert, his lips cracked, splitting. “Did you see it?”
Phoebe reached for him. “No, I didn’t get a clear view. The vault room, a fire…”
“Yeah,” Orlando said, “and some crazy red-haired dude, his clothes smoking, dragging a boy up the stairs.”
“Lydia. I saw her consumed in the explosion. My trap.” Caleb held his head. “What have I done?”
Phoebe was there, holding his hands. “Don’t jump to any conclusions. Remember, this could be anything. A future glimpse, or maybe you were just seeing the past again. The Pharos trap and-”
Caleb met her gaze with pained and desperate eyes as he shook his head. “No, she’s gone. I felt her reaching out to me. Begging for me to save Alexander.”
“He’s got him,” Orlando said. “I was pretty sure about that.”
“Alive?”
“I think so. But I had the sense that he was protected somehow, and maybe holding your boy, it saved him too?”
Caleb nodded slowly, and closed his eyes.
“He’s got the tablet.”
