Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

Pulling himself up into the tunnel was like sticking his head in a furnace, only in this case, the fire was inside him. He gritted his teeth against the pain and forced himself to move forward.

His brief respite from the darkness ended when he started down the passage, but there was a faint glow ahead, and he fought through the blossoming agony toward the beacon.

It was a computer—Sasha’s laptop. He saw that much from a distance, but it was only when he got closer that he saw Parker’s body crumpled in front of it.

There’s a ring of stones, Parker had said. I think that’s the marker. I’m going to try to put it there.

Further down the tunnel, King saw another body—Sasha’s—lying prone in front of the stone circle. It was tantalizingly close; Parker had fallen just a few steps from the Prime.

If this thing kills me before I can get clear, someone else is going to have to finish it. Do you understand?

He understood.

King reached for the computer, but even as his fingers closed on the hard plastic, his legs simply gave out.

No, damn it!

He planted his elbows on the hard stone and pulled himself forward, one ahead of the other, over and over again, until he reached Sasha’s lifeless form. The stone circle was just beyond her, but he could go no further.

With what he thought was surely the last of his strength, he flung the laptop toward the stone ring that marked the location of the Prime, and then collapsed in pain. His body curled up, feeling ready to implode, but then, as though he was suddenly touched by the divine, his pain faded. Still wary, he sat up.

The cave was silent.

His body felt untouched by the destructive force that took Sasha’s and Parker’s lives.

The world—he noted with a hint of surprise—had not come to an end.





EPILOGUE: LIMBO



Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina



“So what do you think is going to happen?”

It wasn’t the first time Rook had asked the question, but as before, the only answer he got was silence.

The truth of it was, King had no idea what was going to happen.

There had been a few moments, as he lay unmoving on the floor of the Prime cavern, where he felt something approaching satisfaction. But then, like the painful sting that accompanied the return of sensation to his nerves, the bitter reality of the situation hit home.

Parker was dead. That by itself was almost more than he could bear, but the way it had happened…

He thrust the thought from his mind. Yes, his friend had died. Parker had made a rash decision to help Sasha and it had cost him his life, and therein lay the problem.

King couldn’t tell the truth, and not just because of how crazy it sounded; he was much more worried about the possibility that someone would actually believe him.

He had dragged Parker’s body into the stone circle that marked the location of the Prime, laid him next to Sasha, and then ignited an incendiary grenade to erase all evidence that either of them had ever existed. He’d fed Sasha’s computer and al-Tusi’s treatise to the flames as well; maybe someday, someone would figure out how to read the Voynich manuscript and would discover the Prime and what it signified, but with a little luck, that day wouldn’t come until the world was a much better place.

The official story would be the same one he had told the rest of the team: Sasha had been spooked by Rainer’s arrival and fled into the cave. Parker had followed and both of them had fallen into a crevasse and died. King had used Sasha to bait the trap, and even though they had succeeded in running down Rainer and the other rogue operators, a CIA contractor and a Delta shooter had paid for the victory with their blood.

King knew that the others had questions about what had happened in the cave; he could see it in their eyes, but none of them had pressed him for details. He was grateful for that. He alone would take responsibility for what had happened, and if it meant the end of his career—or even criminal prosecution—then he alone would bear the burden.

No one could ever know how the world had almost ended.

The team had escaped Chauvet Cave to the eerie melody of sirens bouncing between the limestone cliffs of the Ardèche River valley. Chess Team was long gone by the time the gendarmes arrived. Less than an hour later, they were back aboard Senior Citizen and on their way back home.

Almost home, he amended.

As soon as Senior Citizen arrived at ‘The Pope,’ the team was moved to Decon, an isolated quarantine area where teams were debriefed after returning from particularly sensitive missions. Decon—short for ‘decontamination’—was a place for operators to ‘come down’ from the adrenaline high of combat before going home to their families. It was also the last chance for the teams to get their stories straight before making an official report.