Prime (Chess Team Adventure, #0.5)

Katherine felt his hand slip away, and realized that he was as eager to plumb the tomb’s depths as she.

They moved through the maze, leaving a trail of footprints in the layer of dust on the earthen floor but otherwise disturbing nothing. The path wound around the outer edge of the enclosure, then spiraled in toward the center where they found a bier, upon which lay an ornate sarcophagus with a terra cotta effigy, presumably the occupant of the funerary container. Han played his light across the familiar looking ideograms inscribed on the sarcophagus, but shook his head signaling incomprehension. Then he turned his beam to an object that had been conspicuously placed alongside the bier.

“This doesn’t belong here.” He reached out and placed a gloved hand on it, as if to confirm its solidity.

Katherine directed her light onto it as well. It didn’t look like a Chinese artifact; the symbols on its exterior were vaguely familiar, but definitely not in the style of the ideograms on the sarcophagus. It showed considerable decay and looked like it might have been damaged prior to its placement, so a positive determination of its purpose was impossible. Like the identity of the tomb’s occupant, the object would be something for the experts to figure out, but it was a mystery that had no bearing on her own research.

She was about to turn away when her light fell on Han’s fingers. She gasped behind her mask.

A black film clung to the latex membrane of his glove. He saw it as well, and his face twisted into a perturbed frown.

It was probably nothing, just centuries old dust. Nevertheless, Katherine felt her pulse quicken. “Let’s get out of here.”

They negotiated the maze back to the entrance where the rest of the team had gathered, eagerly awaiting a report on their discoveries, but Katherine gestured for them to stay back and called for a specimen kit.

Both of Han’s gloves were now almost completely covered in the black film. Using forceps, she peeled them off his hands and dropped them into a plastic bag, only then allowing herself a small sigh of relief. Whatever the substance was, it was now safely sealed away.

“Dr. Geller!” It was Stafford. The graduate student had been recording her activity with his video camera, but now he seemed to have forgotten all about this task. He had one hand extended toward her, and she saw the same black film on his gloves. But he wasn’t showing her—he was pointing at her. “Your face.”

She reached up reflexively but caught herself before making contact. Not that it would have mattered; she knew what she would find. Damn it. This isn’t happening.

But it was. They’d been exposed to something in the tomb.

“Isolation protocols,” she said, the words barely getting past the lump in her throat. “Everyone stay back.”

There was an emergency wash station in the lab tent; all three of them would need to be disinfected, their clothes and shoes destroyed…

Suddenly, Han let out a choked gasp and collapsed to the ground.

Katherine stared in disbelief at his motionless form. Han’s cheeks bore several dark smudges and the rims of his eyelids were encrusted with the black substance, but this wasn’t the cause of his distress. The doctor’s skin was cyanotic; he was suffocating.

It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t have inhaled it, she thought. He’s still wearing his mask, for God’s sake.

His mask!

The filter cartridges on Han’s respirator were weeping beads of a fluid that looked like crude oil. The substance had clogged the filters; that was why he’d passed out.

She frantically ripped the mask away, revealing the doctor’s blue-tinged lips but also a scattering of black blemishes around his mouth and nose.

Han still wasn’t breathing.

Katherine discovered that she was also having difficulty drawing breath, and against her better judgment, she removed her own respirator. She was trying to figure out what to do next when a cry sounded from the gaggle of onlookers.

Like some biblical miracle, the crowd parted, the team members retreating in a panic from one of their own. A female archaeologist—Katherine couldn’t remember her name—was gazing in stunned disbelief at her hands, and even from a distance, Katherine could see that the woman’s fingernails had turned completely black.

Then another shriek went up, and pandemonium erupted.

My God! What have we unleashed?

Stafford abruptly fell to his knees and pitched forward, face down and unmoving, but Katherine made no effort to loosen his mask.

She felt a rattle in her lungs with her next breath, like the beginnings of a chest cold.

Whatever it is, it’s fast.

Something about that realization soothed her. Her fear receded, replaced by a calm that was clinical but at the same time, almost reverential.

She had discovered something new, something unique, and that was what she had lived for. So what if it killed her?