Chapter 8
The World’s Biggest Secret
Paralyzed with fear, the Resnick siblings couldn’t have moved if they wanted to.
“Dan! What are you doing?” barked the man on their left to the man who had threatened them. “They’re only kids. You’re going to scare them to death.”
He turned toward the petrified kids. His features softened and he lowered his gun. “Ah . . . sorry,” he offered. “My name is Carl. My partner Dan here got a little carried away.” Like his partner, he was tall, trim and carried himself with confidence and athletic ease. Without question both of these men had been elite members of the military at one time. “You surprised the living daylights out of us just now and I guess our training took over,” finished Carl apologetically.
Ryan’s temporarily frozen heart started beating again. “That’s okay,” he whispered hoarsely, barely finding his voice. “You surprised us, too.” He paused. “Anyway, we, um . . . we were just leaving, so we’ll, um . . . we’ll just be on our way.”
Carl smiled and shook his head. “Good try,” he said, walking over to his partner and standing beside him. “I think you know you’re going to have to come with us. You have a lot of explaining to do. It should have been impossible for you to get down here,” he said in disbelief. “And you’re in some world-class trouble.” He gently pushed his partner’s arm down so his gun was no longer pointing at them. “But I can assure you that no one is going to shoot you.”
“Let’s go,” ordered Dan gruffly, leading them away from the rectangle the laser beam perimeter had created—now clearly a doorway of some kind. Their eyes still told them that the shimmering, multicolored doorway formed a solid barrier. But it wasn’t solid at all. The men had come from the other side—and had walked through completely unharmed. And without question, on the other side of this doorway was the secret they had come to learn.
Regan refused to let this chance slip away. Carl had said he wouldn’t shoot them. They were already in huge trouble. What did they have to lose? “H . . . h . . . hold on a second,” she croaked. “I don’t feel so hot.” She put one hand to her head and one to her stomach, wincing in pain. She bent at the waist, holding her hips. “That elevator ride and those . . . swirling colors . . . making me . . . dizzy . . . and queasy . . . and—”
She stumbled two or three steps forward, toward the doorway, and fell to her knees. She put her head in her hands and made a series of loud, heaving, throaty sounds as if everything she had ever eaten in her entire life was now erupting from her mouth like lava from a volcano. Her retching sounds echoed throughout the cavern.
Ryan ran forward and stooped down beside her. “Regan, are you okay?” he asked worriedly. She caught his eye and gave him a quick wink. She then shifted her eyes suggestively toward the doorway before quickly returning them to her brother.
Ryan caught her meaning instantly. She was good, he thought in admiration. Very good. He nodded ever so slightly to let her know he understood and was in. He was game if she was.
Ryan glanced up at the guards as his sister continued her performance. The two men had backed up a few steps and had turned away, looking somewhat ill themselves as they listened in disgust to what they thought was Regan heaving her guts out onto the floor.
“Now!” shouted Regan as she sprang up and dived through the multicolored doorway with Ryan close behind, taking the guards completely by surprise. As they hit the doorway they felt an electric tingle—the same pins-and-needles sensation as if their foot or arm had fallen asleep, except that they felt it everywhere—for just an instant. And then they were through.
They were through! They had actually made it! Their mouths fell open in shock. They were outside! Outside?
Impossible. They were still thousands of feet underground.
But underground or not, the place they were in stretched on as far as they could see in every direction, including straight up.
But they weren’t really outside either. There was no sky. Just open space stretching as far up as the eye could see. No sun. No blue. No clouds of any kind.
It was as if they were in a well-lighted building so vast that they couldn’t see any of the walls or ceiling. But how could any light source other than the sun illuminate such a huge space? And the light wasn’t coming from any one place. It was everywhere.
The air was fresh and clean, like outside country air would be, not damp and chilly like the air in the cavern had been.
The landscape was dotted with exotic buildings of every kind and flowers and vegetation unlike anything they had ever seen before. To their left was a structure that was the size of a house but perfectly spherical, with a mirrored surface that reflected its surroundings in dazzling brilliance. Just beside this globe was a transparent building that seemed to be suspended in midair. Another building was morphing from one fantastic geometric shape to another continuously before their eyes.
They were so spellbound by the sight of this astonishing place that they completely forgot the trouble they were in. Regan was rudely brought back to reality by a firm grip on her arm. “Feeling better now!” snapped Dan angrily.
Regan gulped. “Much better, thanks,” she croaked. “What is this place?” asked Ryan in wonder.
Carl sighed. “You are standing in a city built by an alien race using technology thousands of years more advanced than ours. A city that also happens to be the biggest secret on Earth. And now you kids know about it!”
Regan swallowed hard. “So what does that mean exactly?” she asked timidly.
“It means,” said Carl angrily, “that you kids are in trouble. Big, big trouble.”