GRIDER

 

Tuesday January 14 - 1902 MST

One day until Turbocharger activates

 

The tunnel was exactly what you'd expect in a place like this. Hard granite bedrock carved out of the heart of the mountain and polished smooth. Then the builders etched in mind-bending hieroglyphs that danced and intermingled like demonic spaghetti. They were the kind that gave you splitting headaches if you tried to read them, so I stared down the tube-like cave instead. That was where danger would come from.

Up ahead the darkness swallowed up the thousands of lumens our lights were putting out as though they were anemic little candles. Even night vision was hopeless. All that did was amplify ambient light until it was enough for the human eye to see. But if there wasn't any ambient light then it was just about useless. I tried to push aside the thought that something unnatural was just removing the light from the air. There was enough weighing on my mind already.

The floor rumbled under our feet then. It was the third time it had happened since we hit the bottom of the pit.

"There it is again." Carlie announced needlessly.

None of us needed a reminder that we are under a mountain during an earthquake. When we finally reached the end of the tube what we found wasn't relief, but another mystery. I'd expected a vault with a pedestal at its center because that was what we had practiced in. But certain details of the Delta site were unknowns, and this was one of them. The chamber had only one way in and out and was just barely big enough for the thing at its center—a casket sized box standing upright like a dresser made entirely out of hammer beaten bronze. Like the walls, it too had those mind-breaking runes forged into its skin.

"Our prize is in there." Kuzmin announced. Then he looked over at the two Primes. "Your turn now."

I wasn't sure how they knew that only Primes could safely handle the artifact—the Keystone—or if that protective magic affected this casket. Kuzmin wasn't taking chances though and gestured at the dresser's handle with the muzzle of his AK.

The Primes looked at eachother with those expressionless masks, then the male—Hooper—relented and reached out to the door handle. His hand wasn't incinerated on the spot or taken off by a monster. It turned with an ominous thump and then the door came open.

Again the damned thing surprised me. We didn't see the twin pyramid shape of the Keystone. I was looking into a cavern that was bigger than not only the bronze casket but the chamber we were standing in. There were stalagmites growing long from thousands of years of formation and sheets of ice clinging to the walls. I could feel the chill blowing in through the opening but that could have been the instinct telling me to run far away from this cursed thing.

Jake Priestley watched with wide eyes that betrayed his disbelief. "How is that even possible?"

He was still new to all of this. Even though he'd been with us for most of a year he hadn't actually gone out on real transient recovery ops. That kind of thing went to the wayside under Basser's "leadership". In a way it created a generation of people at the CTTC that had never been exposed to the weirder side of our job. Now he was diving straight into the deep end of the insanity pool. "Don't think about it too hard. That's a good way to end up in a straight jacket inside a padded room. Just focus on your job and block out the weird stuff."

Hooper's massive shoulders and chest heaved as he took a calming breath. I couldn't see his face through the suit's blackened helmet but I knew he was working up the courage for his next step. Then like a dutiful soldier he stepped through into the cavern that shouldn't exist. It was quite a step down to the stone floor below, like the doorway was hovering in the air or something.

Carlie looked over at Jake Priestley but I couldn't tell what was on her mind through that opaque faceplate. Priestley's pleading look that said "Don't go in there" told me everything I needed to know about that. Those two had a thing between them, which normally wasn't any of my business. But Priestley seemed like an alright guy. I didn't want him getting wrapped up in the clutches of whatever might have taken hold of Carlie. It just wasn't smart getting involved with someone who was that tightly bound to transient phenomena, and the Primes were literally infused with exo-magic. After this was all said and done I'd have a chat with him about it. But for now, we had a mission to do.

Carlie took Hooper's offered hand and stepped through the doorway into the cavern that shouldn't exist. After a few seconds they were gone, reduced to a set of footsteps venturing deeper into the cavern. I suppose I could have stepped closer to get a better vantage point, but that would mean getting closer to the nightmare box. That wasn't happening.

We didn't have to wait long for their return. That was good, because we got another tremor in the meantime and I had to mentally work really hard to push the thought of being buried alive out of my conscious mind. There were wet slaps of footsteps on stone on the other side then the two of them reappeared hefting a big stone…football (for lack of a better word). Just like in our exercises the Keystone turned out to be a big granite block in the shape of two pyramids stuck together at the base. And that big stone double-pyramid landed with a thud when they hefted it through the opening.

Despite Carlie's plaintive grunting to push the heavy artifact through not a single one of the men on our side moved an inch to help. It wasn't due to a lack of chivalry, just a healthy dose of reality and a belief in the warnings saying that thing would kill any normal human that touched it. Kuzmin kicked the empty cargo crate towards them as they hoisted themselves through the opening and back into our world. He didn't want to get any closer to that alien artifact than he had to.

Both Primes were panting from the exertion of moving that heavy block of stone. It must have weighed a ton because I'd never seen anything get Hooper that winded. That guy was a beast in the gym. I'd personally seen him bench over a thousand pounds. Then when the eggheads went to test how much he could deadlift they actually ran out of weights before he hit his max. Yet another reason not to mess with the Keystone.

After they manhandled the artifact into the crate and snapped it shut Hooper closed the casket-closet's door and twisted the handle a couple times like he was expecting it to do something else than what it did. "It doesn't lock."

I blinked in surprise because I wasn't expecting him to care. "Is that a problem?"

Then Carlie said something I really didn't need to hear. "A big one. Something is coming."

Kuzmin didn't wait for further details before barking orders. In this case further details would only ease the descent into insanity. "Move-move-move. Back to ropes."

And I was never more grateful to get the hell out of some place.