The sphere was brighter now, a dull dark blue at the equator but a brighter neon color at the poles where it had first started glowing. When the Oracle screamed, his voice was a hoarse cry of insanity. “The world will be rent asunder by the powers this will give me!”
Reaper was in awe, moving closer to the sphere. “Mon Dieu! This color I have never seen before.”
“Get back!” Salazar barked, lifting his weapon. “Or I’ll shoot.”
The former French Legionnaire looked at him like he was scum and took a step back into the line beside Lea and Ryan.
As the Oracle continued to chant his mantra, Absalom returned and nervously approached his leader. “The place is empty, sir.”
The Oracle snapped, “Empty?”
“No weapons anywhere to be seen,” he said. “No technology of any kind.”
“Or knowledge. The libraries are empty.”
“What? Search again!”
Hawke turned to Lea and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m looking for an egress point. Something tells me this is not going to end well, and when the shit starts flying, we’re going to need to get out of here in a hurry.”
“What about that over there?” Lea pointed to the west side of the sphere. “Looks like some sort of ledge with an archway in it.”
Hawke shook his head. “That’s no good. Look more closely and you can see it’s on the other side of a chasm, at least twenty feet wide. I can’t see the bottom but going by everything else I’ve seen around here I’m going to guess it’s a long way down.”
“No, further up there’s a rope bridge.”
He saw it now, barely visible in the darkness on the far side of the temple, toward the northern end of the vast space.
The sphere was humming now and glowing so brightly they had to look away. Somehow, the Oracle was able to stand right in front of it, his arms stretched out his sides as he repeated his mantra over and over again, the alien words tumbling out of his dry lips.
Then the sphere exploded in light, almost blinding them all. When the bright blue flash receded, they all saw the sphere was now a circular gateway filled with spinning, swirling gases and bolts of cyan electricity.
“Okay then,” Lea said. “It’s going to be one of those days.”
Hawke turned to a mesmerised Ryan. “What’s going on, mate?”
“Looks like some sort of plasma,” he said nervously. “To be honest, it’s beginning to frighten the shit out of me.”
“Moi aussi,” Reaper said.
“Over there!” Zeke yelled. “We got incoming!”
Hawke saw them next. At least a dozen men and women in white robes running through the arches at the rear of the temple.
The Oracle saw them too his face painted white with shock and terror.
“Who the hell are they?” Lexi said.
“I don’t know,” Hawke said, “but whoever they are it doesn’t look like Wolff knows either.”
“And what are those weapons?” Reaper said.
Lea took a step back. “They remind me of those weird crossbows Razak pulled out of the dirt back in the jungle.”
The white-robed figures streamed out of the archways and began firing on the Athanatoi with a vengeance.
The Oracle’s men took up positions of cover and returned fire, forcing the white robed guardians into positions of cover on a ledge running above the sphere.
“We’re out of here,” Hawke said. “Zeke, check if we can get out of here the way we came in. Take Kolya.”
“You got it, boss.”
The team watched the two new recruits as they jogged away into the gloom, not knowing if they would ever see them alive again or not.
A furious Lea turned to Hawke. “We can’t just go! We don’t know anything about this place! We have so much to discover!”
“You can’t discover anything in the grave, Lea.”
“What about my Dad?”
“We know where it is now,” Hawke said. “We can return with a bigger force.”
“But…”
“We know enough.” Ryan reached out to her. “We know there was a civilization on this world millions of years ago. We know they had different DNA and could live for thousands of years. We know this was their capital, and we know they seeded the world as we know it, using their idols to create new societies.”
In the center of the temple, the white-robed figures were gradually overcoming the Athanatoi. The fire fight intensified, but the Oracle refused to take cover. Standing tall before the sphere, he was soon strafed by bullets and bolts of blue neon from the white-robed guardians’ weapons, ripping into his upper legs and cutting him down where he stood.
His bloodcurdling screams made everyone turn and stare as he continued to crawl forward, blood pouring from the terrible wounds in his thigh. He stretched his arm desperately toward the glowing circle. “Please… show me the light!”
A thundercrack of electrical discharge and then he was wrapped in the blue plasma.
“Oh, Jesus!”
Hawke saw the Texan and Russian Athanatoi monk stagger back over from the main entrance and then a loud explosion behind them. “What is it, Zeke? Can we get out that way or not? Did I hear firearms down there?”
He stumbled over to them, a fresh bullet wound gouged into his shoulder. “We’re in deep shit, guys. That noise was the sound of around a hundred Special Ops making their way into the heart of this mountain right about now.”
Hawke darted his eyes over to the Texan. “Who?”
Zeke whipped off his battered and torn ten-gallon hat and wiped his brow. “Can’t be sure, but my best guess is US.”
“Which makes sense given Faulkner is now the President,” said Lea.
“A hundred?” Scarlet said.
Zeke nodded. He looked nervous for the first time since they’d seen him. “At least, and those boys sure are tooled up. They have enough weapons to take Moscow. M134 miniguns at fifty rounds per second, pintle-mounted machine guns, swing-arm GPMGs, you name it.”
“We can take them!” Ryan said.
“No,” Hawke said coolly. “We can’t. We’re good, but we’re not that good. We’ve been on the road for a long time. We’re exhausted and we’re injured and we’re out of ammo. There’s no way we’re beating over a hundred Special Ops guys freshly fed and looking for a fight, especially as we also have those white-robes guys to think about.”
With the Athanatoi guards heavily pinned down under incoming fire, Hawke led the ECHO team behind the support columns and around the outside of the temple to the rope bridge Lea had noticed moments earlier.
“It’s almost in sight!”
A white-robed man appeared on the other side of the chasm, a submachine gun in his hands. When he raised the weapon, Hawke screamed at the team to take cover, but before they had hit the dirt, the man in the robes was blasted off his feet by Athanatoi fire. With his white robes covered in deep red blood, he crashed down into the dirt on the far side of the chasm.
“Keep going!” Hawke yelled. “This is our only chance to escape this nightmare.”
Barely alive, the man in the white robes crawled through the dust and gravel and filth, pulling a grenade from his belt. He pulled the pin and threw it at the chasm where it detonated and blew the rope bridge into a thousand pieces before slumping down to the ground.
Lea turned to Hawke, bullets tracing over their heads. “What now?”
“Wait, I’ve got a great idea!”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Lea put her hands on her hips. “What’s this great idea, Josiah?”
“Rope!”
Hawke tore off his pack and pulled out a length of thick climbing rope. He tied one end around the remains of the previous rope bridge and then grabbing the other end he sprinted toward the chasm.
“Is he crazy?” Zeke said.