Part 22
We had almost reached the end of the line when Derrick ran up to join us.
"Guys!" He gasped, panting heavily with wide eyes. "You won't believe--"
"Derrick!" Jordyn cried, interrupting him. "How was your afternoon back at the camp?"
"Boy, did you miss out on a bunch of stuff that happened to us down in those tunnels!" Kayce needled him.
Derrick wagged his head and joined us in line. "I think I might have seen something..." he began, but as he glanced over my shoulder, I could see him flinch, and he stopped talking.
I glanced back at the line behind us. Herrin wasn't there anymore, but I saw Stephanie talking to Greg as they joined the back of the line. Did he find out something concerning the cheery camp coordinator?
Dinner tonight was fried chicken and mashed potatoes and peas, with a sundae bar for dessert. I selected a breast and drizzled it liberally with the savory brown gravy. Derrick seemed more guarded than I'd seen him before as he stayed close to our group and led us toward an empty table.
Professor Silver stopped next to a table occupied by Dane and Kaity. "Hey guys," he waved to us. "Why not sit over here?"
He might not have been talking to them, but his shouting certainly seemed to disrupt a conversation underway between the mechanic and the linguist.
We ignored the professor and sat down at the table anyway. Derrick started eating for a while, at least until it didn't feel like people were watching us. Finally, he leaned in.
"Okay, so I went back to the mechanics station with Kaity because she had a motor that needed fixing, right?"
I nodded. "Yeah, it was a generator thing, wasn't it?"
I couldn't read the expression on Derrick's face as he nodded slowly. "That's what she said... but the thing she was working on had nothing to do with generator components."
Kayce wrinkled his nose. "What?"
Derrick leaned in and his voice got even lower. "What I'm saying is, whatever they're working on here, it's not just about digging for artifacts and discovering history. They've got equipment here like you wouldn't believe!"
Jordyn toyed with her fork in her mashed potatoes, doodling, I noticed, Greek letters in the foamy white surface. "It's just, like, digging equipment and seismic scanners, isn't it?"
Derrick shook his head. "More. I saw--"
"What are we talking about over here?" Professor Silver appeared, standing over us beside the cheerful Stephanie. He didn't seem aware of what we were talking about, but he pointed to us. "Are you telling Derrick about the cool inscriptions and puzzles we found? Or how about that gauntlet of death we had to travel through to get there?"
Derrick's head whipped around to face him. "Gauntlet of what now?"
"It's just some booby traps we had to walk through," Tony waved his hand. "Half of them were already sprung, and so we just had to be careful around the rubble that they left behind. I want to hear what you saw back here at camp, though, Derrick!"
Derrick hunched his shoulders. "Nothing..." he muttered. "It was nothing. I saw the back-up generators and the motorized winch and stuff, that's all."
Stephanie sidled over to him, her face full of concern. "You're looking a little nervous there, Derrick. Anything going on here in camp that you feel puts our safety in jeopardy?"
Derrick shook his head. His shaggy hair hung in his face as he mumbled, "No ma'am."
His eyes lifted and he met mine with a gaze that said there was most certainly suspicious behavior going on, but he didn't want her to know about it.
Jordyn cleared her throat. "Well," she declared loudly, "I gotta say, you really missed out when you left, Derrick. That temple zone below was so cool!"
I caught her drift, and fell into the conversation. "Yeah! There were jars of sacrifices, and this big room with a mural on the wall that showed two other gods from the Microtheon."
Derrick posture relaxed, and he picked up our enthusiasm. "Oh wow! Which gods were they?"
We blabbed back and forth about the afternoon's discoveries, trading back and forth about the booby traps, the different deities represented, and especially the wall with the strange inscription on it.
"Oh man, that sounds cool!" Derrick gushed for the benefit of the adults watching. Only those who knew how disinterested in archaeology that Derrick was detected that layer of sarcasm in his voice. "Man, now I really feel like I missed out."
"Yeah, you did!" Jordyn laughed. "All three of us worked on that inscription, since Professor Silver said we could use that for extra credit work," she jerked her thumb in the direction of our chaperone. "In the end it was Tony who figured out what the inscription says before we could even get anywhere close!"
Now it was Tony's turn to shrug. I watched his face carefully, but it didn't look like anything was glowing at the moment. Was it something to do with being surrounded by ancient things?
"I don't know why that's so impressive to you," Tony murmured. "All I did was take into account the concept of threes that we'd noticed--"
"Okay, yeah, we get it," Jordyn cut him off with a congenial laugh. "Say," she turned to Stephanie with a huge grin on her face. "I'd really like to call home and talk to my parents, and I can't get a signal on my cell phone out here. Is there any way I could use the satellite phone to make a call back to the States?"
Stephanie grinned and nodded right away. "Sure! It's not a problem at all! I'll go with you." She let Jordyn clear her things from the table. While she waited for the girl to return, Stephanie nodded to Tony. "Oh, hey--Greg was asking just before dinner if it would be all right to discuss with you possible implications of the inscription you all deciphered this afternoon. He was really impressed when he saw it!"
Tony nodded. "Fine by me," he said, clearing his plate.
Professor Silver fidgeted a little before blurting out, "I'll go with you!"
With Tony, the professor, Jordyn and Stephanie gone, that left me sitting with Kayce and Derrick at the table.
Kayce reached across and slapped his buddy in the shoulder. "Okay, spit it out, man! What did you see that's got you worked up so bad?"
Derrick stared at the two of us with serious dread. "Drones," he said. "Cameras, recording devices... Equipment for probing volcanoes and seismic drills..."
"We already knew about the seismic imagers," I pointed out.
Derrick shook his head. "But these things are not just measuring earthquakes, Pris. They're causing them."
"That's crazy!" Kayce hissed. "Why would they want to cause something so dangerous?"
Derrick snorted. "Exactly my question! Whatever their reasons, at least this tells us that this operation is much bigger than just a simple archaeological dig!"
I recalled the erratic behavior we'd witnessed down in the tunnels. "You should have seen the way Drea acted down around the buried temple site," I murmured. "There was that last hallway that hardly had anything dangerous, but she was counting her steps and freaking out at the least little stone out of place."
Derrick fidgeted with the extra napkin from the middle of the table. "Almost like she knew more than she was letting on, right?"
I nodded. "Right. I'm beginning to realize that more and more."
"Here's what I don't get," Kayce said, raising a finger. "If they have all this extra equipment that they're not telling people about, then why would Athanasios be so incensed at the prospect of moving the dig? Sounds like they'd be well prepared to dig in any kind of terrain!"
Nothing more than a ruse... The words of my mother's letter popped up again in my mind. If Athanasios was working to support the cause of the demon, his behavior toward us and toward the archaeologists of FRED did make sense, after a fashion. "Maybe," I mused slowly, "Athanasios doesn't want them digging in another spot." I looked at the guys as the idea took shape in my mind. "Maybe he's keeping them in this area because he knows it's the wrong spot for what they're looking for!"
Kayce stared at me. "You mean he fought with me in front of everyone, all the time knowing that I was right? That was all just fake?"
I just shrugged, not wanting to let on that I knew more about these people than anyone else realized. In my mind, I wondered if Zella would know if Athanasios was one of the descendants of the original Microtheon-worshipping sect, like she was. If he was one of these "faithful", then he might be trusted. If not, we'd know he was probably here in league with the demon--so why would the demon who was after the secret of Trikymios and Auraea not want FRED to find the temple and dig it up for him?
I fidgeted with a loose splinter on the edge of the wooden table. There were just too many unsettling things going on... I felt like I was drowning in questions.
"I think..." I said slowly, "I want to call home."
"Good luck with that one," said a voice behind me, and we turned to see Jordyn, Tony, and Professor Silver walking back to the table. She looked like she'd been crying.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "Did you get to talk to your parents?"
Jordyn nodded her head, her face twisting as she fought to maintain her composure. "I got through to them for a few minutes, at least. But the connection kept clicking off after a while, and right in the middle of talking about the dig, the line went dead!"
Derrick stood and eyed me sharply, as if Jordyn's problem had something to do with the things we talked about. "What do you mean, dead?" He asked. "Like someone tampered with the phone lines here?"
Jordyn shook her head. "No, Stephanie checked that. She said it was more likely that something went wrong on the other end." She shivered as a gust of wind tossed her hair to one side. "I just hope that it was nothing serious, like a dead phone battery or a short power outage."
A mischievous smile played over Derrick's face. "If it'll make you feel better, we can find a radio somewhere and I bet we can get news from back in Chicago."
Jordyn nodded wordlessly.
"As a matter of fact," Professor Silver swaggered forward under the high beams of the floodlights illuminating the camp for the night, "I've got a small portable radio right in my tent. We could use that." He put his arm protectively over Jordyn's shoulders.
We all filed as a group to the tent area, none of us really feeling the need to be overly obnoxious, with all the closed doors we saw.
Inside Professor Silver's tent, he pulled out a small green box with a speaker, antenna, and dial. He eyed Derrick skeptically. "Think you can get it to reach all the way back to the States?"
Derrick nodded. "I built one just like it in AV club. You'd be amazed at what these babies can do!"
He fiddled with the knob and the antenna, adjusting length and frequency until we heard voices in English talking. "... Great Lakes in pretty bad shape. They say the Windy City is getting EXTRA gusty, and the winds don't seem to show any sign of slacking!" the reporter was saying.
I held up my hand. "Wait, stop! That's it!"
We all held our breath and listened as the voice continued to talk. "Thanks Steve," said another voice. "For those just tuning in, that's Steve from our Weather Channel team, reporting on a series of storms centered around all five of the Great Lakes currently, whipping them up into a frenzy that is, quite frankly, only ever seen out in the middle of the ocean. Several lakeside properties across all seven states flanking the Lakes, from east Minnesota all the way to here in western New York have sustained considerable damage, from flooding to high waves, and even reports of small typhoons over Lake Huron and Lake Superior. We'll update you as the situation developsskskshshskskkshsh....." The rest of the broadcast dissolved into static.
"Typhoons?" Jordyn squealed.
"Dang..." Kayce murmured. "Storms over the Lakes isn't anything new... but all five at once? In the middle of spring? What kind of a weather pattern causes that, I wonder?"
I could feel my heart sinking down into my shoes. Not a weather pattern, I thought. Try a god and goddess of sea storms and wind. At least I knew where my parents were... but why would they be causing so much destruction? Was the demon controlling them, or something?
We all dispersed to our respective tents in uneasy silence, and as I curled up in my sleeping bag, I felt for the locket hanging around my neck.
Mom, Dad... if you can hear me... I thought desperately, pinching the pendant with my parents' symbols (theograms, I thought to myself) so hard that I probably left an indentation on my thumb and index finger. Please stop destroying things. Come back to me! I need your help!
The wind rushed around the tent, pushing against the fabric sides and whispering through the trees surrounding us. This time, instead of caressing me with comfort, it felt like the wind stayed outside my tent, pushing and shoving, trying to get in and hurt me. I huddled under the fabric and held my breath, rubbing the locket between my fingers and thinking hard about my parents.
A memory sprang to the surface of my mind.... Once, when I was ten years old, a huge storm whipped through Chicago, making even our large house creak and groan under its weight. I was terrified of the lightning and thunder, worried about things falling and breaking, shattering the window, but my dad came in and wrapped me in his arms. I remember pressing up against his body as his low, rumbling voice told me a story about two brothers, Keravnos and Astrape, who wanted to play a joke on their neighbor Pylerion... "Pylerion liked to have everything just so, but Keravnos and Astrape were noisy fellows, who loved to hide until Pylerion passed by, and they would jump out and yell 'RAHHH!' and they'd make silly faces at him. Poor Pylerion would fall flat on his butt, he was so surprised!" By the time he finished the story, I wasn't scared of the sudden noises anymore. I fell right to sleep in his arms... just as I always did...
All sound died with a rapidity that left a ringing in my ears as the memory finished. I listened as hard as I could, but I heard nothing but crickets and frogs, and the hooting of strange birds in the night. I relaxed onto my pillow as my eyes drifted shut.
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Deep underground, near the center of the island...
The central temple area had lain dormant for centuries, ever since the last true worshipper of Auraea and Trikymios had departed from the island. The mountainside rumbled, and among the gnarled roots of the trees, a short inscription in Greek flared to life on a blank surface. Hidden gears and metal implements clicked and groaned, shifting into position. Deep within their midst, out of sight from all but the most worthy to access the innermost sanctuary, the smooth surface of the rock wall congealed and formed the shape of a door in its blank surface.
All would be ready in preparation for The Heir...
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