The Milestone Protocol, Ernest Dempsey [100 best novels of all time txt] 📗

hand around the room. “This place is safe from whatever power that thing will generate, though based on our calculations it is going to send a beam up through that shaft. There should be minimal if any radiation.”

“Radiation?”

Magnus turned to Kevin after staring at the pyramid for a few breaths. “Yes. But not to worry. As I said, we will be safe here. According to the texts we discovered, the beam is quite focused. It will fire into the shaft and, when it reaches the top, will be dispersed by a similar orb fixed to an antenna at the top of the mountain.”

“You’re going to kill billions of people with radiation?” Kevin realized he sounded disappointed and tried to correct himself. “I mean, how does it work? What’s that thing on the top of the pyramid? And you said there’s another orb?”

“The Scepter of Thoth,” Magnus said. “Come with me. I’ll show you.”

Magnus motioned to his guest, and the two walked through the room behind the front row of workers diligently monitoring energy levels on various screens and gauges.

They entered a white hall with a black floor and continued until they arrived at an ordinary steel elevator door.

Magnus pressed the button and waited. “The scepter is something we learned about long ago, mostly from hieroglyphs we discovered that feature the deity. He is often depicted holding an abacus.”

The elevator door opened, and the two men stepped inside. Magnus pressed the button on the bottom of three, and the doors closed once more.

“Then there are other pictures of him holding other objects. Sometimes barley grain, sometimes palm branches, and very often, a piece of papyrus with a stylus.”

“Because that was one of the powers he ruled over,” Kevin added.

“Yes, of Thoth’s many jobs or titles, the god of writing was one of them. But when we discovered the images of him holding the scepter, it made me wonder. As the leader of the Fellowship, it was my duty to investigate, to better understand what this thing was that our patron deity clutched in his fingers.”

The elevator slowed to a stop, and the door opened again. The two stepped out into a corridor that forked in three directions. Magnus walked straight ahead and stopped at the first door on his right. He pulled the ID card from around his neck and swiped it on the access panel next to the doorframe, then waited for the door to open.

In seconds, the lock clicked, and a robotic woman’s voice said, “Welcome, Dr. Sorenson.”

Magnus stepped through the opening and waited on the inside for Kevin to join him.

Kevin’s eyes widened at the marvels spread out before him. The room was one hundred feet long and nearly as wide. Steel tables were arranged in neat rows with white sheets covering most of them. Glass cases covered many of the tables that housed artifacts unlike anything Kevin had ever seen before.

Gold vases encrusted with diamonds were the first thing that caught his attention. Then he broke free of the spell and panned the rest of the room as he unconsciously meandered through the rows, inspecting clay tablets with Sanskrit engraved onto them in complete, unbroken lines. Ancient scrolls occupied some of the encased spots, these written in the earliest forms of Egyptian, but with other characters included that Kevin could not decipher.

Other tables contained weapons: curved blades, arrows and bows, long spears, and shields. “Are those made from steel?” Kevin asked, pointing at the weapons.

“Yes,” Magnus said. “Those are made from steel. Not just any steel, though. That steel is twice as hard as any we can produce in steel mills around the world. And it predates modern steel by about ten to eleven thousand years.”

“The thirteenth century,” Kevin said absently. His eyes wandered, as if on their own accord, to huge images that covered the walls. They were printouts, replicas of various scenes from Egyptian accounts of history via hieroglyphs. Thoth featured heavily in most of the images and, as Magnus had described, was holding one of the three items the Swede mentioned.

“I’ve seen some of these,” Kevin whispered. “Some not.”

“You wouldn’t be alone in that. Most of what’s on the wall was taken from known sites, places that were excavated long ago or by prominent archaeologists. That one,” Magnus pointed at a huge square section in the center of the front wall, “has never been seen by anyone outside of the Fellowship.”

“An original,” Kevin breathed. “Where is it?”

Magnus grinned with pride. “Let me show you.”

Kevin lingered in the first row for a long couple of seconds while Magnus strode to the door and pushed it open. The Swede chortled. “The treasures and questions this room offers can wait, Dr. Clark. We have a date with destiny, and a new world to create.”

“Yes, of course.”

Kevin dragged himself away from the treasures splayed out before him and walked out the door.

Magnus turned back down the corridor and turned right, heading away from the elevator. They passed several gray doors in the sterile hallway. It reminded Kevin of images and movies he’d seen featuring psychiatric asylums. Plain white walls and floors were used to prevent additional psychological issues from arising, and the gray doors were least stimulating of all.

Straight ahead, the last gray door stood at the end of the corridor. Beyond it, bright lights shone through the window in its center.

Magnus swiped his ID card at the panel again and then pulled open the door. He stood at the threshold for a second and looked hard into Kevin’s eyes. “What you are about to see is going to be…difficult to believe.”

“I’ve been to the pyramids, Dr. Sorenson. I’ll be okay.”

“No,” Magnus corrected, his voice abruptly dark and foreboding. “You haven’t been to a pyramid like this. I would imagine for the uninitiated, it would be jarring.”

Kevin stared back into the man’s cold blue eyes, then nodded. “Okay. Thanks for the warning.”

And like that, the moment was gone. Magnus nodded once and walked through the doorway and into