The Smithsonian Objective Read online

  Gunshots roared behind her. A cry of pain echoed from the passageway. She dropped low and hugged the side wall as she shone her light back and saw Xavier leaning out. He aimed and fired again.

  Then a voice called out: "Whoever you are, we only want the girl. Send her out and we'll let you walk."

  "Fat chance!" Xavier yelled back.

  Diana whispered to him. "I don't see an alternative. They've got us pinned."

  He just smiled, then kicked his backpack over to her. "Look at my sketchbook. At the open page." She heard some muffled voices, and then the echoing voice:

  "Have it your way. Our orders are that you don't leave here alive."

  Diana found the sketchbook. Spirals on the top held together about a hundred sheets of thick drawing paper. But the one that it was open to was near the end – and it showed what looked like a collapsed cave tunnel, with a man and a woman standing calmly in a room behind the crumbled section.

  She looked up sharply – just as a loud explosion rocked the tunnel. The chamber groaned and rocks fell from the ceiling, but then Xavier was there, his body on top of hers. The rain of dust and pebbles stopped, and he slowly eased off her, brushing back her hair.

  "Okay?"

  She nodded, then aimed the flashlight down the passageway – where the light stopped about halfway, at a mass of rubble. She could only guess at its thickness, but imagined they wouldn't be digging themselves out.

  The horror of her predicament should have been crushing her, but then she realized why she was so calm. She held up the sketchpad. "You… saw this. That we'd be trapped, and yet you still brought me here."

  He brushed himself off. Standing there in a beam of dust-filled light against a golden backdrop, he looked strangely god-like.

  "Then…" she continued, "you're either suicidal, or…"

  "Or," he said with a smirk, "I know another way out."

  She heard him moving about in the chamber, making his way to the sarcophagus. "It's going to be a little tight, a nearly vertical ascent, but I left ropes, and…"

  But she was still looking at the sketchpad, feeling an irresistible pull to know more about this man. To see into his thoughts, into his dreams. She gave in to her curiosity. And turned the page.

  Her breath fled her lungs in rush. She was barely aware that he was talking, speaking about the age of these artifacts, how he had taken pictures down here and translated the hieroglyphics. She stared, letting the light in her trembling hand illuminate every finely-drawn line, every shaded limb, every single detail.

  And then she realized he had stopped talking. He was right behind her.

  "You weren't supposed to see that."

  She swallowed hard, still staring at the incredible scene. The audacity, the sheer… "What is this? The future, or just your twisted imagination?"

  "You weren't supposed to see that," Xavier repeated, his voice hollow as he contemplated the picture of the two of them, in this chamber. Their wet bodies pressed tight, facing each other, her arms wrapped around his muscular back, their lips locked in a fierce kiss...

  "But I did," she said. "And I want an answer. Is this the future? Or has everything up to now been some kind of crazy, psychotic game?"

  He took the pad from her, dropped it and let his hand linger just inches from her face, a delayed caress. "The future isn't set. I've managed to change my visions before. So, no – this isn't necessarily what's going to happen. You can change it. It's… your choice."

  She shook her head in dismay, but couldn't pull her gaze from his. Still picturing that sketch, her breath quickened as she sought any way out of this, out of fate. She thought about the past decade, a whirlwind of work, advancing herself at the expense of every relationship. Her father being the first casualty, but leaving no room for anyone else to step in and share her world.

  Dizzy, she tried to distract herself from the moment. "What… were you saying before? The translation of the hieroglyphics…?"

  "You won't believe me," he said. "But when you get back to the Smithsonian-"

  "I've been fired. They won't let me back in."

  "They will," he said, "because you'll be bringing evidence back. Demanding to speak to your boss and the trustees. You'll be reinstated, but it still won't be easy. Not until you get access to the sublevels and the restricted archives where they've hidden the rest of what they've found here."

  "The rest…"

  "It's old, Diana. So very old. Everything down here… the chasm we passed… that's where they came from."

  "They?"

  "Originally. The Hopi have a legend, too. You know it – how the First People emerged from a great hole in the ground-"

  Diana shivered. "The Grand Canyon..."

  Xavier nodded, licking his dry lips. "The truth, Diana, the big truth that they won't ever let out, the truth that would shatter every notion of our origin and evolution… Is that we didn't come out of Africa. We didn't even start in Asia or anywhere in the Old World and then migrate west. No…"

  "We came from… here?" She whispered it, barely believing it herself, not knowing what to believe anymore. Nothing mattered. Everything she had held sacred had just been incinerated in the course of an hour.

  She leaned in and felt her arms encircling Xavier's neck. Felt her breath leave in a rush, mixing with his, as his lips parted and he bent down to meet her kiss. And then all her doubts and confusion were drowned in the bliss of passionate oblivion.

  Washington, D.C.

  The Smithsonian Institute

  September 13, 7:30 PM

  Xavier had flown her back on his private plane to avoid any lingering security that might be on the lookout for her. Then once in D.C., he had sent her on in a cab while he left on other errands, saying he would see her again later that night.

  Amazingly, perhaps because Simcoe felt there was no rush, her credentials still worked at the Smithsonian's main entrance. The guard let her pass without a second look. She took the elevator and marched straight into Darien Simcoe's office. She knew he worked late most days, and sure enough, found him at his desk.

  Except…

  He was sitting in his chair, and at first it seemed he was asleep, mouth open. But then she noticed the spray of blood on the wall of diplomas behind him. On his lap: a gun, still warm, gripped loosely in his lifeless hand.

  She stood there a long time before finding the courage to move to his desk to see what was lying there, inside an open manila file marked CONFIDENTIAL.

  It was a catalog. A listing of the contents of Archives – Sublevel 5, K-L.

  About the middle of the first page, her vision snagged on it: Kincaid's Cave. Locker 23-893. Combination 343212.

  Gooseflesh ran down the back of her neck. Did Simcoe have a change of heart? Maybe he saw her on the entrance video feed, coming in brazenly with a leather satchel full of… something, and decided to end it for himself before she could expose him.

  But… something didn't feel right.

  She shook it off. She had an opportunity here. Xavier had been clear – what they took from the cave was nothing definitive. Easily dismissive as a forgery. The only real evidence was locked away in the Smithsonian's secret archives.

  She made her choice.

  Sublevel 5

  At times during the descent, she was sure she was being followed. Shadows on the stairwell above her, darting out of sight when she looked back. But curiosity won out over caution. She made it to the sealed door on Sublevel 5, tried her handprint on the scanner and for some reason she wasn't surprised that it worked. She opened the door.

  As she stepped inside, motion-sensing halogen bulbs illuminated an enormous warehouse floor with shelves twenty feet high, their contents locked away in boxes behind metal bars.

  Drifting through the aisles as if in a dream; she eventually found herself before locker 23-893. It was the fourth shelf up, about at the level of her head. The
compartment had a digital screen and a number pad.

  At a scuffling sound behind her; she turned, holding her breath, but saw nothing.

  Calming her nerves, she turned back and typed in the combination. The grate popped out, then the locker slid down.

  She was about to open it and reach inside when she heard it again: a grating metallic sound from the next aisle. She dropped low and slid along the shelving for several steps before skidding to a halt.

  There was a face staring at her through the bars.

  Blue eyes. Red hair.

  Xavier grinned as he bent to an empty shelf where they could see each other clearly. "Did you find it?"

  Diana was too stunned to answer. A hundred connections slid into place all at once. Then she said it: "You… you killed Simcoe."

  His grin never wavered.

  Fighting off a fresh wave of nausea, she continued. "You left the catalog for me to find, after what? Forcing him to show it to you and then extending my clearance to the sublevels?"

  Xavier shrugged, but still said nothing.

  She knelt on the floor now, her mind spinning with everything that had happened since he dropped to her rescue, and now she fought the crushing realization that he had been four moves ahead of her the whole time. "Why?"

  He raised his right hand. In it rested something a little smaller than a bowling ball. It was silver-plated, covered with crisscrossing lines etched with strange runes. Just looking at it made her head swim. "This, he whispered. "The contents of locker 21-432."

  "What is it?"

  "Something I need," he responded cryptically. "Something more important than you can ever guess. It was relegated here, suppressed without further study, simply because of where it was found."

  "Where?"

  "On a Wyoming cattle ranch in 1923; discovered under thirty feet of topsoil and inside the ribcage of a fossilized Triceratops. The implication of course being that whatever advanced civilization made this thing – it coexisted with the dinosaurs. Over seventy million years ago…"

  Diana said nothing for a moment, refusing to even acknowledge the impact of what he had just said. Finally she said, "So you used me. Because… because… you saw it here and needed my access?"

  He nodded. "See, you're getting this now. Yes, I saw this sphere. Dreamed of it many, many times. Knew I was meant to find it, and I knew I could get you to help me."

  "The Kincaid article. The Grand Canyon. My father…" She slumped to the floor. "Everything…"

  Xavier's hand appeared above her, his arm extending through a gap in the shelf. At first she thought he was trying to grab her hair or pull her up. A part of her wanted him to. Needed him to. Despite everything.

  But then his hand opened.

  And a single folded sheet of paper descended toward herand settled on the floor by her face.

  "Look at that," he said in almost a whisper. "when you're settled down. When the turmoil and thrill of what's to come gives you a moment's breath. And when that day arrives, make your choice. You can change the future, or embrace it. Either way, I'll be waiting."

  As his footsteps echoed down the lonely corridor, past the suppressed relics of a forbidden age, she somehow found the energy to touch the page and hold it up. In a sketch just as beautiful in its contours of light and shade, he had drawn a vision of the two of them together. Holding hands, facing a sun rising over a desert-like mountain scene.

  A vision that despite the excitement of everything she'd discovered, and the fear of what was to come, still brought tears to her eyes and a smile on her face.

  Thank you for reading books on Archive.BookFrom.Net
Share this book with friends