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.Mick removes the mask, but finds his mouth too dry to spit.He wipes the tears from his red-hot face and looks up.Oh, sweet Jesus …He sits up, bedazzled, his quivering limbs no longer his to control.His eyes widen, his mind racing so fast that he cannot form a single cohesive thought.Sweat pours off his face and body from the furnacelike heat, causing pools to form in his wet suit.His heart is pounding so hard that it feels like it is weighing him down, pressing him to the scorching metal grating beneath his wet suit.I’m in hell …He has entered a mammoth, darkened, ovoid chamber, its dimensions rivaling the New Orleans Superdome if the arena were gutted.Licking the surface of the surrounding walls is an inundating layer of searing-hot, crimson red flames which rise in ripples like an inverted waterfall along the sizzling perimeter, disappearing into an oblivion of darkness above.But not darkness! Swirling hundreds of feet above his head, illuminating the very center of the gargantuan abyss is a brilliant, emerald green vortex of swirling energy—a miniature spiral galaxy rotating in a slow, omnipotent, counterclockwise sweeping motion like a cosmic ceiling fan, pulsating with power.Mick stares at the galaxy’s unearthly radiance, transfixed by its beauty, humbled by its magnificence, and absolutely terrified by its implications.He forces his eyelids to close over his burning pupils, trying desperately to clear his head.Dominique …Struggling to his feet, he reopens his eyes and takes in the rest of his ethereal surroundings.He is standing on a perch, a metallic grating supporting the hatch that had sealed the cylindrical shaft.Four feet below, filling the entire chamber like a lake in a mountainous crater, is a billowing, silvery, mercury-like liquid, its glistening, mirror surface reflecting the dancing vermilion flames.Ebony whiffs of smoke drift above the undulating sea of molten metal like steam escaping from a boiling cauldron.Mick turns to face the glowing wall of red-hot embers.Situated just below the flames is a grillelike façade that rings the entire interior of the chamber.Distortion reveals invisible gases gushing out from tiny pores along the facing like heat rising along a desert tarmac road.The intake burrow … a ventilation shaft?Mick stares at the surreal wall of flame, which neither burns nor consumes, but flows straight up the vertical enclosure like a raging river of blood.Feverish thoughts swirl through his mind.Am I dead? Maybe I died in the minisub? Maybe I’m in hell?He collapses onto his buttocks, half-sitting, half-lying along the edge of the platform, too weak and dizzy to move.He manages to spit into his face mask and reposition it, then remembers the smaller tank.Unfastening it, he sucks in several breaths of pure oxygen, managing to clear his head.That’s when he notices the tear in his wetsuit.The skin of his right knee is exposed, the wound bleeding profusely.Baffled, he touches the hot blood, scrutinizing it as if it is some kind of alien broth.His blood is bleeding blue.Where am I? What’s happening to me?As if in response, a violet surge of energy ignites like a bolt of lightning from somewhere across the lake.He leans forward, struggling to see through his mask, which has fogged again despite the fresh coating of saliva.And then another bizarre thing happens.As he removes the mask, a powerful wave of invisible energy rises like a gust of air from the surface of the lake and strikes his arm.The face mask is levitated straight into the air, where it remains hovering, three feet above his head.Mick stands.As he reaches out to retrieve it, he registers an intense field of electromagnetic energy, which resonates through his brain like a reverberating tuning fork.Disoriented, he reaches blindly for the oxygen tank as the cardinal fires dance in his blurry vision.Giving up, he falls backward against the metal and sucks in more oxygen, closing his eyes to the vertigo.Michael …Mick opens his eyes, stifling his breath.Michael …He stares out at the lake.Am I hallucinating?Come to me, my son.The oxygen mask falls from his mouth.“Who’s out there?”I’ve missed you.“Who are you? Where am I? What is this place?”We used to call Nazca our own private little purgatory, do you remember, Michael? Or has that brilliant mind of yours finally failed you after so many lonely years in the asylum?Mick feels his heart flutter.Scorching tears stream down his beet red cheeks.“Pop? Pop, is that really you? Am I dead? Pop, where are you? I can’t see you.How can you be here? Where is here?”Come to me, Michael, and I’ll show you.In a dreamlike state, he steps off the grating and drops to the lake.“Oh, shit, oh, God!”Mick looks down, his mind overwhelmed by what his senses are reporting.He is weightless, defying gravity, floating above the silvery surface on an emerald green cushion of energy that courses through every fiber of his being, intoxicating him.Exhilarating sensations rise up through his bones and exit his scalp, causing every strand of hair on his head to stand on end.Adrenaline and fear battle for control of his bladder.Feeling the air tank levitate away from his back, he hurriedly tightens the Velcro strap around his waist, then returns the regulator to his mouth.Come to me, Michael.A single step forward propels him along the energy field like an unbound Baryshnikov.Emboldened, he executes a half dozen more strides, then finds himself soaring across the lake’s mirrorlike expanse, a wingless angel guided by an invisible force.“Pop?”A little farther …“Pop, where are you?”As he approaches the far side of the chamber he sees an immense, charred-black platform looming thirty feet above the glistening surface like a barge from hell.A ripple of terror grips his soul as he realizes that he cannot stop, that his momentum through this weightless world is guiding him to the object against his will.I have you.Panicking, Mick turns to flee, only to find his legs churning in place as he is drawn upward and away from the lake’s surface.He dives onto his belly in midair, clawing helplessly at the energy field as his body is wrenched backward and onto the platform by an overpowering, icy-cold, malevolent presence.Mick lands hard on his knees, falling forward as if thrust into worship.Hyperventilating, his mind gripped in fear, he looks up to gaze upon his keeper.It is a pod, as high and wide as a locomotive, as long as a football field [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]