Chapter 18: "Run!"

"It's a way in!" Nikko pointed out, arms waving wildly in the direction of the small wooden door. "It's what we've been looking for!"

"And we will investigate it tomorrow," his father sighed. "It's not going anywhere. Plus, we don't know what we'll find when we get in there, or how long it will take to explore it. It might take five minutes, it might take us all day, and I for one would rather face the latter with a good night's sleep and a decent breakfast inside me!"

Juliet couldn't help but agree with the professor, but no matter how much she tried, sleep just would not come. Over and over, her mind replayed conversations. Conversations with Tony, conversations with Cal, conversations with Nikko about Tony and Cal, and most of all, conversations that mentioned in any way the parchment scroll they had discovered in Syria. It seemed that she was only just beginning to doze when the soft light of dawn seeped round through the shutters and round the curtains, bringing the light, airy sound of birdsong as the dawn chorus began.

It was after eight when Maggie shook Juliet awake. She was fully dressed and looking down at her roommate with an odd expression. In the fog of fatigue, Juliet found she couldn't tell if the look on Maggie's face conveyed pity or concern.

"I'm up, I'm awake," Juliet assured her colleague, feeling neither.

"When you didn't wake up while I was getting ready, I figured you could do with the lie in," explained Maggie, conveying a cup of coffee from the bedside table to Juliet's hand. "However, when Nikko made it down to breakfast before you, I told Solomon I'd see if everything was alright. Figured you might need an extra nudge though."

"Thank you," sighed Juliet, sitting up and sipping the coffee. "Is everyone waiting?"

"Are you kidding me?" Maggie laughed. "Nikko was only just sitting down when I left and we all know how much that boy can eat!"

"Especially when it's already paid for!" Juliet agreed with a smile. "And especially when it's a buffet!"

"What about you? Feel like eating? I could go bring something up."

Juliet shook her head. "Just tell the Professor I'll be down in ten, fifteen minutes, please. Twenty tops."

"I believe I can do that," nodded Maggie, still watching Juliet with that odd, undefinable expression. "And don't worry: he's in no rush. Take your time."

As Maggie turned to go, a thought crossed Juliet's mind. "Maggie," she called, waiting for the older woman to stop and turn back before continuing. "Did you tell him? Professor Zond, I mean. About Tony?"

"No," replied Maggie, shaking her head. "Do you want me to?"

"No," Juliet answered, copying Maggie's gesture. "At least, not yet. Not until…"

"Until you're sure?" Maggie offered. "Might be too late by then."

"Not until I've had a chance to talk to him. I need to call him. Today. I can call him before we leave…"

Maggie cut her off with a raised hand. "Time difference! Unless your boy's an extremely early riser, you might want to leave it until a little later in the day. Say five hours or so!"

Juliet's shoulders slumped. "You're right," she sighed, the hands cradling the now empty coffee cup dropping to her lap. "I'll call him when we get back."

"Have you thought about what you're going to say?" Maggie enquired, folding her arms and watching the young doctor patiently.

"Only all night," quipped Juliet with a shrug.

Maggie paused for a moment, waiting to see if Juliet was going to expand on that answer. When it soon became obvious that she wasn't, Maggie nodded and turned to the door. "I'll tell Solomon you're on your way."

"Thank you, Maggie!" Juliet called after her. As the door swung closed she spotted a hand raised in silent acknowledgement.

Twenty five minutes later, Juliet found her way into the dining room. It was empty but for one person. The sudden cessation of her footsteps made him look up. Calvin met her gaze across the not so crowded room. As Juliet approached his table he rose to leave.

"Don't go," she murmured. "Please. I need to talk to someone. I need to talk to you."

Cal picked up his empty mug. "Coffee? I could do with a refill. You get your food, I'll get the drinks?"

XXXX

Tunnels. Why was it always tunnels?

Nikko squeezed himself through the child sized doorway, the camera on his safety helmet, which of course his Dad had packed, held safely out of the way of walls and ceiling. He could crawl on hands and knees well enough, if he kept his head down, but right now he'd rather see where he was going. He brushed more cobwebs out of his face.

"Remind me why I had to go first?" Nikko called through the coms.

"You're the smallest, bar Juliet, you're the one who found it," replied his father, verbally ticking off points on a list. "Oh yeah, and you offered."

"Any offer made before caffeine is inadmissible!" Nikko called back.

"Tough!" Solomon responded, the grin absolutely obvious in his voice.

"Ugh! You'll be pleased to hear it opens out a bit after a few metres," reported Nikko.

"You don't sound very pleased," replied Vincent.

"The spiders seem to have taken it as a challenge," groaned the team's youngest member, swiping away even more cobwebs.

One by one, the team made their way into the tunnel. The only person left behind was Maggie, tracking each of them on her laptop and watching the live camera feeds from each helmet. Four out of five showed highly unflattering views of the person in front. Gradually, the tunnel grew, first to just about a metre high, then to two metres. Cobwebs still festooned the funnel of darkness stretching out before Nikko. they reflected the light from the flashlight on his helmet as if they were made from spun silver and moon dust.

"Ugh! It's like Shelob's lair in here!" Nikko complained, loudly.

"Film version or book version?" Vincent asked from right behind him.

The young man jumped, then flapped his hands madly in front of his face. "Dude!" Nikko yelled, spitting cobwebs. "Don't do that!"

If Vincent laughed, it was swallowed up by the web-laden walls. In the relative comfort of the minivan, Maggie smiled. Almost instantaneously, the smile dropped from her face and she zoomed in on Nikko's camera feed.

"Nikko, freeze," Maggie ordered, watching the image still as her order was obeyed. "Good, now look to your right. Your other right, Nikko. Do you see it?"

There was a moment of silence that hung in the air like an eight ball over a side pocket. The camera feed moved slightly this way and that. "I see it!" Nikko called back, charging forward with the unassailable impetuosity of youth.

Vincent was, predictably, the next to move, followed by Solomon. With gloved hands and archaeological brushes – "Really Dad? All this time?" – the three men cleared the cobwebs from a door even older than the one they had entered by. Maggie watched the combined progress through Cal's camera: the only one neither too close to get the whole picture, nor pointing in the wrong direction. It was hard to tell in the limited light, but this door seemed a darker wood than the first: older and tougher too. The ironmongery of the lock required a key, a locksmith or an expert lockpicker. The first two options were out of the question, but they still had Vincent. Soon the door was open and the group trailed through.

There were fewer cobwebs beyond the door, possibly because it fitted its opening better and had a keyhole cover rusted into place on the inner side. It made progress more pleasant but, without the reflections amplifying the light, darker. Vincent was the first to flick on his hand-held flashlight.

"Is that a wall, up ahead?" Solomon wondered aloud, squinting into the dull light and following Nikko and Vincent down a short flight of steps.

"A junction, I think," murmured Vincent.

"So who goes right, who goes left?" Nikko asked, looking over his shoulder. His eyes glanced back up the group. "I think Juliet and I…"

"Do you think they make snickerdoodles over here?" Maggie asked with a sigh. "I always get peckish watching pointless arguments."

"Nikko, Vincent: you're with me," Solomon announced. "We'll take the right branch. Calvin, Juliet: you two take the left branch. Keep in contact. If we lose the signal, we won't know it until Maggie doesn't reply; and if you do lose the signal you mark your point and you come back. Last thing we need is for some of us to get lost in here!"

"Oh-kay then," breezed Nikko, watching his father take the lead. Vincent loomed out of the shadows and motioned for Nikko to precede him. Nikko frowned, then took the hint. He glanced back over his shoulder to where Cal was watching them go and Juliet was watching something else entirely, lost in thought. "Chin up, Juliet!" Nikko called. "Remember Maggie can see everything you can!" He watched Juliet's head snap up, eyes wide, and chuckled to himself, following his father into the depths of the ancient earthworks.

Juliet smiled a cookie-cutter smile at Cal and waved a hand at the other branch of the tunnel. "After you."

XXXX

They had been walking, albeit slowly, for nearly half an hour, checking in and reporting back to each other constantly, when the tunnel turned an unexpected bend to the right. Juliet brushed a strand of hair out of her face and took a swig of water from her bottle.

"Hey Maggie," Cal called, "where exactly are we? This tunnel is bending away from the line of the wall."

"Calvin, you've been out of line with the wall for a while now," Maggie replied. "You must be deep enough to cross under roads and utilities, though, if the tunnel's heading right."

"There are a few more steps down ahead," Calvin admitted, "and it has been feeling like we were on a decline for most of the way."

"Well, judging your direction from the line your tracker has been tracing on my systems, if you turn ninety degrees right, you'll be heading under the Boulevard de l'Europe and out towards the hospital and the Vosges mountains. These coms have a good range on them, but I can't guarantee we'll get a clear signal with hospital machinery and mountains in the way."

"Cal, Juliet?" Professor Zond's voice crackled through the coms. "Any problems, with communications or anything, you come straight back, you hear me?"

"Loud and clear, Professor," Juliet answered, fixing her water bottle back in the side pocket of her pack. "At least this branch is a bit wider after the turn."

Juliet let her hand drop to her side and found another there, waiting for hers. Cal's fingers brushed against hers in a silent question, neither heard nor seen by the cameras on their safety helmets. She interlaced her hand with his, a smile creeping onto her face that was far more genuine than the last, and together, they stepped over the threshold.

XXXX

6 ½ Months Ago – 7 days after the fall.

Juliet had no idea what time it was, but her body was fairly sure it was well past breakfast time. They had walked through the night, their packs, lighter for the lack of a tent, settled uncomfortably on their bent backs. This tunnel may have been built by Templars, but either they were a lot shorter than in their pictures or they had some reason to ensure that anyone following the secret passage could not stand upright.

"Let's take a break," suggested Cal, "It doesn't sound like anyone's following us. We would have heard that door open again."

"We certainly heard it close!" Juliet muttered, remembering the hollow, grinding thud that had reverberated through the tunnel like the sudden drop of a sarcophagus lid, sealing the occupants firmly into place. She glanced down to where Cal had stretched out on the tunnel floor. "Tired?"

"Sore back," he replied, wincing. "Why make the secret catch so high only a tall person could see it, then make the tunnel so low only a child could walk through it without bending?"

Juliet, her own back feeling barely any better, lay down beside him, her arms tucked under her head. "Safety? You could only find the catch if you knew where it was, and once in the tunnel you couldn't stand and fight?"

"Like how spiral staircases always give the advantage to the person coming down them," Cal mused. "Yeah, makes sense, I guess."

"Where do you think this leads?" Juliet asked, handing Cal a granola bar.

"Who knows," Cal shrugged. "I think we're heading north. We were last time I checked the compass. Beyond that, it's fifty-fifty whether this leads out or to another Templar hideout."

"I'm putting my money on 'out'. That door seemed very decidedly one-way. If this were taking us to another Templar building, don't you think they'd make this an entrance as well as an exit?"

Cal sat up and reached for his water bottle. In the dim light of their two flashlights, Juliet spotted a shadow on Cal's back. She reached up and touched the mark. Her fingers came away dark with blood.

"You've opened up one of the cuts on your back," she murmured. "Take off your shirt and let me put a dressing on it."

"It's fine," he replied. "I'm fine. It was just the weird angle and the pack hitting the roof of this place."

"You're not fine, you're bleeding," Juliet snapped. "At best, if you leave it, the shirt will get stuck in the clot and when you do take it off the damage will be worse!"

"Fine," he huffed. He reached up to pull the shirt over his head and winced. That was a movement he hadn't tried since before the fall and, it appeared, would not be trying again for a while. "Argh, can I get a little more light here, please?"

Juliet sat up and turned her flashlight onto the buttons of the shirt. It wasn't his usual choice for this sort of journey, but it was all they could get on him after the fall. He always had one neat shirt in his pack, just in case, but only one. Juliet watched him reach up to remove the now opened shirt and wince.

"Here, let me," she said, handing him the torch then moving back to peel the fabric off his shoulders and, carefully, off the newly reopened cut on his back. "It's not too bad: it's the deepest one, so just the last to heal. Everything else seems to be holding together okay. I'll need a small dressing out of my first aid kit and a couple of alcohol wipes."

"Yay, my favourite!" Cal joked, rummaging in the front pocket of Juliet's pack for the kit. "On the bright side, at least down here, no one can hear you scream!"

"Er, I can, so try not to, please!" Juliet threw back, taking the supplies he passed her. In all fairness, he hadn't screamed the first time she cleaned the wound either, though she was fairly sure his teeth had been clenched together so hard they would have dented metal. "There: that should do for now. This tunnel can't be too long if it was meant for emergency use. We haven't exactly spotted any signs of water or rest spots. Once we're out of here we can find some sort of transport and get it looked at properly."

"The joys of archaeology: we spend half our time trying to get into a hole in the ground and the other half trying to get out!" Cal trilled, shrugging the stained shirt back on and buttoning it up. "Come on: we've walked through the night. It can't be much farther now."

XXXX

They had walked through what was left of the morning and the tunnel still showed no signs of stopping.

"Maggie, can you still hear us?" Juliet called through the coms.

"Little bit crackly, but you're still there," said the voice in her ear. "Once the boys are back, they're going to follow you. Their tunnel was blocked off, although they did spot a route up to the tower."

"Just watch out, you two," said the Professor's paternal tones. "If the strata at our end was unstable enough to collapse, you might find the same thing at yours, and the rockfall we encountered looked recent."

"Increased haulage traffic perhaps?" Cal wondered aloud. "Maybe some localised infrastructure works."

"Could be," agreed Professor Zond. "Could also be age and decay. All I'm saying is watch your step."

"We'll be fine, Professor," Cal assured his mentor. "There haven't been any signs…"

A groaning creak killed the words in Calvin's throat. Together, he and Juliet looked back at the source of the noise, then forward into the unknown. He looked down and met Juliet's eye. He saw the word forming on her lips even as it did on his own.

"Run!"