… from Enia:
“And Seymour’s advice, not to enter?” said Peter.
“Me, he advised to keep you alive in any way I see fit. We’re entering. But first let’s pass by the crashed plane.”
“The what?!” Now Peter doubted even his augmented senses.
“On the plateau above, there’s a wrecked airplane,” Martin supplied. “A US light bomber, shot down during World War Two. All locals know it. I’ve been there during my off-road trips.”
Peter, despite his excellent grades in European history and his visits to most of those places, remained an American deep down. “Bulgarians have shot down one of our planes?”
“Why not?” said Martin, whose Bulgarian and American parts were always in a boxing match. He played the host now, so the Bulgarian part took the upper hand. “Haven’t the Vietnamese and the Afghan shot down our
huh, now “our” means American
helicopters? Why should we underrate the Bulgarian military anyway? They seem to have done a good job with spreading misinformation about Tsarichina. While everybody and their granny knows about Roswell and Area 51.”
~
Potential believers–currently, moderate skeptics–sometimes demanded a proof of God’s power, or even existence. Their thoughts ran along the lines of,
Please, Lord, I want now, at this very minute, my bastard of a boss to get a heart attack and kick the bucket! If you do that, I promise to obey all Your commands and attend Your Church every Sunday.
Or,
The lottery jackpot this week is 21 million bucks. Pray let me win it! In exchange, I vow never to cheat on my wife again. I’ll even stop watching porn! And drinking!
~
“Ann … you and Seymour kept hinting I should take sides, right? You hoped I’d pick Lil.”
She nodded.
“I’ve made my choice long ago, but now I’m surer than ever: Lil!”
“Welcome,” Ann said.
No self-respecting thriller would have it as easy as that, so Martin, who respected self-respecting thrillers, complained, “Is that it? No initiation rite, no chanting ceremony, no cowls, candles, altars, secret handshakes?”
~
“The side of this chamber is 32.809 feet. That’s 10.00030474 meters. Ten meters alright! And the Monolith’s dimensions, for granite’s density of 2.7 tonnes per square meter, give 69956.75161 tonnes.
“That’s really the largest chunk of hewn rock ever found!
“If we apply numerologists’ favorite Theosophical addition and reduction–you know, 123 = 1+2+3 = 6, then the mass of the Monolith gives 6+9+9+5+6+7 and so on, which gives 10. Even if we subtract the mass of this chamber, 2,700 tonnes, we get 67256.75161 tonnes. We do the same calculation–and get ten again! Same goes for the sum of the Monolith’s sides: 314.1592606. Ten meters, a total of ten, and the characters in the first problem on the door were ten, symbolizing the digits. Apparently, those guys knew the decimal system. Oh, and another thing. The shortest side of the Monolith multiplied by 1.618 gives the medium side. Multiply that by 1.618 and you get the longest side. 1.618 is Phi: the golden ratio. That’s my first-glance findings. There’s prolly more ratios.”
“That’s highly interesting, convincing, enthralling and hardly coincidental, but it doesn’t help us decide if it’s safe to peer into the spiral,” said Ann.
Spoken like a true mother protector!
Martin smiled inside, and looked at Ann like he’d never look at his mother.
~
Shortly after they entered the corridor, they were met by intense fire. Fortunately, it was more intense than accurate. Apparently, the mercs at the other end, where the corridor took a ninety-degree turn, were already aware of Ann’s acumen. Only their guns peeked out and shot in their direction. Peter and Ann were forced to rely on the flimsy cover of a pair of door frames. Ann fired back, just for the sake of participation; both sides knew they were in a deadlock. Peter touched the floor and closed his eyes.
Ann’s voice stopped the architectural transformation he’d just visualized. “Hold on! I can deal with it.”
She gripped one of her guns by the barrel. She waited for half a second until one of the merc’s guns peeked past the corner. Ann threw her Glock his way and jumped back.
What followed was so quick that nobody saw it clearly except for Ann. To see–and make sense of–it, you’d need to watch it slo-mo in an action flick. One of John Woo’s, for instance.
The Glock spun half the way, passing by the bullet shot by the merc. It had nearly reached the corner when it passed by the haze caused by the second shot. Then, thanks to Ann’s calculated trajectory and timing, its trigger guard slid around the Colt barrel, laid bare by the shot.
Yes, in slo-mo you would see the merc yielded a Colt.
The mass and momentum of the Glock managed to deflectthe Colt. The direction of the Glock changed too: its barrel spun towards the merc. And the pressure of the Colt barrel on the Glock trigger caused a discharge. Smack into the merc’s face.
As the Colt fell from the dead merc’s hand, its slide moved forward, and the two reloaded guns clanged on the floor.