The Atlantis Stone by Nick Thacker

Author:Nick Thacker [Thacker, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Turtleshell Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 33

1:36 am

“So which is it, then?” A frustrated Vilocek asked.

“He didn’t know,” Bryce said. “He’s only figured out the location of each site, and that’s it.”

“We don’t have time to search each of these locations, Captain. We need to know exactly where the crystal is, extract it, and — “

“Why?” Bryce interrupted. “Why do you need it now — can’t you send teams to each place? What’s your hurry?”

Vilocek glared at him. “We have a deadline; imposed on us by the crystal itself.”

“What do you mean, a deadline?” Professor Andrews asked.

Vilocek kept glaring at Bryce as he answered. “The crystal, as we’ve found from the original sample in the lab, has a half-life. It is actually degrading. From what we can tell, it’s close to 12,000 years old, and it degrades at an increasing rate with each passing day.”

“So it’ll be completely broken down sometime in the near future?” Wayne asked.

“Yes — in June, my scientists back in New Mexico determined that it will be completely degraded by sometime late this year. We’ve been unable to pinpoint the exact date, but we can assume that we have only about a week to find and stabilize the crystal.”

“And — you do know how to do that, correct?” Professor Andrews asked.

Vilocek grinned. “We’re working on it.” His smile quickly faded. “But for now, we need to figure out where the stone is hiding. Professor Jensen, I suggest you and Bryce put your heads together and get me something I can use.”

Jensen Andrews nodded, and then frowned; he stared vacantly at a point on the floor, perplexed.

Corinne looked at him, realized that he’d just remembered something, and was trying to piece it together in his mind. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “There’s something we’re missing. The locations, the symbols — they’re all trying to tell us something, but I can’t figure it out. So far, everything we’ve seen from these clues — and whoever left them — is a pattern; there’s order in this all. We need to look at the data from that perspective, and we should be able to — “

“Petra.” Corinne was staring at a map that Karn was scribbling on a large sheet of paper.

“Petra?” Vilocek and Jensen asked simultaneously.

“Yes! Look,” she said, shoving Karn aside to get closer to the map. He shot a murderous look at her, but Vilocek shook his head as Corinne examined the drawing. “It’s the northernmost point of all the locations, and since the line travels both north and south of the equator, don’t you think they would have acknowledged the significance of Petra’s location?”

“Each of the sites are perfectly aligned to the cardinal points,” Jensen said, considering, “so they certainly included magnetic direction in their considerations.”

“And we don’t have anything else to go on,” Vilocek said, making up his mind. “I’m not completely convinced, but we can look into it more on the way. Load up. We’re leaving.”

Plus, he thought to himself, we’ll be in a much better position to meet up with the others.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.