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  It was getting late. The sun had just begun to slip beyond the peaks of the Andes. Darkness was falling. Throughout the jungle, he heard no sound but that of withered leaves, dropping from their stems to the forest floor with a gentle clatter. It was perhaps that utter absence of life and that empty vacuum all around him that made the new presence so terribly apparent. His eyes widened. Something else was out there, and it was watching him.

  The prospector flung his paddle to the timbers. He snatched up his cutacha. Straining his eyes, he gaped through the snarls of dead vegetation. His heart hammered so hard against his chest that every beat snagged a breath in his throat. He hadn’t seen anything specifically, nor had he been alerted by any sound. It was something else. His perception of a maleficent presence had simply manifested itself in his consciousness, just as distinctly as if his balsa had floated right into some field of sentience, but it was a two-way effect. He’d drifted into something’s territory, and they both were aware of the other.

  The prospector shouted at the forest. He stamped his foot against the deck, slashing at the darkening air, and smacked the flat blade of the cutacha against his bare chest. The stench was intoxicating. Whether it was the effects of his heightened emotions or something airborne, he began to feel lightheaded. The nutty pungency numbed his lips and tongue, while its more astringent edge seared the linings of his nostrils. Everything was changing. He rubbed at his eyes, smeared his hands over his slackening face. It began to feel as though he’d drifted completely out of his own world, and into another. His raft was floating through the whorls of a vast termite colony, where he inhaled redolent fumes of rotting wood and royal secretions, where some pulsating queen controlled her castes from the deepest grotto.

  The prospector advanced to the edge of his balsa, reeling in the mind-bending vapors. No fight left in him, he surveyed the tangled vegetation with a dulled complacence. A silvery thread of drool swung from his lower lip. He found himself nodding at all the things that he now understood. Yes, he knew things, important things, things recently inferred, or perhaps things unearthed that had always been buried somewhere in his brain. He smiled, because his path in life seemed so clear to him now. The twists of his meandering past had always seemed so random, but every action he’d ever taken now appeared to have been calculated as critical directives in some greater plan. Every drone in the termite colony had a specific job to perform, and so far, he’d performed his duties well. He sensed that the queen was pleased with his work. Tonight, he was going to receive a promotion.

  The prospector straightened up a little when he heard the trunks of trees begin to snap. Cracks resounded through the jungle like rifle reports. Dead canopies whispered, as trees toppled in a great wave of roiling foliage that shifted, parted, and finally afforded an unobstructed view of the Andes Mountains, as a wide path tore its way through the jungle to the river’s edge. One of the queen’s soldiers, bringing news of his promotion. He wiped some snot hastily from his nostrils, and smoothed back his wild hair. The last row of trees splintered and crashed into the Rio Iaco, teetering the prospector on the edge of his balsa.

  There, it loomed, as immense as a drug lord’s mansion. The jungle presence glowered down full upon him, its eyes a cluster of portals straight to Hell. The stench was ferocious. The prospector found himself trembling in its shadow, but not from fear. He trembled with excitement. At last, his hard work had been noticed.

  The thing leaned down, bending along a seam at its midsection until it was close enough to set the prospector’s balsa aglow in the hellish eminence of its eyes. The hair on his arms stood on end as currents of weird energy fished all through his body. He hooted when sparks spat from the outboard motor. There was magic in the air. The air compressor prattled back to life, with a gaseous hiss and a glottal roar. The jangling system of conveyers lurched back into motion, carrying sieves around the auger in a jolly promenade. In the darkness, their shadows marched across an infernal backdrop cast upon the awning. He suppressed a powerful urge to begin dancing around the raft like a goblin. Instead, he remained at full attention.

  It was beautiful. The prospector smiled up into the crimson spotlights, sparks flitting from his golden teeth. Orders from the queen had arrived. Every drone in her ranks had a special job to do, each within his unique capacity. Some had really big jobs that the prospector didn’t fully understand, involving corporations, computers, and national defense networks. His job was simpler, but no less important to the future of the colony. His task was to find her, the deep dreamer, and put an end to her before any problems could arise.

  The prospector fired up the outboard motor, and he brought his balsa about. Never before had he felt so empowered, so alive. He offered a parting wave to the looming thing in the jungle as he piloted the raft back upriver. It would be a long journey, out of one country and into another, taking him all the way to the ends of the earth, if that’s what his mission required. Nevertheless, he was determined to succeed. He would find that little bitch, and when he did, he was going to cut her head off.

  Chapter Two

  The colonel snapped a rigid salute as the bunker doors swung wide. Backlit by sprays of fluorescent light, a twisted form was escorted into the central command room, flanked on either side by armed squads of Unit 777 commandos. The colonel swallowed down the knot already tightening in his throat, faltering in his effort to maintain some semblance of professionalism, as the rows of masked troops hustled into tactical positions on every side of the room. They were taking no chances with this one, not even here, in the most secure underground bunker in all of Egypt.

  The colonel’s heart rate increased as his eyes met those of the shadowy figure, stepping forth from his guardsmen once the bunker doors had slammed shut behind him. He crossed the room with a soundless cadence upon bare and calloused feet. Lancet light pierced the holes riddling his tattered tunic. His approach was aggressive, fearless, corroborating the accounts of the few who’d managed to survive their brutal engagements against this animal. Despite the ragged garb of a tribal warlord, he appeared quite comfortable in the sterile confines of a military facility, advancing with an air of entitlement toward what would soon be his new appointment as tactical commander over the largest army in the Middle East.

  As the colonel stood face-to-face with the infamous warmonger, he suspected few officers could be endowed or even indoctrinated with the level of militant solidarity simply to stand by, unaffected, on the threshold of such a monumental blunder. Here was a madman, a freak, who’d made quite a name for himself under some rather pretentious pseudonyms, but he was perhaps best known as “the Green Man.” None knew him more intimately than those thousands of butchered innocents whose mutilated remains filled mass graves all over the Middle East. Only a handful outside of his mercenary network had ever managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of him, and no one, to the colonel’s knowledge, had ever survived an opportunity to look full upon this living nightmare. The colonel tried not to stare into the gaping hole in the middle of the Green Man’s face, but he failed. The sallow tone of his greenish skin was to be anticipated, of course, but no amount of wartime casualties could have prepared the colonel for the extent of the Green Man’s malformations.

  “Everything has been prepared in strict accordance to your instructions. Egypt stands by, awaiting your command. It will be an honor to serve you, Sir,” the Colonel said, clearing his throat. He lowered his salute, and stared into the Green Man’s vapid eyes.

  As a detective strives to understand a killer by analyzing the wounds inflicted on his victims, so was the colonel left to ponder this tyrant’s assignment to one of the world’s most powerful positions. The order had come down from the top, and under the highest level of classification. In just twelve hours, all regular army personnel throughout Rashid Field Headquarters were reassigned in advance of the Green Man’s arrival. By the zero hour, the facility had been entirely repopulated by Unit 777 commandos, supported by a regiment of the colonel’s own
Sa’ka Special Forces. The base was on lock-down. No one entered, no one left, until the Green Man had accomplished whatever objective Egypt had employed him to complete.

  “With all due respect, Sir,” the colonel said, “by what title would you prefer to be addressed?”

  The Green Man cocked his misshapen head. Those vacuous eyes belied nothing. His was a visage divorced of any trace of humanity. It was no more possible to intuit what this man was thinking than what thoughts entertained the mind of a coiled viper. The colonel felt himself give an involuntary jump when one of the Green Man’s hands struck suddenly upward, mashing a small device into the greenish folds of his throat. Vibrations from the instrument rattled through a wreckage of vocal cords, producing a robotic intonation. “I am the Voice,” he replied, drawing a loaded revolver from the folds of his tunic, leveling the barrel to the colonel’s forehead, “and I’m here to relieve you of command.”

  ###

  “Pyramids. Why the hell else would anyone want to visit Egypt?” The American dropped his hand to his wife’s thigh with a fleshy smack. “Outside of the outstanding class of people, of course, and those miles of gorgeous wasteland. No, we naturally came to see those pyramids, along with everyone else in this restaurant, and now, having seen them, I have to say that I’m pretty relieved to have checked this one off my bucket list.”

  “Pyramids.” The engineer nodded, gesturing with a slice of pizza toward the massive monuments that loomed beyond the plate glass windows, silhouetted by the sanguine light of a dying sun. “This trip was supposed to have been my professional retreat, but I brought along my son.” He cast a glance toward the dark-haired teen seated next to him, who was toying with his phone. “His mother is Egyptian. Bringing him to Giza was always her dream, but she didn’t care to join us, not under these circumstances, but I couldn’t pass on the opportunity. My colleagues, they all went into Cairo for a nicer sort of dinner,” the engineer tipped his head in the direction of his son, “but this guy wanted to stay for the laser light show, and of course, for the pizza.”

  “Hey, who doesn’t love pizza?” The American grinned at the kid, whose eyebrows hitched, but he never looked up from his phone. “We all do. Every goddamned one of us. Personally, I think it’s testimony to what’s quite possibly the perfect cuisine. A man can travel halfway around the globe to admire one of the Seven Wonders of the World from right across the street, sitting in a weirdly familiar, air-conditioned fast-food joint, stuffing his face with pizza. It’s just fantastic.”

  “You really think so?” His wife raised an eyebrow.

  “Obviously, I was being sarcastic. When the builders of these eternal monuments were sliding those first huge blocks into place, what do you imagine they might’ve thought if they could’ve foreseen that one day, many thousands of years after their demise, the eyes of their Great Sphinx would be staring right into the front windows of a goddamned Pizza Hut? I don’t think they’d be too happy about that.” He clapped his hands and chuckled, glancing over at his wife. “Pyramids and pizza. Laser light shows. I just love it.”

  “Did you enjoy your tour?” The engineer’s eyes fluttered closed for a moment, as he seemed to draw a breath of air in hopes of diluting the forced atmosphere of this company of perfect strangers. Seating was limited in the crowded restaurant. Tables had to be shared.

  “Sure.” The American man nodded, sticking out his lower lip. “It was very—archaic.”

  “Were you bothered at all by the merchants?” the engineer asked, directing his gaze to the American woman. “They can be aggressive, and rather lewd.”

  The American shrugged, looking to his wife.

  “No,” she replied. “I expected that I might attract some unwanted attention, being a western woman and all, but I don’t feel as though we were targeted in any way.”

  The American pinched his nose, leaning back in his seat. “Those disclaimers are all over the Internet. Don’t come to Egypt! Stay away! The pyramids are such a dangerous place! I mean, come on, those aren’t their pyramids.” He directed a thumb at the throngs of local merchants down on the plaza, then straightened up in his seat and leaned over the table. “They’re our goddamned pyramids. Right? They’re your pyramids. They’re his pyramids to enjoy.” The American tipped his chin toward the teen, whose eyes flicked up momentarily from his phone before settling back down into his technological bubble. “These people? The people who occupy Egypt right now? Their culture is just as alien to the builders of those monuments as we are. Don’t let them fool you. They don’t own the pyramids, even though they might try to convince you that they do. No-no. The pyramids are a gift to all of us.” He tapped the pad of his index finger against the center of the table. “No matter where you travel abroad, they’re always going to see you coming. You know what I mean? Different languages, same old set of tricks. They’ll always see you as an easy target, a scared little tourist quivering in his flip-flops, and of course, carrying around a fat wad of cash in his wallet, right? Bullshit. You can’t let them bully you. Otherwise, the terrorists win, right?” The American chuckled. “The two of you, I’m guessing Germans? Ya?”

  The engineer and his son nodded, as their mouths were too full of pizza to reply.

  “Well, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. They’ll always see you coming if you’re from a more developed country, but we don’t let it bother us, do we?” He glanced toward his wife. “We love to travel, wherever and whenever possible, and I refuse to let anyone push us around.”

  “I don’t travel too much outside of Europe,” the engineer replied, swallowing his food. “It’s become too dangerous. These countries, they don’t care about protecting their tourists, or even developing any sort of a tourism industry. They have a much more fundamental attitude. My wife, she was born here, yet, she was very worried about me bringing him along. That says a lot.”

  The American narrowed his eyes and smiled. “We’ve travelled all over the world, the two of us. Africa, Australia, Asia, Peru … and I honestly can’t say that I’ve ever felt unsafe anywhere. Not for one minute have I ever felt like things were out of my contr—”

  The American frowned through the front windows, as a tight formation of military helicopters ripped through the gap between the pyramids and Pizza Hut, billowing dust beneath their chopping rotors. The German teen looked up. He raised his phone with both hands, snapped a picture, and then lowered the device back into his lap, already texting. After completing a circle around the area, the squadron peeled off to the south, and drifted off into the twilight.

  “As an engineer, I should be mostly interested in the design and construction aspects of the pyramids. That’s why my firm chose this location for a retreat, but you know what I really find most fascinating about the pyramids?” the engineer said, dabbing his mouth with a paper napkin.

  “What?”

  “They are symbolic of a much bigger phenomenon. They are not really tombs for dead kings, as we’ve always been led to believe. That’s a misconception. Tombs were never their purpose. No mummy of a king has ever been found inside of a pyramid. The bodies of the ancient rulers were always buried in Saqqara, and down in the Valley of the Kings. The purpose of the pyramids was something entirely different.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “When we think of pyramids, we always think of Egypt, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Pyramids are not unique to Egypt. Their appearance was a global event. Five-thousand years ago, pyramids were popping up all over the world. It was as though all people, all around the world, were all being inspired to create the same type of structure at the same point in time. I’m a logical man, and that is illogical. I can’t believe in some golden age of enlightenment. That is ridiculous. I believe that a far more physical transfer of knowledge took place, from one culture to another.” He gestured toward the pyramids of Giza. “These were not the first.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head, and took a sip of
his lukewarm tea. “You mentioned travelling to Peru. That was actually where the Age of Pyramids began, down in the Brazilian rainforests at the three corners of Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. Very little remains of those structures because they used earth and shells as construction materials rather than stone, but those were the first pyramids. In South America, there are estimated to be many hundreds, perhaps even thousands of them, and none of them were tombs.”

  The American looked to his wife, and winked. “You must have been on a better tour than we had. I mean, they offered us a camel ride, but …”

  “Well, if they aren’t tombs, then what are they?” the American woman asked.

  “That is more difficult to explain,” the engineer replied, “and perhaps irrelevant. What is obvious is that in most every case, a pyramid’s foundation is a separate structure than the pyramid itself, built from different and older material. All around this area, there are ruins of a far more ancient society, crystal altars, obelisks, and nameless temples. Much older civilizations once existed, but they were wiped from the historical record. Pyramids are often found atop the ruins of these older structures, as if a pyramid is more of a political statement than the fulfilment of a purpose. I like to think of a pyramid as an enduring symbol of the dominance of a new culture over the remains of an old one, an immovable capstone, a seal that cannot possibly be broken, planted over the gates to more ancient knowledge.” The engineer pointed accusatively at the great pyramid of Giza. “The enslaved construction workers who built these structures were probably the last traces of those cultures that were erased.”

  The American screwed up his brow. “Erased by whom?”

  “By the star worshipers.”

  “Star worshippers?” The eyes of the American woman widened.