Sean Ellis - Callsign - King

“I can take care of myself. When do we leave?”

“Ethiopia?”

There was a brief pause and King could almost envision Deep Blue checking the history of his movements from the record of information transmitted by the GPS tracker in his phone.

It was early morning in Addis Ababa, early afternoon in New Hampshire where the new Chess Team headquarters was situated. After checking out the supplies and rented vehicles-two newer model Range Rovers-that Moses had acquired the previous evening, and meeting the four young Ethiopian men he had hired as assistants-King had made a mental note to avoid using the term ‘bearers’-he had decided it was time to check in with the home office.

“Well, you have been busy. Two different incidents, and you were right in the middle of both. Care to fill me in?”

“Manifold. They’re back in business.” King quickly brought Deep Blue up to speed, starting with Sara’s mysterious text message, and ending with his decision to accompany Felice Carter back to the Great Rift Valley.

“Is this one of the clones?” Deep Blue asked.

“That’s a possibility. I suppose it’s also possible that he had so many projects going under different umbrellas that these guys don’t know their boss is dead. They might operate autonomously and only involve Ridley when they have something worthwhile to report.”

“What do you think they’re after this time?” Deep Blue asked.

“I’m still trying to figure that out. I think this started as a fishing expedition, without a clear goal. They just happened to find something important enough to kill for. But that’s not why I called.”

“Sara.”

King took a deep breath. “I need you to find her for me.”

There was another period of silence before Chess Team’s runner spoke again. “The Ethiopian government is trying to keep this under wraps, but it looks like six bodies were recovered from the hospital.”

Six? There had been five CDC scientists in the lab. His heart fell.

“Five were recovered from the first floor, and another-a male-was pulled from a site of a fire on the fourth floor. No identification on any of them yet.”

Male? Then he remembered the Gen-Y shooter he had killed in Felice’s room; the sixth corpse. “Sara isn’t one of them. She was at the hospital when all this went down, but I didn’t find her. As far as I know, she’s still alive.”

“She hasn’t checked in with the CDC. Could she have been captured by the Gen-Y team?”

“I don’t know.” It was a plausible theory, but it just didn’t feel right. “I can’t imagine what her value to them would be.”

“I’m sorry, King.”

“I can’t think about that right now. I’ve got to focus on Manifold; figure out what they’re up to. But keep looking for Sara, and contact me immediately if you find her.”

“Absolutely.”

King thumbed the ‘end’ button and dropped the phone in a pocket. It was time to go.

He found Felice, now wearing blue jeans and a t-shirt, pacing the floor of Moses’ residence, like a caged animal. She looked up when he entered, an eager, almost hungry expression on her face. “Now?”

“In a minute. First, I need to know about where we’re going. And what you were looking for there.”

“That’s proprietary information. I’m not at liberty to share it with you.”

“In case you weren’t paying attention, you got a termination notice yesterday. I don’t think you have to worry about a law suit from your former employer. But you’re not getting back to that cave without my help, and we don’t go anywhere until you start talking.”

She returned a pensive frown, not so much bothered by his line of questioning as she was the fact that it was yet another delay. “What do you want to know?”

“Yesterday, you said that you learned of this site from…what was the word you used? ‘Esoteric sources’? What did you mean by that?”

“Just that. Instead of relying solely on the verifiable historical record, sometimes we pay attention to local folklore. We don’t necessarily take it at face value, but sometimes a pattern emerges, sort of like clues to a treasure map.” She resumed pacing the room. “Have you ever heard of the legendary lost graveyard of the elephants?”

“Sounds like something from a Tarzan movie,” King remarked.

Felice stopped for a moment, and faced him, her face completely serious. “There’s a reason for that. The elephant graveyard is one of those tall tales that has been circulating Africa for centuries, just like King Solomon’s Mines or the Kingdom of Prester John. Stories like that tend to take on a life of their own after a while.

“According to the myth, there’s a place where all the elephants go when they know they’re about to die. They’re drawn there, like it’s something in their collective subconscious. A lot of dead elephants in one place means a fortune in ivory, just lying there waiting for someone to collect.”

“But elephants don’t really do that,” King said. “I mean, we’d know if they did.”

She nodded. “Scientific advancements, both in the field of zoology and remote sensing, have verified that elephants don’t behave that way. But when you consider that today’s elephant population has been nearly wiped out by poachers and big game hunters, who’s to say that something like that wasn’t the case a few hundred years ago.

“Most of the stories about the elephant graveyard were easily enough disproven, but one lead was promising because of where it led us: the Great Rift Valley. We know that people have been living in the Rift for hundreds of thousands of years. It made sense that, if there were any truth to the story, then it would have originated there.”

“And why was Nexus interested in elephant bones?”

“As I said, the graveyard would be evidence of collective behavior that isn’t evident in modern elephants. Our goal was to compare DNA from elephants in the graveyard with that of modern elephants, and hopefully isolate the genetic markers associated with that behavior. If we could identify the section of the elephant genome associated with intelligence, it would go a long way toward understanding the evolution of human consciousness.”

King pondered her answer. He didn’t get the impression that she was being intentionally deceptive, but her explanation didn’t square with his knowledge of Manifold’s agenda, nor did it explain why they were willing to kill in order to get control of whatever had been discovered. Finally, he asked: “What about the ape skull that you brought back?”

She gave a helpless shrug, her expression indicating that she was even more bothered by that incongruity than he.

“You’ve got to remember something,” he persisted. “Why else would you be so insistent on returning?”

“That’s just it. I have to go back there to find what I lost.”

King considered her answer but he kept coming back to something else she had said. Drawn there… something in their collective subconscious.

Is that what’s happening to her?

And if what she had found in the cave had awakened some kind of link to a collective subconscious-one that could affect human behavior-what did Manifold have planned for it?

He knew he wasn’t going to get those answers from her, and he sensed he was nearing the point where her singular desire to return to the cave would make her less cooperative, more demanding. It was time to get moving.

King drove the lead vehicle, with Felice and Moses as passengers. Felice had not spoken more than a few words since their earlier discussion, and as they drove she simply stared out the window, as if hoping to catch a glimpse of their destination, despite the fact that it lay hundreds of miles to the north. Moses responded to King’s questions, but likewise showed little interest in conversation, leaving King alone with his thoughts, which given the uncertainty surrounding Sara’s fate, was not a good thing.