David Golemon - Legend

"I figured the first place to start is to get a team to Madrid to speak with the archbishop, for obvious reasons," Niles said. "PFC Hanley here was to make an appointment for us."

Instead of announcing anything to the gathered department heads, the private went straight to Niles and handed him a slip of flimsy, then departed the room. Niles scanned it and then looked around the table.

"Well, who's to go to Spain?" Virginia asked.

Compton handed the yellow paper to Alice and then removed his thick glasses.

"It looks like we have to do this the hard way," Alice said, as she lowered her own glasses, which dangled from a long gold chain. "It seems Archbishop Santiago was murdered yesterday afternoon."

The news was greeted with silence and dismayed looks.

It was Alice who broke it.

"This does not fit Mr. Farbeaux's profile at all. He's not a cold-blooded killer, he only takes life as a necessary function in saving his own skin, and the archbishop would have posed no threat to him."

"I think we may have to reevaluate certain realities here. Something is out there that is driving people to extremes, so let's start with blank paper and not go in with any preconceived notions," Jack said, looking from face to face.

"We'll have to start here, in our own files. The answer is there, Helen Zachary found it, and so will we. I'll break down everyone's duties and get back to you. As of," Niles looked at his watch, "0945, I am declaring an Event. I'll speak with the president. Excused," he finished.

Robby was alone. All he knew was that he was near the point of collapse. The heat in the lower levels of the mine was close to unbearable. Exhausted, he let his own weight work for him as he slid down the damp wall. His worn-out body came to rest on the rudimentary thousand-year-old wooden tracks that coursed through the ancient shafts like a million miles of twisting and undulating snake.

The tunnels had gone quiet as a tomb in the last forty hours as he fought his way through the darkness only to find he wasn't climbing but descending deeper into the great mine. The cascading water that had been engineered a millennium ago by unseen and mysterious hands flowed through the shafts beside the old transport track and wooden ore carts. Robby had taken the time to examine these strange canals and found that they had been carved out of the sheer rock flooring of the immense structure. He surmised that the canals were used to transport much heavier or larger loads to the lowest depths of the shafts. But that was the riddle. Why send gold to two different areas for processing? He had discovered rocks inside one of the old ore cars; they were speckled with large streaks of gold. These cars were on tracks that led from down below and went on toward the higher levels. He had tried to follow these upward but the tracks most times eventually traversed through small openings into shafts that were close, and he was afraid he would get caught in one. Try as he might, he would eventually lose the track and then before he knew it, he was heading down again. Disoriented and confused, he had decided to quit fighting it and follow the canals down.

As he tried to slow his breathing a noise caught his attention. He tried to penetrate the darkness to see what was around him. Then he heard it again. It sounded like whispering. Then suddenly a light flared from down below the next bend. His heart started pounding in his chest. He could now see the reflection of a large orange flame as it bounced off the water of the canal.

He steeled himself. "Hey!"

He heard two sharp yelps, as if his voice had caught someone totally unaware. Robby closed his eyes in thanks nonetheless when the flame around the bend started to advance toward him.

"Who's there?" he called out.

"Robby, is that you?"

"Oh God, Kelly?" he called and fought to gain his feet.

The next thing Robby knew, he was being embraced by the most welcome vision he had ever seen.

Kelly kissed him all over his face and hugged him until he had to pull away for air.

"You're alive, I can't believe it!" she cried as she pushed him away and looked him over. The girl holding the torch was Deidre Woodford, Professor Zachary's office assistant, who couldn't help but smile at the reunion.

"The others, how many are with you?"

"We have about twelve in our group," Kelly said as she nervously looked around her. "Come on, we have to get back. We can only be out for twenty minutes at a time."

"What…what are you talking about?" he asked as he was pulled along.

"It will take too long to explain, Robby, but just to let you know, we're the houseguests of the owners of El Dorado."

He was pulled along until they reached a great carved-out chamber and, as they entered the light of several torches, Robby gaped at the spectacle before him.

"Something, isn't it?" Kelly asked as she led him around a large grotto of clear, clean water that filled the center of the huge, once natural cave.

"Look at that!" Robby was gazing up at more than a thousand life-size statues of the beast they had seen and been attacked by. They lined the walls as if they had been arranged to have their stony gaze watch the interior of the enclosure. Situated between each statue was a small opening and in some of these openings firelight flickered. He was looking at over five hundred living quarters that had at one time housed the slaves that worked this mine.

"Come on, we have to get inside before the creature comes back. It's almost lunchtime," Kelly said as she looked at her watch. "Every twelve hours like clockwork. And that big bastard is never late."

"What in the hell are you talking about?" Robby asked as he was led into one of the enclosures. He saw that very old animal skins, along with a strangely woven cloth, covered the mouths of these strange dormlike rooms.

"The thing that attacked us out on the beach?"

"Yeah?"

"It thought we were trying to escape the valley and these mines," Kelly said. She lit another torch. And in that light she could see he wasn't following her. "Robby, that creature is our jailer. It's been trained to keep us right here. To keep us close to our work and to stop any attempt at leaving the mine." She reached down to retrieve something, and thrust it into his right hand. "Here, you must be starving."

He saw that she had given him cooked fish. He crammed it into his mouth, just now realizing how long it had been since he had eaten. The white meat tasted as good as anything he had ever dined on before in the best restaurants. When he finished, he leaned over and kissed Kelly.

Robby couldn't make out the reasoning behind what she was saying. The dots that were supposed to be connected swirled before his eyes. Then in the torchlight he saw the cave paintings of long ago, rendered by a very primitive culture, possibly the Sincaro Indians. Their whole story was there for him to read and finally get a mental grasp of. As Kelly held the torch out for him to follow, he saw a long and brutal history of slavery and mass murder as depicted by a long-dead hand.

That was when a warning call sounded from outside in the grotto. "It's coming!"

Kelly quickly placed the torch on the floor and stepped on it until it was extinguished. Then she took Robby's hand and pulled him back to the mouth of the small cave. Kelly held her index finger to her lips as he started to ask a question. She gestured out toward the semidarkness of the giant cave.