David Golemon - Legend

Jack turned and saw Sarah as she came up behind him. She was also admiring the dam engineering inside the wall.

"Well, you discovered enough to save our asses down there," he said as he turned back to the wall and held a hand to it.

"Lucky guess," she said as she, too, placed a hand on the dam. "There must be thousands and thousands of gallons of water inside that wall. In its heyday, the Inca may have had several hundred treasure boats traversing this system."

"There's eight of them right there," Jack said, moving his torch so Sarah could see the strangely crafted boats near the canal. "More over there, although they don't look in as good a shape."

Sarah observed that several of the boats had been laid along the far wall, and had been damaged severely.

"But I think with a little luck, these may hold up," Jack continued.

"Are you thinking of using the canals to get back down to Teacher ?"

"You and the others are, but Carl and I have some searching to do."

"The bomb?"

"Yeah," was all he said as he made his way back to the group.

The interior was now well lit by at least thirty torches that were either in the hands of people or arrayed in their holders around the room.

"I think this room was nothing more than a way to control the water in the canals. We have to get down. The only way is to use what we have," Jack announced. "It may take hours, or maybe days, to get out on foot. But with the canals we can be assured of going one way, and that's down. Teacher is down there and the way out is also. We haven't a choice."

The students looked at one another. They nodded their agreement that it might be the only way.

"Everyone get over here and select the most structurally sound of these boats. They're large enough to fit everybody."

Carl wasn't paying any attention, as he was looking around the giant water room with Virginia in tow. The cavernous area had several doorways sliced into the stone walls. He would run the torch inside one and then quickly bring up the XM-8 and look inside. He was tired of being surprised and wanted to know his surroundings a little bit better.

"Carl?"

"Yeah," he answered Virginia as he backed out of the fifth room he had looked into.

"This place is giving me the creeps."

He looked at the strained features on Virginia's face in the torchlight.

"You mean more than just the mere fact that we're stuck in probably a ten-thousand-year-old pyramid that was reverse engineered and constructed inside a mountain surrounded by a lagoon that seems to be torn from the pages of a Jurassic history book. Why would that be less creepy than being here in the penthouse of a place that probably killed thousands of innocent Indians?"

Virginia rolled her eyes. "Smart-ass," she said, but she still looked about nervously. "I mean, can't you feel it? It's like we stepped into a cemetery here."

"Look, go on back with the master chief, he seems to become half human when you're around, Doctor. I'll take a look at these other rooms."

"Don't treat me like a child, Carl," she said, as she turned and led the way to the next room.

As Carl smiled and followed, his nose did pick something up that had not been there only moments before. He extended the torch into a room with downward spiraling stone steps. He thought for a moment that he heard something. He listened closely but then figured it had only been the sound of the canal echoing off the walls the deeper he went on this level.

"This must be the peasant's way down," he said.

Virginia didn't answer. Carl leaned back out of the opening and held up the torch. He saw Virginia's back as she stood frozen in the stone archway of the next small chamber. Carl raised his weapon and moved forward. He gently moved the doctor out of the way and brought the torch inside. His eyes took in the sight and he swallowed. Virginia had been right; this level was creepy for a reason. He stepped into the room and shined the torch around. He had entered a mausoleum.

"Go get Jack and Sarah."

The major stepped into the room and saw what had stopped Carl short. The navy man had lit several of the interior torches and was bent low, examining some of the treasure in the room. Not the treasure of El Dorado, but treasure that marked the march of time throughout history.

"Oh my god," Sarah said, as she squeezed by Jack.

In every conceivable position, bodies, skeletal remains actually, were laid out across the floor. Artifacts from the history of El Dorado accompanied these humans from the past in their journey to wherever each soul's journey took them. There were breastplates of conquistador armor, stacked next to a case of old World War II K rations. A rusty Thompson submachine gun was lying across the case. Swords were strewn about. Spears, stone axes. But by far the strangest and most bizarre artifacts were the bodies. They were arrayed in all positions, but Jack noticed one very puzzling thing: all were chained to the wall with bronze manacles.

"The animal."

He turned toward Virginia. Carl and Sarah glanced at her with quizzical curiosity, then Sarah looked down at a sixty-plus-year-old body of an American soldier. The remains were in remarkably good condition because of the dryness of this particular chamber. Both bony arms were raised in mock surrender as the chains held them up. The body next to it was that of a conquistador, the red shirt still clinging to the bony frame, the empty eye sockets staring blankly at the intruders.

"The bodies were brought here postmortem. Their blood has stained the stones around them. The beast brought them here and actually chained them to keep them from escaping the mine, still doing its job after centuries and centuries."

"That's a stretch, Doctor," Carl said.

"It is still an animal, Commander; it hasn't a concept of death, impending or otherwise, its own or another animal's. It just does what it was trained to do."

"Bring back escaped slaves," Sarah said as she went over to another set of bones. "Major, here's a fellow soldier, look."

As Jack and the others stepped to a far corner where Sarah was standing, they could see a skeleton that was chained by only one arm. The man, centuries before when still alive, had worked his right hand free of the manacle that dangled above him. In the torchlight Jack could see that the dying man had used a lead ball, a musket round, which now lay by the bony fingers, to etch something in the stone flooring. Sarah had seen the first few letters and already guessed at the rest. Jack leaned over and blew some of the layers of dust away from the remaining letters.

"I'll be damned," Carl said over Jack's shoulder.

"'Captain Hernando Padilla, 1534,'" the major read aloud.

"What does the rest say?" Virginia asked.

As Jack lightly and reverently moved the bony fingers of the long-dead conquistador away from his final words, the musket ball rolled away and lodged in a flooring crack and stayed. He again took a breath and blew air over the remaining words.

"' Perdoneme ,' " Sarah murmured, and then stood and walked away. "Even though he was dying, he was ashamed of what he had done."

"What does the word mean?" Carl asked.

Jack patted him on the shoulder and walked away, sad for a fellow soldier lost long ago and in a place he didn't want to be. No different than any man in the world.

" 'Forgive me,' " Jack answered. "It says simply 'forgive me.' "

Carl looked back down at the skeleton and then the armor lying next to it. The scratch marks, the dents. He couldn't fathom the remarkable journey this man had made, the horror of losing everyone in his command. He shook his head and straightened up just as he heard Virginia intake breath sharply. She had begun slowly backing away from something in a far corner.