The Golden Crystal (6 page)

The plane started to taxi, only minutes away from takeoff. Bryce sensed that he was also only minutes away from a drastic change in his life. He leaned forward in his seat to enter the bank account information, and his new boss — James Whittenfield, Jr. — looked out the window, content. 

UNKNOWN

HE BLINKED. NOTHING.
AM I dead?
He blinked again, and the blackness surrounding him slowly became an image. Blurry at first, but gradually more clear. 

He had a splitting headache. Professor Jensen Andrews blinked again, and slowly tried to sit up.

The pain in his side was excruciating, and it took him a couple of tries to fully prop himself up on one arm and look around. His was in a room — all metal, with no windows or furnishings except for a bed and small toilet in opposite corners. The toilet and bed frame were metal as well. The bed held a thin mattress with several springs protruding from the top. Finally, his eyes were drawn to the floor.

It was made of double-layer reinforced steel, and the only break in its smooth surface was a small square window, no more than a foot in diameter. The window was reinforced with vertical steel bars a few inches apart. Clearly, he was not intended to leave. 

Great.
 

Jensen looked down at his body to see what was causing the pain in his side. His shirt — a white, button-down with a pencil pocket — was opened to the waist. His lower torso was wrapped in a thick gauze bandage. The bandage had a small, round, dark stain, just to the right of his stomach.

He had been shot. The recollection surprised him. The area around the wound was tender, but for the most part the pain was isolated to the immediate area. He carefully probed around the spot, getting a feel for how severe it was. 

Suddenly, he remembered the security guard; saw perfectly in his mind the hole, placed so precisely in the center of his forehead. 

He looked again his own wound. 

Whoever had shot him was certainly the same person who’d shot the security guard, yet he was still alive. Somebody wanted him alive —
needed
him alive. 

Who?

Just as the question crossed his mind, he heard a loud
clang
outside the door. Jensen looked up at the small window on the door. There was a brief pause, followed by a shifting sound, and then what could only be keys jangling. Somewhere inside the cell wall, a huge latch was lifted. 

The lock disengaged, and Jensen Andrews used all his strength to pull himself into a sitting position. From there, he struggled to stand up. Just as the door swung open, His body cooperated and he fully stood, the reward for his increased pain being nothing more than the benefit of looking his captor in the eye. 

“
Uncle Jensen, you’re awake!” a warm-sounding young girl’s voice addressed him. “It’s been almost four hours — I was afraid the sedatives you were given were too strong.”

Andrews blinked again, still not completely lucid. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. The person in the doorway was silhouetted by the light from the hall outside. He had recognized her voice immediately, and seeing her silhouette in the door proved his ears correct, but he still couldn’t believe it was actually her.  

“Uncle Jensen, I’m so glad you’re okay — I’ve been so worried about you; they said you wouldn’t be harmed, but when I saw you come in, bleeding and all, I…“ She choked up. “I thought they’d hurt you,” she sobbed, entering the cell. 

He rushed forward, fighting the pain in his side to embrace his niece. Then he realized that she wasn’t alone. There was a large shadow just outside the cell door. 

A voice broke the silence. “The boss wishes to speak with both of you immediately.”

“Who are these people, Corinne?” Jensen asked his niece. “What do they want with us, and why was I shot? Did they hurt you?” The questions came quicker than Corinne could respond. 

“Uncle Jensen, I’m fine — they didn’t shoot me, if that’s what you mean. ’And I don’t know why they’d want to shoot you,” she said, with an accusing glance back towards the doorway. “They’re interested in something they think you or I have. I don’t know what it is, but I heard them talking about some sort of an expedition.”

They were suddenly interrupted as a hulking man strode in from the hall. “Party’s over — let’s go.” His English had a slight accent that Jensen thought could be Eastern Russian. The man jerked a thumb toward the door and stepped back into the hall. Corinne supported her uncle with an arm, and they reluctantly followed.

As they fell in step behind the large guard, a second, smaller man fell in behind, cutting off any chance of escape that way.
Why bother,
Jensen thought. The pain in his side was reminder enough that he didn’t want to take any more chances with these people. 

At the end of the stark hallway, the group ascended a flight of stairs to a set of double doors. Another guard opened the doors, and as they passed through, Jensen felt the air get cooler. Once inside, they found themselves in a high-ceilinged room with a tiled floor, artificial lighting and metal trim. It had the appearance of a large laboratory, but judging by the metal tables and chairs arranged in the center of the room, it looked like it was currently being used a meeting hall.

The tables were strewn with a variety of maps, papers, and equipment. Several more guards were milling about the room. The only person who seemed to notice their entrance was a man dressed in civilian clothes who stood at the central table and greeted them warmly. 

“Ah, Professor Jensen! Ms. Banks! It’s good to see you — I’ve been expecting you!” He smiled at them as the large guard took up a position to one side, blocking the exit. “Please pull up a chair, we’ve got some work to do,” the man continued. He held out a hand, as if greeting an old friend over drinks and a cigar. “We have been working diligently for the past few months, trying to plan our trip, but I’m afraid we’ve run out of time.” He looked at Jensen. “We needed to call in an expert.”

Professor Jensen frowned. “You have a very indelicate method of ‘calling in’ your experts. What do you want with me?”

The man smiled again. “Jensen Andrews, 52 years old, native of Santa Fe, currently serving as Regents Professor of Ancient and World Studies. Your work in ancient civilizations — specifically the study of prehistoric peoples — has always fascinated me. But recently, you published a paper in a research journal called ‘The Golden Civilization: The Original Discoverers of the Number Phi.’”

Jensen looked at him, confusion settling on his brow. That paper had been a side project he’d had in interest in for some years, but nothing more than a “notch on his belt” for his accreditations list — something to publish in order to keep his tenure. He’d spent a few months researching the “GoldenRatio,” represented by the Greek letter ‘Phi’. The so-called ‘Golden Ratio’ refers to a mathematically irrational number — 1.618, and the ratio 1:1.618. Jensen had written that this number appeared numerous times in nature — from the spiral shapes of some shells and mollusks to the growth patterns of certain plants and trees — even in human anatomy. 

Many groups of people throughout history had recognized the ubiquity of this number and its ratio. Some groups had ascribed mystical properties to it, and some artists and architects paid homage to that mysticism by incorporating it into their work. Da Vinci, the Greek Parthenon — even in modern design, reflected in the layout of streets and buildings around the world. 

But the true roots of the number — rather, the original “discoverers” of the ratio — were still unknown to modern historians, and it was this puzzle that Jensen had tried to solve in his paper. The results were compelling, yet many of his colleagues and contemporaries at the academic level dismissed the treatise as far too bold of an idea with too little supporting evidence. 

The work had been an interesting aside to his professorial duties at the university, and it had helped to keep him occupied during the previous summer. Still, even he didn’t think the paper was definitive enough to warrant much attention after it was published.

“Professor Andrews, I feel that you would be a valuable asset to our team. My name is Dr. Tanning Vilocek, and I have spent the last thirty years of my life trying to find the solution to one problem. I believe you can help me solve that problem.”

“Dr. Vilocek, I don’t understand — what exactly is it that you’re trying to accomplish?”

“And why were we kidnapped?” Corinne suddenly interjected. “Why not just ask for help?”

Dr. Vilocek didn’t respond. Instead, he sat down and sifted carefully through a stack of papers on the table. With a large pair of tweezers, he gently extracted one document from the pile. It was old — very old — two yellowed and cracking pages loosely bound together. He carefully slid it toward Jensen and Corinne.

“If in fact this item is one of a larger collection, we have underestimated immensely the gravity of the situation. As the men here have seen firsthand, the item has already shown some intriguing characteristics. 

“On the first day of the month, we had placed the stone next to a wilted flower on the sill. Within the night, the flower had begun to heal; it was a most unexpected reaction, and we have since determined that the stone itself was the cause of this reaction.”

Jensen faced Vilocek, shocked. “Where, exactly, is this ‘item,’ or ‘stone,’ now?”

Vilocek reached into his suit pocket and withdrew a small rectangular box, no larger than a bracelet gift box or eyeglass case. He placed it on the table and slowly, deliberately, lifted its lid. As the lid came off the box, a slight bluish glow emanated from within. 

It’s beautiful,
Jensen thought. Inside, resting on a bed of what looked to be cotton cloth, was a very small sliver of stone, clear and mostly translucent. It was no larger than a common sewing needle, thinner at one end and rounding out into a head at the other, as if it had in fact been chipped off of something larger. The whitish-gray sliver itself was hardly distinguishable against the white of the cloth beneath it, but the glow it emitted could not be missed.

“We’ve been running tests on the material for some time now,” Vilocek explained, “and we know that it reacts differently with different elements, but for the most part, we have no idea what it really is. Obviously, one of the first experiments we ran was to measure its healing capabilities with small shrubs, like from the letter. It works better than we’d expected — taking a completely dead, dried-out plant to a robust, exceptionally
alive
state.

“Subsequent experiments with other life forms, unfortunately, have not been as successful. We’ve been able to resuscitate small mammals like mice and gerbils, but only for a limited amount of time. Each test subject showed a small flicker of life for a moment, but then immediately reverted to a state of death.

“For small wounds in larger animals, including humans, we’ve seen improvements in healing speed and have been able to replicate the material’s effect in isolated incidents. For the most part, though, we believe this sliver of stone is just not large enough to cause any lasting regenerative effects for larger life forms.”

Vilocek continued, “Further, we’ve found that this element — whatever it is — bonds quite easily with almost any pure substance, at least temporarily. That’s how we know it becomes active in different states with different materials…”

His voice trailed off as Jensen and Corinne gazed at the small glowing sliver of crystal. Its beauty was certainly evident, however small it was. Vilocek let them gawk at it for a few more seconds, then called their attention back to the document in front of him. 

It appeared to be missing the second page, but concluded on a third, offering some hypotheses the author had come up with to explain the stone’s mysterious properties. It ended with a single symbol in the place of signature. 

It was the symbol of the Golden Ratio:

“You see, Professor,” Vilocek said, “there may in fact be some use for you here.”

DR. VILOCEK CONTINUED TO EXPLAIN his thoughts on the ancient letter. The large guard, whose name tag read ‘Karn’, was joined by two more guards; one named Beka and another, younger man named Rogers. As Vilocek went on, Jensen and Corinne listened with increasing interest, forgetting for a moment how they came to meet this man.

Jensen found himself getting lost in the compelling results of Vilocek’s research, and had to keep reminding himself that Vilocek had abducted them — and shot him. The fact that he had a bullet hole in his side reminded him that there was something sinister about this whole thing, regardless of how interested he might be in Vilocek’s research. Jensen wondered how Corinne could have any role in this. She was a smart girl, with a degree in Applied Physics and Mathematics, on a fast-track to a career at NASA. But with NASA’s budget dwindling, her interests had shifted to a research career, or eventually a teaching position. She’d reached out to Jensen six months ago, hoping he could find her a position in his department. He had an opening, and they’d been working together since.