The Inner Circle (3 page)

What the hell happened?

Arkadei sat up quickly and a sharp pain pierced throughout his head, causing stars to form before his eyes despite pitch-darkness of the cave. He was very dizzy and breathing seemed more difficult than he was used to. When he felt the side of his head, he found a grotesquely large bump had already formed. He tested the rest of his body parts and a quick inspection found no broken bones, an injury he knew would be devastating considering the lack of medical attention available to the tribe.

The tribe. My wife and son. Had they heard the explosion?

Arkadei quickly pushed the pain to the back of his mind and realized he had to get out of this cave and go find out what had happened. People might be hurt and he had to make sure his family was unharmed. He petted the dog and found the leash still around its neck, whispering words of encouragement to it - and to himself – making assurances that everything would be okay.

Having been blown around and knocked unconscious, Arkadei was not sure which direction he should travel. He had to guess and picked the side opposite the dog since it had been behind him before the wind struck. After crawling for what seemed like forever, Arkadei finally saw the light at the end of the tunnel. When he emerged into day, he was not sure whether he was awake or if he was still dreaming.

The world around him was completely surreal. Before he entered the cave, the forest had been dark, as the numerous trees blocked most of the sunlight from shining down to the ground. Now the light was clearly visible. The trees, which had stood high and strong a few minutes earlier, had suddenly been pushed flat against the ground. They were all lying flat, pointed in the same direction, looking like a bed of flowers after an army tank had run over it. The trees also looked severely burned, but upon closer inspection, Arkadei discovered that their outsides were only charred, as if a raging fire had ignited them for only a few seconds before being snuffed out. The forest that once looked ominous – enough so to scare Pavel and Serge – now appeared pathetic.

The thought of his two fellow hunters snapped Arkadei out of his momentary state of shock. He found the husky sitting next to a tree, when he remembered that had been the same spot where he'd tied up the other dog before entering the cave. Arkadei walked over and found this tree burned equally as bad as the others. There was no sign of the other dog, but a charred piece of rope lay on the ground next to the tree.

"Come on, girl. We must go find the others."

The dog whined sadly but obeyed Arkadei, limping in front of her master as they walked out of the forest. Pavel and Serge were also not where Arkadei had left them and he wondered if they had already rushed back to camp to check on the rest of the group. Once he left the wooded area and crossed the large plane leading to the smaller forest that his tribe inhabited, Arkadei saw another effect from the explosion more clearly. A light mist – made up of what appeared to be snow and fog – shrouded the sky for as far as Arkadei could see in every direction. The mist filtered out the bright sunlight and gave the world around him a feeling like it was still an early, cloudy morning.

Arkadei's head was now pounding and he felt a combination of dizziness, extreme confusion and nausea. His brain cried for him to sit down and relax for a few minutes, but he would not allow himself to rest until he knew the fate of his family and fellow tribe mates. When he reached the outskirts of their forest, he discovered that Serge was not at his teepee. In fact, Serge's teepee had disappeared completely and the huge tree that had protected it from harsh weather had also been completely flattened and charred, like every other tree Arkadei had encountered along the way.

It wasn’t until now that Arkadei completely panicked, as he frantically rushed to where he hoped he’d find the others. When he reached the center of camp though, he found it had suffered the same fate. Arkadei could not find a single thing to suggest that thirty people had lived in this area; not a single person or a single teepee. He fell to his knees and cried, wondering what kind of force God could have unleashed to cause such annihilation.

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The light that streaked through the sky and exploded that morning was a comet, more specifically a 50-60 meter chunk of rock that came from space and exploded a few miles above the Earth's surface. It destroyed thousands of square acres of forest in this mostly desolate region of Siberia but could be heard for hundreds of miles. If the comet had arrived a few hours sooner, it would have destroyed a large part of European Russia and killed thousands of people.

PART ONE

Nicholas Rose held a manila envelope open, typing the terms he saw on the lab report into a popular Internet search engine. The Internet access at the observatory was much quicker than it was at his house and he was trying to do everything possible to avoid bringing this envelope home. His sister might mistakenly find it and there was no way Nick wanted Sarah to find out about his test results by accidentally stumbling across an envelope. The girl had dealt with so much adversity in her life already so the last thing he wanted was for her to get freaked out by something that might not even be a problem.

A fully tenured Astronomy professor at the ripe age of twenty-six, Nick Rose taught the subject he most loved at a local community college. In fact, the only passion he’d ever had during his life had been outer space. Comets, stars, black holes, if it happened outside of this world, Nick loved it. After graduating with his master's degree in Astronomy, Nick had been prepared to accept a job with NASA, the only place he really felt he could make a difference.

But when the accident happened, he’d known there was no way he could move halfway across the country and abandon his sister. He had to play the role of reliable older brother, a role that he begrudgingly accepted at first but eventually grew to cherish. His sister meant the world to him, even if she was a bit wilder and more free-spirited than he thought was appropriate for a girl her age.

Man, I'm starting to sound old,
Nick thought.

Accepting the job at the local community college had been the only route left for Nick if he wanted to use his astronomy education to its fullest extent. Not only did this teaching job allow him to remain living at home, it also gave him plenty of access to the astronomical observatory at the nearby state college, which had a close relationship with many of the surrounding community colleges. Younger in his life, Nick always held the thought of community colleges and their students in a very low esteem, but after teaching there for a few years, his opinions had changed. Many of the people Nick remembered from his college years took the opportunity to attend a good private school for granted, choosing to party rather study. But many of the community college students –
his kids
–  were often eager to learn and do well, if only to use the smaller school as a stepping stone to get into better colleges.

When the results of his Internet search finally popped up on the screen, Nick frowned. This was not good. Not good at all. He began to copy down the disease symptoms onto a piece of paper in the folder, trying not to think too much about what he was learning. It was only natural for him to worry and fear everything he read, but there would be plenty of time to deal with those feelings later. He had more important things to worry about than just himself and he knew that getting upset would not do him – or more importantly, his sister – any good. Besides, for all he knew this problem would go away and then he would have done all this worrying for nothing.

Nick was so engrossed in reading and copying down the material that he didn’t even hear his astronomy partner enter the room.

"What are you doing?"

Nick jumped in his seat, quickly putting the manila folder into his briefcase and shutting down the Internet browser.

"Nothing, just looking some things up. What took you so long? You should have been here ten minutes ago."

Josh Clement stood there with his motorcycle helmet under his arm and his bookbag slung over his shoulder.

"Sorry, must have gotten stuck in traffic."

Josh was twenty years old and looked like he would have felt more comfortable hanging out at a skateboard park than in an astronomy lab. Although their ages were different by only six years, Josh and Nick looked like they were several generations removed from one another. While Nick wore his standard conservative outfit of khaki pants and a button down shirt, Josh was clad in clothes that could've come straight from a rock video.

Josh had been a student in one of Nick's classes a few years ago, taking the astronomy class because he 'thought it would be a lot easier than any of the real science classes.' At first, Nick assumed Josh was going to be a lost cause, since he skipped three of the first five classes and did not seem to pay attention or take notes when he was in attendance. Nick kept him after class one day and planned on suggesting Josh drop the class or risk getting an F. Josh admitted that he was slacking off way too much and asked if there was anything he could still do to earn a passing grade. Nick normally had very little sympathy when it came to his student's excuses, but he respected that Josh had been honest with him. He told Josh that if he became his assistant for the rest of the semester and helped him track the night sky, he would pass him. Josh agreed.

Josh soon found that astronomy was much more interesting when he wasn’t simply reading textbooks. The two quickly became friends and Josh found that he really enjoyed searching the night sky, especially while helping Nick to look for undiscovered comets. Josh had been surprised to learn that any undiscovered comet was named after the person who found it, even if that person was just an amateur star gazer. So for the past year and a half, the two met at the observatory on a monthly basis, following Nick's carefully plotted points, searching for something that had yet to be discovered.

"Okay, well we better get to work. We only have the telescope for the next five hours and the weather reports say that clouds will be rolling in within three."

Josh placed his bag and helmet on a nearby table and sat down in the chair next to Nick and the big computer.

"Are you going to let me use the computer tonight?" Josh asked eagerly, though he already knew what the answer would be.

"How many times do I have to tell you? If anybody found out that I let an unregistered user control the equipment, we could lose our place on the schedule."

The observatory had very strict rules when it came to the use of its hugely expensive telescopes, stating that only teachers were allowed to control it with the computer. A violation of this could result in losing their spot on a very tight schedule, as the number of people who wanted to use this telescope far outweighed the amount of time it was available for use.

"I know, I know. But it can't hurt to ask."

Nick took out a thick notebook full of different coordinates and tossed it onto Josh's lap. Josh opened it up about halfway through until he found the place where they left off last time.

"Okay, Copernicus. Ready to start?"

Nick opened up the telescope program on the computer and cracked his knuckles, ready for a long night of typing in numbers.

"Start whenever you want, Galileo."

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"Are you sure we shouldn't try another quadrant?" Josh asked after two long, boring hours of finding nothing. "I mean, we looked in this area last month and didn't find anything. Maybe it's time to try some place new."

"You don't just find a comet by swinging the telescope around, hoping that you're lucky enough to land on something new. It's not going to just fall into our lap. I don't know how many times you're going to have to come here before you learn that searching for comets is mostly a boring, tedious act."

Josh expected this answer, or at least something like it. He made sure to ask Nick at least a few times every month to change quadrants, but every time Nick gave the same old 'comets don't fall on your lap' speech. The whole process was starting to get very boring and he wished something – anything – would happen already. The past two hours felt like a complete waste of time, especially since Josh had been saying all along that they weren't likely to find anything. 'We have to look anyway, just to be sure,' Nick had told him.

Just to be sure?
Josh was sure he was going to fall asleep if they kept this up. He could have been spending this time working on his motorcycle, which had not been running smoothly the past few days. Or he could have just been getting some extra sleep, something he could always use. Or even better, he could be spending time with the most important person in the world to him, especially now that her brother was preoccupied and not around to discover them…

Josh sighed, knowing that any further argument would get him nowhere but angrier that Nick was always such a stickler for following his game plan. He read off the next set of coordinates and Nick typed them into the computer. The huge telescope whirred as it moved the barely noticeable few degrees difference from the last set of coordinates they had checked. After a few more seconds, Nick typed a few things more into the computer and the black image of empty space appeared on the computer. Josh put a check mark next to the unsuccessful set of numbers, something he was quite used to doing.