Please read "Super Sick" first. This story is better if you do. Enjoy!
Years of desperate searching ended with a letter sliding from an envelope. Bradford flipped the note hastily, his eyes immediately striking upon the answer. The Canary Islands…?
The words scrolled across the page in a neat cursive, and though the note was unaddressed, Bradford knew who had sent it. No letter sent by regular post could have found him, but even with the frequency of his covert travels, the Researcher always found him anyway… and she had found it!
“I’ve been there a dozen times! How could it be the Canary Islands?” But there it was, staring him in the face. The Researcher was never wrong, and despite the omission of a bibliography, Bradford knew that she had scoured every document, transcribed every interview, and sought out her own hidden sources to consult. She was invariably and immensely thorough.
That’s why she cost so much.
Bradford looked at the note one last time, reveling in an answer for once. Then he set the card’s corner alight, tossing it into the fireplace. He watched it burn, the flames’ flickering glow dancing across his firm expression, the paper curling and fragmenting into grey-white ash. Then he scattered the remains with a fire poker. No one was going to follow him this time.
***
Bradford walked out of an old manor house onto a misty street in Stirling, Scotland. He hadn’t expected to leave the city for weeks, but he wouldn’t complain that he received news sooner than he ever could have hoped. I need to beat them there, he thought.
The opposition would only get worse if they knew how close he was.
Bradford entered a black car waiting for him around the corner from the manor and tapped on the glass, telling the driver to leave.
The car traveled slowly and indirectly through the twilight, drifting down the misty streets but steadily advancing toward the rendezvous point. After a few of these seemingly random turns, a nondescript blue sedan began trailing behind, always a few cars back. You’d think they’d get better, he thought. Of course, that car could be a decoy to distract from the real surveillance… well, we’ll just have to see how they deal with what I have planned. Bradford smiled to himself as the car took another turn.
What he was seeking was unknown to all except him, and even Bradford was uncertain as to what lay beyond the Gateway. He had searched cities, ruins and visited countless sites described as “gateways” for a decade now, finding nothing that matched what the Traveler had related. And if that search had frustrated him, those pains were little when compared to how much less he knew about the Traveler herself.
The Traveler, as she introduced herself each time, had disappeared after their third meeting when she had finished sharing the same words once again–a key–and made him commit them to memory. Bradford had stayed awake long into the night sketching the uncanny woman’s ethereal eyes onto sheet after sheet of paper, unable to contain the compulsion to capture the look just as he had seen them. He found the longer time went one, that was the only thing he could remember about her.
On that last meeting, as she was turning away from him, she said that she would find him again once he had opened the Gateway. Now, after ten years the time was truly coming to see what the door would open and, perhaps, why the Traveler had chosen him.
Feedback from the driver’s retrofitted radio scanner pulled Bradford back to the present. A tunnel loomed ahead, its own form of gateway, leading into darkness. Bradford’s car entered a realm of blinding yellow headlights and misty obscurity, where brake lights dripped down forming red pools behind the cars waiting for a signal at the tunnel’s end. There was light enough to see forms and shapes, but not enough to warn a watcher of what they might have missed.
This was just the perfect place to lose a trail.
The driver stopped a few car-lengths into the tunnel and Bradford slipped out into the wet darkness. Faintly glowing paint drips on the shoulder led him to a car four or five ahead of him and he entered it without a sound. The driver winked in the rearview mirror, her curly hair glowing red in the foggy brake lights. The Researcher…
“Are you excited to see the sun after all this rain?” She asked him, turning a covert operation into a regular day in traffic.
“The sun has little to do with my excitement… it isn’t what I’m searching for.” He still didn’t know what to make of her. He had been half a mind to pass over her services when they had first met. How could someone that… conspicuous discover the secrets he needed?
Now with an answer, he was certainly pleased that she had convinced him otherwise.
The Researcher shook her head, looking forward at the queue of cars beginning to make their turns. Her eyes bounced from her windshield to her mirror and back again. “Always business… don’t you ever stop and have some fun?”
He didn’t answer for a moment, then: “No. No, I do not, Researcher.” I really should ask for her real name…
“Hmm…” She said, looking both ways before clearing the tunnel and taking a left.
Bradford turned his head and watched as his previous black car took a right, the blue sedan
following a few cars behind it.
“To the airport… the Gateway is waiting.”
***
The white G450 touched down on a long tarmac strip hugging the distant edge of one investor or other’s estate. Bradford’s quest had drawn the interest of personal collectors, government agencies, and other forms of treasure hunters alike. No one knew what the Gateway was or would reveal, but none of them could pass on what the discovery might afford them.
He walked off the plane’s steps with the Researcher close behind. The sun beamed above indifferently, shining the same as it had every time Bradford had visited the islands. He looked back at her red hair wreathed by the deep blue of the tropical sky. He had tried the few times they had met since beginning their professional relationship to ignore her striking features, and he felt that he did a good job of demonstrating that–even if he did a deplorable job of it internally.
“So, where are we going?” He asked not looking back again, the image of her descending the steps still blazing in his mind.
The Researcher smiled then lengthened her stride, brushing his arm benignly as she passed, with a look that said ‘I’m not giving it away just yet.’ Then she continued past him to meet their guide who was waiting up ahead. She took keys from the man, shushing his protests before they could really begin. Then she flipped her hair and strode off, leaving them both behind.
Bradford shook his head, his arm buzzing where she had touched it. She seemed to always try to get under his skin–break his composure.
But had she already…?
The Researcher led the men off the radiating pavement into the shade of a small hangar with a few expensive but dated aircraft. A Land Rover was waiting for them stocked with water and other supplies for a long drive.
She finally spoke. “We’re heading inland,” and she entered the driver’s seat with a wink, reaching across the console to open the passenger door for Bradford.
The guide entered the backseat, shaking his head.
***
They drove through the rugged wilderness passing arid stone hills and tough desert flora.
After some time of nothing but the sounds of the engine, the vehicle climbed a rise like any other. Only this time the world opened up before them and at the highest point a great monolith stood next to a smaller but still large stone companion.
“Where are we?” Bradford asked, looking at the two stones. “I’ve never been to this formation before.”
“This is the Roque Nublo. It’s a popular attraction, but it doesn’t have ‘gateway’ in its name, so you’ve never bothered… I think you’ll agree that it certainly looks the part, though.” The Researcher said, somehow implying that not wanting to have fun had stopped him from stumbling upon this sooner.
It indeed looked the part. It wasn’t hard to imagine the two stones as the remains of an ancient collapsed doorway.
… After all these years! He stood within sight of what he had been searching for.
Bradford, the Researcher, and the guide exited the Land Rover and hiked up the last of the way, the coarse, igneous rock grinding against the soles of their shoes. Bradford barely felt the exertion of the climb; he could have stormed the hill in a suit of armor for all the years of questions he world be answering.
They stepped into the shadow of the great monolith.
The air chilled and the colors of the surrounding hills warped and brightened in an instant, stopping them all in their tracks.
“I guess this must be the place,” Bradford said. The Researcher raised an eyebrow at him, looking out over the suddenly kaleidoscopic hills, but he simply walked past. He couldn’t spend time investigating the phenomena.
He needed to open the gate.
Bradford walked toward the stones, each step a dream fulfilled from a decade of fitful nights. He had imagined this day over and over, and it made the living of it feel almost like a memory.
Finally, he reached the base of the stone.
The colors of the hills were even more vibrant and strange as he looked around. They quivered and swirled with the beams projected down by a rainbow sun above. He reached out his hand and touched the stone. It was warm beneath his fingers, somehow impervious to the cold of its own shadow.
The Traveler’s eyes hovered on the edges of his consciousness seeming to watch him from his own recollections. He had always wondered why the Traveler had chosen to appear to him… I guess I’ll figure that out now.
With that thought, Bradford walked toward the center of the two stone sentinels, mentally rehearsing the key that the Traveler had made him memorize. What would be hiding behind this sealed portal? Would it be safe?
“Bradford!” The Researcher hissed from where he had left her, standing beside the guide. “A drone is coming in hot! It may be armed!”
Bradford had no time to hesitate. He walked to the very center, feeling something pulsing beneath him, though not seeing any of the energy’s effects on the surrounding pebbles or plants. At the center, he stopped, threw his arms out to the sides toward each monolith, and began reciting the key.
“Silent steps, distant glories,
Beyond the end of the island cliffs.
Home again, down below me,
One breath, one wink, one inch to trip.”
With the final word all the color in the hills flowed at him, swirling in a torrent of molten vibrancy. He had no time to move out of the way; it was all upon him in an instant. He held his breath but the colors seeped between his closed lips, into his eyes, ears, and nose. There was nothing but the colors, no one but him, nowhere but here.
Then the world returned as quickly as it had been overwhelmed, leaving Bradford crouching between the monoliths gasping for air. The hills and stone showed no sign of the supernatural power they held only moments ago.
When Bradford regained his composure he walked over to his two associates. He noticed the sparking and smoking remains of a military-grade drone and a pistol held comfortably in the Researcher’s hand.
“Don’t worry boss; I took care of it–I don’t think it was armed.” She said with a wink.
“Apparently you were,” Bradford responded.
She laughed. “You can joke!”
The guide looked like he had gotten himself in a little over his head. “Uh, sir, are we done here? Could we get you back to the airport now?”
Bradford didn’t really know what had happened; he wasn’t even sure he had received everything he had come for, but he nodded his acceptance anyway. The three of them walked back to the Land Rover and drove away like any other tourist group would have done after getting a photo and having a picnic.
“So, what happened?” The Researcher asked. “You walked over there, nearly passed out, then you walked back.”
“You didn’t see the–ahem–the, er, dust devil that choked me up?”
She shook her head, her eyebrow raising ever so slightly.
“Yes, it was nothing… I believe it was the right place, but maybe there is more to learn before we can truly unlock its secrets.”
She nodded again. “Well, perhaps I should call in some friends to keep an eye on the place… make sure none of your admirers try and figure those secrets out before you.” She played with the band of her smartwatch, tapping a quick pattern down its center.
“Sure… that would be good. Thank you.” He looked out the window back at the two stones on the outcropping as they descended the rise. I’ll tell her what happened when I understand it myself… maybe the Traveler will come and tell me what this all means. He turned back to face the front and saw the Researcher speaking quietly into her watch.
“So, what is your real name, anyway? We’ve worked together all this time and I have no idea what to call you.”
She finished one last comment into her watch through smiling lips. “Well, I thought you’d never ask!” She flipped her glowing red hair. “I go by many names… but most people call me Lucine.”
To be continued…