Black Onyx Read online

  Two years later, Dillon was officially adopted and his last name became Mentzer. Now, at twenty-seven, he couldn’t remember what the last name of his biological father had actually been.

  He stretched and stood up and looked to the sky again and then over to the mountain. He glanced from that to his tent and bit his lower lip.

  “Screw it,” he mumbled. He pulled on his crampons, snuck away some equipment, and began the long hike up the mountain.

  It was cold, even with the several layers he had on, but there was an exhilaration to it that he was so familiar with, he wasn’t sure he could live without it. That’s what was most shocking about James’ retirement: what exactly was he going to do with the inevitable boredom that was coming?

  The hike was torturous. Each step seemed to be more difficult than the last. His hands felt numb and he had lost sensation in his feet a long time ago. Frost was building up in his nose and he’d have to stop and snort it out every ten or fifteen minutes. But the view was incredible. A dark, icy landscape lit by moon and stars. As he climbed higher, with nothing else around him, it felt as if he were climbing into the sky.

  He reached the top and found the opening. It took a moment to bolt in the cables and ropes as the ice felt much harder than during the day, but he finished and harnessed himself in. As he lowered, he looked down the mountain to the small candle flame of the fire in the distance.

  The cavern became pitch-black only twenty feet down and he flipped on his headlamp. He repelled down the rest of the way. The cavern seemed smaller in the dark as the illumination from his lamp only went about a dozen feet. It was quiet down here except for the echo of his crampons digging into the ice and snow.

  Over the bridge, now without the sounds of others, he could hear a slight wind blowing, though it didn’t appear like there were any openings in the cavern to let it in. He stayed in the middle and didn’t look down over the sides into the gaping maw of blackness.

  He could see the shadows of the buildings as he came out of the corridor. It felt like people could still live here and he stood quietly a moment just to make absolutely certain no one was. He went inside a home near the tower. It appeared identical to the one he had been in before, down to the vase on the table. He went into the bedroom and the bed was the same hard, uncomfortable gray material as the other. He lay down in the groove—and felt something.

  Heat. Almost like a furnace. Dillon sat up and it was cold. He lay back down, and the heat overtook him again. Taking off his gloves and raising his hand, he could tell the exact moment when it went from hot to cold. It was a heat field of some kind, just over the bed. Without any holes in the gray material, he didn’t know where the heat was coming from unless there was something just underneath it.

  He sat up and left the house. Wandering through the streets, he felt like an invader. He hadn’t asked anyone’s permission to be here, to be in their beds or looking through their homes. Reminding himself that this was a town of ghosts, he walked to the tower.

  Looking in the same place as before, he could have sworn the symbols had changed. But perhaps he was misremembering because of the excitement the first time?

  He reached his hand out and touched it. It went straight through, inside the tower.

  13

  Dana was sitting in her office when she decided to check on something. One of the boys in the pequeños locos was going to flip. A gang made up of ten to fourteen-year-olds, they had been incredibly difficult to penetrate. Knowing that they, at worst, would serve time in juvenile detention, which was run by their gang, they had no fear of the law.

  She wheeled out past the cubicles to the conference room on the other side of the floor. It was morning and people were just rousing themselves out of sleep with coffee and the sugar rush from donuts. Looking out the windows, she saw the streets of El Paso below her; an armadillo was flattened on the road in front of their building. None of the cars were stopping to move it to the side of the road.

  Dana continued to the conference room. Inside, Special Agent Pablo Trujillo was there with twelve-year-old Mateo Salas. The boy was staring at the conference room table, an opened soda in front of him.

  “Mateo,” Trujillo said, “this is Dana. My boss.”

  “Hello Mateo,” she said with a smile. “Pablo says you wanted to speak to us.”

  He nodded his head but didn’t look up.

  “Well, Mateo, I think that’s very brave of you to do this. And we’re going to take good care of you. Do you understand?”

  He nodded.

  “Where are his parents?” she asked.

  “Outside in the hall. They gave us permission to speak to him alone.”

  She went out to the hall and saw a couple sitting on the chairs. The man was in jeans and cowboy boots and staring off into space. The female looked like she had been crying all night. Dana wheeled back in and went to her office. As she was about to log on to her computer, her phone rang.

  “Gladstone,” she said.

  “This is Miguel. Is happening in four nights, on Thursday. The shipment’s going to Honolulu International.”

  “What’s it doing in Hawaii?”

  “That’s where we’re picking it up.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. I just know where we’re picking it up.”

  The line went dead.

  Dana called up Michael.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Get me a ticket to Honolulu and book a hotel for both of us. Call the field office there and have someone meet me at the airport.”

  “Sure. What’s going on?”

  “I think we finally have the bastard, Mike. I think we finally have him.”

  14

  Dillon’s hand went all the way through as if the tower weren’t there. He yelped and pulled his hand out. Standing there a moment, watching his breath in the light of the headlamp, he debated whether he should just leave right now and go back to camp.

  No way, he thought. How many people have an opportunity like this?

  He closed his eyes, put both his hands up, and walked into the tower.

  Opening his eyes, he could see a staircase in front of him leading up. It was circular, like a lighthouse, and went up higher than he could see. He took the first step and began to climb.

  Suddenly, it grew hot and he felt sweat underneath his coat. He unzipped it and took off his beanie and gloves.

  The steps were steep and seemed to go up forever. He climbed until he felt battery acid in his legs and had to stop for a moment. Looking down, he realized it wasn’t actually that far. The air was just growing thin. He had brought supplemental oxygen with him and he took it out now and breathed a few deep breaths before continuing up.

  At the top of the stairs was a room. It was empty except for a small panel on the other side. He walked to it. It was a tube with a crystal in it. It was hot to the touch and appeared almost like diamonds but with a soft glow in the center. It was solid and didn’t move until he applied downward pressure. It was a lever. He held the crystal in his hand, his breathing labored, and pulled the lever.

  The air rushed out of him as the floor opened up and he fell. He was screaming as he slid down in an arch and spun and went into an opening in the ground. It was pure darkness around him and he was sliding faster and faster.

  Dillon dug his fingers into the slide to arrest his fall but the surface was too slick. He tried turning over and stopping with his boots but it didn’t even slow him.

  And then the darkness began to fade and a blue light illuminated his surroundings as he was flung from the slide and landed on his back. It knocked the wind out of him.

  “Oh, shit.”

  He rolled onto his side, pain radiating up and down his body as he pulled himself up, stretching his back. He sat quietly and just breathed, trying to tell if any of his ribs were broken, when he saw what the blue light was.

  In front of him, in what looked like a casing of ice, was a man.

 
; He crawled back, startled, until he hit the wall. The man was standing there looking at him, unmoving. Dillon swallowed and stood up. He didn’t move for a long time and then slowly stepped to the left and then the right. The man’s eyes weren’t following him. Slowly, he began to approach him.

  As he got near, he saw the proportions of the man. He was huge, at least seven feet in height and built with massive muscles. But his skin was a slick black surface, his face expressionless. It wasn’t a man. It was some sort of…suit.

  Dillon touched the ice casing, and it slid down, revealing the suit.

  “Whoa.”

  Dillon sat on the floor a long time. He had his knees to his chest and his arms wrapped around them, staring up at the suit. What would something like this be worth? He couldn’t tell what material it was made of. But underneath it was a pool of black. It was as black as oil but seemed to have the consistency of water… and it was moving.

  Finally making up his mind that he would take the suit, though he still couldn’t even guess what it was made of since he’d never seen a material as slick, he realized he didn’t know how to get out of here. Glancing around, all he saw was an opening in the ceiling, maybe five feet by five feet. He went to the slide and attempted to climb up, but it was impossible. It was too slick.

  He walked to the suit, and saw another one behind it. Two black suits with liquid underneath them. He stared up at it as he reached out to touch it, to feel the material. His fingers barely glanced the surface when the suit opened up and lowered to the ground. It was split down the middle, meant for someone to step into.

  Suddenly, he felt pulling inside of him. He thought at first maybe he was getting ill but the pulling grew stronger and his stomach growled. He stepped away from the suit and every muscle in his body froze. There was resistance to his movement. Before he recognized what was happening, he flew off his feet and was being pulled toward the suit. He spun around on his stomach and thrust the sharp edges of his crampons into the ground. It slowed him a little and then the force grew stronger. It felt like his bones were being pulled out of his body and he screamed.

  He was flung off the ground and flew backward, slamming into the suit.

  “Holy—”

  The suit wrapped around him, and he was in darkness.

  15

  Dillon felt lightness, like he was floating, and thought he might throw up. His head felt loopy and he couldn’t see anything. And then a flash of blue and sparkles of light swimming past his vision before the room was in full view again. He could hear his own breathing.

  He tried to move, and found it was effortless. He took a step, his knees snapped back, and he fell. Catching himself with his hands, the ground cracked underneath him.

  “Oh man,” he said, his voice with a metallic edge to it from the muffling of the suit.

  He stood up. The suit felt like silk against him and the only sensation he felt was from a soft movement, like water slowly pouring over him. He looked down to the ground and saw imprints of his hands. He walked, slowly, to the wall. Walking was more difficult as the suit didn’t bend very easily. It was almost like it was just a microsecond behind his thoughts. He touched the wall, and could feel it through the suit, as if he weren’t wearing anything. He ran his hand along it and registered warmth. He made a fist and tapped the wall…once…twice and then a little harder the third time and it cracked underneath the force of his light blow.

  That’s when he felt something else. A wetness at his feet. He looked down. The black fluid that had been underneath the suit was moving across the ground. It had pooled by his feet and then, almost as if bracing itself, flung itself on the suit.

  Dillon instantly felt pain. Pain and burning and rage. He saw flashes in his mind. A great city on an open plain, gold statues decorating the buildings. He saw priests blessing rivers and mountains with the blood of sacrificed women. He saw wars and diseases and a fiery hailstorm that rained down on the city, men in black flying suits like the one he was in, attempting to break apart the hunks of molten rock that were destroying the city.

  He saw other men, mutated men in suits much larger than his, raiding the city, broken bodies underneath their feet as they killed anything in their path. Monsters.

  Entire groups of men, women and children were slaughtered as the two types of suits clashed and fought and destroyed themselves.

  But Dillon also felt something else. Power. Power unlike he had ever felt before. The blue tint to his vision was turning red and he was breathing heavily. He felt himself…changing. Something was happening to him and he felt himself growing into the suit, his arms feeling tight inside it, his feet in pain, his head on fire.

  “No!”

  He tried to step away but the liquid followed him, climbing up his leg. He ran from it and into the wall, taking it out and falling into the room next door. More suits like the one he had on, some of them brown, more pools of black liquid.

  The liquid was up to his hip now and he was filled with pure power. He felt that he could move the earth and there was no one that could stop him. The supremacy and the rage was just as equally tainted with agony. He grabbed at the liquid on him and it wasn’t a liquid at all. It had mass, a form. He ripped it off of himself but it wouldn’t let go. It clung to him and he swore he could hear it inside his head.

  He screamed and used both hands to rip the black substance off and throw it across the room. It spattered on the wall and slowly, gradually, began to gather itself up again. He was on his feet and searching the room for a way out. It was the same as the last one: a slide and a square hole in the ceiling.

  The substance had assembled itself together now and was crawling down to the floor.

  Dillon raced into the other room and braced himself as he sprinted for the wall. He held his arms up to block his face, but didn’t have to. He barreled through the wall like it wasn’t even there.

  Another room, the same: two suits, a slide, a hole. He sprinted through another wall, and another, and another, all the same. The substance was behind him. Going from room to room like some predator.

  Dillon ran to the slide and attempted to climb up again, jamming his fingers into the slide’s material like knives and using it to pull himself up. But it was too slow and when he lost his footing he slid back down. The substance was now in the other room.

  Dillon looked up to the hole. He was thinking of what to do when he noticed the oddest sensation: his feet were off the ground. He was levitating.

  He lost control the moment he became aware of it and crashed back down. He rolled over several times as the substance was in the room, pulling itself toward him. He looked to the hole in the ceiling again, and started to rise.

  “Whoa…whoa…oh holy crap…”

  He rose through the hole and kept going, not looking back into the chamber he had just been in. The substance leapt for him, but missed. It couldn’t get up the hole.

  The hole was just a long tunnel that led outside. He could feel the cold of outside as he floated up and out of the hole. He looked down and lost control again and landed on the side of the mountain, rolling several dozen feet before stopping himself. He stood up, shaking his head, and looked down to the suit in the moonlight. Underneath the light of the moon, it glowed an uncanny sapphire.

  Dillon saw the light of the campfire. He began running over and felt that he was running too fast. The images before him were moving at an incredible speed. He looked down and saw his feet as a blur as they raced across ice and snow. Though the suit was larger than he, it seemed almost to adjust; to somehow shrink, to fit him.

  He looked up again, and his feet left the ground. He was up in the air, climbing. Twenty, thirty, forty feet.

  “Owwwwww!”

  James and George heard him. He saw their tents rustle as the flaps opened and they climbed out, James putting on his glasses and looking up to the sky, his mouth falling open.

  “James,” Dillon shouted, “James!”

  He couldn’t think
of anything else to say. He spun in a loop. As his arms came closer to his body, the speed of his flight increased. As they went farther from his body, he slowed. Nothing was propelling him: there was no gas or combustion coming out of his boots or back. He was simply lifted up into the air as if he’d become wind itself.

  He spun around, going higher and higher, coming in front of the full moon that was out, the suit lighting up to a powerful shade of indigo, before he tumbled back down and came close to the ground before zooming back up. It was like walking: he did the action first by thinking about it but once he was in the middle of it, he didn’t have to think.

  Spinning like a top, he grew a little dizzy. He felt himself lose concentration and his altitude began to decline. “Whoa. Whoa! Suit, suit! Stop…stop!”

  He slammed into the earth like a crashing building. It shook the ground and tore up ice and rock. His body was imbedded into the frozen soil. Slowly, he pushed himself up. He felt pain but not as much as he should have. He looked back to camp and saw everyone standing outside their tents.

  “Um, hey guys. So I found something kinda cool.”

  16

  James was the first to snap out of shock. He walked over to Dillon and stood silent a while before touching the suit.

  “I went back to the city,” Dillon said.

  “So I see.”

  “This was in that tower. In a chamber underneath the city.”

  “You just put on a strange…artifact?”

  “It’s probably more accurate to say it put me on.”

  George was walking up now. “What the hell! I told you no one gets anything without me. This trip is over!”

  He went to grab Dillon and instinctively, Dillon raised his hand. Without a single touch, George was thrown off his feet, flying back and tumbling head over heels.

  “George!” James said, running over to him.