Return (Matt Turner Series Book 3) (50 page)

A bell chimed vaguely in the background, and Matthew looked to the door.

Tuni wasn’t sure how he interpreted these fresh tears, whether they were borne of mourning or relief.

Her hand floated to Alexander’s head. He sat there unaware, enthralled with an epic battle between two ninja turtles.

Matthew stood. Tuni’s ears unmuddled.

“… there’s a sale next door on these little overalls. Fricken adorable.” It was Iris Turner, and not a hint of the college student air Tuni had known. She was grown up, beautiful, powerful. If not for the loose flannel shirt and torn jeans, Tuni would’ve thought her some executive or politician … cop, even. That’s what it was. She was like her father, Roger Turner.

But wait, what was this? Iris was pushing a stroller. A stroller with a very small, very Turnerish baby.

Tuni stood and went around Alexander. She and Iris hugged and kissed cheeks.

“You look great!” Iris said.

“
You
look great!” Tuni replied, and bent over the baby. “And who is this adorable young man?
Iris
… I had no idea—May I?”

Iris gave her a
“by all means”
wave.

Tuni wedged her fingers beneath the pudgy arms and lifted the drooly, wide-eyed boy to her chest.

“This is Horus,” Iris said. “And, as much as I love him, he ain’t mine.”

“
Horus?
So whose-”

“I’m gonna head back next door,” Iris blurted. “Great to see you, Tuni! We’ll catch up again some time.” And she scurried out the door.

“His mother’s pick, not mine,” Matthew said, reaching up to wipe the drool on the baby’s bib. “You know, Horus? Son of
Isis
and Osiris?”

It came together quickly in Tuni’s head as she carried Horus back with her to her seat. “Isis
Meier?
Jon’s daughter? But, how old—I’m so sorry. I sound like an absolute arse.”

“Arse, arse, arse!” Alexander was always paying attention at the right time.

Outside the window, Tuni saw Iris meet back up with an attractive blonde woman. “Oh, is that … Is that her outside?”

Matthew glanced back. “Oh, no. Don’t scare me like that.” He smiled, shook his head. “No, that’s Joss Lynn. She’s my,
ah
… She was the little girl that got kidnapped when I was around nine, if you recall. Anyway, about Isis Meier, she’s twenty-seven. And was a mistake. Just found out about that little gentleman a few months ago.” He nodded to Horus. “But now that everything’s all,
ah
…
clear
about my, eh,
role
… I’m oddly finding myself enjoying it. Enjoying
him
.” Matt was blushing, cheeks now advancing from red to purple.

“So you and Isis are …” Tuni
clicked
and swiped her fingers before her neck.

“Yeah. Thank God. She’s torturing some other guy a few blocks over. Next month, she’s off to Cambodia for six months, so this is sort of a trial run. Our first overnighter. I’m going to have my hands full when she’s gone, and—knowing her—probably for another seventeen years after that.”

“Like a one hundred percent thing?” Tuni said as she made faces at the giggling Horus, bouncing him on her knee.

“Oh, no … gosh … no way. Isis could never stand that. More like ninety-nine.” He winked. “Oh, before I forget …” He searched his shorts’ pockets and produced a business card, handing it to Tuni. “I told her I was on my way to see you after the pick-up and she asked if you were working. Said to say ‘hi,’ and that she could hook you up back at the museum, if you were interested.”

Tuni felt another surge of tears approaching, but was able to hold them back this time. She continued bouncing little Horus, looked at the card’s NYMM dinosaur logo, and said, “I’d be extremely interested.”

*

Alexandria, Egypt – El Zaytoun Trainyard – Five months later

Along a line exactly parallel to Alexandria’s coastline, precisely one mile (as the bird flies) southwest of Diocletian’s Column at the ruined site of the Serapeum, lay an array of expansive warehouses situated at the end of an immense train yard. Ostensibly, the yard’s placement here, aligned with the current branch of the Nile, and in some respects replacing one of the river’s historical functions as a shipping conduit, makes perfect sense.

The city’s great harbor no longer served as the country’s import/export hub, instead hosting an array of luxurious sailboats and mega-yachts, while the clamor of container ships and tugboats carried on in the less picturesque harbor to the west. It seemed logical to lay tracks leading to this busy port.

What remained odd, however, was the fact that the yard had been built a stone’s throw from the Nile, in an area that city planners knew would sell at top dollar as the metropolis grew. And it wasn’t as though they were simply bringing transportation where it was needed. The current piers and infrastructure were built at the
same time
as the train yard.

Three more miles west, another port extended from the shoreline—the old port—and cut through a low-income, industrial suburb where near-future residential growth was highly unlikely. Half a century ago, here was where most officials wished to expand the area’s shipping foundation, but somehow this proposal was defeated, and now over a dozen acres of prime land lay below tons of unsightly industrial clutter and rust.

Accusations had flown about back rooms and bribes, but most now believed the decision was superstition-based, as the vast majority of acreage had once been known as the Great Necropolis, or City of the Dead. What few tombs had actually been found in the Necropolis had been cleared of remains, and a century of searches for additional tombs had come up empty-handed. Of course, over 2,500 years, it wasn’t easy for a hidden tomb to remain so. Nothing was found, perhaps, because there was nothing left to find.

Building 112-E, situated atop the one-mile mark from Diocletian’s Column, sat in a secluded corner of the train yard, behind the rest of the much-used, matching warehouses. A curious observer—an observer who’d made it past multiple high fences, barbed wire, and security cameras—might at first find it odd that 112-E had no doors or windows, but would then logically assume it was simply an expansion from the neighboring structures, and therefore needed no entrances of its own.

A few days ago, in the dark of a moonless night, another observer decided to scale the wall, crawl to the peak of the slippery metal roof, unscrew the sole spinning ventilation dome, and rappel inside for a closer look.

His headlamp had swept across the empty warehouse, discerning only splintered concrete pavement full of long-dead grass and weeds. Cracked white paint marked an old borderline or where a road had once passed. It looked like someone had simply dropped the building atop a parking lot.

He’d gone to the innermost wall and walked the full hundred feet from end to end, shifting over several paces, and walking back. On the third such march, he’d come upon a lumpy, rectangular patch of asphalt, seemingly laid by hand.

Tonight, Matt returned in cargo pants, long sleeves, and gloves, along with a backpack full of noisy tools, and set to work excavating the asphalt. It took a lot less time and effort than he’d expected. The thin layer of asphalt had been spread on top of a steel plate—the sort used to temporarily cover road work. Once he severed the loose bond between asphalt and concrete, raising and sliding the plate out of the way was a simple matter of leverage and a long pry bar.

A short, dingy, aluminum ladder (made of quality materials in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, USA) led down to a claustrophobic crawlspace that smelled of old wood. The horizontal shaft was only about two feet tall by two feet wide, making the journey through it slow and onerous.

Matt followed the shaft through a sharp left turn, and stopped. Before him, the level ground suddenly dropped four feet, and a contorted mummy lay at the bottom, with frayed, almost entirely deteriorated wrappings.

Confused, he backed up, edged around the corner, and examined the walls at the corner. All solid.

He crawled back to the leathery cadaver and shone his headlamp around the area. Beyond the depression, the shaft resumed, but only for another couple feet before ending at a sloped pile of fist-sized rocks. He smiled.

Interesting how the scrolls’ hiding spots were so much more complex than this.

He inched forward, braced himself against the side walls, and carefully lowered his feet into the depression. Stepping around the mummy as much as he could, Matt made his way to the rubble on the other side, and began scooping the rocks back, dropping them on poor Mr. Whoever-this-was. Once he’d cleared a suitable path, he climbed up, and continued forward into the chamber ahead.

It was strange not knowing what to expect. A cursory check with a gloveless hand revealed that neither the floor nor walls contained useful imprints. All he knew was that this was where the stewards had hidden what they considered to be the true collection: the
tokens
.

And when he reached the widened chamber, peering down into another depression—this one of unknown depth due to being completely filled from wall to wall—he finally understood. It was the most obvious thing he couldn’t believe hadn’t occurred to him. And Patra, Philip, and Kaleb had all somehow manipulated their imprints to conceal this utterly pervasive aspect of their lives.

With his boots anchored to the tight shaft’s wall and ceiling, one hand twisted backward to hold the ledge, he slid forward and bent over the chamber, hanging precariously above the thousands of strewn tokens. To fall into this quagmire probably wouldn’t be as bad as his incident in that basement store room, especially with his body this covered up, but there was a whole lot of pointy and stabby down there.

Stretching … stretching … fingers grazing a peak of tokens …

Got you!

He curled three tokens into his fist, and edged his way back up into the shaft. A moment of breath, tokens secured in a breast pocket, and he began the painstaking journey backwards to the mummy.

Fatigue and dizziness borne of thin air almost convinced him he didn’t need to replace the wall of rocks, but he forced himself on, finding every little pebble around, beneath, or on top of the mummy, whom he decided to dub “Jerky Face.”

Over an hour later, Matt was finally outside in the cool, fresh air. With the dome vent replaced, he stole across the warehouse roofs to the access ladder, slid down to the ground, and followed his well-practiced path around the surveillance systems, to the isolated corner where he’d scaled the barbed wire fence.

His boots squished down into the strip of succulent groundcover.

A deep, cleansing breath.

Clear.

He brushed from his shirt the dust, cobwebs, and assorted debris, pocketed his gloves, and turned to head up the alley to his car.

“Hello, Steward.”

The voice spoke just as Matt’s eyes landed on the figure standing only six feet away. Matt startled and his hand reflexively shot to the tactical pen in his belt.

“A fitting tool for the modern Steward, no?”

Matt side-stepped out of the plants for better footing, and to turn the unexpected visitor toward the street light. The voice had been androgynous, the accent indistinct—like a mix of Mediterranean cultures, but using standard American English inflections.

The figure rotated as Matt turned, allowing the light to shine on them. Matt assumed this was a woman by the shape of the hips, and locations of fat deposits. She was only a few inches shorter than him, with a manly haircut vaguely parted to one side, wearing loose khaki slacks, and a baggy shirt that stretched over her neutral chest, round belly, and love handles. Her hands remained in her pockets, and she slouched like a chubby high school kid with low self-esteem. But as the shadows rescinded, her face came into sharp focus, revealing a tranquil, cherubic appearance. She had crow’s feet and deep lines, but with big round eyes—pale green and all-seeing—and a latent smile’s tiny curl on puckery lips.

“Quite visual,” she said. “We’re pleased to see you’ve recovered, Matthew. Displeased to see this fact littering the headlines.”

“And who are you?” Matt finally said.

“Anzar. A Steward. May we invite you to tea?”

A Steward! A real-life, modern-day Patra.

“Like Supatra in title and mission,” she said, “but certainly not in eminence. We’re
particularly
interested in your direct experience with the Steward.”

“You’re a telepath.”

“As are you. It’s all in sensitivity and practice, isn’t it? Each of us begins with the physical—object-aided is always most potent. And quite the blessing, that is. We couldn’t imagine a childhood spent free of limitations.”

“‘We’ … ‘all’ … There’re more than one of you?” She nodded and took a step closer. So many questions filled Matt’s head. And she could read it all, couldn’t she? This was what it felt like to be around him. For nothing to be private. “How, in all my years, have I never found a single imprint from one of us until Patra?”

“For one, we’re obviously an exceedingly rare breed, but also because we only imprint when we choose to. Come. Tea.”

Anzar strolled on ahead toward the small, dilapidated house on the corner. It was the only residence in the industrial area. With the windows boarded up, Matt had thought it abandoned—condemned, just no one had gotten around to bulldozing it.

He had the three tokens in his pocket. She had to know he’d taken them. He dipped a finger into his breast pocket and extracted an ink-stained cane pen—one of the ancient scribes’ writing tools. Every document ever written or copied at the Library—the imprints not only a visual preservation of a scroll, but also capturing the scribe’s
intent
. With the thousands of pens and brushes in that chamber, no one need ever
interpret
an ancient document again.

Anzar stopped and glanced back at him. “Yes, your souvenirs. They’ll need to be returned, of course … but not right away.” She smiled. “We use it like a library, too. Return a scribe, check out another … But come, please. Tea. It’s nearly four a.m. We’ll discuss your …
ambitious
ideas about the collection. And you’ll share Steward Supatra with us.”