Chapter 22

Bamahfuz had received the bad news with ill grace. He threw a precious Chinese porcelain vase across the room. It exploded against the wall. He was angry and frustrated. He summoned Abu Sameer to his home, and lectured him on the importance of stopping the cavers from reaching the City. The two of them sat on cushions in his majlis and discussed the crisis. Bamahfuz ate dates and slurped sweet tea. Abu Sameer took no food or drink. His face was inscrutable.

“I don’t think we can stop them,” said Abu Sameer. “There are not enough of us. Our opponents are very powerful. They control the City and the momentum is on their side.”

Bamahfuz shook his index finger at Abu Sameer.

“I have interests to protect!” he shouted. “I cannot allow the Americans and their allies to gain access to the City. If necessary, I will send troops into the caves to stop them. Iran will help us!”

Abu Sameer thought silently for a moment, and then said: “You may have to do that.”

Ehsan joined the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution for two principal reasons. Of course, he believed in promoting the faith and the revolution. He was too young to remember the Shah or the age of imperialist domination, but he had listened to the mullahs in school and had learned about the glorious return of Imam Khomeini, the ouster of the traitorous Shah and the humiliation of the diplomats of the Great Satan, America. The second reason was that he needed the income. His father had died of a prolonged and painful cancer, and his mother was still raising a brood of boys and girls younger than he. They lived in a cramped apartment in downtown Tehran. It wasn’t much, but it was home, and Ehsan missed it. He also missed his rambunctious brothers and sisters, and the soulful eyes of his mother. Ehsan felt it was his duty to support the family, as his father had done. He didn’t have a college degree, so the Revolutionary Guards seemed to be the best option. After rigorous and seemingly endless combat and survival training, he was now a proud private first class and served in an elite unit of military “problem solvers.”

Ehsan found little that made sense about his current assignment. He and his fellow Guards were on a clandestine mission whose purpose remained a mystery. They were ten of Iran’s best fighters, the equivalent of America’s Special Forces or SEALs. They had traveled secretly by sea aboard a nondescript tanker from the port of Bushehr in the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz, around Arabia and into the Red Sea, disembarking secretly at night on the southwestern Saudi coast not far from Jizan.

It was close to dawn when they entered the cave. Ehsan’s sergeant had received their orders from agents of Salem Bamahfuz, a Saudi businessman and friend of Iran. They were to locate and kill a group of American intruders and their lackeys. The Iranian force had entered through a different cave opening, but they knew where they were going, and where they would intercept the infidels. The mission was straightforward and simple. He checked his AK-47; he was proud of the sturdy semi-automatic rifle, and cared for it as if it were his own child. Ehsan adjusted the lamp on his helmet and took a deep breath. Let’s get this done, he thought. As the strike team moved deeper into the tunnels, he tried to stay focused on the mission, on his surroundings – it was so important to stay alert to potential threats – but his mind began to wander back to Tehran, his life there. He thought about Farahnaz, the beautiful, dark-eyed girl who lived with her parents on the third floor of his apartment building, who often looked at him and smiled as they passed on the staircase. His dream was to someday marry her – if he could find the courage to speak to her father.

Eventually, the strike force reached an immense bronze doorway that lay open to them, and beyond it a cavernous “amphitheater.” They hid behind large boulders and surveyed their prey – the group of Americans and Saudis, settled at a campsite in the middle of the cavern.

From the moment when Ehsan heard the order to attack, until all of the Americans and Saudis, including the Marines, were dead, barely ten minutes passed. The assault was a blur. Ehsan fired repeatedly at the enemy. The American soldiers were no match for the much larger and better-armed Iranian force. Ehsan’s heart pumped, adrenaline surged through his body. His bones shook with the unceasing stream of gunfire. He brought down one of the women – the one known as the “professor” – and several of the men. Blood sprayed as the bullets ripped through flesh. He heard screaming, shouts, gasps and cursing in English. Then it was over. As the echoing roar of the weaponry faded away, Ehsan’s sergeant quickly surveyed the carnage, noted the stillness of the bloody bodies, and then signaled his team to withdraw the way they had come. No time to think about what had just happened. Move, and move quickly….

It was hard not to reflect on what had just happened, but Ehsan consciously kept it out of his thoughts. The job was done, and all that mattered was getting home. He focused on the tunnel through which they ran. Suddenly, they were confronted by a rock wall straight ahead, as the tunnel turned sharply to the right. Ehsan did not remember such a turn from their earlier entry. There had been some gentle curving of the tunnel, but no right angles. He wondered if somehow they had taken the wrong exit from the “amphitheater.” But the sergeant said nothing, the troops hurried on down the tunnel, and no one else seemed to notice….

Another 30 minutes passed and they had not reached the cave entrance. The sergeant raised his hand and the team stopped. He adjusted the lamp on his helmet and shone the light on a chunk of rock that protruded from the wall, like hawk’s beak.

“We passed this rock before,” the sergeant said.

Others agreed that they had seen the “beak” earlier. Ehsan himself had missed it. His mind was zeroed in on the charms of Farahnaz, and he had noticed little of his surroundings, apart from the strange turn, which he now realized they had passed a second time.

“Do you remember that right-angle turn we took?” he said aloud, looking at the sergeant. “I don’t remember that on our way in to the amphitheater.”

“You’re right,” said the sergeant. “We’re in the wrong tunnel.”

“But how did we get here?” asked one of the soldiers. “I’m pretty sure we left the amphitheater through the same tunnel that brought us in.”

The sergeant was starting to perspire. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve and looked at his men.

“Something is very wrong here. Let’s backtrack a bit. Keep an eye on the walls, and see if there are any hidden exits.”

As they trudged back, studying the cave walls for openings, Ehsan experienced a new feeling, something completely alien to him. He felt claustrophobic, as if he were trapped in a confined space that was somehow becoming smaller. From the looks on the faces of his comrades, they were having a similar experience. This is not good, Ehsan thought. It is not good at all....

Back in the “amphitheater,” globes of light of various colors were moving over the dead bodies, methodically, purposefully, as if studying each shape, perhaps measuring it. There was absolutely no sound in the immense stone chamber, as the globes did their work. One by one, the bloody bodies began to dissolve. The bloodstains sizzled softly and evaporated. Before long, the chamber was pristine, as if no one had been there.

            Perhaps no one had.
(Next)
(Beginning)

Chapter 21

            When Mubarak was very young, a mere boy, his father took him on an aerial mission far from home. It was the first time the boy had been allowed to participate in a mission. His father, who traveled frequently on these trips, felt his son was ready.

            The day began when his father brought him to the Circle, the central plaza around which the City had grown. This place never ceased to amaze Mubarak. The expansive floor was made of what Mubarak recognized as highly prized Numidian marble, spotted with flecks of gold, polished to the highest sheen. He looked up at the great pearl-colored dome far above, and at the great multihued columns that supported it. Surrounding this view were hundreds or even thousands of towering buildings – many of them like ornate spears aimed at heaven, some resembling vast inverted bowls, radiant and powerful. The immensity and vitality of the City gave the boy great comfort, and he sighed as he surveyed it.

            His father pointed at a hazy, glowing sphere in the Circle. They hurried toward it, and as they strode, the sphere underwent a silent metamorphosis, taking on the shape of a metallic disk, with porthole windows along its rim. The disk appeared to float about five meters above the marble floor of the Circle. A ramp had been lowered beneath the disk, and climbing it, they headed inside.

            They entered a large room, empty apart from a few jinn, one of whom sat in a central chair, almost a throne, and somehow controlled the movement of the disk. With a crew of five, including themselves, the vehicle took off.

            Mubarak watched through a porthole as the disk rose up toward the pearl dome. Through some unknown action, the dome was opening, and thin curtains of reddish sand began to drop, turning to fine dust and then vanishing as they descended. It was morning outside, and the rays of a bright summer sun washed the stone walls of the great chamber that held their City. They rose beyond the chamber, up and out into the world. Mubarak stared open-mouthed through the porthole as the disk climbed swiftly above a ring of hulking dunes of reddish sand and into the bright blue sky. He looked down, and saw the yawning mouth in the earth that led to his home. The area around the opening was the ultimate in desolation. In these vast, waterless dune fields, sterile under the blazing sun, extending for many hundreds of miles, nothing lived.

            The disk shot silently into the sky and approached a rift in the world fabric, high above the clouds, a gap in spacetime that the jinn knew well. In seconds they slipped between realities. It took a few more seconds for Mubarak’s vision to adapt to the many dimensions of this rift. Their City was in the human world, not in the jinn world, and sometimes he forgot how beautiful and dazzling the universe really was. He saw his father transform before his eyes, becoming more complex as his body found extra directions, new depths. The other jinn in the crew grew similarly more intricate, profoundly richer in their reality. Mubarak raised his hand before his face and studied its amazing geometry.

            Before long, they exited the rift, and were back in their metallic disk, in three spatial dimensions, rocketing over a chain of snowcapped mountains. They descended toward a human city. It was nighttime, and the city sparkled with light.

            “That’s Colorado Springs,” said his father. Mubarak knew his geography. He also recalled vaguely that the city was somehow connected with a military organization, the U.S. Air Force.

           

            Next came their encounter with humans. Mubarak’s memory of this episode was sketchy, as it was meant to be, since this was a deliberate confusion encounter, intended to baffle the humans and raise doubts among them about what is real and what is not.

            A family was taken from its house and brought dramatically aboard the floating disk. The humans seemed drugged or in a trance. There was a husband, a wife and a small girl child. They had been watching television when the abduction occurred. A strange, intense, halogen-like light streaming through the window, then mystical green mist filling the room, then total control of the humans…. It was a fairly routine process, Mubarak was told. The jinn, their shapes shifted into alien grays, pretended to examine the humans medically and spoke to each other in gibberish, nodding sagely. Then they floated the family members back to their home, and the mission was over. Mubarak’s father thought a second episode should be conducted elsewhere, but the commander was adamant – the official itinerary called for only one. So they returned to the City in the Empty Quarter.

            Mubarak remembered the face of the little girl. She had not seemed as drugged as her parents, and she had studied the jinn crew with a seriousness he had not expected. No fear, no hesitancy – just cold, scientific interest. Perhaps the little ones were not as susceptible as their parents, he thought. Perhaps the children could see through this charade….
(Next)
(Beginning)

Research Note

            In January 2011, the fifth Global Competitiveness Forum (GCF) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, held its first-ever panel discussion of “space aliens” and the UFO phenomenon.

            Attending the forum were many of the world’s top business and political luminaries, and speakers included such figures as former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

            The UFO panel featured ufologist Stanton Friedman, journalist and well known British UFO authority Nick Pope, venture capitalist and well known UFO authority Jacques Vallée, and well-known science writer and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku.

            The title of their discussion was “Contact: Learning From Outer Space.”

            The implication of all this, as explained by Nick Pope, was that venture capitalists should look at UFO’s as an investment opportunity. There was money to be made not only from the controversy surrounding the UFO phenomenon but also from the eventual solution of the “mystery.”

            Said Richard O’Connor, M.D., executive director of the Crop Circles Research Foundation: “The Friedman, Vallée, Pope, and Kaku panel were not invited to the GCF in order that GCF attendees could make fun of them, deride them, and call them ‘nut cases.’ They were not invited to the GCF to provide entertainment.

            “They were invited there because the momentum of UFO Disclosure is accelerating, and a great number of highly influential capitalists in our world now know with certainty that the UFO Phenomenon is real. These business leaders are educating themselves about the UFO Phenomenon, trying to put together their After Disclosure game plan in the light of their new awareness of this unprecedented reality. We should pay close attention to these developments and follow this example.”

            Jacques Vallée, Ph.D., identified himself to the conference as the general partner of a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley, which had so far funded some 60 high-technology startup companies in such areas as nanotechnology, database software and genomics. He was perhaps better known to the world as an astronomer who has written extensively on UFO experiences for more than half a century.

            The UFO phenomenon, Vallée said, “presents the kind of anomaly that leads to new concepts in science. In other words, even if we don’t have a complete explanation in the next few years or decades, the data is so compelling that it can lead to disruptive breakthough.”

            The phenomenon is so complex, he said, that it is important not to jump to premature conclusions.

            He presented a model for scientific investigation of the UFO phenomenon, which presented “identical patterns” throughout the world. This model sought to “guide” the analysis on six levels:

Level I – Physical

Level II – Anti-Physical

Level III – Psychological

Level IV – Physiological

Level V – Psychic

Level VI – Cultural

Level II, the Anti-Physical, dealt with what Professor Kaku called the “physics of the impossible,” including UFO phenomena that might seem impossible given today’s level of knowledge but which with further scientific advances would eventually become understandable.

            All six levels of analysis, he said, could lead to technological breakthroughs.

            He cited several examples of UFO encounters involving French pilots that were recorded scientifically but have never been explained. Vallée believed that such phenomena could be studied objectively with today’s science, without prejudging their nature.

            Currently there was too much polarization, with academic skeptics arrayed on one side and believers in “extraterrestrials” on the other. Vallée believed that the large number of unexplained ancient examples of apparent UFO encounters, along with the high frequency of sightings today and the occurrence of physical and biological “anomalies,” argue for “bold new theories.”  

            He suggested that UFO reports could provide the basis for an “existence theorem” involving new notions of time and space, and at the same time could encourage breakthroughs in technological innovation.

(Next)
(Beginning)

Chapter 20

  

            Out of the darkness came the white creatures. The Marines were the first to see them. The tunnel seemed blocked by a large, tangled nest or a bundle of rope. Suddenly the nest moved, and the ropes came alive. Desert vipers – horned and poisonous, albinos all of them. Angry white serpents’ heads rose up out of the tangle. Their eyes were like gleaming red gemstones, their fangs slick with venom. The snakes had to be at least two meters in length, maybe more. They were anything but happy.

            One of the Marines opened fire on the wriggling mass of serpents. Bullets riddled reptilian flesh; blood sprayed, and snake bodies were flung into the darkness. Amid the gunfire, the expedition team members huddled together, backing away from the violence. As they did so, they bumped into Dan Keller, whose flashlight lit the tunnel behind them. Dan was ignoring the snakes. Something else was troubling him….

            First he had heard the clicking sound – the clicking of claws. Then the skittering of thousands of chitinous legs across stone. Keller knew the sound of scorpions, but he could not imagine what his ears were telling him. Suddenly the creatures began to enter the light cast by his flashlight. The shouts behind him, the gunfire, the panic of his companions, barely registered. Dan’s eyes were fixed on the flood of arthropods approaching him, climbing over each other, their claws snapping, stinger-laden tails poised for attack. They were all pure white; he had never seen white scorpions before. They made up a wave, maybe half a meter high, moving towards him. And they were clearly in a foul mood.

            “Behind us! Quick!” he shouted to the Marines. “Scorpions!”

Pvt. Willis tore her eyes from the bloody mass of snakes, and saw the wave of little white, lobsterish creatures billowing toward them, waving their stingers. Scorpions, she realized – like a flood of damned monster crawdads! She trained her weapon on the wave and swept it with bullets…. Keller watched her work. He was impressed. An amazing woman, he thought.

Lasser first sensed the bats were coming. He knew the stirring of the air, signaling their approach, the ultra-high-pitched screech, just on the edge of audibility. But he wasn’t prepared for the living tornado that whirled out of the darkness, thousands of death-white bats spinning over their heads, baring their fangs, reaching with their claws for human hair, arms, faces…. There wasn’t much the Marines could do. They swung their weapons over their heads like clubs. The whirlwind of bats continued to assail them, and Lasser felt they were somehow sucking the air from the tunnel, deliberately trying to suffocate them. As a bat slammed into the back of his head, pitching him forward, he wondered briefly if they were carrying rabies….

When the white creatures attacked us, we were puzzled at first, then terrified. Snakes at first, then scorpions, then screeching white bats…. The Marines tried to take them out. But they kept coming. Devereaux tried to rally us.

“Your shovels!” he cried. “The shovels in your packs! Use them as weapons!”

Lasser was down, screaming, as a white bat worked its way down his head, wings flapping, and sank its curved fangs into his neck. The damned things were bloodsuckers, vampires!

I worked my mini-shovel loose just in time, extending and locking its shaft as a desert viper shot through the trembling legs of Dr. Semple and headed straight for me. It was almost as if the snake knew me, and deeply hated me. It opened its mouth, bared its fangs and hissed before striking. At least I assumed it was planning to strike. I didn’t give it time. I brought the edge of the shovel down just behind its head, decapitating it in one blow. The ghostly white body writhed in its death throes; the head lay lifeless, the eyes no longer gleaming.

Dr. Semple had dropped to the ground, and was trying frantically to extricate a flapping bat from his hair. Scorpions closed in on him, ready to climb up on his body.

I began stamping the arachnids with my heavy caving boots, and shuddered at the sickening crunch of their white exoskeletons. Fluorescent ooze leaked from their crushed hard-shell bodies. I took the point of my shovel blade and worked it under the bat on Semple’s head. I flicked it upwards, and the bat flew against the wall and dropped to the floor, dazed. I then smashed it with the shovel blade. I then came to Lasser’s rescue, and disposed of his bat as well. He clamped a hand to his bloody neck and stared at me in gratitude.

I swung the shovel over my head, taking out a few more bats, then searched the area around my feet for the next crawling attacker. I, the soft-spoken university professor, experienced a rush of adrenalin. I felt like a superhero!

At that moment, I had a kind of vision – I don’t know if it really happened or not – the serpents, scorpions and bats around me seemed to dissolve into a green mist, each animal becoming an intense yellow glow in that strange fog. Some of the glowing points of light began to wink out. The vision lasted only for a few seconds. I understood at that moment that we had not been attacked by animals, but by jinn. They had shifted shapes, transformed themselves, for their assault, but this carried great risk for them, I knew. If they died in animal form, they died as jinn. And many were dying here. The jinn were acting out of desperation.

The Marines continued to spray bullets at the creatures, killing serpents and bats for the most part, and taking out scorpions with their combat boots. Some of the creatures did get through, and inflicted serious pain. I saw Sgt. O’Dell take viper fangs in his left calf. He cut the snake in half, but he was clearly hurting. And Bakhashaf was streaming blood from his head, apparently the victim of a series of bat bites, as he sat against the wall and rhythmically slapped scorpions away with his bare hands.

Pvt. Willis was actually enjoying this! She had sliced up her fair share of serpents and peppered a cloud of white bats with bullets. Her feet did a zydeco dance on the poisonous scorpions.

I was surprised at how weak the jinn seemed. Where were their vaunted powers? Perhaps the legends were exaggerated. It occurred to me that perhaps these jinn, these opponents of Awda and his ilk, were indeed few in numbers and on the losing side of history.

It was then that I realized how wrong I was. The suicidal attack of the white creatures was not the worst of it. In fact, it was simply a diversion, to keep our attention from the main event.

Mahmoud Bakhashaf, our Saudi caver, continued to sit quietly, his head forward and dripping blood, as the Marines and the rest of us dealt with the last of the creatures. I was worried about him. I shook his shoulder.

“Mahmoud, are you okay?” I asked.

He looked up at me. His eyes had gone strange, and for a moment they glowed green!

He swung his right arm at me and pushed me aside. I went sprawling onto the tunnel floor, sliding in blood and fragments of dead animals.

Suddenly Bakhashaf was on his feet, heading toward the Marines. He walked strangely, as if just getting used to his limbs. I knew it was no longer Mahmoud. I realized he had been possessed. This was one of the things the jinn were supposed to be able to do: take over a human being’s mind and body. And they had just done it.

“No!” I shouted, to no one and everyone. I got to my feet and ran toward Bakhashaf. The Marines had turned toward us. Mahmoud was zeroing in on a private named Mark Bonaventure, a short, wiry, but extremely strong fighter. Bonaventure sensed a threat and lifted his weapon quickly. O’Dell’s flashlight played on Bakhashaf, and showed us the bizarre flaring of the young Saudi’s eyes. Mahmoud was going for the Marine’s rifle. At least that seemed to be his plan. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Dan Keller came flying through the air, directly at Bakhashaf, like a linebacker intent on taking down a quarterback. But his target disappeared, and Keller came crashing to earth. Bakhashaf was now behind Bonaventure, who had no idea what was happening. The Saudi effortlessly stripped the rifle from the befuddled Marine and with a flick of his arm sent him flying against the wall of the tunnel. Bakhashaf now stood facing the team, training the M-16 on all of us. He wasn’t smiling. He looked terrified. But clearly he had us.

At least so I thought, until I realized that Mubarak Awda had rejoined us. Mubarak later explained to me what was happening at that moment, and how we managed to survive.

Imagine yourself in Mahmoud Bakhashaf’s position: picture a young Saudi caver, confused by the strange goings-on, fearful of the dark and yawning unknown, anxious to get back to a more comfortable world. Suddenly an onslaught of ghostly white beasts attacks us. The youth’s heart is racing. As Devereaux told us to do, Mahmoud lashes out at the snakes with his spade, crushes scorpions beneath his boots, ducks away from the swooping bats. In his confusion, his mind is open, and ripe for the plucking.

A renegade jinni named Sufafeesh, suddenly present but hidden from human sight, dives deep into the mind of Mahmoud Bakhashaf. The jinni is under orders to possess the human, seize a rifle from the Marines and kill them all. Possession, I have since learned, is not easy for the jinn. Entry into the human psyche involves some pain, a great deal of intense pressure, and the temporary relinquishing of some power. There are some moments of agony for Sufafeesh; then, in a flash, he is seated, and in control of the human. He sees through Mahmoud’s eyes, and hears through his ears. The Saudi’s senses are augmented by the jinn presence. His sight now includes the ultraviolet and infrared spectra, and he sees new colors beyond the purple and the red. His hearing now encompasses ultralow and ultrahigh frequencies, and instills a higher level of alertness, of readiness, in the man. There is a low, throbbing sound, coming from the earth. It sounds like the heartbeat of the planet. In actuality, it is the pulsing of the far-off City, the sound of jinn society, jinn life. At some subconscious level, the possessed mind of Mahmoud Bakhashaf marvels at the new richness of reality, like a drugged patient being wheeled into the operating room, sensing the technological wonders of the medical team surrounding him, but unable to react. Mahmoud can do nothing with the sensory input. Sufafeesh is the commander, and is ready to act. The jinni spots Pvt. Mark Bonaventure, sees a moment of doubt, and launches the man’s body at him.

In a matter of seconds, Bakhashaf is holding the rifle, and lifting it toward the group, all of whose members seem frozen in time. Sufafeesh is ready to kill them all.

Suddenly, Sufafeesh too freezes, unable to give the order to the man’s body. He is not alone inside the psyche of the Saudi: someone else is in the process of possessing Bakhashaf! In fact, Sufafeesh, at his most vulnerable when he is possessing a human, is now being possessed himself….

This is all simplistic, and perhaps a bit melodramatic, but I can’t think of any other way to describe what happened. Mubarak possessed the possessor, and effectively expelled him from Bakhashaf’s body.

Mahmoud dropped the rifle – unfired – and fell to the ground. His lungs were working furiously, as if he had just run the 1500 meters. The Marines recovered the rifle and tended to Bonaventure, who seemed dazed but basically okay. I went to Bakhashaf and tried to help him up. I had an idea of what had happened, but was unaware of the details. I was sure Mubarak was somehow involved in saving us.

“What?” asked Mahmoud, getting unsteadily to his feet. “What?”

“It’s okay, Mahmoud,” I said. “Someone just saved our lives.”

“I – I – What are you talking about?” he asked, slurring his words a bit.

I looked at the others.

“He has no idea what just happened,” I told them. “He was possessed. One of the bad guys took over his mind – and his body. But our friends put a stop to it.”

Devereaux stared at me as if I were crazy. He stayed silent; he knew the truth, but wasn’t ready to admit it.

Keller rejoined us, brushing dust from his clothes. He seemed unhurt from his failed attempt to bring down Bakhashaf.

“What do you know about this?” he asked me.

“Not much,” I said, trying to be as open as I could. “Mubarak was somehow involved, but all I have is a feeling. I think our opponents have been stopped for the time being.”

“So where is Mubarak?” Dan asked, somewhat skeptically.

“Right here,” said a voice from the shadows of the tunnel. Keller turned his flashlight and illuminated Mubarak Awda, who was walking slowly toward us.

“Where the hell were you?” Keller asked.

“Talking with my superiors,” Mubarak replied. “And helping out with your problem.” He stopped in our midst, and scanned our faces. “I think we are now in good shape,” he said. “We shouldn’t have any further delays in reaching the City.”

As they headed back to the “transition zone,” Keller spoke with Pvt. Willis about her combat skills.

“You seem to have an aptitude for this kind of thing,” he said.

“I’m a Marine,” she said coolly. “It’s my job.”

“Where are you from?”

“Louisiana,” she said. “Plaquemines Parish.”

“What’s your take on this jinn thing?”

She looked at him sharply. “You tell me. You’ve lived for years in this godforsaken place, as I understand it. You must have some thoughts on the matter.”

Keller smiled. “Godforsaken, eh? The people here think this is God’s own land.”

“Right,” said Vanessa, keeping her eyes forward, watching for threats as they walked along the passageway. “Well, who’s to say? You know, I come from a place where the supernatural is an everyday thing. We have Voodoo and zombies and God knows what else. Why shouldn’t this place have its own spirits?”

Keller studied her face as they walked. She was quite attractive, in a way. Her eyes were large and liquid, and very intense. She was a smallish woman, but very tightly wound and in control of her every move. Keller liked that. He liked a bit of self-control in this unpredictable world.

“Good point,” he said. “Well, if you think things have been weird so far, wait till you see what’s coming!”

“You mean the City?”

“Yeah, that…. But also, it seems to be getting harder and harder to get there. I wonder if we’ll even make it.”

“We will,” Vanessa said, almost gritting her teeth. Her confidence made Keller feel a bit better.
(Next)
(Beginning)