Eleventh in the series. Read after the break…
Insight
By Scott Lowther
Copyright 2019
1991, February; Saudi Arabia
A trio of F-15s flew far overhead, heading towards Kuwait and the war. Saddam had never really had much of a shot, but keeping the site hidden and secure remained a top priority.
Without knowing it, Office of Insight Director Cole echoed the first Director when he mused to himself just how unpleasant the desert was. But this time there were no detention centers for captured amphibious humanoids. Instead, there was a subterranean city, its entrance buried deep under the shifting sands.
Director Cole hated being here. He hated it on multiple levels, from the heat, to what the city represented, to the fact that his Office was in part responsible for the war then ongoing. In the greatest security breach in Insight history, a disgruntled Agent had pilfered spacecraft radar records showing this site and had sold them to the Iraqis. Saddam Hussein, like his ideological predecessor Adolph Hitler, was interested in the mysterious and the occult, in archaeological finds that might grant him power either directly or through propaganda. Saddam had decided that the lost city should be his. Unfortunately it was deep within Saudi Arabia so he could only claim it militarily. Step one of his plan had been to conquer and annex Kuwait, but that wasn’t going very well: the United States and its allies were currently bombing the Iraqi military into oblivion. At least it will be over soon, the Director thought. Iraq would be defeated, Saddam would be dead or deep inside some prison, and Iraq would be converted into a stable democracy of some kind. This region of the world would soon finally be stable, if not necessarily peaceful. Then the US could focus on making sure the Iranians don’t get the bomb…
The Office of Insight was keeping an especially low profile in this incident. They had known of the city since ’84, but had only sent in a few preliminary expeditions… small teams, what they were sure they could get away with without being spotted. But now that war was tearing up the region, a larger contingent of researchers had gone in to follow up. Their reports were enough to get the Director to show up in person.
The entrance on the surface was nothing more than a large tent, big enough to cover the excavation and construction. The tent sat atop a five foot diameter steel tube that had been sunk into the sand the fifteen feet to the bottom, then dug out. Ladder rungs provided access to the bottom, where the Director found access to a door in an ancient stone structure, built up against a low rock face. Inside, lit adequately with small fluorescent lights strung along the ceiling, there were a few stone altars and other such, appropriate for a small religious building. But it was the back wall that was the center of attention. There was an ornately decorated bronze door, maybe five and a half feet high, built into a wall. An Agent, Cole didn’t recognize him, stood next to the door and opened it when the Director and his escort approached. A blast of surprisingly cool air shot out. The escort led the Director though.
On the other side were, almost immediately, the things that had drawn the attention of the earliest researchers. The Director had to stoop, which did his back and knees no good, due to the low ceiling. The walls were straight and smooth, and where exposed, covered in intricate murals. Every dozen feet or so there was a stack of glass and wood cases… the wood clearly astonishingly ancient, the glass very modern in appearance. They were shelves or cases, each about four feet long and a little over a foot tall, stacked four high, floor to ceiling. Each case was faced with a large pane of glass. Director Cole had never seen pre-twentieth century panes of glass of that size this clear and smooth. Clearly whoever made these were advanced enough to at least make panes of window glass equal to what modern tech could do.
“You can try to break the glass if you want,” the escort said. This surprised Director Cole… he knew David Kent to be as serious and professional an investigator as the Office had on staff. To suggest that someone try to destroy antiquities was uncharacteristic, to say the least. “This glass is amazingly strong. One of the excavators took a pickaxe to one pane and did nothing but mash the tip of his pickax. The wood is just as strong. Infused with some sort of resin.”
Cole declined the offer. Not so much because he didn’t want to break the ancient glass for trivial reasons, but for what lay behind it: each niche contained the mummified remains of a vaguely humanoid reptilian, clad in jewelry and opulent fabrics. Looking down the hallway, estimating the numbers involved, Director Cole decided that the war being fought above could probably be paid for just with the jewelry available for the taking here. No wonder Saddam wanted this place.
“We estimate this place was last used about the time the last ice age ended, when the Arabian peninsula started turning from savanna to desert,” Kent told him. “We’ll need to do genetic testing to make sure, but from early studies of the bodies, we think these guys aren’t pure Deep Ones, but Deep Ones hybridized with some reptile species. Possibly Nile crocodiles, based on some of the unique anatomical features.”
Director Cole gave a slight chuckle. “I would not have wanted to have been in the room when that mating was carried out,” he said.
The escort nodded, unsmilingly. “No, that would have undoubtedly been a… unique experience. Anyway. They still have gill structures on their necks, but they seem to be closed up, vestigial. Their brains are noticeably larger compared to their body mass than either humans or Deep Ones. They don’t have webbed hands or the impressive claws of pure Deep Ones or human hybrids. In fact, these guys seem wholly adapted for life on land, much further away from the baseline Deep One than the human hybrids. We haven’t figured that out yet; you’d think that since Deep Ones are far closer to reptiles than they are to mammals, the human hybrids would be more different than the croc hybrids. Still a mystery.”
As they spoke, Kent walked the Director down the hallway. The hallway, Cole noticed, was empty of workers. There had been dozens working outside, more dozens working just inside, but here…nobody. Just the long rows of mummy display cases, interspersed with still-colorful murals depicting the reptilians in their daily lives. Cole noticed that the reptilians daily lives certainly seemed to involved a lot of blood and a lot of dismembered humans. A long distance down the hallway they came to an intersection; the director could see many other branches splitting off. “How many mummies are there?” he asked.
“Well over fifteen thousand in this area,” Coles escort answered. “But that’s nothing. If you want to see the real prize, take a look down here.” Cole followed the agent past the intersection, down a set of distressingly small steps, clearly meant for the smaller, much shorter-legged reptiles. There was another bronze door, intricately worked with almost alien artistic flourishes.
The escort stood aside, let Cole open the door himself. A blue phosphorescent glow emitted from the space beyond. Cole stuck his head in. “Oh, my,” he muttered in wonder. He took a step forward and gaped at what he saw.
“Helluva thing, ain’t it,” the escort said.
“Yes, indeed,” Director Cole replied. He was finally glad he’d come all this way. And he was even more glad that the war would soon be over and tension would leave the region so that the Office of Insight could work on this in peace.