The library wasn't a library. It was a kill box.
The mechanical Anubis statue towered over us. Ten feet of gold alloy and gears. Its eyes glowed red, scanning the room with a hum like a dying wasp.
"Move!" Charles shouted.
The statue swung its staff.
CRASH.
The stone pillar next to Charles exploded. Dust and shrapnel sprayed the air. The force of the blow cracked the floor tiles.
"It's fast!" Jean Chouan yelled. He rolled to the side, his pirate instincts kicking in. "For a hunk of metal, it's too damn fast!"
Charles raised his revolver. He didn't panic. He aimed for the glowing red lens in the statue's chest.
BANG. BANG.
Two shots. Dead center.
SPARK.
The bullets flattened against the gold armor and fell to the floor, useless.
"Ballistics ineffective," Charles noted calmly, backing away. "Armor plating is hardened alloy."
"Maybe brute force then!" Chouan roared.
The smuggler charged. He swung his boarding axe with both hands, aiming for the statue's knee joint.
CLANG.
The axe bit into the metal but didn't cut. The statue didn't even stumble.
It backhanded Chouan.
It looked effortless. A casual swat.
CRACK.
Chouan flew across the room. He hit the far wall and crumpled, coughing blood. His ribs were broken.
"Chouan!" Champollion screamed.
The statue turned its head. The red eyes locked onto the linguist.
It took a step forward. The floor shook.
It raised the staff again. The tip began to glow green. Charging a beam.
"Wait!" Champollion shouted. He held up his hands. "It's not attacking randomly! Look at the pattern!"
Charles paused. He watched the machine.
It didn't strike immediately. It stood there, staff raised, pulsing with light.
Pulse. Pulse. Pause.
A voice ground out of the statue's chest speaker. It sounded like stones grinding together.
"Shemu. Peret. Akhet."
"Coptic," Champollion whispered. "It's speaking Coptic."
"Translate it!" Charles ordered. "Now!"
"It says..." Champollion listened, his face pale. "State the value of the soul."
The statue took another step. The green light grew brighter.
"It's a riddle," Champollion realized. "The Judgment of Osiris. The Weighing of the Heart."
"It's a password," Charles corrected. "It's an authentication protocol."
He looked at the room.
In the center, behind the statue, was an altar. It wasn't religious. It was a control console. Rows of sliding stone beads set into tracks.
"An abacus," Charles said. "It's asking for a number."
"What number?" Champollion panicked. "The weight of a feather? The number of sins?"
The statue swung the staff down.
Charles dove.
The green beam sliced through the air where he had been standing. It hit the floor and melted the stone into glass.
"It's a particle beam," Charles gasped, scrambling to his feet. "We have seconds."
He ran toward the altar.
The statue turned to intercept him.
"Distract it!" Charles yelled.
Champollion grabbed a piece of rubble. He threw it at the statue's head.
"Hey! Over here, you rust bucket!"
The statue paused. Its logic processor prioritized the new threat. It turned back to Champollion.
Charles slid across the floor, under the swing of the staff. He reached the altar.
He looked at the beads.
It was a base-10 system. Simple. Elegant.
"State the value of the soul," Charles repeated.
He thought.
In Egyptian mythology, the heart must weigh exactly the same as the feather of Ma'at (Truth). If it's heavier, you are eaten. If it's lighter...
"Zero," Charles whispered. "The balance must be zero."
But the abacus wasn't set to zero. The beads were arranged in a complex pattern.
4,000. 200. 50.
"It's not asking for the weight," Charles realized. "It's asking for the cost."
He looked at the symbols carved into the console. Life. Death. Harvest.
"It's a ledger," Charles said. His eyes widened. "This whole facility... it's a bank. It stores life force. And the account is overdrawn."
The statue raised its staff over Champollion. The linguist curled into a ball, waiting for death.
"Inputting debt!" Charles shouted.
He slammed the beads.
He didn't zero them out. He moved them to the negative side of the track.
Minus 4,250.
He pulled the lever on the side of the console.
CLICK.
The statue froze.
The staff stopped inches from Champollion's head.
The green light in the weapon faded.
The red eyes flickered. Then turned blue.
A chime sounded. Clear and pure.
"Audit Accepted," the voice said. "Administrator Access Granted."
The statue lowered its arm. It stepped back into its alcove and went dormant.
Champollion looked up, shaking. "You... you solved it."
"I balanced the books," Charles said. He wiped sweat from his forehead. "The system was waiting for a payment. I acknowledged the debt."
A deep rumble shook the room.
The altar split in half.
The floor beneath it retracted. A spiral ramp opened up, descending into the earth.
Green light poured out of the hole. It was blinding.
"The vault," Charles said.
He helped Chouan up. The smuggler groaned, clutching his side.
"I hate archaeology," Chouan wheezed.
They walked down the ramp.
The air got hotter. The smell of ozone was overpowering.
At the bottom of the ramp, they stopped.
They were standing on a glass walkway suspended over a massive cavern.
In the center of the cavern floated the Engine.
It was a sphere of green crystal, fifty feet wide. It wasn't resting on anything. It was suspended in a humming magnetic field.
Inside the crystal, light swirled like liquid fire.
"My God," Champollion whispered. "It's beautiful."
"It's a reactor," Charles said. He checked the Geiger counter. "And it's leaking."
He pointed to a crack in the crystal surface. A beam of raw radiation was spewing out, hitting the cavern wall and turning the rock into lava.
"It's damaged," Charles said. "That's why the sea is mutated. The containment is failing."
"What was it for?" Chouan asked. "A weapon?"
"No," Champollion said. He was reading the glyphs on the control ring. "It says... 'To Green the Sand.' 'To Drink the Sun.'"
"It's a terraforming device," Charles realized. "The Pharaohs used it to make the Nile Valley fertile. It pulls energy from the sun and pumps it into the soil."
"But it broke," Chouan said.
"And now it's poisoning the world," Charles said.
He walked to the main control interface. There was a slot in the center. An indentation shaped like a jagged rock.
"The key is missing," Charles said. "Without the key, we can't shut it down."
BOOM.
An explosion rocked the cavern.
Debris rained down from the entrance ramp above.
"Company," Chouan groaned, drawing his knife.
Footsteps echoed on the metal ramp.
A man walked down. He was surrounded by Redcoats.
He wore a leather mask. He held a pistol in one hand.
In the other, he held a black stone shard.
Colonel Shrapnel.
He stopped at the bottom of the ramp. He looked at the Engine. He didn't look scared. He looked hungry.
"Magnificent," Shrapnel whispered.
He held up the stone shard. It pulsed in time with the reactor.
"The missing piece," Charles said. "The Rosetta Shard."
"You solved the riddle, boy," Shrapnel said. His voice was muffled by the mask. "Thank you for opening the safe."
He walked onto the glass bridge.
"Now step away from the console," Shrapnel ordered. "Daddy needs his medicine."
Charles didn't move. He stood between the monster and the machine.
He calculated the odds.
Distance to enemy: 20 feet.
Number of hostiles: 12.
Probability of survival: <1%.
Charles smiled.
"You want the key?" Charles asked. "Come and audit me."