Alien Portals: A SciFi Alien Multiverse Romance Novel Read online

  Galadriel walked toward the ridge, ducking her head to try to get a better look at the variation in color that had grabbed her attention.

  "There's something on the ridge. Did any of the researchers say anything about a cave or a tunnel that they were studying when they found the wall?"

  "Not that I've read," Rick said. "Wait." She could hear the clicking of computer keys coming over the line. "Yes. I can't believe that I forgot. There was one group that went into a very small tunnel along the ridge. It was too tight to fit most of the people who tried to get in."

  "I don't think that I ever read that."

  "Yeah, there's a good reason for that. When the group went in, they were in there for hours. Even when the researchers who were on the outside tried to call into them, they wouldn't respond. Just when they were getting ready to try to crack through the stone to widen the entry to the tunnel, some of the group came back out."

  "Some of the group?"

  Galadriel had gotten to the side of the ridge and could now clearly see that the discoloration that she had noticed while standing in the chained-off area was actually a crack in the stone that seemed to lead inside the ridge. She ran her fingers along the edge, feeling the cool air that was rushing from within.

  "Some of the group," Rick replied. "Two of the researchers who went in didn't come back."

  "Where'd they go?" Galadriel asked, startled by the revelation.

  "No one knows. The other members of the group were so shaken up by whatever happened in there that they wouldn't talk about it. All but one quit the project that day, and the other one went through the rest of that portion of the excavation without speaking a word. None of them would go back into the tunnel, and when they sent in a camera, there was only darkness. They couldn't see anything. It only went in a few feet, and then it hit a wall."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean it hit a wall. It went as far as it could into the tunnel and then it hit stone. There was nowhere else for it to go."

  "Then where could those two people have possibly gone?" Galadriel asked.

  "Your guess is as good as anyone's. They never found them. There was never any trace of them. There was a massive cover-up over it. The group running the excavation didn't want anyone to know what happened and risk losing the funding for the project, so they instructed everyone to pretend that the whole situation hadn't happened. They falsified papers to make it look as though the two researchers who disappeared had been sent to another location for a different excavation. They kept up communication with their families for a few weeks and then let it peter out. The families made their assumptions from there."

  "That's horrible. How do you know all of this?"

  "Wherever there is someone wanting to keep something a secret, there is someone else who wants people to know the truth. There is always someone willing to go against what they've been told to make sure that what really happened is known. Someone came forward after that section of the excavation was complete and shared the information through underground sources. It was never officially accepted or admitted. Now it is essentially considered legend, but if you research the names of the people who they say disappeared into that tunnel, you'll find that neither one of them has been seen on home soil since that excavation. There are pretty detailed stories about what happened to them, but it's all information that can't be confirmed."

  Galadriel was so invested in what Rick was saying that she almost didn't hear the crunching sound of tires on gravel.

  "Oh, no," she hissed into the phone.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Someone's coming. I'll call you back."

  "Gala–"

  She ended the call, cutting Rick off, and turned around. The sound of the tires on the gravel was getting louder, telling her that whoever it was was getting closer. She took a few steps away from the ridge so that she could see the access road and noticed a cloud of dust billowing up from the gravel and sand, indicating a vehicle coming toward her. Her eyes darted to the chained-in section, and Galadriel realized that she had left her bag in the sand. She ducked down as low as she could and ran toward her bag, knowing that if whoever was in the car coming down the access road saw it, she would immediately be found out.

  Jumping over the chains, she slid on her knees across the sand and snatched her bag. As she climbed back to her feet, she glanced up and saw a large, white truck slowing as it came to the end of the access road near the excavation site. As it turned, she could see the word SECURITY written across the side in thick, black letters. They stood out from the white paint like a threat, and Galadriel felt her stomach sink. She scrambled backwards, not knowing where to go. She could have gotten up and run deeper into the desert, hoping that she could find a way to hide herself. She could try to get back to the access road and the front of the site without the security van catching her.

  Neither option seemed plausible, and Galadriel looked toward the ridge.

  "Hey!" A voice exploded across the quiet desert. "Hey! You can't be here."

  The sound of the truck door slamming was like a gunshot and Galadriel started running back toward the gap in the wall. She wasn't sure if she would fit. It wasn't a large space, and she was somewhat less than tiny, but it was the only option. She could hear the heavy footsteps of the man who had yelled at her from the truck running toward her, and she slammed herself against the ridge. She felt the edge of the entryway in the stone and put her hand through it, making sure that it was still open.

  "Hey! Where'd you go?" the man shouted.

  Galadriel took a breath and forced herself through the gap in the stone.

  Chapter Eight

  Galadriel could feel the stone scraping at her body, but she pushed through until she finally felt herself stumble into the open area beyond the gap. She rushed forward into the darkness with her hands in front of her. She remembered what Rick had said about the camera hitting the wall after it had only been inside for a few moments, and within seconds, she felt the cool, damp stone at the end of the cavern. Turning around, she pressed her back to the wall and tried to calm the shaking of her breath. Her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she worried the man outside was going to be able to hear it. She reached to either side of her, trying to find another tunnel or section of the cavern so that she could get further out of sight, but the tunnel seemed only to stretch a few feet to either side.

  The light that filtered through the gap in the stone spilled onto the floor of the tunnel near the entryway, and she saw it fade as the man walked past. Galadriel tried to hold her breath so that he wouldn't hear her, and she pressed further against the stone, hoping that she could somehow disappear into the small amount of darkness that the tunnel afforded her. The sound of the footsteps grew more distant and then louder again for a moment, as if the man had gone past the entrance to the tunnel and then came back. Galadriel held her breath for another moment, waiting for the security guard to stick his head into the tunnel and see her. Instead, the footsteps rushed away again, faster this time like he was sure that he had seen her in the distance and was chasing her.

  When the sound of the footsteps disappeared completely, Galadriel let herself relax. She took a step away from the wall and tried to look around, but beyond the sunlight that came in through the crack, the darkness was too deep for her to see anything. She turned her phone on again and activated the flashlight feature, immediately filling the space around her with a clear, white glow. She turned the phone toward the wall and, just as she had estimated, it was only a few feet away from where she was standing. She turned around and found that the other wall was a nearly equidistant from her.

  "How could they have spent so much time in here?" she whispered to herself, remembering what Rick had told her about the group of researchers staying in the tunnel for long enough that the rest of the excavators were afraid of what might have happened to them.

  Her phone rang, and Galadriel picked it up without looking
at the screen.

  "Did they catch you?" Rick asked.

  "No. I went into the tunnel."

  "What?" he asked, sounding startled by the response.

  "That tunnel that you were telling me about. I found it. I hid in it so that the security guard wouldn’t find me."

  "Are you still there?" he asked.

  "Yes. It's not really a tunnel. It's more like a really small cavern. I don't understand why those people would stay in here for so long. There's barely enough room for me, much less a group of people. And there are no other tunnels. No exits. It's just a cavern. One small, little space with nothing to do and nowhere to go."

  "So where did those two excavators go?"

  Galadriel shook her head, even though she knew that Rick couldn’t see her.

  "I don't know," she said absently.

  The glow from the end of her phone was still shining on the wall ahead of her and Galadriel noticed that the surface looked irregular, rather than smooth as she expected it to look. She reached out and touched her fingertips to the stone, feeling the pattern beneath her fingertips.

  "Are you still there, Galadriel?" Rick asked.

  "I'm here," she said. "I think that I might have found something."

  "What is it?"

  "The wall inside the cavern isn't smooth. It almost feels like there are engravings in it, but they're old."

  "Can you see them?"

  "Not well."

  "Do you have your bag with you?"

  "Yes."

  "Make an imprint of them and then send me a picture of it."

  Galadriel lowered her bag to the floor and pulled out the paper and pencil that she needed to make the imprint of the wall. She used the same technique to transfer the impression of the engravings in the wall to the paper and then spread it out on the floor. She turned the phone and snapped a picture of the paper, hoping that the light of the flash would provide enough illumination that Rick would be able to see the shapes clearly.

  "Can you see anything? Does it look like engravings to you?" she asked as she put the phone back to her ear.

  "There's definitely something there," Rick said. "I can't tell what it is. Is there water or anything coming down the wall?"

  "No."

  "I just don't understand how they got so weathered. Even if they are extremely old, being inside the cavern should have protected those carvings from the wind, sand, and rain that would wear them down like that. The only thing that I could think is that there is water running down from the top of the cavern, but you said that it's dry. It just doesn't make sense."

  "I'm not sure."

  Galadriel ran her fingers along the engravings again and suddenly, the sensation beneath her fingertips became familiar. She ran them back again, pressing a little harder this time to ensure that she was getting every detail that she could. Though the depth was different and the edges of the stone on each shape were softer and less defined than the skin of her fingertips was accustomed to, they triggered memories that made her tremble.

  "It's the words on the wall," she whispered, as much to herself as to Rick.

  "What?" he asked,

  "The engravings. They are the same as the words on the wall. At least some of them."

  "Are you sure?" Rick asked.

  "I know these words," she said. "I've seen them before. I've felt them."

  "What do they say?"

  "I don't know. I don't know what any of them mean."

  Galadriel pressed harder with her fingertips as if reaching into the shapes of the engraved letters, trying to find greater meaning in them. Suddenly, she felt warmth building beneath her touch. She lifted her fingers away, startled by the feeling, but quickly replaced them. The need for that warmth was intense, like the need that she felt to be near the wall, almost like the wall itself was close to her again, and she was feeling herself fall into its magnetic appeal. Heaviness washed through her; the exhaustion of her frantic day and sleepless night seeming to hit her all at once and pull down on her eyelids until she wasn't able to hold them up any longer.

  "Galadriel?"

  She could hear Rick's voice somewhere in the distance of her mind, but wherever it was, she wasn't able to get to it. It seemed to be slipping further away each time that he said her name. The sensation of falling became more distinct, and she realized that she no longer felt the stone beneath her fingertips. She drew in a sharp breath just as she fell fully forward and felt her phone drop from her fingertips, the sound of Rick's voice fading into oblivion as her body dropped through nothingness, her closed eyes shielding her from whatever was happening around her.

  What felt like both an instant and an eternity later, Galadriel's body hit the ground and the breath that she had started to draw into her lungs expanded so that she gasped the air in, hungry for what seemed like the first oxygen she had had in several minutes. Her eyes were still closed, and for a moment she was afraid to open them. She didn't know why, but something felt strange around her, as if the very air itself were different, and she wasn't sure that she wanted to confront what she would see when the lifted her still-weary eyelids.

  After a few moments, she became sharply aware of a bright, almost searing glow around her – the type of illumination that could reach through closed eyelids and burn against even the strongest eyes. The next thing she noticed was the heat. It sizzled across her skin in direct and startling opposition to the coolness of the cavern. It was as though she had stumbled back out into the desert, but even then the heat and brightness were too intense.

  Galadriel reached to one side and felt the ground. Instead of finding the rocky floor of the cavern, she felt fine, powdery sand. Creeping her fingers further inward, she felt for the wall that should have been only inches away if she had fallen where she stood. It wasn't there. As far as her arm could stretch, she felt the hot, almost silky sand.

  Hearing her breath around her again, Galadriel fought to keep herself calm. She let her eyes open slowly and pulled herself up onto her hip so that she could look around. The cavern was gone. She was sitting on a massive, rolling expanse of sand.

  Chapter Nine

  Galadriel got to her feet cautiously. Her bag was still draped over her shoulder, and she glanced down at it to make sure that nothing had fallen out. Even though she was carrying only her research materials and the most basic of personal items, the bag and its contents suddenly seemed precious and she felt the urge to protect them.

  She turned around to see where she had fallen from, wondering if she had somehow moved away a rock in the cavern and simply tumbled through. Instead of finding the other side of the ridge, however, Galadriel found herself looking at what looked like a large, moss-covered boulder. It was completely out of place in the middle of the wide desert, and there was no opening or other indication of how she might have come through.

  The intensity of the sunlight burned into her eyes, and a sharp pain was starting to build in her temples. She reached into her bag and pulled out a pair of sunglasses, feeling a sense of relief wash over her as she settled them into place and allowed the tinted lenses to cut the bright glare so that she was better able to see what was around her. Galadriel took a few steps to approach the boulder and looked at it more closely. Even standing inches away from it, there was nothing that showed where she might have come out. No crack, no door, nothing at all.

  She walked around the side of the boulder, but it looked largely the same from all angles. The thick moss reminded her of the woods that she played in when she was a child and would spend the summers at her grandmother's home in the country. Away from the bustling city life where her parents raised her, Galadriel had been fascinated by the quiet and calm, and how everything seemed to grow and thrive on its own without the hassle, fanfare, and interference that seemed to surround her with every breath. Instead, the thick blankets of moss grew along the ground and up the sides of the trees without help and without anything around it to make demand
s or to even appreciate it. It simply existed for existence's sake, and Galadriel had found great comfort in that.

  Now the moss was giving her another feeling, but she wasn't able to express exactly what it was. She looked around and saw nothing but the same rippling sand. The occasional sharp-looking brush grew up from the ground, but there were no trees, no thickets, none of the cool, damp, and dark spaces that would be needed in order for moss like this to thrive. There weren't even any other boulders that would explain the presence of this one. Fear started bubbling up within her. No matter which direction she turned, the landscape didn't change. There was nothing but the sand. She couldn’t see any indication of the excavation. Even the silhouettes of the massive tents that had billowed in the distance when she was approaching the ridge were gone.

  She leaned down and ran her hand through the sand at her feet, feeling its texture again. The sand of the desert that she had just left was gritty and coarse, but this sand felt smooth and fine as it flowed through her fingers. It reminded her of the sand that covered the tourist beaches that she would sometimes visit with her father when she was younger. They were unlike the more exotic beaches that her mother preferred, and the sand there was mostly shipped in by companies that wanted the stretches as pristine and perfect as possible for the families that swarmed to them every summer. Those beaches, though, had always managed to seem less perfect because of the shipped-in sand. This sand was even silkier – the individual grains almost imperceptible as it slid through her fingers and back to the ground.

  Nervousness was building in her chest, and Galadriel didn't know what she was supposed to do next. She didn't know how she had gotten from the inside of the small cavern in the ridge to the huge, open expanse of sand, and that meant that she also didn't know how she was going to be able to get back. That thought quickly turned her nervousness into fear. She turned back to the boulder and pressed her hands to it, hoping that somehow she would be able to find a latch or a hidden door that would lead her back to the cavern. All she felt beneath her palms was the damp softness of the moss and the rough surface of the boulder, hot from absorbing the rays of the almost impossibly bright sun.