​Jalahdi Bhatti
13 days ago Jalahdi Bhatti took a new job. This wasn’t particularly monumental for her as she worked within the gig economy and took jobs as they came to her. People hired her for her skill set and her reputation. Her actual job title varied depending on what she was being paid to do, and her reputation on who was telling the story. Retrieval specialist. Treasure Hunter. Thief. Talented. Overpriced. Loyal.
As long as that one facet of her reputation remained, that she always got her jobs done and always came through, Jalahdi didn’t care what people said about her or called what she did. She had explored ruins, infiltrated archeological sites, and wandered the wilderness. Sometimes her locales were a little less exotic. Her new job wasn’t exactly her area of interest but the money was so good it was suspicious. And where there was suspicion there was curiosity and where there was curiosity there was inevitably danger. Where there was danger Jalahdi Bhatti was usually not very far behind, or sometimes just narrowly ahead; the two of them locked in an unending game of tag together.
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So Jalahdi saw just how much she was being offered to rob the house on the cliffside, and saw just who owned that house and suspicion/curiosity/danger sang in her veins and she took the job. The house on the coast was owned by Jennifer Chan, the famous fantasy author. While this was novel enough on its own, the thing that interested Jalahdi was that the house was also owned by Jennifer Chan’s wife Doctor Xiao Chan. Doctor Chan wasn’t as famous as her novelist wife in most circles except for the very specific ring of interest Jalahdi was a part of. In that ring working archaeologists like Doctor Chan tended to gain notice.
Her instructions were clear: break into the house, find Dr. Chan’s office, find the black box with the red rune painted on top and take it. Do not open the box. Do not engage with the Chan family. Easy enough, except for the unknown: what was in the box. Jalahdi thought about doing the responsible thing and just not taking the job, but whoever had hired her, either intentionally or not had snared her interest with the mystery of Dr. Chan’s box.
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So, after almost two weeks of planning and staking out the house Jalahdi made her move. When night fell she moved without stumbling. Disabling the security system sensors she picked the lock and walked right through the front door. The house was modern in design: gleaming hardwood floors and massive glass windows at the back overlooking the cliffs and the sea. However there were personal touches: unwashed mugs in the sink, a half built lego set in the living room, and a fuzzy blanket tossed haphazardly over the back of the couch.
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Jalahdi tried to ignore these items. This is why she preferred to steal from people who had been dead for a few thousand years. She glided carefully over the hardwood floor keeping her steps light and quick and her weight on the balls of her feet. Her research indicated that Dr. Chan’s office was on the second floor. She climbed the steps walking up the tiny protruding section of floor on the other side of the railing partially because the wood would be less worn out, but also because it was more fun. When she reached the landing of the second floor she flipped over the banister and landed in a crouch. She peered down the gloomy hallway. The only light had been emanating from the windows downstairs and the moon, but there were no windows in this hallway. Thankfully there was a nightlight plugged in across from the stairs. Jalahdi guessed it was so the Chan’s didn’t trip and stumble down the stairs if they got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.
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She counted the faint outlines of the doors she could make out in the gloom. To her left was the bathroom, then the Chan’s master bedroom, their son’s, and there at the other end of the hall would be Doctor Chan and Jennifer Chan’s shared office. She made her way down the hall and slipped inside easily.
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Easy is a good thing, she reminded herself. You don’t actually want to get caught.
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Closing the door behind her, she felt it safe to turn on her flashlight and sweep it over the room. There were windows in here too, as this was the back of the house. The Chan’s had chosen to leave the view for their office instead of their bedroom. Two desks were pushed next to each other on the right, and a shelf of books was crammed full on the left.
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Jalahdi moved to the closest desk and started looking. It took about fifteen minutes, and every minute that passed she knew she was pushing. The longer she stayed in the house the more dangerous this got.
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Finally turning her attention to the book shelf she found it hidden innocuously on the bottom of a stack of books written by Jennifer Chan. The size and shape had made the black box look like another book among the stack. It was only the lack of anything written on the spine that made Jalahdi do a double take, and that was when she saw the seam indicating the opening.
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She carefully moved the three books on top to the floor and took the box down from the shelf. She replaced the books and made her way back to the door. She hesitated. The moon was high in the sky. Almost full, it shone through the full windows of the back wall framing Jalahdi in glass, sea, and moonlight.
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The box was a sleek black with a single red symbol painted on top. Her employers had called it a rune and Jalahdi realized this was a word choice meant to gain her interest. In reality Jalahdi saw that the symbol painted on the box was done sloppily. As if by a child. Her experience as a world traveller and the requirements of her job meant she also recognized the symbol. It was the chinese character for Mom.
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If Dr. Chan had stolen something from a dig site and brought it home then Jalahdi wasn’t really doing anything worse by stealing it from her.
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She took another step toward the door and stopped again. There was no way the thing her employers were interested in was the box. What they wanted was what was inside. That’s what she was being paid for.
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Making a decision Jalahdi opened the box.
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Suddenly she heard sirens.
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The Chan's were the only residents for miles. Jalahdi grabbed what was in the box and tucked it into the pocket of her jacket. She placed it on one of the Chan’s desks and ran for the door. She barreled for the staircase and slid down the railing. She thought she heard a door open above her but she was already sprinting for the kitchen and the back door. It was no longer just moonlight coming through the windows but a flashing red and blue.
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Suspicion/curiosity/danger it was all catching up to her as she ran out of the house. The police were at the front. There was no way to get to the road and to her car parked a mile away. She didn't even try, instead running without stopping for the edge of the cliff.
She reached her hand into her pocket and pulled out the object she had stolen. She didn’t get much of a chance to look at it seeing only an opaque or crystalline object on a chain. She wrapped the chain around her wrist and clutched the crystal at the end in her fist. Then she jumped off the cliff and plunged into the sea below.
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Jalahdi followed the cliff face swimming for a few miles using only moonlight and her memory of her two weeks staking out the house to find what she was looking for. Thinking she was at the right place she began to climb. She had to move the chain to her neck to free her hands. She was a talented and experienced climber, but without equipment and at the dead of night every move she made up the cliff face had to be calculated.
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This is more like it, she thought, carefully choosing her next handhold and budging herself up another few feet. This is what she should be doing. Chases, and high dives and scaling cliffs this was the stuff she was made of. Not robbing cute families in their glass houses. Even if one member of the family was apparently also a thief.
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Jalahdi made it halfway up the cliff face only almost falling twice before she found the hidden cave. The cliff was full of them and she had spent a good portion of her two weeks finding and taking stock of these caves. She had left go-bags of emergency supplies and gear in the one’s she had found for just something like this happening.
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She pulled herself into the cave and leaned against the rock wall panting. She found her flashlight, which like all her gear was top of the line and water proof and turned it on.
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This wasn’t one of the caves she had staked out. It was a new one. It was small, about five feet by feet with a ceiling that was thankfully a little higher. The gap to get inside was narrow; it looked like a crack in the rock from the bottom of the cliff. There was no graffiti on the walls, no litter, or any sign that anyone had been in this cave before.
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Part of Jalahdi’s love for her job was getting to be the first person at these sites. Or the first in a very long time anyway. She thought that might be true here. She took a satellite phone out of her pack and sent a message to one of her contacts. They would send her more information and she would worry about extraction.
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Her employers would have to forgive her opening the box if she forgave them for the arrival of the cops. Speaking of…
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“What’s so special about you?” Jalahdi shined her light on the pendant around her neck. She finally had a chance to examine the necklace. The crystal was about the length and width of her thumb. It was pyramid in shape; there were four sides that ended in a pointed triangle. It was cloudy and opaque. It looked like cheap costume jewelry, and Jalahdi’s trained eye saw that was pretty much what it was.
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Maybe there had been something about that box.
Or.
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She took the necklace off and slammed it against the cave wall. The crystal shattered. Just glass.
Jalahdi looked through the broken remnants...she had thought, with the opaque colour, that maybe something had been hidden in the necklace, but there didn’t seem to be anything.
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Sighing, and wondering if she had just lost out on her big pay, and more pressing the answer to this whole mystery as she removed the last piece of dangling glass from the chain.
The chain.
She ran her fingers over the silver chain. It was thin and flat. There was something engraved inside. Letters. It took some time going by feel but eventually Jalahdi was able to distinguish the characters. It wasn’t english, or chinese. It might have been greek. “Open a path for me.” She said.
Below her something was happening. The waves of the sea sounded...wrong. On the lamb and paying attention to every detail Jalahdi noticed immediately. She crept to the cave opening and looked down.
The waves had raised far above their natural levels, but they weren’t crashing against the cliff face. Instead they were swirling up and then back into the sea. A circle. No, she thought peering down, an arch.
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The decision should have been an easy one, and it was. Suspicion, curiosity and danger were all promised in that swirling unknown door to whatever came next.
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Jalahdi scrambled down the cliff face, she skidded down several feet and cut her hands open but didn’t care. She didn’t know how long the door would stay open. She reached the mouth of the arch. Sea spray hit her face, but she couldn’t smell the salt. Instead there was another smell coming from the portal: ozone? Copper? It was something metallic. She tried to see to the other side but the waves were churning too quickly and it was still too dark.
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She tilted her head to the side. “Yeah. Yeah Ok.” Then she jumped. This time into the vortex.
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It wasn’t an instantaneous teleportation to another place. Instead she jumped and landed harder and sooner than she thought just on the other side of the arch. She could see that the waves actually extended in front of her in a kind of corridor. She walked down it, the moon shining through the water and her flashlight helping her move forward. She eyed the walls of this corridor and tried not to think what would happen if it collapsed on her. She quickened her step a little.
There was another end. This door was not swirling and made out of water but made of metal Jalahdi couldn’t see what the door was connected to. “Talk about tunnel vision,” she muttered.
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She could only see a door and a panel next to it. There was no handle on the door. The panel had a pyramid shaped hole.
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A key she thought. Followed by, “oops.”
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She grabbed a screwdriver from her bag and popped the bottom off the panel. It took longer than she thought it would, every tense second a moment the waves could come crashing down on her, a more literal representation of her tension in any job than she needed. The system of the door was nearly unrecognizable to her but finally she connected two wires and heard a click as if of a lock opening. The door in front of her swung open.
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Not even a creak. Someone oiled the hinges she thought.
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Then she stopped thinking for a moment because she stepped through the door and was struck dumb.
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She looked up first. A silver web twisted over her head into the shape of a dome. Above the silver beams were swirling waves arching away from the beams. It was a much larger version of the corridor she had just walked through. A layer of silver and then water creating a hollow dome inside of which was...inside of which was–
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The city was lit up. Everything seemed to be made out of sleek metal that somehow hadn’t oxoidized despite its proximity to the water. There was electricity here, which Jalahdi had figured because of the door but it was another thing to see it. The entire city gleamed. Street lights, and flying...cars or ships...it was hard to tell really, shone out. She seemed to be at the edge of this city. A path made out of paving stones and lined with flowers (flowers?! Here?) lead up to the city.
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Jalahdi took the path. Taking the walk up to the city to process everything. Or trying to.
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It was clear that wherever she was they had technology like she had never seen, she thought, as she watched the flying ships above her. This city had a nightlife. People were bustling about. They were dressed in white flowing clothes. They all seemed to have shining silver accessories. Some talked into them, or tapped at them like phones. Others were even more advanced, projecting blue holograms of friends to walk next to them on the streets, or transporting objects from somewhere else into the palm of their hands. Or maybe not even transporting. Replicating. Jalahdi people watched while ducked into an alley of the city that wasn’t lit up by the strategically placed lights on the buildings. She listened to them too. Her knowledge of languages and ancient cultures meant she sort of understood them, but living languages change, and there was a lot of slang that went over her head.
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Her satellite phone trilled. It seemed even bulkier and heavier than normal, she thought as she watched these strange young people play with their slim triangle devices. It was her contact. Extraction would be at the cliff’s tomorrow morning at 0600. She had already extracted herself...or had she? Could she stay in this strange city?
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She eyed the dome high above her. Protection from just the water? Or were these people trying to keep something else out? Like guests.
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She weighed the scenario in her mind. She bounced lightly on her feet as she thought before going still her mind and body settling. She was a retrieval specialist. A treasure hunter. A thief. That meant she went into places, she traveled, and went from place to another. That she took something. And that she got out. Staying wasn’t her game.
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She was in, that was part one. Which meant next: she had to take something.
One of those ships? She thought. Joyride? Maybe.
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She eyed the gleaming silver buildings of the city. Trying to see if there was anything to indicate what might be inside. She dismissed the idea even though it was the perfect kind of tempting. As much as she loved playing with danger she knew that the only way she got to keep playing was to stay in the game. She had barely rewired that door and that whole thing had played out with an uncomfortable helping hand from luck.
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She eyed the swarming crowd of people. All of them with one of those triangle devices. It would be the equivalent of stealing an Iphone from home, she thought. But of stealing an Iphone and bringing it back to the 17th century. The tech would still be worth a fortune if she decided to sell it...and if she didn’t it was the perfect souvenir size.
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There was the problem of blending in. Everyone was wearing that flowing white cloth, which probably made sense given the humidity, but it meant that Jalahdi would stick out in her all black work gear. She looked around her, looking for anything around her she could use to her advantage.
She found herself glancing up at the dome above her. She wondered how much energy it took to power this city, or to power that field that kept the water from crashing in. Or maybe the water was the power? Some kind of hydroelectricity? As her gaze came back down it was snagged by something fluttering white above her.
One of the sleek buildings she was nestled between had balconies. About three floors above her was some of that white cloth. Probably out to dry. She pressed herself against the opposite building and took a running start at the other building. She jumped up the side of the building using her momentum to hop once, twice and she was just high enough to grab the bottom of the first balcony. It wasn't difficult to climb this balcony to the second floor and from there quickly reach up and grab the white cloth. She scrambled down the building and changed quickly. She didn’t know how to pin the cloth the way these people did so she just drapped the cloth the way her mother had taught her to drape a sari. She pushed that memory aside and focused on the task at hand.
She cast another glance around and stepped out into the crowded street and tried to walk with the crowd as if she had grown up on these streets with them. She made her way toward a group of teenagers who were loitering outside a black building with sharp angles that seemed to be a popular spot. As they stopped coming out of the doors they blocked a group of people going in. One of the people was a flickering blue outline– a hologram , another had a silver glove and was manipulating a ball of water above their fingers changing it into shapes of a star, then a triangle, and it was this showing off that had created a block of the door.
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Jalahdi pushed through this tangling of two groups. She jostled the boy with the glove so that the water in his palm spilled onto the flickering blue girl. In the argument between the two groups that broke out she slipped away. She was careful to keep her pack low to the ground so that it didn’t attract the eyes of anyone in the crowd. Her new outfit didn’t have pockets so she tucked the triangle device she had pickpocketed from one of the teenagers close to her side.
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She didn’t run, nor did she want to go too slow even if she was tempted to gawk at the city. She kept an even gait to that stone path back to the door. As she walked along the path she glanced at the strange flowers that were growing along the stones. She didn’t recognize them; they looked like some cross between coral and orchids. That was probably what they were, she thought, some kind of highly advanced genetic modification. She hesitated as she reached the metal door.
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The longer she stayed inside the greater the chance of getting caught. She knew that. Barely pausing in her movement she bent down and plucked one of these strange flowers from the path. Since she had hacked the door to get in it was still cracked open. She carefully pulled the door open a little wider and saw that the tunnel that brought her to the city was still swirling.
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She looked back. The city rose up behind her. It was bright. That was the part she would always remember. Shining black buildings and soft lights framed by a shimmering silver web and the swirling sea above them. She thought she understood living a life with danger dangling above her head and being kept from crashing down by only thread but these people were living that almost literally. Or maybe they weren’t. She thought about all the swarming happy people converging in the city. How not a single one of them had looked up at the dome in concern, or caution, or even awe. She didn’t think she could have lived like that, relying on the strength of the thread, or that silver web, relaying on the genius of somebody else to stop the waves from crashing in. She watched as one of those flying ships dodged around a silver beam, still wishing she could fly one when those lights around the city all began to change. Instead of shining white light on the buildings they all turned red. It could have been normal, an artistic effect, or something they do when the night life in the city awoke, but where she came from flashing red lights meant alarm, warning, and cops.
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Jalahdi slipped through the metal door and back into the water tunnel. She made her way back to the mouth of the vortex at a jog afraid someone from the city would come down the flower-coral path and shut the tunnel down while she was inside. Through the vortex could see flashes of the cliff face where all of this had started. She tried to estimate how much time had passed since she broke into the Chan’s. A couple of hours maybe? She stepped out of the tunnel and from her neck she pulled off the silver chain.
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She thought about how much it would be worth. The key to that city, which itself was the key to untold advancement. She thought about the kind of people who had hired her to break into a house with a child in it. She thought of what they would do to all those people in that city. She ran her thumb over the strange symbols before sighting. “I guess some secrets belong to the waves,” she whispered, and then she threw the chain into the vortex. The water of the tunnel seemed to swirl faster and faster before collapsing back into the ocean with a great splash. She shone her flashlight into the water. She couldn’t find a gleam of silver. Maybe the ocean had swept it away, or maybe it had made it to the otherside of the doorway.
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She climbed her way back up to the hidden cave in the cliffs, the way familiar to her this time. She settled against the wall and counted another three hours to sunrise when her extraction would arrive. She played with the triangle device she had stolen, itching to take it apart but not having the equipment.
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She placed the device in her bag still 50/50 on whether she would sell it or not. She would have to go underground for a while. And she could kiss her reputation for loyalty goodbye. She had broken one of the employer’s rules: she had opened the box. More than that she had used the score for herself. Oh well, she had found something to occupy her time for awhile.
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She brought the strange hybrid flower to her face. In the sliver of moon light from the cave opening she saw that the pink and orange coral-orchid was veined with silver. She leaned over and inhaled listening to the sound of the waves, and letting the smell of Atlantis wash over her.
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