Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller by Brandon Ellis (best novels to read in english .txt) 📗

a public place. Chances were, no one in the facility would report any illegal activity if Slade started to knock him around, especially in a facility called “Underfoot Black.” He bit his tongue. “You got me fired from my job?”

“Yes, and you have a new one.” He slapped Jaxx on the shoulder and squeezed. “Make me proud.”

Jaxx shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “I need my job. Do you know how hard I’ve been working? Do you know how hard it was to land that job? They were the only ones who even considered me.”

“Well, apparently they weren’t too attached.”

Jaxx’s heart sank. “Shit.”

“As I said, this facility is known as Underfoot Black. We are a top-secret installation for the Global Safety Administration headed by me. I report directly to the President of the United States.”

Jaxx pursed his lips. Was he supposed to be impressed? “Okay.”

“That’s all you can say?”

“I’m at a loss as to who you are, what the Global whatcha-ma-call-it is, and Underfoot Black? Could you pick any more of a sketchy name?”

“Good. It’s unfamiliar to you, as it should be.” Slade clasped Jaxx’s forearm, pulling him forward. “Scientists, attention please.”

The room quieted and everyone stopped their work.

“This is Kaden Jaxx. He will be helping us with research and investigation.”

A few of them gave nods, most scowled. They went back to their tasks.

Jaxx lowered his gaze. Only just got here and I’m already the least-popular member of the group. He touched the desk in the center of the room. The pyramids spun. “How do you stop the image from moving?”

Slade touched a button on the desk. “Easy.”

Jaxx grimaced and shook his head. He examined the image. “Are these real?”

“Yes.”

The colonel was serious. “If these pyramids are real, they are untouched by modern man. The casing is nearly perfect. It’s capped in gold. Robbers would have chipped away at them centuries ago. Where are these pyramids located?”

“Callisto.”

Callisto? Why does that sound so familiar? A memory popped in his mind, and his head slightly jerked back. On the Mission Control Center-like screen when he walked into Underfoot Black. A moon around Jupiter? It couldn’t be. They were testing him. The entire tour through “Underfoot Black” was an elaborate ruse. He was no dummy. He wasn’t going to fall for their nonsense. Pyramids on Jupiter’s moon, my ass. “Is Callisto a territory on Antarctica?”

A few scientists chuckled.

Slade shot them a look. They went back to what they were doing. That was unusual enough to give him pause. Scientists were usually a mouthy bunch, ready to give their opinions. Either Slade payed them silly money to keep quiet, or the gun at his hip had served its purpose. Either way, Jaxx needed to tread carefully. He’d already lost his job at the University; he couldn’t afford to lose this one before it had begun.

Jaxx pointed to a symbol on the largest pyramid, his finger going through the hologram. Unmistakable. His heart beat faster. He wanted to run to the hills and shout at the rooftops. If this pyramid was real, then to Jaxx this symbol was undeniable proof that Atlanteans were the source of the majority of pyramid construction throughout the world. “Is that symbol on any other structure in the vicinity of these pyramids? Or is this just it?”

Slade looped his fingers through his belt. “We haven’t found any other symbol that resembles that one.”

Jaxx’s mind was always dialed in on the archaeological channel and even though he was in a foreign place, it did not fail him today. “Okay, two circles inside a larger circle, looking like a target. A cross in the middle. One line of the cross extends the length of the target and the other line extends the width. Do you know what that means?”

Slade clenched his jaw. “That’s why you’re here, Jaxx, so you can dazzle me with your brilliance.”

“It’s something I’ve been saying for decades. The three circles serve as a reminder of a lost continent, a lost island, and a lost city. Most importantly, it’s a map of what the island was before it sank 12,500 hundred years ago. The island had an outer water ring, which is represented by the symbol’s biggest circle. Inside the bigger circle are two small circles, which also reminds us that the island had two more inner water rings around the main city. The symbol’s cross are the canals that went the length of the island and the width.”

Jaxx paused. The room dove into silence. He didn’t want to say the name of the mythological place he spoke about in fear he’d be laughed out of the room. Nonetheless, to keep his mouth shut for too long caused more pain than not.

With everyone’s ear, he continued to educate them. “Looking at the pyramids in this image, you see that the land these pyramids sit upon is higher than the land surrounding them. This tells me who built these pyramids, but the symbol is the dead giveaway. I guarantee that if you follow the exact latitude to the other side of the Earth to where these pyramids sit, you’ll see that at almost exactly one-hundred-eighty degrees there will be a large mountain or a volcano.”

Slade cocked his head to the side. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that the majority of the large pyramidal-structures in our world are here to terraform the land by raising the water and mineral table, raising the land, and raising the land on the other side of the Earth. Not every pyramid does this, but most do.”

Slade shrugged. The man didn’t seem like an idiot, but perhaps he was more of a visual learner. Jaxx raced through his hypothesis, boiling it down to the basics; something most people could follow. He drew a sphere in the air with his hands. “This is Earth.” He made a tent-like structure on one side of the sphere. “On this side, we have a volcano.” He ran his other hand over the dome of the imaginary sphere and formed