CARTER [P2C3] – Thyme

The Chronicles of Samuel Carter – Part II: Chapter Three

This is Part Two of the Chronicles of Samuel Carter. If you haven’t read Part One, yet, please find the link below.

The Chronicles of Samuel Carter

And now for the continuation…

Part II – Chapter Three: Thyme

Running down the tunnel carved deep under Hellstone Lake, Samuel glanced ahead, the echo of his footsteps swallowed by the darkness before him. Intermittent phosphorous strips lay along the narrow path like an afterthought, gloomy green moss brooding in the shadows, encased in crystallised droplets of water and sediment, hung from weathered stone.

“How much further?” Samuel shouted, barely registering his own words.

“Almost there,” came the reply from the man running next to him.

The magnetic hum grew louder. The tunnel widened and ended in an oval antechamber, walls made of smooth cobblestone set in perfect symmetry around a dark steel hatch at hip height.

“Here.” The professor handed Samuel a set of earplugs from one of his numerous pockets.

“AR comms?” Samuel asked.

“What?”

“These things? Augmented Reality stuff, right?”

The professor looked at him with a frown. “Earplugs, Doctor Carter. Ze noise?” The professor wedged them into his hairy wax factories and turned to the sealed hatch.

“We’re trapped. That Gorleechen fellow has us right where he wants us. What happened back there?” Samuel squeezed the earplugs between his fingers.

The professor was fiddling with the door, his back to Samuel. “Hmm, hm…hmm.”

“Professor? PROFESSOR!”

“Pressure hatch. We need to get through before Erich catches up. Ah, here.” Thomas pressed, and a hidden access panel appeared with four chrome knobs and tiny black mechanical letters above. “Let’s hope ze legendary fish sausage recipe was worth the price.”

Samuel’s stomach growled at the mention of food.

“One part Zander. One part Hecht. Makes two,” Thomas set the first dial. It clicked into place. “One part Aitel. One part Rutte. Two again.” The second knob obeyed. “All fish filets only, mix and grind together. Then season with…mmm, lecker. Roll into six-centimetre long finger thick sausages, five hundred grams, uh, bread…crumbs, cloves of garlic, lemon juice, parsley, sage, rosemary und—verflixt! There is a word missing.”

“Thyme?”

“Hm? Sometime past midnight,” the professor replied, staring at the recipe.

“No, the herb. Thyme.”

“Ooh, Thymian! Ja, freilich, ich Dummkopf.”

Samuel looked at the squiggly handwriting. “And what has a fish recipe to do with all this?”

“Our inside man in the kitchen, Doctor Carter. Just a little longer, and we’ll be safe. Then I will explain everything.”

Samuel shook his head as the professor turned the third knob to the number six.

“Now for the last one. Five hundred, hmm, lemon, herbs, altogether, five, four, two, makes eleven, hm, cross sum, makes two.” Thomas rubbed his fingers, squinted at the dial and turned the last knob. Once, twice. The metal plate fell into place with a satisfying clack.

The dials rattled and reset with a warning buzz.

“I guess that’s not good?” said Samuel.

“I was wrong. Let me see…four fish, ingredients, not size. This must be it. Four, Five, Four, Two.”

The numbers clicked and clacked and a few seconds later reset again to the sound of many footsteps, and something else, something fast, something growling, something howling, drawing closer, coming their way.

“Give me that!” Samuel grabbed the recipe.

“Vorsicht, it’s my only copy,” cried the professor.

“That line about the herbs is underlined, and here? Why would it say See you next year on a recipe?”

“Johann is a good friend. Of course, he would write something like that. It’s the end of the year.”

“Alright, but here again, the word year is underlined, don’t you see? Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. Year.” Samuel looked at the Professor expectantly.

“Yes, Thymian, I understand, but the code didn’t work. We are missing something… ah, the secret ingredient!”

“What? No! The year, the album, the code. Nineteen sixty-six! Simon and Garfunkel. Don’t you see?”

“How would I know that? That was more than two centuries ago. Johann wouldn’t leave me that clue…unless—of course! He knew that you would know. Brilliant, oh my dear Johann.” Thomas took the piece of paper, folded it with care, kissed it, and put it back into his breast pocket, patting it gently. “Here goes nothing!”

The hatch opened with a hiss as pressurised air escaped, orange light flared, alarms blared, and with a howl, something leapt at the professor.

“BAZI. Sitz!” Thomas commanded. The dog obeyed with a yelp. “Good boy!” He produced some strips of beef jerky from his pocket, which the pug slobbered over while they climbed through the narrow hole into an empty two-by-two-metre corridor, grey steel panels bolted from floor to ceiling, soft amber light flowing around them from everywhere. Professor von Traunstein sealed the hatch shut, and the alarm stopped.

“You had food in your pocket this whole time?”

“Ze last of my treats.”

“For a pug?”

“Bazi was my dog, too, once…” Thomas said, his eyes distant, cleared his throat, took a key shaped like a tooth from his neck chain and held it close to the centre of the hatch.

“What’s this now? A tooth?”

“Not just any tooth, Doctor Carter. This is a Hellstone Tooth. The shape is ze exact same as ze lake. Only three keys exist. Erich has one, so did Beaumont,” Thomas grinned, “—and the third, well, that’s another story.”

“This Erich guy has a key? Can’t he just unlock the door?”

“He could, only, you see, I will leave mine inside and thus block ze lock, and he cannot risk forcing ze hatch open without risking damaging ze hull integrity.” The professor winked.

A black groove appeared in the shape of the key. It seemed to breathe, whisper. Samuel shuddered.

“Gently now,” Thomas pressed the tooth inside the opening and quickly withdrew his hand as the hole snapped close with steel teeth. “That will buy us enough time. Come, ze oxygen chamber is right up ahead.” Thomas headed down the tube, light pulsing at his every step.

“I hate tunnels,” Samuel grumbled.

They were sitting in reclining chairs inside the chamber. A scent of essential oils lingered in the air, and from the speaker came soothing sounds of water, strings and flute. The light dimmed, and the procedure began; Samuel felt the pressure in his ears when the music stopped. A voice droned.

“So, you’ve locked yourselves in. Rats in a cage. No matter. I will get what I want. I will melt the flesh off your bones, I will be a god, and you will be a pile of goo at my feet. You hear me, Thomas? I will—”

The professor turned a knob, and the music continued.

“Closed system. He can’t hear us. We need to get you to ze X-Point before—

“I go supernova.”

“It won’t come to that, Doctor Carter.”

“You don’t know that. I can’t control it. What if I pass out again? What if this thing takes over?”

“We’ll transfer ze energy back into ze device, and then we’ll—”

“What device?”

“Beaumont has not told you?”

“No one ever tells me anything.”

“I assumed, since you have been there for so long, Jackie’s attempt at transference—”

“Transference…I’ve heard that word before. Her father…the book…the cage.” Fragments of a memory, a pod, one part trapped, the other free, free to release the light. “This device…it can hold the energy? Is it safe?”

“It is the safest place. You were never meant to touch the staff. Beaumont is playing with things far beyond his comprehension. His interference cost us dearly.”

“Once we reach the X-Point, you can get this thing out of me?”

“In theory—It’s very much new territory. Beyond quantum entanglement, beyond quantum fusion. Pioneer ground, Doctor Carter.”

“I don’t understand. How can you be sure this will work? Who built this device?”

“We don’t know. We think it was built by the same people who made the staff.”

Samuel let out a deep sigh. They both sat in silence for a while.

“If we fail, what will happen?”

“Our findings are inconclusive. Ze energy…defies measurement. Worst case? Ze blast would be big, quite big.”

“How big?”

“A few hundred megatons. We can’t know for sure but Hellstone Lake and everything around it would most certainly be gone.”

Samuel stared at the ceiling. “How long?”

“Impossible to say. But there may be no explosion, and you will simply cease to be.”

“—Not before I get my pretzel.”

They followed the pale green fluorescent strips down to the next section, passed through, sealed the pressure doors behind them, and the deeper they went, the colder it got. The distinct humid odour of mushrooms seeped out from cracks in the walls, spores shimmered in the faint twilight. His nose and mouth tingled, his hair stood on end, they were close now.

“Up ahead,” Thomas pointed at another round hatch in the ground before them at the end of the tunnel.

Together, they strained and pulled, and with a reluctant creak, it opened, and they descended into the steel belly of a ship.

“This is the X-Point?” Samuel could feel the magnetic resonance.

“Welcome aboard the SM-Hellstone, Doctor Carter.”

---

TFTD Community

Thank you for reading, and to all new subscribers, welcome and thank you for joining! Please leave a comment and say Hi in the chat or on Discord, or drop me a line via email. I am always happy to hear from you.

If you liked reading this, feel free to click the ❤️ button on this post so that more people can discover it on Substack. 🙏