Unknown 9 by Layton Green (each kindness read aloud txt) 📕

a lover of games and puzzles himself, Dr. Corwin could only appreciate the devious nature of the wild goose chase, though any good lover of riddles would take offense that no prize awaited except a carved message beneath a cannon.

Ah, but I do have a prize, he thought as a warm sea breeze caressed his cheek.

My prize is knowing that Ettore Majorana might still be alive and has continued his research.

You might have won this round, you sly devil, but I know you’re out there somewhere, still at work on your theories—and we’ll see who wins the game in the end.

   13   

As the muscular and dangerous-looking Chinese man—surely an Ascendant—approached the Kalighat Kali Temple, Andie joined the shorter line on the northeast side of the main hall, which led down a set of stairs to the inner sanctum housing the Kalika murti. An unarmed guard in a brown uniform was checking people through at the top of the steps.

As Andie tensed for action, Cal skirted the line holding a fistful of rupees. She had asked for a diversion, and he walked right up to the guard, making a show of trying to bribe his way to the head of the line. Andie couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the guard was shaking his head and jabbing a finger at Cal’s chest. The people in the line were growing agitated and muttering to themselves, probably about rude Americans.

Cal wouldn’t relent. He tried to press the rupees into the guard’s hand and walk around him. This caused the guard, who was much smaller than Cal, to take him firmly by the elbow and try to lead him away. Cal resisted. The guard called for assistance, and two of the nearby touts rushed over. Cal outweighed each of them by fifty pounds, and struggled so hard the entire group fell to the ground in a heap.

Hoping Cal wouldn’t get hurt or arrested, Andie used the distraction to sprint to the front of the line, vault over the pile of men struggling almost comically on the ground, and bound down the flight of steps. She drew stares and shouts aplenty, but no one tried to stop her.

At the bottom of the steps, the line snaked clockwise around the metal fencing surrounding the Kali idol. Andie cut to the right, avoiding the entire line, and a few steps later found herself face-to-face with the imposing stone goddess. The protests from the devotees increased in volume. A crowd of people pressed against the viewing platform above her, pointing down and shouting.

Thank God I have a sari on, she thought, or I might be lynched.

Gritting her teeth, she ignored the clamor and scrunched beside a woman kneeling before the goddess and moaning her name. Andie was so close to the idol she could have reached through the fencing and touched the smooth black stone.

In one deft motion, she held the Star Phone to her eye and aimed it at the Kali yantra on the ceiling high above her. She could glimpse only the outer edge of the yantra from that angle, but it was enough: the chessboard image appeared, and the stone block with the Cassiopeia constellation above her head started to glow. A silver line darted from Cassiopeia to the Leo block she had already illuminated. An explosion began in the king’s constellation and spread quickly across the chessboard, until the entire 3-D image burst into silver fragments that reformed into a new nine-digit alphanumeric sequence. Ignoring the angry shouts all around her, the jarring twang of the sitar, and the foreign smells assaulting her senses, she committed the code to memory and pocketed the Star Phone.

When she turned to leave, people in line were still clamoring and jabbing fingers in her direction, yet remarkably the line had held, since no one wanted to lose his or her place after hours of waiting. As she sprinted toward the stairs, one of the awful touts, a grubby man with missing front teeth, bounded down and stalked her with a vicious twist to his mouth. He was jabbering in Hindi and blocking her way. One of the priests had probably sent him to apprehend her.

Andie didn’t have time for this. She could feel the Ascendants pressing in. With a howl, she ran straight at him, and at the last moment launched a flying kick straight to his stomach. She hit him square with her right heel, throwing him backward, and braced her fall with an elbow. Dazed by the hard floor, she lurched to her feet as the tout curled into a ball and gasped for air. Andie darted up the stairs alongside the stunned crowd and reentered the main hall, where the pandemonium had increased.

In one glance, she noticed a number of troubling things. There was a circle of people standing around Cal, who was struggling to his feet. The guard and the touts were watching him closely and waving their hands, calling for help. Throughout the hall, priests and more guards and even a policeman were converging on the source of the commotion. And at the far end of the natmandir, opposite her position, Andie saw the Chinese man entering the temple, trying to discern the cause of the uproar. He started pushing his way through, wading through the devoted worshippers as if they were long stalks of grass that bent with his passage. Andie didn’t think he had seen her or Cal yet, but it was just a matter of time.

She ran toward Cal, screaming and waving her arms, trying to cow the crowd into submission. It seemed to work—the men around him shrank back, and no one wanted to engage her. As the policeman and his retinue surged forward, Cal collected himself as best he could, and together he and Andie fled the sprawling hall through the nearest open-air exit.

They emerged into an interior courtyard far less crowded than the main courtyard. Still, a good