Helios

FIFTEEN

Three hours, Pierce thought. I’m gone for three hours, and the whole world goes to hell.

He was still trying to make sense of what Dourado had told him. She had been a little frantic, no doubt about that, but the things she was describing taxed his comprehension.

Global earthquakes? The sun stopped in its tracks? A 13,000 year old alien satellite? Robots? And worst of all, Felice Carter in the thick of it, all alone.

He glanced over at Lazarus, seated across the aisle of their chartered plane. The big man, now wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants purchased from a gift shop, had recovered from his wounds, but even though his face was stony and unreadable, Pierce knew he was seething inside. He was angry at a perceived failure to protect the woman he loved.

That was Lazarus’s curse. He believed it was his responsibility to save everyone.

Pierce understood. He felt just as helpless and angry.

The elation and relief they had experienced after escaping from the caves under Arkaim had started to evaporate during the mad dash across the border of Kazakhstan, when Dourado failed to pick up the phone. Pierce’s mood had diminished a little more with each successive attempt, but it had not occurred to him that something might be wrong in Rome, or that the source of the problem would turn out to be a threat of global proportions.

He was still having trouble wrapping his head around that.

Worse, Dourado had lost contact with Carter. At last report, Carter, along with tech billionaire Marcus Fallon and a physicist named Ishiro Tanaka, were being chased by an army of actual killer robots intent on preventing them from shutting down the errant Black Knight satellite. Pierce was less clear on the details, but that was some kind of massive electromagnetic mirror, diverting both the sun’s light and heat energy, and its gravitational influence. The threat was difficult to fathom, but the greater mystery — the identity of the enemy who seemed so intent on preventing Fallon from correcting his mistake — was an even more troubling mystery.

The earthquakes had played havoc with international air traffic control. The skies were being kept clear for relief flights, though Pierce had been assured the restrictions would soon be lifted. Every second they spent stuck on the ground just made him more helpless, but that was nothing compared to what Lazarus was feeling.

Pierce stared at his phone, wondering if he should call Dourado again, to check if there was any word from Carter. He knew it would be a futile gesture, though. Dourado would call the instant she knew something. Worrying wasn’t going to accomplish anything.

“I think this is all connected,” Fiona said, breaking the long silence.

Pierce looked over and saw the young woman staring at the metal orb they had recovered from beneath Arkaim. “It sounds like the Black Knight and this Roswell memory metal are made from the same stuff as that sphere. But what happened had nothing to do with you finding it.”

“I’m not so sure about that. But that’s not what I mean.”

Before Pierce could ask her to elaborate on the first statement, Gallo addressed the second. “Your vision. Raven stealing the light.”

Fiona nodded. “You were wondering why I dreamed that particular story. Maybe the sphere was communicating with the other pieces of memory metal. Maybe it knew what was happening. Or was warning me about what might happen.”

“Like a prophecy?” Pierce felt about prophecies much the same way he did about magic and miracles. Sure, they happened sometimes, but there was a rational explanation. There had to be.

“No,” Gallo said, with unexpected certainty. “It was an explanation. This has happened before.”

Fiona was as surprised as Pierce. “What do you mean?”

“According to Cintia, the Black Knight is at least 13,000 years old. Its arrival coincides with the dawn of civilization—”

“Well, that depends on your definition of civilization.”

She ignored him. “Nearly every civilization on Earth practiced some form of Sun worship. The Sun God was almost always the most important deity to the ancients. And there’s always a story like this. A god stealing the sun or losing control of it somehow. When Fiona told us about Raven, I thought of the Phaethon story.”

“Phaethon, the son of Apollo?” Fiona asked.

Gallo nodded. “Technically, it was Helios, not Apollo. Phaethon begged Helios for a chance to drive the sun chariot. That’s the part that reminded me of the Raven story.”

“But Phaethon lost control of the sun chariot and would have burned up the Earth if Zeus hadn’t killed him with a thunderbolt. That’s almost the opposite of what happened with Raven.”

“It is,” Gallo said. “But what if the stories are describing the same event? An actual solar crisis, but from different global perspectives?”

Pierce shook his head. “All these myths came out of stories intended to explain the changing of the seasons and cosmic events, like eclipses, to primitive people who didn’t understand how the universe worked.”

“That’s the accepted version, of course, but we both know better, George. Those ancient civilizations did understand. They weren’t primitives. They mapped the stars. Built observatories. They knew the Earth was round, no matter what they tell kids in school. They were too sophisticated to need reassurance about the cycle of the seasons or eclipses. Those stories are referencing a universal event. Just like the flood myths.”

Pierce let that dubious comparison slide. “Let’s say you’re right. Why does it matter?”

“Because if this has happened before, then it means there’s a way to shut it down.”

“Felice is already working on that.”

Gallo wagged her head sideways in a gesture of polite disagreement. “This Fallon fellow is a child playing with matches. We need a fire extinguisher.”

“Is that what this is?” Fiona held up the orb.

Gallo glanced at Pierce. “George, what do you think?”

Pierce rubbed his chin. “I think we can safely say that it might be part of the solution, but that sphere hasn’t seen the light of day — if you’ll pardon the pun — in at least five thousand years. Maybe a lot longer. Maybe not since the time of the Originators.”

“What happened to them?” Fiona asked. “Who were they? Aliens?”

“Gods,” Gallo murmured.

“Quite possibly the inspiration for them,” Pierce admitted.

“In Greek mythology,” Gallo continued, “the gods were not the embodiment of the forces they represented, but rather masters of those forces. Helios wasn’t the sun personified, but the master of the sun, which took the form of a chariot he drove across the sky. The sun chariot is ubiquitous in Indo-European mythology. The Norse. The Celts. It’s in the Rig Veda. There’s even mention of a divine chariot in the Bible.”

“I’m familiar with the stories,” Pierce said. “UFO enthusiasts think those are all primitive descriptions of alien spaceships.”

“What if they are? What if the sun chariot is an Originator spaceship? Maybe the Black Knight is what Fallon thinks it is, an alien device for harnessing and redirecting the sun’s energy. And the sun chariot is the vehicle used for going back and forth to turn it on. That’s what we need to do to fix this. Fly up to the Black Knight and shut it down.”

“Fly up? In an ancient alien spacecraft?” Pierce sighed. It was outlandish, but outlandish was par for the Herculean Society’s course. “Assuming it’s possible, in the story, Phaethon lost control of the chariot and nearly destroyed the Earth.” He looked at Fiona. “Raven was scorched by the sun. That’s why his feathers are black. Approaching it could make things worse.”

Gallo pointed to the orb. “It’s alien technology. Has to be. And it responds to Fiona. To the Mother Tongue. There aren’t a lot of other options.”

George gave a nod. She was right about that. “But we’ll have to find the chariot first.”

“And Felice.” Lazarus spoke quietly but his tone was as hard as a diamond.

Pierce nodded. “We know Fallon’s experiments caused this. That’s where we have to focus our efforts. But Erik, you go after Felice.”

“You’re sure?” Lazarus looked surprised. He’d overcome the PTSD caused by drowning hundreds of times in a row while clawing his way out of a lake. He was back to full fighting strength now, physically and mentally, and for him, the mission always came first. But even a seasoned fighter like Lazarus could be undone by worry for a loved one. For him to bring his full force to bear, he first had to find Felice, whose presence and expertise would also be beneficial.

“I’m sure,” Pierce said. “Go find her, and when you’re done you can both help us save the world.”

SIXTEEN

Gallo felt a flush of guilt. “I didn’t mean…”

Pierce waved her off. “Don’t worry about it. We’d just be in his way.” He took out his phone and tapped the screen twice, once to place the call, and once more to put the phone on speaker.

Dourado picked up on the first ring. “Still no word,” she said.

“About our flight, or from Felice?”

“Take your pick.”

“Doesn’t matter. Change of plans. Erik is going to Geneva to help Felice. If he asks, and he probably won’t, give him whatever help he needs with travel arrangements.”

“Just Erik? What about the rest of you?”

Pierce looked over at Gallo. “Gus, where do we start?”

Gallo was at a loss, feeling put on the spot, but Fiona jumped in. “Cintia, we need to find the chariot of Helios, the Sun god.”

“Oh. Let me Google it.”

Gallo wasn’t sure if Dourado was joking or not, but the brief exchange helped her organize her thoughts. “What we’re looking for is a real world connection to Helios. Temples. Specific locations mentioned in the myth that correspond to real locations. I’d look it up myself…”

“I understand.” There was a slight pause. “Okay, the most significant ancient site associated with the worship of Helios is the island of Rhodes, just south of Turkey.”

“Of course,” Gallo murmured. “The Colossus.”

“The Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was dedicated to Helios. There’s a whole file on it in the Herculean archives.”

“We can save that for another day,” Pierce said.

“The Dorians brought Helios worship to Rhodes, probably from Corinth on the Greek mainland. There was a small temple to Helios there, but he was never very important to the Greeks. The only other place associated with Helios is Thrinakia.”

Gallo nodded. “From the Odyssey. After escaping Scylla and Charybdis, Odysseus landed on the island of Thrinakia, where Helios’s daughter Lampetia tended his sacred cattle and sheep. Odysseus was warned to avoid the island, and especially the herds, but his men were hungry and killed some of the cattle. Helios demanded retribution. He threatened to stop the sun from shining on the Earth if the mortals weren’t punished, so Zeus sent a thunderbolt to destroy them. Odysseus survived but was exiled to Ogygia, the island of Calypso, for seven more years.”

“Stop the sun from shining,” Pierce mused. “Sounds like he was threatening to cause a solar event.”

“Why does a Sun God need sacred cows?” Fiona asked, shaking her head. “And people think Native American stories are weird.”

Gallo gave her a thoughtful look. “That’s an excellent question.”

“It is?”

“If experience has taught us anything, it’s that, while there is more than a little truth in the old myths, we have to be careful about taking everything at face value.”

“Right. Chariot equals spaceship.” Fiona shrugged. “And sacred cows equal what?”

She meant it as a joke, but as she said it, her eyes got a faraway look. “A chariot is pulled by horses…a power source. There’s a logic to the symbolism.

“Helios had cattle and sheep, right? Cattle for meat, sheep for wool. If we accept that Helios was an alien…an Originator…maybe he was the guy in charge of solar power. What would he need that would correspond to meat and…” She looked down at the orb again, squeezing the springy metal. “Wool?”

“I’ll be damned,” Pierce muttered. “I think you’re onto something. I’ll bet if we take that thing to Thrinakia, you’ll be able to use it like a compass to find the chariot.”

“Unfortunately,” Gallo said, “like so many other locations from the Odyssey and the Heraklion, we don’t know where it was, or even if it was. Ancient geographers thought it might have been Sicily, or Malta. But they were just guessing, and obviously they had no idea that there was a world beyond the Pillars of Hercules.”

Pierce nodded. “Cintia…”

“Let me guess,” Dourado said. “You need me to cross reference all locations in the Odyssey with actual known locations and create a computer simulation of the actual route Odysseus traveled. Already on it.”

“Actually I… You know what, never mind. I like your idea better.”

“According to Homer, Odysseus and his crew arrived at Thrinakia after passing Scylla, a six-headed sea monster, and Charybdis, a giant whirlpool that’s often associated with the Strait of Messina, between Italy and Sicily. That’s the main reason why Sicily is often identified as Thrinakia. Before that, they were on the island of Circe, the sorceress — also a daughter of Helios. Circe told Odysseus that there were two routes back to his home, the Kingdom of Ithaca. The route he chose took him to Thrinakia, but the other route would have taken him through the Wandering Rocks, the same rocks that almost destroyed the Argo. Traditionally, the Wandering Rocks are associated with the Bosporus Strait, the passage between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. So if Odysseus had to pass through the Wandering Rocks to get back home, that would put Circe’s island in the Black Sea. Nowhere near Sicily.”

“Not to mention the fact that the Bosporus is the only water route out of the Black Sea,” Pierce put in. “There isn’t another, so Circe couldn’t have offered Odysseus a choice.”

Gallo shook her head. “There’s no way to make the geography described in the Odyssey fit the map unless we reject all our preconceptions about where Odysseus, or the person who inspired him, actually traveled.”

“Too bad Alexander’s not around anymore,” Pierce muttered. “He’d probably know exactly where it is.”

Alexander Diotrephes, was one of many names used by the immortal explorer who had inspired the legend of the demigod Herakles, or as the Romans called him, Hercules. Alexander — Hercules — had not actually been the son of the god Zeus, but in a way, he had descended from the heavens, or more precisely, from an alternate dimension. After an extended stay on Earth — several thousand years of walking among humans — he had recently returned home. He had formed the Herculean Society to preserve his legendary legacy and to protect humankind from dangerous truths about the universe. Before leaving he had entrusted its care to Fiona’s father, Jack Sigler. He had, in turn, appointed his good friend George Pierce to oversee day-to-day operations under the auspices of the Cerberus Group.

While many of the stories about Hercules were exaggerations, the product of multiple retellings over the course of the centuries, there was more than a grain of truth in all of them, a fact they had discovered a few months earlier when retracing the legendary Labors of Hercules. Gallo had been astonished by the revelation that Hercules’s travels had taken him well beyond the limits of the then-known world.

Inspiration hit like a lightning bolt. “He did know!” She sat up a little straighter. “It’s in the Heracleia. Look in the Cerberus archives, Cintia. You should find scans of it.”

The Heracleia was an epic poem about Hercules, believed to have been written by Homer — the very same poet to whom the Odyssey was attributed. There was only one physical copy of the poem, written on leaves of papyrus, and locked away in a hermetically sealed vault at Cerberus headquarters in Rome, but there was also a virtual version Gallo had studied.

“Okay, I’ve got the scans,” Dourado said. “But it’s all in Greek.”

Gallo had done a full translation of the poem and knew that her notes were somewhere at Cerberus HQ, but there was no time to send Dourado on a scavenger hunt. “Send me the files. I know what to look for.”

She picked up the phone and began scrolling through the images. It was like picking up a treasured book from childhood. The more she read, the more she remembered of her initial translation.

“Here,” she announced after almost twenty minutes of reading. “In this passage, Herakles is talking about an encounter with a goddess ‘whom the Egyptians call Hecate.’ She tried to seduce him to steal the secret of his long life, and when that didn’t work, she tried to trick him into stealing one of the undying beasts who graze ‘upon the slopes of the mountain where no mortal dares to go, across the sea in the land of the sun’s rising.’”

Pierce nodded. “Okay, that does sound familiar. Hecate is the goddess of sorcery and witchcraft. That could be another name for Circe. Undying beasts could be the cattle of Helios and ‘the land of the sun’s rising’ could be describing Thrinakia.”

Gallo nodded. “Hecate is Greek, not Egyptian, but the Egyptians did worship a goddess named Heqet, a fertility goddess and a symbol of the Nile during flood season.”

“Now you’re losing me.”

“This makes sense, George. Cows were sacred animals in Egypt long before there was any kind of civilization in the Greek isles. In Egyptian mythology, the symbol of the goddess Hathor was the horns of a cow holding the sun. Hathor was either the daughter, wife, mother, or female personification of Ra, the sun god.

“Homer was guilty of getting things mixed up, especially when it came to geography. He probably did it intentionally. But maybe he let something slip here when he mentioned the Egyptians. Maybe the land of Circe is actually somewhere along the Nile, in Egypt. Thrinakia, the land of the sun’s rising, where the sacred cattle are kept, lies across the sea, to the east.”

“Which is it? From Egypt, you have to go north to get to the sea, not east.”

“The Mediterranean is north,” Gallo said with a grin. “But the Red Sea is due east.”

Pierce rubbed his chin. “The Red Sea, huh?”

“It’s not as crazy as it sounds. The Egyptians dug canals connecting the Nile to the Red Sea going back as far as the nineteenth century BCE. Odysseus would have known about that route. According to the poem, after the Trojan War, Odysseus and his men raided a city called Ismaros, in the land of the Cicones. Now supposedly, that’s one of the fixed geographical points, but remember that the events described in these poems took place before the Greek Dark Ages. A lot of places all around the Mediterranean took their names from locations mentioned in the stories, rather than the other way around. So the people that Homer calls Cicones could be almost anyone.”

“Sort of like the way Native Americans are called Indians,” Fiona said. “Because Columbus thought he had landed in India.”

Gallo nodded. “Sort of like that. Some historians have speculated that the city Odysseus called Ismaros was actually Lothal, on the Indian peninsula. It was one of the richest port cities in the ancient world. Odysseus almost certainly would have known about it and he might have considered it a worthwhile prize, especially after the other kings divided up the wealth of Troy.

“After the raid on Ismaros, the poem says he was blown off course and spent the next ten years trying to find his way back home, which when you think about it, doesn’t make a lot of sense, if he’s in the Mediterranean or the Black Sea.”

“Okay,” Pierce said. “For argument’s sake, let’s say you’re right. The land of Circe, a.k.a. Heqet, is Egypt. Where’s Thrinakia?”

“It would also have to be a place with very little flora or fauna; otherwise, Odysseus’s men would not have had to kill Helios’s cattle. So a desert, and there’s a lot of desert on the eastern shore of the Red Sea. Thrinakia is also described as a triangular island. In fact, the word translates as ‘three corners.’ There are some small islands in the Red Sea, but nothing with a mountain. However, a primitive sailor might not be able to distinguish a small peninsula from a large island.”

“Sounds as if you’ve already got a place in mind.”

“I do. A triangle of land, mostly desert, with a mountain that’s considered sacred even today. Thrinakia is the Sinai Peninsula.”

SEVENTEEN

It took a few seconds for Carter to realize that the car had stopped rolling, and another few for her to recognize that she was upright.

Unhurt? That was debatable.

She looked over and saw Fallon, dazed but also uninjured.

“Hey!” she said. “Still with me?”

He mumbled something incoherent.

She tried the door, but it was jammed shut, so she wriggled through the hole where the side window had been. The Aston Martin had come to rest on a grassy patch alongside the road. A crowd of onlookers had gathered, but no one approached. Carter heard sirens in the distance, then a different noise, a high-pitched whine, growing louder.

It was another Stork drone, flying over the road, heading right for them.

She stuck her head inside the car. “Come on. We need to go.”

“Go?” Tanaka asked, as he crawled from the back seat, still clutching his tablet computer. “Go where?”

“Does it matter?” She pointed to the tablet. “Leave that.”

He held it closer, as if fearful that she might try to take it away from him. “I need it to access the satellite.”

“The hacker is using it to track us.” She glanced up at the incoming drone. It wasn’t moving very fast, but it would be on them in a few seconds. “That’s the only reason he didn’t shut you out completely. No electronics.” She tossed her phone aside. “Either leave it behind or stay here with it.”

“She’s right, Ishiro.” Fallon had extricated himself on the opposite side and was circling around the wreck. “We’ll get a clean computer. Leave it.”

Tanaka scowled, but threw the tablet through the open window, into the car, without further protest.

Carter spun on her heel — a mistake, as the abrupt movement sent a throb of pain through her upper torso — and then she ran for the tree line. Fallon and Tanaka followed close behind. As expected, the drone appeared to be homing in on the car or something in it, and just before the three fleeing figures ducked into the woods, the flying robot slammed into the car behind them.

The trees marked the boundary of an urban park, with paths and trails, allowing them to slow to a more discreet walking pace. Carter recognized the place as the Conservatory and Botanical Gardens of Geneva, a repository of rare plant species from all over the world. It was the sort of place in which she might have lost herself under better circumstances, both as a biologist and as a tourist. Unfortunately, there was no time to enjoy the beautiful surroundings. While there was no sign of further pursuit from rogue machines, Carter knew it was only a matter of time before the local authorities started looking for the trio who had fled the accident’s scene. No doubt at least a few of the witnesses had captured their likenesses on video.

“We need to keep moving,” she said.

“And go where?” Fallon shot back.

“You mentioned a radio telescope in France. If we could get there, we could build a new transmitter and shut the Black Knight down, right?”

Tanaka shook his head. “We may have only a few hours before another solar event begins. I don’t see how we could get there in time.”

“It might as well be on the moon,” Fallon added. “Tomorrowland is still our best chance. We need to regain control of the network.”

Carter sighed. “All right. I might be able to help with that.”

She found a pay phone outside the small restaurant at the center of the park, and placed a collect call to Cerberus Group headquarters.

A few seconds later, she heard Dourado’s overjoyed voice. “Thank God, you’re safe.”

“I’m not sure ‘safe’ is the right word.”

“Just hang on. Erik is on his way to meet you.”

“Erik?” Carter’s heart skipped a beat. “You’ve heard from them?”

As Dourado brought her up to date, Carter felt some of her anxiety about the situation slipping away. She wasn’t alone anymore. Her friends were safe, and Lazarus was on his way to help her, while the rest of the team was headed to the Sinai Peninsula.

She wasn’t sure what to make of their working theory about the sun chariot of Helios. That it sounded crazy didn’t faze her. She had seen a lot of crazy things, particularly since coming to work for the Cerberus Group. As she saw it, the real problem was time. Finding the sun chariot, if it still existed at all, might take days. Weeks, even. If Tanaka was right, they might have only hours.

“Erik just left Istanbul,” Dourado went on. “He should be there soon. I’ll arrange a safe house and hire a car to pick you up.”

“Cintia, that’s great, but right now, there’s not a whole lot Erik can do to help.” She hated saying it, but it was true. There wasn’t anyone she’d rather have by her side against a human foe, or even a mutant hybrid monster, but his physical strength wouldn’t be much use against robots and hijacked computer networks.

“What do you need?”

“I’m glad you asked.” Carter grimaced, feeling even worse about what she was about to say next. “How would you like to meet your hero?”

EIGHTEEN

Under normal circumstances, leaving the relative shelter of the secret Cerberus Headquarters facility beneath Castel Sant’Angelo would have been almost unthinkable for Dourado. For as long as she could remember, she hated being outdoors, exposed to a world so big that she felt like she might get sucked away into space if she stood too long under the open sky. And then there were all the people, each one a potential predator, just waiting for a chance to pounce on her — figuratively, but maybe literally, too.

People couldn’t be trusted. The world was too big, and she was so small, so insignificant. That was why she preferred the digital world. In the virtual landscape of cyberspace, she was a goddess. That she was able to even think about venturing outside was a testimony to how far she had come since her panic-stricken youth in Belem, Brazil. Indeed, under normal circumstances, her value to the Cerberus Group would only have been diminished by venturing out into the open world, away from the hardware that imbued her with such god-like omniscience.

These were not normal circumstances, though, and that made the experience a little more tolerable.

Getting through the airport was miserable, but probably no more so for her than for everyone else. The terminal was crowded with people who had seen their scheduled flights delayed due to the disruption in air traffic caused by the global earthquake. But at least she was indoors. Her flamingo-pink hair and facial piercings attracted the attention of her queue-mates, some giving her judgmental frowns, but more offering nods and smiles of approval.

The short flight to Geneva wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be. The plane’s cramped interior made her feel safe, like a comforting hug, which helped keep her mind off the fact that she was hurtling through thin air five miles above the surface of the Earth. Yet, for all her coping skills, what made the trip endurable was the knowledge that she was on her way to meet Marcus Fallon.

She had not been exaggerating when she called him a hero of hers. If anything, she had downplayed her feelings about him. Fallon was the personification of the future she had dreamed of all her life. Like no one else in the field of robotics, he had bridged the gulf between the limitations of the physical world and the limitless possibilities of cyberspace.

What Fallon did was similar to what Fiona could do with the Mother Tongue. She could create golems out of clay and loose earth and then bring them to life with an ancient language to do her bidding. He created robots out of metal and plastic and brought them to life with binary machine language to do his. The big difference was that, while the Mother Tongue was nearly extinct, computer code was a language that anyone could learn and which Dourado already spoke fluently. And now she was on her way to use that knowledge to help the man she idolized regain control of his wayward creations. She felt like a street kid tapped to play in the World Cup final match.

As she made her way through the Swiss airport, though, she felt a little of the old familiar panic setting in. As excited as she was at the prospect of helping Fallon, she would still have to brave the world outside.

A large figure stepped in front of her and even though the rendezvous had been pre-arranged before she left Rome, Dourado nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Erik,” she gasped.

That was all she could say for a few seconds, but Lazarus didn’t seem to notice. “The pink hair was a good idea. Hi-vis. Easy to spot.”

She wasn’t sure if that was his attempt at humor. Probably not. He didn’t strike her as the sort of person to crack jokes, though in truth, she did not know him very well. Their orbits rarely crossed. Joke or not, he made no further comment as he led her outside to the stop for the shuttle that would take them to the rental car pick-up lot, and that was fine with her.

Thirty minutes later, the ordeal ended with their arrival at the safe house where Carter, Fallon, and Tanaka had gone following the escape from Tomorrowland. The initial meeting with Fallon was a blur, and she was pretty sure she had embarrassed herself by fawning over him, but a few minutes later she was back in her environment, using her laptop to remotely probe the security of the Space Tomorrow mainframe and intranet.

Carter greeted the news of her intent warily. “Won’t the hacker be able to track us here?”

“He can try, but I’m spoofing our location.”

With Fallon’s help, she was able to establish off-site administrator privileges, after which it was a simple matter to begin searching for the Trojan horse that had allowed the unknown hacker to hijack Fallon’s robots and turn them against him. But after employing every anti-virus measure and security subroutine in her arsenal, along with a few that Fallon suggested, she could find no evidence of the incursion.

“What does that mean?” Carter asked.

“It means that the hacker covered his tracks very well,” Fallon said

Dourado thought that was oversimplifying it. “It’s got to be someone already on the inside. Someone with full access to the network.”

Fallon shook his head. “No. That’s a very short list, and everyone on it is above suspicion.” He glanced at Tanaka and received a nod of confirmation. “We’re looking for someone who’s just that good. When we find him, I may have to offer him a job.”

“A job,” Carter murmured, as if thinking aloud. She fixed her gaze on Dourado. “Someone with the skill to do this could pretty much have anything he wanted, right? Why do this?”

Fallon waved a dismissive hand. “He’s just trying to make a statement.”

“You mean like, ‘I can destroy the world if I want to?’ That’s quite a statement.”

“Hackers are ego-driven creatures, prone to delusions of godhood.”

Dourado could not disagree with the sentiment. “If that’s all this is, then the incursion is probably over. He’s made his point. Maybe he’ll try to blackmail you at some point in the future. But if it’s something more, he might be waiting for us to make the next move.”

“Challenge accepted.” Fallon rubbed his hands together in a show of eagerness. He turned to Dourado. “What do you say? Ready to beat him at his own game? When he pops his head up again, we’ll be waiting with a sledgehammer.”

As excited as she was at the thought of testing her skills against the unknown enemy, Dourado also felt a twinge of apprehension. If the hacker was that good, the sledgehammer might come down on her head. Up to this point, all she had done was look in the windows, so to speak. Once she started giving remote commands to the network, the hacker would be alerted to her presence, and he wouldn’t be fooled by her spoofed location. “Maybe we should be ready to move,” she said. “Just in case.”

Carter laid a hand on her shoulder in what seemed to be a gesture of encouragement.

Dourado accessed the robotics interface, which allowed her to interact with all the autonomous machines at Tomorrowland, and began the two-step process of learning how the system was structured, and testing the robots to see if they would respond to her commands. As before, there seemed to be almost no evidence of the cyber-attack. The robots were functioning normally, doing their job without any active oversight. Maintenance robots had already begun repairs on the two construction-bots that had been damaged.

“The storm has passed,” Fallon declared. “I’ll still have to figure out how he cracked my security, but it’s safe to go back in.”

“Safe?” Lazarus, who had, after an understated reunion with Carter, remained in the background, now broke his silence. “It’s an ambush. He wants you to go back. You’ve got something he wants.”

Carter took a swatch of metallic fabric from her pocket. “You mean this?”

Lazarus nodded. “This wasn’t just a data breach. He has plans for that antenna array and the Black Knight. He needs you to get it working again. That’s what he’s waiting for. He’ll wait until you do that to make his move.”

“I’m not sure we have a choice in the matter,” Tanaka countered. “Like it or not, that antenna array is the only way to eliminate the threat of another solar event.”

“Not the only way,” Dourado countered. “There’s the sun chariot.”

Fallon raised an eyebrow. “Dr. Carter told me about your friends’ excursion to the Sinai. I’ll admit, it’s intriguing. It would go a long way toward explaining where the Black Knight came from. But we’re facing a time crunch here. And I believe in cleaning up my own messes. Technology caused this problem, and technology can fix it.”

Lazarus did not back down. “You aren’t in control of the technology. What’s to stop the hacker from turning it against you again? Self-driving cars, drones. There’s a lot of stuff out there with your hardware that could be turned into weapons. If we go in there, we might make the situation a lot worse.” He shook his head. “We have to let Pierce handle this.”

Tanaka gestured to the computer. “May I use that for a moment?”

Dourado regarded him warily. She didn’t like people using her hardware, messing with her settings, downloading God-only-knew what kind of crap off the Internet. “Why?”

“If I can access our surveillance satellite, I should be able to determine how much time we have before another event.”

“I guess that’s a good reason.” She got up from her chair to make room for him, but stayed close, looking over his shoulder as he entered a web address into the browser. A moment later, a three-dimensional map of the Earth appeared, encircled by an orbital tracking line that ran more or less from pole to pole.

Dourado had known about the Black Knight satellite long before she overheard Fallon telling Carter about it. She knew that the authorities had dismissed it as a modern legend, cobbled together from assorted radio anomalies, questionable eyewitness reports, and erroneous scientific interpretations, but she also knew that was exactly what they would say to keep the truth from getting out. Just like with HAARP.

Tanaka stared at the screen for only a few seconds before making a dire announcement. “It’s worse than I feared. The Black Knight will be fully deployed by 1800 UTC.”

Carter shot a glance at her watch. “Eight o’clock local. Forty minutes, give or take. But at least it’s after sunset.”

The physicist shook his head. “No, you don’t understand. The satellite is currently moving above the Western hemisphere. It’s daytime there.”

Dourado knew what that would mean. A solar pause above the Americas would trigger another series of tidal earthquakes along the geologically fragile Ring of Fire. California would be devastated. Tsunamis and abnormally high tides would inundate coastal areas, where most of the population was already concentrated. And if it continued longer than a few minutes… If it went on for hours or days…

“That’s it, then,” Fallon said with grim finality. “We can’t wait for your friends to pull a rabbit out of the hat. We need to go back to Tomorrowland. Right now, if not sooner.”

“Forty minutes,” Carter murmured. “Cintia, can you reach George?”

“I can try.” She tapped Tanaka on the shoulder, and when he had vacated the chair, she sat down in front of the computer again and initiated a call to Pierce’s satellite phone. It took several seconds for her to establish a connection, but instead of Pierce’s voice, the only sound to issue from the speakers was a burst of static, and then silence as the call dropped. Dourado turned to Carter. “I think it’s up to you.”

Carter turned to Lazarus. Dourado couldn’t read the big man’s impassive expression, but Carter seemed to draw strength from him. She faced Fallon. “You think you can shut it down?”

“If I can’t, no one can.” He grimaced, perhaps realizing it was the wrong thing to say. “Yes. We can do it.”

“Cintia, you can deal with the hacker? Keep him off our backs long enough to do this?”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I guess that’s all any of us can do,” Carter said with sigh. “All right, let’s load up. We’re going to Tomorrowland.”

NINETEEN

Pierce stared at his phone in frustration. “Call ended?” he grumbled. “Call didn’t even start.”

“Was that Cintia?” Gallo asked. She had to shout to be heard over the throaty roar of the helicopter’s engine. “What did she say?”

“Don’t know. The call dropped.”

“I hope everything’s okay.”

Me too, Pierce thought. Dourado had called earlier to let him know about her decision to leave Cerberus Headquarters to join Carter and Lazarus in Geneva. Her expertise would give them an edge in dealing with the situation there and perhaps unmask the enemy that now seemed intent on turning the ancient Black Knight satellite into a weapon of mass destruction. Her decision surprised Pierce — she wasn’t exaggerating her agoraphobia — but he had given her the go-ahead. Dourado was a lot tougher than she believed. Now he wondered if she was regretting the decision.

“If it’s important, she’ll try again,” he shouted. “Probably just checking up on us.”

They had come a long way in just a few short hours, from Kazakhstan to Istanbul, and then on to Sharm El-Sheikh on the tip of the Sinai Peninsula, where Pierce had used his UNESCO credentials to wrangle a military helicopter flight to Saint Catherine’s Monastery — a World Heritage Site — on the slopes of Mount Sinai.

This was not Pierce’s first visit to Egypt, but the world had changed since his last visit. The rising influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and of ISIS on the world stage had not only brought the specter of terrorism to the reliably tourist-friendly Arab nation, but also a threat to the ancient monuments for which the nation was most famous. Islamic militants had called for the destruction of the pyramids and the Sphinx, which they condemned as temples to false gods. Pierce did not consider it to be an idle threat. A similar declaration made by the Taliban government in Afghanistan had resulted in the destruction of the fifteen-hundred-year-old Bamiyan Buddha statues in 2001, and more recently, ISIS fighters had destroyed ancient Roman temples in Palmyra, Syria. Pierce was a little apprehensive about traveling to Egypt, especially without Lazarus present to advise him on matters of security, but recent attacks in Paris and Brussels had demonstrated that nowhere was truly safe. And right now, the looming solar crisis trumped all other considerations.

Saint Catherine’s — its official name was ‘Sacred Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount Sinai’—built in the sixth century, was one of the oldest Christian monasteries in existence. It housed the world’s oldest continually operating library, which contained, among its many other treasures, the Syriac Sinaiticus, a fourth century copy of the Gospels — the oldest copy in existence. Of course, the significance of Mount Sinai to all three of the world’s major monotheistic faiths went back much further.

According to the Bible, Mount Sinai was the place where God had first called Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, and then later presented him with the Ten Commandments. Whether this particular mountain was the same mountain recorded in the Biblical account was a matter of some debate, though. There were at least thirteen other sites believed by Biblical scholars to be the actual site of the divine encounter.

Pierce had been drawn to archaeology after watching the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark as a young boy. From the moment he walked out of the theater, he had dreamed of searching for the lost Ark of the Covenant — an artifact straight out of the Bible — just like his hero Indiana Jones. Now that he was the caretaker of the Herculean Society, he found himself crossing paths with those larger than life stories in ways that would make Indiana Jones jealous of him.

The helicopter landed just beyond a large garden, a few hundred yards from the monastery’s fortress-like walls, which sat at the base of the mountain, as if guarding the approach. Pierce couldn’t make out many details. They had seen a few scattered lights in the nearby tourist village as they made their approach, but the monastery appeared to be in a total blackout. Pierce was afraid that it might be deserted, but as the helicopter’s rotor blades began to wind down, a tiny light appeared in front of the monastery gates. It began moving down the path toward them.

“Here comes the welcoming committee,” Pierce said.

He threw open the side door and stepped out into the brisk night air as the light drew closer. He could now see that it was a handheld electric lantern, and the hand that held it protruded from the voluminous black sleeve of an exorasson—the robe worn by Orthodox monks. Pierce couldn’t quite distinguish the monk’s face, but the ambient glow from the lantern did reveal a prodigious beard spilling half-way down the man’s chest.

Pierce stuck out his hand. “Are you Father Justin? I’m Dr. George Pierce, from the World Heritage Committee. We spoke on the phone.”

“Yes.” The man held the lantern higher and gave a slight bow.

Pierce sensed the monk wasn’t going to accept the offered hand, so he drew it back before things got awkward. “Sorry about the late hour, but as you can imagine, we’ve got our work cut out for us.” When the man didn’t reply, Pierce added, “You know, because of the earthquakes. Lots of damage to survey.”

“Please don’t think us ungrateful.” Father Justin’s English was perfect, without any trace of an accent. But there was more than a trace of irritation. “Surely there are others whose need is greater than ours. Would not your time and resources be better spent helping those who have lost everything?”

Pierce spread his hands in a show of helplessness. “That may be true, but I’m a cultural preservation expert, not a rescue worker. This is what I do, and I take it very seriously.”

“As do we. For seventeen centuries we have tended to this holy place. This is not the first time an earthquake has shaken our walls. We will repair the damage as we always have. That is what we do.”

Pierce managed a diplomatic smile. He was receiving the message—We don’t want you here—loud and clear, but he had no intention of slinking away. He was prepared to wave the UN flag in the monk’s face all night if he had to. He was pretty sure that Father Justin wasn’t going to call and check his bona fides like Zdanovich, the Russian administrator at Arkaim. Even if he did, St. Catherine’s Monastery was a World Heritage Site, and Pierce, as an inspector-at-large, was justified in paying the place a visit, even if he wasn’t being honest about his motive.

“We just need to look around for a little while, take a few pictures for our report, and then we’ll be out of your hair. We’ll be very discreet. You won’t even know we’re here.”

Father Justin wasn’t quite ready to throw in the towel. “It may take several hours for you to document everything. I’m afraid we can’t accommodate you overnight, and I doubt that you will be able to find lodging in the village. The damage was quite extensive there as well. Perhaps it would be wiser for you to return in the morning.”

“We’re prepared to work through the night.”

The monk gave a heavy sigh. “Very well.”

“Great. Let me just grab my team.”

Pierce returned to the aircraft to give Gallo and Fiona the news, and to update the pilot, a cocky young Egyptian army officer, who looked barely older than Fiona. Pierce had no idea how long the search would take. If Fiona could make the memory-metal sphere work like a dowsing rod, they might find the sun chariot in a matter of minutes. So for the moment it seemed prudent to have the aircraft standing by.

Father Justin regarded the two females with a pinched expression, but made no comment as he turned on his heel and shone the lantern toward the gates. “Follow me.”

“I don’t think he was expecting women,” Fiona whispered.

Pierce grinned. “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem. Just be glad this isn’t a mosque or a synagogue.”

“Actually, there is a mosque here,” Father Justin said, looking over his shoulder. “But if you knew anything of our teachings, you would know that women are greatly esteemed in the Orthodox Church.”

Pierce ducked his head in embarrassment. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

The monk made a sweeping gesture. “This place honors a woman, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, a child…” Here, he turned and gazed at Fiona, “About your age, I imagine, who devoted her life to studying the teachings of Christ. She condemned the Roman emperor Maxentius to his face for his cruelty, debated his wisest advisors, and won, converting many of them to Christianity, even though doing so meant instant martyrdom. Maxentius imprisoned her, tortured her, but she would not renounce her faith. More than two hundred individuals, including Valeria, the wife of Maxentius himself, came to her in prison, begging her to deny her faith. Every one of them were so moved by her words that they, too, confessed faith in Christ and were martyred. After her execution, angels brought her body here, to the Mountain of God. It is said that a healing spring flowed from the place where she was buried.”

Fiona gave a wry smile. “I like her.”

Justin stared back for a moment, and then nodded. “Yes. She still has that effect on people.” His demeanor softened a little. “Why have you truly come here?”

Pierce exchanged a glance with Gallo, but before he could figure out his next move, Fiona took the bull by the horns. “We told you the truth. We are here because of the earthquakes.”

“But not to survey the damage?”

“No. We’re trying to stop any more of them from happening.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” He waved again. “From here, no less?”

Fiona’s smile did not falter. “With a miracle, of course.”

Pierce allowed himself a tentative sigh of relief. Fiona’s approach was spot-on, and despite his initial surliness, the monk seemed to be warming up to her. Pierce took a step back, nodding for her to continue.

“A miracle.” Justin nodded, as if intrigued. “Are you here to pray?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Fiona replied. “We know that this was a holy mountain long before the monastery was built. We’re looking for something that has probably been here a lot longer.”

Some of the cleric’s earlier wariness returned. “You’re treasure hunters.”

To Pierce’s dismay, Fiona did not deny the accusation. Instead, she held out her hand, displaying the sphere of memory metal she had recovered from deep under Arkaim. “We’re looking for something like this.”

The monk shone his light on the artifact, bending close to inspect it, then stood up straight. “I am sorry. There is nothing like that here.”

Pierce sensed a curiosity in the man, a desire to know more, despite himself. He decided to take a page from Fiona’s playbook. “This artifact was made by an ancient civilization called ‘the Originators.’ They don’t appear in the historical record, but they do show up in the myths and legends of other cultures that we do know about. The ancients thought they were gods, but they didn’t have any magic. Just technology.”

“Gods,” Justin echoed, thoughtfully.

“The Originators created a device that can harness solar energy.” Pierce went on. “Unfortunately, it can also cause seismic disruptions. Earlier today, the device was used, and you have seen the results. We believe there is another device here that can stop it.”

Justin spread his hands helplessly. “As I have said, there is nothing like that here.”

“Please,” Fiona said. “There’s got to be something here. Just let us have a look around.”

Justin stared at her for a few seconds, then managed a tight smile. “We are not in the habit of refusing those who come here praying for miracles.”

TWENTY

Death rode to the holy mountain, not on a pale horse, but in a pair of road-weary and battle-scarred minivans. The men inside the vehicles speeding along Nuweiba Road, the highway that snaked through the lesser peaks, all the way up to the infidel church on the slopes of sacred Jabal Musa, were killers, freshly blooded after a swift surprise attack on a police checkpoint further down the mountain.

The firefight had been unavoidable. There was no hiding the fact that they were armed to the teeth. Most carried AKS-74 carbines, but their arsenal also included an RPG-7 anti-tank rocket launcher. So even though killing policemen wasn’t their primary mission, it had been a necessary action. A prelude to what would soon happen when they reached the end of the road. And, from what Abdul-Ahad al-Nami could discern after listening to the subsequent conversation of his fellow passengers, their first chance to kill in the name of the Prophet.

They were all strangers, all young men like him, gathered from Egypt and all over the Arabian Peninsula, all full of zeal for the fight. At first, he was not sure that he should trust any of them. However, the more he heard, the more he knew that they were his brothers, fellow soldiers who had heard the trumpet of Israfil.

Israfil was one of the Malak — a messenger of God, an angel — who would sound the trumpet on Yawm al-Qiyāmah—the Day of Resurrection. But Israfil was also the nom de guerre of a senior organizer in the army of the Caliphate — the Islamic State — or at least that was how he had introduced himself to Abdul-Ahad a few months earlier, in an online forum where holy warriors gathered to indulge their passion for jihad. Over the ensuing weeks, Israfil had opened the young man’s eyes to the urgency of the times and prompted him to be ready. The Caliphate had been restored, and soon the armies of Rome would gather on the plains of Dabiq, for the final battle. Abdul-Ahad had wanted to travel to Syria and join the fight, but Israfil had urged him to be patient, promising him a far greater role in the outworking of God’s plan.

Tonight, he had made good on that promise, summoning Abdul-Ahad and the others to a coffee shop in Suez, where the minivans and the weapons were waiting, along with the mission: go to the Jabal Musa and stop the agents of Masih ad-Dajjal—the anti-messiah — from defiling the sacred ground where Moses spoke to God.

Israfil had explained that the outcome of the great battle between good and evil would be decided here, on the holy mountain, and Abdul-Ahad knew that it was not an exaggeration. He had heard the news reports, of the earthquakes, and the signs in heaven.

The end of all things was upon them.

He glanced down at the pictures Israfil had sent them, photographs of the enemy’s agents. A man, a woman, and a girl — all Westerners.

Abdul-Ahad had no reservations about killing women or children, not if they were servants of the anti-messiah.

Tonight, they would kill the enemies of God, and, he did not doubt, they would be welcomed into Paradise as martyrs.

But first, the world would burn.

TWENTY-ONE

Almost from the moment she tried to attune herself to the orb, Fiona knew they wouldn’t find the sun chariot at the monastery. “It’s not happening,” she told Pierce. “I’m not getting anything.”

“Let’s try moving around a little.”

She knew, with the same vague certainty that had guided her into the subterranean labyrinth beneath Arkaim, and then back out again, that it would be a futile effort. But she nodded and followed Pierce around the thirteen hundred year old religious complex anyway.

Before leaving them to conduct their search, Father Justin had played the tour guide, telling them the history of the monastery, explaining that there had indeed been a Christian presence on the mountain as far back as the fourth century. The monastery was a more recent addition, going back to the ninth century. It had been built to protect the monks from Bedouin attacks. While the rest of Christendom had suffered through the Dark Ages, with churches across the Holy Land being razed or turned into mosques by the conquering Saracens, Saint Catherine’s had endured.

There were several different chapels inside the walled fortress, along with, as Justin had earlier intimated, a mosque, converted from an older Christian church during the Fatimid Caliphate between 900 and 1100 CE.

“This is a holy place to all the Abrahamic faiths,” Justin explained. “Moses is revered as a prophet in the Islamic tradition, and this mountain where God spoke to him, is held as sacred. The Prophet Mohammed himself issued a covenant — the Ashtiname of Muhammad — sealed by his own hand, granting us protection in perpetuity. The only concession was this mosque, which we maintain to this day.”

“I guess that explains why the Islamic State leaves you alone,” Gallo observed.

“We rely upon God for protection,” Justin said. “However, it may be that this peace that has endured for a thousand years is God’s way of showing us all — Christian and Muslim alike — that co-existence is possible.

“You may go where you wish,” he told them. “I would only ask that you respect the sanctity of this place, and please, remove your footwear before entering the Katholikon.” He gestured to the enormous church basilica dominating the interior of the walled complex. “It is holy ground today, as it was in the days of Moses.”

Wandering the monastery was like being in an M.C. Escher painting. Inside the high walls, the buildings were jumbled together, connected by stairways that led up to rooftops, and tunnels that ducked beneath old stone buildings, no two of which were the same shape or size.

The earthquake had left its mark on the monastery. Although none of the buildings had collapsed, everywhere they turned they had to pick their way through piles of rubble. Some areas were blocked off, but Fiona didn’t need to visit every nook and cranny of the site to know that they weren’t going to find anything.

Maybe Gallo had misinterpreted the reference in the Heracleia. Maybe there was no sun chariot at all.

No. She pushed the thought away. She had seen the vision of Raven for a reason, and this was it. There was a way to fix what was happening, and she was going to find it. But if it’s not here, where is it?

After twenty minutes, Father Justin rejoined them in the northeast courtyard of the monastery, as they were putting their shoes back on. He did not seem at all surprised by their lack of progress. “Why did you believe that you would find what you seek here?”

“We didn’t choose this place randomly,” Pierce said. “In ancient texts, this place was called Thrinakia, the island of the Sun God, Helios—”

“I have read the Odyssey, Dr. Pierce. In the original language. Sinai is not Thrinakia.”

“There are other stories,” Gallo said. “Stories older than Egypt itself, about the Sun god’s herds that roam a mountain across the sea to the east of the Nile.”

“Herds? Cattle?”

“Cattle are a symbol of agriculture. Domesticating cattle made civilization possible. The Egyptians worshipped cattle, and I believe that’s what Homer was alluding to when he spoke of the sacred herds of the Sun God on Thrinakia. There are universal truths hidden in those stories.”

Justin considered this for a moment. “Interesting.”

Fiona sensed the monk wanted to say more. “Do you know something? Have you heard about sacred cattle here?”

“I would not use the word sacred. However, when Moses led the sons of Israel out of Egypt, he brought them here. For forty days and nights, Moses spoke with God upon the mountain. Right up there.” He gestured to the darkness above the monastery complex. “During his absence, the sons of Israel fell into despair. They begged Aaron, the brother of Moses, to make a god for them to worship.”

“The golden calf,” Pierce said, nodding. “I had forgotten that one.”

“When Moses came down, carrying the Covenant, written by the very finger of God upon tablets of stone, he saw the people worshipping a calf of gold. What has always intrigued me is that, in the book of Exodus, chapter thirty-two, the sons of Israel do not tell Aaron what sort of god to make. And when Moses questioned him, he said: ‘They said to me: Make us gods, that may go before us: for as to this Moses, who brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, we know not what is befallen him. And I said to them: Which of you hath any gold? and they took and brought it to me: and I cast it into the fire, and this calf came out.’”

“Wait,” Fiona said. “The calf came out of the fire? On its own?”

It sounded like a golem to her.

Justin smiled. “Aaron was trying to shift the blame. The Bible is very clear that he was the craftsman of the golden calf. But it is interesting, is it not? It would seem there have been sacred cows here after all.”

“What happened to it? The calf?”

“Moses pulverized the idol and mixed the powder with water, which he forced the sons of Israel to drink.”

Fiona grimaced. “Harsh.”

“Not as harsh as what he did next. Moses gathered his cousins, the sons of Levi, and instructed them to put the evildoers to death. Twenty-three thousand in all.”

Fiona had no response to that.

Justin went on. “That is how Moses recorded the story, and I accept it as true, but I also recognize that it was written more than a generation later, to instruct the children of those who made the Exodus from Egypt. It is a cautionary tale, warning of the dangers of willfulness and apostasy. Perhaps there is more to the story that we do not know. Details that would help us grasp how the God of Moses was also the God who came to live among us and offer his life on behalf of sinners.”

Pierce waited for him to finish before turning to Gallo. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

Gallo nodded. “It’s possible. There are similarities.”

“You guys want to share?” Fiona said.

Gallo offered the explanation. “Odysseus was warned to leave the sacred herd of Helios alone, but his men disobeyed him. They took some of the sacred cattle and ate them. They also sacrificed some of them. As a punishment, Zeus killed them all. Except for Odysseus, of course.”

“It’s not the same,” Fiona countered.

“No, but it might be referencing the same event, just like the story of Raven and the story of Phaethon are similar. It means we’re on the right track.”

“I choose to accept that the Bible is the revealed truth of God. That is enough for me.” The monk stared off into the distance for a moment, as if contemplating a weighty decision. “There is something I want to show—”

A bright flash, like a nearby lightning strike, cut short his sentence. Before anyone could comment, there was a loud boom, followed by a shock wave that hit Fiona like a gut punch.

“What was that?” she gasped.

Pierce, looking as stunned as she felt, then managed to reply. “I think it was the helicopter.”

Father Justin stared at the explosion, a horrified expression on his face. He crossed himself. “We’re being attacked.” He shook himself out of his stunned stupor and turned to them. “Quickly. Follow me.”

TWENTY-TWO

As they looked through the open gates of Tomorrowland, Dourado could not help thinking of the haunted amusement park from a Scooby Doo cartoon. It wasn’t just the name, though that was part of it. Although it was still early, not even eight o’clock yet, the sprawling campus was dark. Not a single light burned in any of the windows in any of the buildings, and yet, there was a subtle energy in the air, an undercurrent of activity.

Machines lived here, clockwork ghosts haunting the shadows. Under any other circumstances, she would have found that cool, but tonight, it just felt creepy.

“Not good,” she muttered.

Lazarus parked the rental car just outside the already repaired gates and they disembarked, heading through on foot. The logic behind this move was straightforward. If things went pear-shaped inside the walls of Tomorrowland, it would be far easier to outmaneuver the robots on foot, and keeping the car outside the walls would ensure a quick getaway once they made it through the gate. And, as long as things didn’t go south, transportation inside the complex wouldn’t be a problem. There was an automated cart waiting for them just beyond the gateposts.

The transport-bot greeted them. “Welcome, Mr. Fallon.”

“We need another cart,” Fallon said. “Scan my guests in and give them full access, on my authorization.”

“Yes, Mr. Fallon. Another cart is on the way.”

Fallon flashed a triumphant smile at Lazarus. “See? Told you.”

Lazarus stared back, his expression impassive but unimpressed. He had advised shutting down all the robotic systems remotely before attempting to enter the compound, but Fallon had argued against that measure, reasoning that it would make little difference. If the hacker did attack the network again, turning the robots off wouldn’t slow him down in a meaningful way, while keeping the robots operational in the meantime would facilitate their mission. Dourado agreed with Fallon, but she did not share his confidence that they had seen the last of the hacker.

The one concession Fallon had allowed was to disable the network’s outside Internet connection. Once on site, they would be able to interact with the computer and the Space Tomorrow surveillance satellite shadowing the Black Knight, but no one outside the complex would be able to do so. Unless the hacker was on site, he would not be able to carry out another attack.

Of course, if the hacker was an insider, perhaps one of the very few human employees in Fallon’s operation, then it was possible that he was there, hiding in one of those dark buildings, waiting for them to step into the trap.

The second cart arrived less than a minute later, and the five of them climbed aboard — Fallon and Tanaka rode together in the first vehicle, while the trio from the Cerberus Group rode in the second. Dourado maintained a constant vigil, monitoring the network from her laptop. There was no indication that a second incursion was in progress, but if Lazarus was correct, the enemy would not make a move until they were right where he wanted them.

They made one stop in the heart of the complex, at a building Carter identified as ‘the Operations Center,’ just long enough to procure a second laptop computer. Then they continued on to the array site. The plan was for Fallon and Tanaka to restore the Roswell fragment to the transmitter and begin working to regain control of the Black Knight satellite, while Dourado stood ready to repel any cyber-attack.

As they made the drive to the outlying location, Dourado noted Carter staring at the surrounding terrain. The carts’ headlights revealed some of the damage caused during the latter’s earlier visit. There was no sign of the construction robots that had come after them, but the pavement was scarred and stained with oil, and the landscaping to either side of the road had been obliterated.

Dr. Carter probably feels like a veteran, visiting an old battlefield, Dourado thought. For the first time since leaving, she found herself wishing she had stayed in Rome.

The carts stopped in front of the concrete building that housed the transmitter. Fallon got out and came over to Carter. “I’m going to need that piece of meta-material now.”

Carter, unsurprised by the request, held out her hand. When she opened her fist, the crumpled fabric popped back to its original shape — a flat plane. Fallon took it and headed into the building, with Tanaka close on his heels. Lazarus and Carter remained outside with Dourado, sitting in the cart, watching the network status for any sign of trouble.

Carter checked her watch. “Seven forty-five,” she said. “Fifteen minutes. I don’t know whether that’s plenty of time, or if we’re cutting it close.”

“It is what it is,” Lazarus said. “Worrying about it isn’t going to change a thing.”

Dourado knew he was right, but the wait was excruciating. She checked the network status again — unchanged, as expected — and then opened the browser page Tanaka had used earlier to check the satellite’s status.

The orbital map showed the satellite moving above North America. It was almost six o’clock p.m. on the East Coast, midafternoon on the Pacific. She thought about the map showing the distribution of earthquakes during the earlier incident and wondered what it would look like if they failed. How many red dots would there be? Where would the tsunamis strike?

How many people would die?

She found a link to the video feed from the surveillance satellite and clicked on it. A small player window opened in one corner of the screen, and after a few seconds, the live image appeared. She saw the curve of the Earth — brown land and gray-green sea — and the light blue band of atmosphere transitioning into the void of space. Right in the middle of it all, like a misshapen black fly sitting on the screen, was the Black Knight satellite.

It looked like the pictures Dourado had seen of it on the Internet.

“Is this right?” she said aloud.

“Is what right?” Carter looked over her shoulder at the screen. “No. That’s what it looks like when it’s dormant. Fully deployed, it will look like a glowing sphere. That must be an old picture.”

Dourado checked the time stamp. “No. This is live.”

Behind them, a loud hum began to emanate from the transmitter building.

Carter hopped out of the cart and headed for the open door. “Fallon,” she called out. “Are you seeing this?”

The door slammed shut.

“What the—”

Before Carter could complete the rhetorical question, the electric cart closest to the door lurched forward, heading right toward her. She threw herself to the side, just barely getting out of the way. The cart continued forward, maneuvering as it moved, until its front end was kissing the door. The cart held it shut, blocking the entrance to the transmitter building.

Lazarus leapt from the cart, then spun around and pulled Dourado along. “It’s starting.”

She stumbled after him, her free hand still gripping the laptop, struggling to process what was happening.

He pulled her to the corner of the little concrete building. She couldn’t see the carts or the door. “Stay here,” he told her, then he ran out of her view. The concrete walls muted the hum of the transmitter, and she could hear Carter shouting Fallon’s name, demanding an explanation.

It’s starting, Lazarus had said.

Was he talking about the transmitter?

She glanced down at the computer screen again and saw that the image had changed. The Black Knight, still hanging in space about the Earth, was changing shape before her eyes, unfolding. Expanding. The change was rapid. She could already see the first hints of the sphere it would become.

Somehow, instead of shutting down the Black Knight, the reactivation of the transmitter had accelerated the process.

Or had it?

“Fallon!” Carter cried out, and then there was a loud, insistent banging sound as she beat her fists against the metal door.

Dourado barely heard. Her attention was fixed on the computer screen, but she wasn’t watching the live feed anymore. Instead, she was navigating into the archive of footage from earlier in the day. She entered the time code for one hour earlier. Then two hours. Three.

Each picture showed a different perspective, but there was one unchanging constant. The Black Knight itself.

Dormant.

Inactive.

The Black Knight had not posed any threat at all.

Not until thirty seconds ago.

Suddenly, she understood everything. She understood how the hacker had defeated the Tomorrowland network firewall, hijacked the robots and autonomous vehicles, and then melted away, leaving no trace.

Lazarus reappeared, dragging Carter after him. “Cintia. It’s starting.”

“I know,” she groaned. “They lied to us.”

He shook his head. “I’m talking about the robots. The carts. You need to get control of them. Move them away from the door so we can get in there.”

Even as he said it, she heard the rhythmic clanking sound of metal treads moving on asphalt in the distance, growing louder by the second. The construction robots had come out of hiding and were headed their way.

The hacker had made his move.

But there is no hacker, she realized. There never was.

She turned back to the computer, steeling herself for the life-or-death cyber-battle to come.

On the video player screen, the Black Knight began to shine with blinding, radiant solar energy, and Dourado knew that, on the far side of the world, the sun had just stopped moving.

TWENTY-THREE

There was another explosion, so close that the flash and the bang happened almost simultaneously, and a section of the ancient wall that had stood for more than a thousand years disintegrated in an eruption of rubble. The second blast confirmed that the first one had not been an accident.

The monastery was under attack.

Beams of light pierced through the smoke and dust, probing the interior and heralding the arrival of the attackers.

“Come with me,” Justin hissed. “Quickly.”

They had just rounded the corner of the Katholikon basilica, when the noise of gunfire reached Pierce’s ears.

Definitely an attack, he thought. So much for enduring peace.

Justin led them into a narrow alley behind the basilica and pointed to an enormous tree with long leafy vines growing from a raised bed. Pierce had noticed it during their earlier wanderings. It was the only one of its kind inside the walls. Even in the middle of a crisis, Justin could not forget who he was. “This is the bush from which God spoke to Moses. Behind it, there is a passage that leads out onto the mountain.”

“An escape route,” Pierce said. “Good thinking.”

Justin shook his head. “It’s the pilgrim’s path. A sacred route leading to the Cave of Moses, where he hid himself when beholding the glory of God. It is not meant for you, but…” He paused and crossed himself again. “When you are outside, you will see the path. Keep to it, for if you stray, you will in all likelihood wander the mountain until you freeze to death. The path will lead you to the cave. Hide there. If I am still alive when the sun rises, I will find you.”

He pointed to the tree again. “Go. May God keep you and watch over you.”

As if to underscore the urgency in his voice, there was another burst of gunfire. A section of wall high above them shattered, as a dozen bullets tore into the ancient stone. Pierce shielded his eyes with one hand until the debris stopped raining down. When he lowered his hand, Father Justin was gone.

Pierce climbed up onto the elevated soil bed and drew back the branches to expose what looked like a drainage hole. “Go!”

Gallo went first, clambering up and scurrying under the foliage, disappearing into the dark hole. Fiona was next, but as she brushed past him, Pierce felt a jolt, like an electric shock, pass through the branches and into his hands. He let go with a yelp and looked around for a moment, wondering what had happened. For a moment, he thought that one of the explosions had damaged a buried electrical line, but then he remembered that the power was out in the monastery.

Weird, he thought, and then he ducked under the vines and plunged into the passage. Whatever its cause, the shock did not reoccur.

Pierce’s headlamp revealed the smooth, baked-clay brick wall, Fiona’s backside, and not much else, but there was enough room for him to crawl on hands and knees without scraping his back against the ceiling. There was more sporadic shooting behind them, the noise of the reports distorted by the tunnel’s acoustics. Pierce tried not to think about the carnage they were fleeing, or the senseless hate that had motivated it. Maybe the terrorists would be content with vandalizing the monastery, sparing the monks’ lives.

He could hope.

The tunnel sloped downward for its full length, about a hundred and fifty feet, and then deposited them onto the desert floor at the foot of the south wall, facing the mountain slope. The walls muffled the sound of the ongoing assault, but Pierce knew the fortress would not contain the violence any more than it had protected those within.

He located the path Father Justin had spoken of, a well-trampled foot trail, dotted here and there with dark stains.

Blood.

He recalled what Justin had said about holy ground and taking off their shoes inside. The pilgrims who followed this secret route probably took that admonition very seriously.

As the grade increased, their pace faltered to a walk, and soon all three of them were struggling for breath. The monastery was a mile above sea level, and the summit of the mountain was at least another half-mile higher.

With their increased elevation, Pierce could see down into the monastery. Columns of smoke rose from two or three small fires, the rest of the darkness illuminated by occasional flashes of gunfire. Then he spotted lights outside the walls, a small group of men skirting the exterior of the monastery.

“Lights off!” he ordered the others, switching his own headlamp off as well.

Had they been spotted?

“Looks like we’re going to have to skip the Cave of Moses,” he said, keeping his voice low, barely louder than a whisper. “We’ll skirt along the base of the mountain and then double back. I doubt these guys will stick around much longer. I’m sure the Egyptian army has already heard about this, and the cavalry is on the way.”

“Do you think they’re here for us?” Fiona said.

“Possibly,” Pierce replied. “Maybe our cover story was too convincing. ISIS couldn’t pass up a chance to take UN hostages.”

Gallo spoke up. “George, what if this isn’t Islamic extremists? You heard what Brother Justin said about the charter of protection. No Muslim would defy the Prophet like that. What if they’re here because of what we’re looking for?”

“How would they even know?” Fiona asked.

It makes sense, George thought, and then he turned to Gallo. “You’re right. We have to consider what Felice discovered in Geneva. Somebody caused that. Intentionally. Maybe they’re trying to create a weapon, or maybe they just want to bring the apocalypse, but they have the resources to make it happen. Who’s to say they don’t have an army, too? If they’ve learned what we’re looking for and why, then they would want to stop us. Or take it for themselves. The question is, how would they even know about us in the first place?”

“Maybe they hacked our phones? Cintia was worried that there might be a mole in Fallon’s inner circle.”

As much as he didn’t want it to be true, he knew she was right. As usual. The timing of the assault, and the fact that the attackers were moving up the hill, was all the proof he needed.

Worst of all, the sun chariot wasn’t even there, or if it was, it was hidden so well that Fiona could not sense its presence.

“It doesn’t change what we have to do,” Pierce said. “We just need to stay alive—”

The ground heaved beneath him, knocking him flat. He slipped a few feet down the slope before catching himself, but even before he stopped sliding, he knew the sudden disturbance wasn’t another explosion. The ground was still moving under him.

“Earthquake!” Fiona shouted.

Pierce stayed down in a prone position, hugging the ground to avoid being launched into an uncontrollable downhill slide, but as the frightful shaking went on, the seconds stretching into minutes, he could not help but wonder if this was the beginning of the solar event Dourado had warned about.

If it was… If the Black Knight satellite had been activated again, redirecting the sun’s light and gravity, the tremor would only be the beginning.

A noise, loud like a thunderclap, split the air, and a wave of heat flashed over Pierce. His nostrils filled with a strange smell, a mixture of burning dust and freshly turned soil. There was a second report, more distant, but still very loud, and then another, the two overlapping. Pierce couldn’t tell if the noises were from bombs or maybe rocket-propelled grenades exploding on the slopes around them, or something related to the quake. Regardless, there was nothing he could do to protect himself. His life or death was in the hands of fate.

Then the shaking stopped.

“George!” Gallo’s cry was choked by a mouthful of dust, but at least she was alive.

“I’m okay. Are you? Fiona, are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Fiona replied, then added. “The Black Knight just woke up again.”

Pierce pushed himself up to a crouch and, despite the unresolved threat from the monastery attackers, flipped his headlamp on.

The dust motes caught in the beam of light made it look like a solid thing, but amid the haze, he spotted Gallo and Fiona, both huddled just a few feet away. He crawled over to them, hugged them for a moment, and then shone his light on the mountain, scouting a route to freedom.

Below them, a hundred yards away, the line of glowing artificial lights advanced up the slope — the monastery attackers, homing in on Pierce’s headlamp. As he stared down at them, Pierce saw a tiny flash, barely bigger than a spark, followed half-a-second later by the report of a rifle shot.

“Down,” he called out, flipping off his light and pressing himself flat. “We can’t stay here.”

“We can’t very well move either,” Gallo said. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” he grunted. “I saw.”

As if being hunted by killers armed with guns and rocket launchers wasn’t going to be challenging enough, fate had decided to increase the difficulty setting. Pierce’s brief glimpse of the mountainside had revealed the quake’s aftermath. The ground had split apart all around them. Long fissures, bleeding acrid smoke into the chilly night air, now crisscrossed the slope. Without the aid of artificial light, Pierce could just barely make out the ground in front of him. The jagged cracks in the terrain were a shade darker than the brown soil.

“Slow and steady,” he said. “We’ll crawl out on hands and knees if we have to.”

“Uncle George!” Fiona’s voice rose with increasing urgency, as she called out. Pierce couldn’t see her face, but he could make out her silhouette. She was pointing into the nearest crack.

The fissure was glowing a dim red, but getting brighter by the second, like the coils of an electric heater warming up. Pierce’s first thought was that they were witnessing volcanic activity, but as the light grew, rising through the spectrum — orange, yellow, and then bright white — he realized the cause was nothing as ordinary as a rising magma plume.

Something was alive down there, moving in the depths of the Earth, like an embryonic dragon squirming through the cracks in its eggshell, struggling to be born.

TWENTY-FOUR

Felice Carter felt like throwing up. How had she not seen this coming?

Smoke and mirrors.

Deception.

Fallon had invited her into his inner circle and then distracted her with the imaginary external threat of the hacker.

Even now, confronted with the reality, she couldn’t quite reconcile it with what she had experienced. Why had Fallon gone to such extremes to deceive her, particularly at the beginning, when he had complete control over the Black Knight satellite and the Roswell meta-material fragment? It made no sense.

She placed her hands flat against the concrete walls and took a deep breath. She didn’t need to see them, and the wall itself posed no obstacle. All she needed to know was that there were two men inside the structure, and one or both of them were going to unleash an apocalypse if she didn’t act.

A hand touched her arm, distracting her. She looked up and saw Lazarus. His face was impassive, but she could see the question in his eyes.

Are you sure you want to do that?

“I have to stop them,” she said.

“Wait.”

That was all he said.

She knew the reason for his apprehension. It had not been concern for the men inside the transmitter building that prompted him to intervene, but rather concern for her. If she did this, if she touched their minds and permanently stripped away their free will, it would be the same as killing them. Two more souls added to her tally.

The first few times her… ability…had become manifest, it had been something out of her control, an autonomic response to a threatening situation. Yet, knowing that did not assuage her feelings of guilt. Those incidents had prompted her subsequent quest to develop a mental discipline regime to keep the power in check, and had motivated her to spend years of her life helping fight disease in developing nations.

If she unleashed the ability now, it would be deliberate, intentional.

But no less necessary.

Behind Lazarus, one of the large construction robots trundled down the drive. She couldn’t tell if there were more behind it, but this time, she didn’t have a souped-up spy car in which to escape. Not that she had any intention of running.

Dourado’s fingers flew over her laptop’s keyboard. She muttered as she worked, letting Carter and Lazarus know that she wasn’t ignorant of the threat. “I see it. It’s not recognizing the admin account I set up, but I created a backdoor that he doesn’t know about. If I can… I’m in.”

Lazarus half-turned to look at her. “Can you shut the transmitter down?”

“I don’t know that part of the system.”

“The robots then?”

“Working on it.”

Lazarus turned back to Carter. “Let’s try it this way first.”

She nodded. “Hurry.”

Lazarus pulled away from her and ran back to the front of the building, where the two electric carts blocked access to the door. She followed, but only as far as the corner, observing from a discreet distance.

He walked up to the cart blocking the door, dropped to a squat and hooked his hands underneath it. With a howl of primal fury, he stood up, lifting one side of the thousand pound vehicle. There was a tearing sound — Carter hoped it was his clothes bursting at the seams, as his muscles bulged with the effort, but she knew it was probably his tendons snapping. The cart tilted up and then passed the point of no return, tipping over onto its side, clearing the way to the door. Lazarus stood there for a second, breathing heavily, face contorted in pain, then he reached for the doorknob.

Carter spied movement behind him, but before she could shout a warning, the second cart surged forward, slamming into Lazarus and pinning his legs against the door with a sickening crunch.

“Erik!”

She rushed toward him, but he held up a hand, forestalling her. Through teeth clenched against the pain, he whispered, “Cintia.”

Without retreating, Carter turned back to the computer expert. “Cintia! You’ve got to shut them down.”

“I’m trying!”

The construction machine was just fifty yards away, close enough that the noise of its metal treads on the pavement was almost deafening. Despite Lazarus’s earlier warning, Carter moved forward, joining him at the door. She braced her back against the wall, pushing against the cart, trying to force it away from the door. As before, it refused to budge. Despite his injuries and the awkward position in which he had been pinned, Lazarus pushed as well.

The cart shifted a few inches, but then the wheels began spinning, pushing back. Lazarus howled again, as the vehicle slammed him into the door a second time.

The construction robot was now just twenty yards away, its spider-like manipulator arms unfolding above its tracked chassis. The large circular saw-blade tipping one arm was already spinning.

Ten yards.

“Get out of here!” Lazarus shouted.

Carter had no intention of leaving. Instead, she turned to face the wall, placed her hands against it, closed her eyes and prepared to unleash her power against the two men inside.

The noise abruptly ceased.

Carter opened her eyes and turned to look at the now motionless construction robot, which had come to a complete halt, almost touching the rear of the cart, its manipulator arms stretched out above her. The saw blade was still spinning, but hissing as friction brought it to a stop. The only other sound was the hum of the transmitter on the other side of the door.

Then she heard a shout from around the corner. “Yes!”

“Cintia? That was you? Can you back these things away?”

Dourado stepped into view, her attention still glued to the computer in her hands. “I had to do a blanket shutdown. He’s fighting me hard.”

Carter tried pushing the cart again. It rolled without resistance, but only for a few inches before bumping up against the motionless treads of the construction-bot. It was enough of a gap for Lazarus, his face twisted with pain, to extricate himself. But it was not enough to get into the transmitter building.

“Keep trying,” Carter said. “I’ll see if I can distract him.”

She was relieved that circumstances had provided her an alternative to unleashing her power, but whether this was a true reprieve or a postponement remained to be seen. She pulled the door open a crack and shouted inside. “Fallon! Stop this! Now!”

The reply was a shout loud enough to be heard over the hum. “I’m afraid Mr. Fallon is indisposed.”

“Tanaka?” Evidently, Marcus Fallon was guilty of recklessness and bad judgment, but not responsible for activating the Black Knight. “What did you do to him?”

“He’ll live. At least a little while longer.”

“Why are you doing this? You know what could happen?”

When Tanaka didn’t answer, she glanced over at Dourado, who made a rolling gesture with her finger. Keep him busy.

“Let me guess,” Carter went on. “You saw the potential to turn this into a weapon, but Fallon didn’t want that.”

“Ha!”

“Have I got that backward? Is Fallon the one who wants to weaponize it?”

“He’s naïve,” Tanaka said. “He thinks he can save the world. He’s a fool.”

“And you? What do you want? To destroy it?”

Silence.

“Seriously?” Carter asked. “You want to destroy the world?”

“I don’t expect you to understand.”

She glanced over at Dourado. A nod. Almost there. “Try me.”

“The world can’t be saved, Dr. Carter. Not by you. Not by Fallon. All you will do is prolong the suffering. Life is a mistake. A brutal, terrible joke that’s already gone on far too long.”

Carter recognized the rhetoric. Tanaka was a pessimist. Not merely a gloomy, glass-half-empty Eeyore, but he was a believer in the nihilistic philosophy that life — all life — was meaningless.

No wonder his Cerberus recruitment score was so abysmal, she thought. “Seven billion people deserve a chance to figure that out for themselves. You don’t get to make that decision for everyone else.”

“Seven billion,” he echoed. “A hundred years from now, they will all be dead, and ten billion more will have taken their place, living short, ugly, miserable lives. Billions more after that. Suffering. Dying. I am not destroying the world. I’m putting it out of its misery. I’m sparing untold billions the horror and pain of existence.

“I thought perhaps I could use HAARP to do it, but the transmitter wasn’t powerful enough. Then, when Marcus approached me about the potential of the Black Knight satellite, I knew I had been given a second chance. I’ll confess, the gravitational anomaly was an unexpected bonus, but ultimately unimportant. The world will not be shaken apart. It will die entombed in ice.”

“You’re going to stop the sun, is that it? I’m pretty sure it’s going to take more than a couple of minutes of that to have the kind of effect you’re looking for.”

The hum stopped.

Carter looked over to Dourado, but the latter shook her head. Not me.

Tanaka had shut the transmitter off. Was he surrendering?

She returned her attention to the door. “So why do it? Why go through all this?”

There was a long silence. Maybe he wasn’t giving up after all. Lazarus got to his feet, his broken legs already healed. He leaned against the side of the car, gathering his strength to shove the remaining cart out of the way and end the threat. Then, Tanaka spoke again.

“Call it proof of concept.”

Even before he finished speaking, Dourado let out a dismayed shout. “No! Damn it!”

Distracted by the outburst, Carter didn’t see the construction-bot’s manipulator arm swinging toward her, but Lazarus did. He threw his arms around her and tackled her out of the way.

The mechanical arm struck the cart, smashing through the fiberglass housing and knocking the machine sideways. Carter caught only a glimpse of it as Lazarus scooped her up with one arm and scrambled around the corner, dragging Dourado along as well.

There was a harsh ringing sound, as the robot’s circular saw began spinning again, but it was drowned out a moment later by the clank and rumble of metal treads moving against the pavement. Carter had just got her feet under her when the machine rolled into view, lowering the saw to slice them all apart.

Lazarus thrust Carter and Dourado away, well outside the reach of the mechanical arm, then spun around, ducked under the sweep of the blade, and leaped onto the base of the robot.

Carter recalled what Fallon had said, about how the construction robot wasn’t programmed for combat. The same appeared true for self-defense. It lumbered forward, trying to seize hold of her and Dourado, oblivious to the stowaway.

Dourado stumbled, going down on one knee. The computer flew from her hands and skittered across the ground. Dourado let out another wail of dismay and crawled after it. Faster than Carter could draw breath to shout a warning, the robot arm with the saw blade moved into position above Dourado and then sliced straight down.

TWENTY-FIVE

With an indifference only possible for a computerized automaton, the construction robot brought its spinning saw down on Dourado, but in the instant before contact was made, the blade shifted sideways. With an eruption of dirt, the blade buried itself in the ground, just a few inches to her right.

Before she could move, almost before she realized she was still alive and intact, the manipulator arm reversed, the saw tearing free of the earth. She rolled left, scrambling on all fours to put some more distance between herself and the robot, but she knew it wouldn’t be enough.

The manipulator arm shuddered, and began moving away from her. The saw plunged down again, burying itself deeper into the ground than the first strike. Then, with an ear-splitting shriek, a six-foot long section of the manipulator assembly broke loose from the hydraulic joint. Lazarus, his arms still wrapped around the other end of the disarticulated appendage, leapt from the base of the machine.

The damage seemed to have no real effect on the robot. Its other arms came forward, clamps and manipulator claws opening wide to grasp him, treads moving as it lurched ahead.

Instead of retreating, the big man wrenched the saw blade out of the ground, spun around like an Olympic hammer thrower building up momentum, and then brought the blade down hard on the treads.

The air rang with the impact. The severed appendage twisted out of Lazarus’s grasp and he half-staggered backward, scrambling to avoid being run down. The blow, however, had done what he intended.

The robot’s left track came apart, one end flinging about like a decapitated snake, and then the left side stopped moving. The massive machine spun around, its one remaining track causing it to pirouette, and it slammed into the transmitter building, smashing an enormous hole in the concrete wall.

Dourado, still in full-flight-mode, retreated several more steps before realizing that the battle — man versus machine — was over. What she had failed to do with technology, Lazarus had accomplished with brute force.

She stopped running and leaned over, resting her hands on her knees until her breath returned and the urge to throw up passed. Carter hastened over and embraced her, but the moment of triumph lasted exactly that long.

“Heads up!” Lazarus shouted. “We’ve got incoming!”

Three more of the construction-bots rolled into view and turned toward them. Lazarus bent to retrieve the makeshift axe that he had used to take down the first machine, but Dourado knew the odds of defeating all three were not good.

She looked around for her computer and found it.

Both pieces of it.

Lazarus had spared her from the first swipe of the saw blade, but in so doing, he had diverted the blade down onto the laptop, slicing it in two.

“So much for that idea.”

Lazarus hefted the broken saw-arm and stood his ground. “Get to cover,” he shouted. “I’ll deal with them.”

Carter grabbed Dourado’s arm and pulled her toward the wrecked robot. With her free hand, she pointed to the hole in the building. “In there!”

Of course! Dourado thought. We’ll force Tanaka to shut the robots down.

In the subsequent chaos, she had almost forgotten that the man responsible for it all was hiding on the other side of that wall. Her mind still boggled at the insane reasons he had given for putting the entire planet in danger, but his motivation didn’t matter. All that mattered was stopping him.

Carter climbed up onto the base of the disabled robot and disappeared through the hole. Dourado followed, picking her way through the rubble and dropping down into the dark hole beyond. There were no overhead lights shining, but there was some light from the glow of a computer screen on the other side of the room, right next to the open door. She didn’t see Tanaka, but a prone figure — it had to be Fallon — was stretched out on the floor, partially buried under debris from the collapsed wall. Carter was kneeling beside him, but Dourado hastened to the computer.

Outside, the low rumble of the tracked machines devolved into a tumult of metal crashing and hydraulic systems straining. An ear-splitting shriek filled the tiny room, and a shower of yellow sparks poured in like rain, as one of the robots began cutting through the wall.

Carter grabbed Fallon’s shoulders and pulled him from the rubble, dragging him toward the door, but she stopped there. Dourado could see that another one of the robots had moved into position in front of the exit, blocking their escape.

There was only one way they were going to survive this.

She gritted her teeth against the horrible noise, and tried to keep her attention on the task at hand.

The Space Tomorrow access menu appeared on the screen, and she saw the familiar prompt for username and password. She entered information for the admin account Fallon had shown her.

She tried again with one of the backdoor accounts she had set up. The results were the same. She tried another, her last. No good.

“Porra!” she snarled. “I’m locked out.”

Carter bent over Fallon again and started shaking him. “Wake up, damn it!”

Fallon came to, jolting as if startled.

“Password?” Dourado shouted.

Fallon nodded.

“What’s the password?” Carter shouted into his face.

“Password,” he said. “Cap P. ‘At’ symbol. Dollar sign. Dollar sign. Lower case ‘w’. Zero. Lower case ‘r’. Lower case ‘d’. Username is M-dot-Fallon.”

Dourado stared at him, gobsmacked. “Seriously? Your password is ‘password’? Are you an idiot?”

She typed it in.

The main intranet menu opened. She navigated through the network, found the robotics subsystem menu, typed in the blanket shutdown code she had used before, and said a prayer.

The tumult ceased.

Lazarus’s face, twisted with concern, appeared in the hole a moment later, but when he saw that they were alive and unhurt, he relaxed. Dourado slumped against the wall, too exhausted to even remain on her feet.

Carter however, wasn’t ready to celebrate the win. She shook Fallon again. “Where’s Tanaka?”

“Ow!” Fallon complained, touching a hand to the back of his head, then looking at his fingertips as if checking for blood. “I’m not even sure where I am.” He glanced around. “Oh. Son of bitch. He sucker punched me.”

“He did a lot more than that.”

Fallon blinked as if he was having trouble bringing the big picture into focus.

“Tanaka was the hacker,” Carter said, speaking as if addressing a child. “He betrayed you.”

“Why?” He struggled to his feet, and then jolted forward, throwing open a panel on the large metal cube that dominated the room. He stuck his head in for a moment then just as quickly emerged and slammed the panel shut.

“It’s gone.”

“Proof of concept,” Carter muttered. “This whole thing was a setup so Tanaka could steal the Roswell fragment. All he needs to do now is find another transmitter.”

Fallon still looked confused and helpless. “But…why?”

“Why else? He wants to destroy the world.”

TWENTY-SIX

Pierce looked away from the fissure, the light burning inside too bright. Green globs floated across his vision, but through them, he could see the mountain slope rising before him, lit up bright as day. It was not from any source of heavenly or artificial illumination, but from below, from the light radiating out from fissures all across the slope.

The rocky ground nearby erupted in a puff of dust, and a fraction of a second later, the report of a rifle reached Pierce’s ears. He ducked, but he knew that staying put was no longer an option. The gunmen — at least ten of them, maybe more — were ascending the mountain, rushing toward them.

“Run!” he shouted.

The unexpected light rising up from the maze of fissures had taken away the cover of darkness, but it also illuminated a path to the top. More shots were fired, the bullets striking all around, some uncomfortably close. But after just a moment or two, the light began to dim, the darkness returning with a vengeance.

“What now?” Gallo whispered.

A few more shots echoed across the slope, then those stopped as well. Flashlight beams lanced through the night, playing up the mountainside, searching for them. The gunmen had spread out and were ascending in a picket line, at least to the extent the broken terrain would allow.

“Back to crawling, I guess.” Pierce wished he had a better suggestion, but until inspiration dawned, keep moving was the best he had.

“No,” Fiona whispered. “Don’t move.”

Pierce stopped. “What did you see?”

“Those things…”

“What things?” Gallo asked.

“Didn’t you see them?”

“I saw,” Pierce whispered back. “I think. I don’t know what I saw… It looked like… I don’t know… Like it was made of pure light.”

“They’re here. All around us. Do not touch them.”

Pierce recognized the certainty in her tone. He had heard it before, earlier that day in the passages beneath Arkaim.

“What are they, Fiona?” Gallo pressed.

“The sacred cattle of Helios.” Her voice sounded detached. “Not actual cows, but some kind of creatures made of pure energy. I think the Originators made them to store the power they harvested from the sun. Sort of like Energizer golems. Living energy inside a shell made of melted rock. Remember that story Father Justin told us about how the golden calf came out of the fire? I think this is the same thing. They’ve been here this whole time. Sleeping.”

“What woke them up? The earthquake?”

“The earthquake or the Black Knight. Maybe I did it, by bringing the sphere here. Or all those things together. We need to stay away from them. They’re dangerous.”

Pierce recalled the jolt he had felt when Fiona touched the small tree inside the monastery — the actual Burning Bush of biblical fame, if the monk was to be believed. Had Fiona’s touch restored a spark of supernatural life to it, as well?

He glanced back down the hill and saw that the picket line was less than fifty yards away. “Like we needed one more thing to worry about,” he muttered.

“If they’re similar to golems,” Gallo said, “Maybe you can control them?”

There was a brief pause, and when Fiona spoke again, her tone of flat certainty was gone. “I didn’t make them, but…I can try.”

She lapsed into silence, and Pierce knew better than to disrupt her focus. The line of flashlights continued moving toward them, slowed somewhat by the terrain, but still advancing.

A shout went up, and then one of the men opened fire.

Pierce ducked his head, covering it with one arm in a futile attempt to protect himself, but the shooter wasn’t aiming at him.

Suddenly, the world was filled with light.

TWENTY-SEVEN

It was like staring into the face of the sun. Light filled every pore of Abdul-Ahad’s body. Heat like a cleansing fire, burned through him. The holy mountain had opened up, and an army of strange creatures had come forth, summoned by the evildoers after their escape from the monastery.

In that instant, he understood why Israfil had sent them here.

“They are jinn,” he shouted, letting the others know. If they were still alive. He could not see any of them. He could not see anything at all.

“Jinn?” The shout had come from somewhere off to his left, closer to the source of the brilliant eruption. “How do you know?”

God is merciful, he thought to himself. I am not alone.

“Can you see?” he shouted.

“Not well,” came the reply. “But yes. I was looking away from the flash.”

“The creatures? Can you see them?”

“I can see shapes moving on the mountain,” the other man said. “Are you certain that they are jinn?

Although he did not possess even a fraction of Israfil’s wisdom, Abdul-Ahad had spent many years immersing himself in the writings of the Prophet — peace be upon him — and the greater abundance of unwritten traditions. He knew the creatures had to be jinn, beings of smokeless fire, rather than malak—angels, beings of pure light — because malak, unlike both humans and jinn, did not have free will. Jinn could choose between good or evil. They could also be enslaved, bound in earthen vessels, just as Solomon had once done, binding the creatures in oil lamps, compelling them to guard his Temple. That was what the three enemies were attempting to do — binding the jinn in earthly shells, to send them forth to destroy the faithful.

He didn’t know how to explain all of this to his brothers, but he did know what had to be done. “Shoot the creatures,” he shouted. “Unleash the jinn. Let holy fire consume the enemies of God!”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Despite the fact that he was face down and covered up, Pierce was compelled to squeeze his eyes shut against the painful brilliance. The light was like a physical force, buffeting his entire body with incandescent radiant energy. It was, he imagined, like the flash of an atomic bomb. He could feel the exposed skin of his hands grow hot, and then cold. He heard Gallo cry out — in pain or alarm — but her wail was nothing compared to the screams from the gunmen.

The screams faded after a moment, as did the light. Pierce raised his head, but all he could see was a green haze. The still-cool night air was crisp with the smell of ozone. “Gus? Fi?”

“I’m okay,” Gallo said. “Can’t see a blessed thing, but I think it will pass.”

“I’m all right,” Fiona said. She paused a beat, then added. “They shot one. That was a bad idea.”

“I guess so,” Pierce said, blinking and willing his sight to return. There was no pain, and that seemed like a good thing. He had never experienced flash-blindness before, but he had heard stories of the intense, lingering pain of exposure to intense light. Even so, navigating the mountain at night without a flashlight had just gone from being difficult to impossible. It would be at least an hour or more before his eyes readjusted to the darkness. Still, if the light had been bright enough to do that to him, and he had been looking in the opposite direction, the gunmen were surely blinded.

He flipped on his head lamp. The green fog was still there, slowly receding from the periphery of his vision, but through it he could make out Gallo and Fiona, lying flat, shading their eyes. Beyond them, the torn landscape, and at the edge of his headlamp’s light, he saw something else.

“Holy shit,” he muttered.

It looked nothing like a cow, or any other kind of animal, and yet he could see how an ancient poet, grasping for the words to describe it, might have made such a comparison. A large, bulbous body, was perched atop what might have been legs, and spiraling protrusions that, without too much imagination, could be compared to the long horns of an ox or water buffalo. However, as Fiona had suggested, the creature looked more like a golem — a rough approximation of life — than like an actual living thing.

He tore his eyes away from it and shone the light down the slope. The gunmen were still there, though there were fewer of them. All of them were clutching their eyes, and groping about in the unique pantomime of men recently struck blind. After a few seconds however, the man furthest out swung his rifle in Pierce’s general direction.

“Time to go,” Pierce shouted.

He grabbed Gallo with one hand, Fiona with the other, and was just starting to move when the shot was fired. The round sailed past them. The man had probably seen nothing more than a bright blur, but that was enough to give him an aim-point. Pierce didn’t dare turn his headlamp off. Darkness, and what they might blunder into, was now the greater danger.

As they reached the nearest fissure, the fusillade began in earnest. Puffs of dust erupted all across the mountain. The surviving gunmen were firing blind, trusting in an overwhelming volume of lead to make up for their blindness. Eventually, they would hit someone.

Or something, he thought, and then he made a mental note to come up with a better name for the light creatures. Anything but cows.

As they skirted the edge of the fissure, Pierce spotted the creature again, meandering along the far side, eight-feet tall and half again as long. It resembled nothing less than a behemoth made of shifting sand. Pierce could feel its energy, like invisible feathers of static electricity brushing his face.

Too close, he thought, adjusting course to give it a wide berth. But he knew that if a random bullet struck the creature, piercing its shell, they would probably all be vaporized.

As if to underscore that threat, another flash lit up the mountain.

The source of it was behind them, well out of their line of sight, but Pierce felt his entire body glow red for an instant. The light revealed a path through the maze, but as it faded, night blindness returned with a vengeance.

“Can either of you see?”

Fi replied first. “Not much.”

Gallo’s admission was even more succinct. “Nope.”

“Okay. Looks like it’s going to be the blind leading the blind.” He closed his eyes, trying to remember how the world had looked in that instant of brilliance. Fortunately, the flash had given them another reprieve from the shooting, but how long it would last was anyone’s guess. “Single file behind me. Gus, hang on to me. Fi, you hang on to her.”

They started forward again, with Pierce counting the steps to the end of the fissure, and then taking a few more just in case, before starting upslope. If he remembered correctly, there was one more fissure ahead, thirty or forty yards—which is it, Pierce? It matters! — and then just a very steep climb to the top.

Something brushed against his face, the touch softer than a breath, and he froze. The sensation lingered. His skin began to tingle, like tiny insects crawling across his face.

Gallo felt it, too. “Stop. We’re too close to one of those things.”

Pierce turned his head back and forth, trying to see around the haze. He knew the creature was somewhere close, no more than ten feet, but try as he might, he couldn’t pinpoint its location. “Back up. We’ll circle wide, give him lots of room.”

“Wait,” Fiona said. “Let me try.”

She began chanting, her voice so soft that it sounded more like faint musical notes than words. After a few seconds, the tingling stopped. After a few more, she stopped singing. “Okay. Follow me. But keep your eyes shut. I think it’s going to get pretty bright.”

The chain reversed, with Gallo now pulling Pierce along, as Fiona took the lead. Pierce squeezed his eyes closed, taking Fiona’s admonition seriously, but the warning also triggered a memory planted in his head since childhood.

“Shekinah,” he whispered. “I know what they are.”

“Trying to concentrate here, Uncle George.”

Pierce held his tongue and followed along in silence. He climbed with careful, deliberate steps, turning when Gallo squeezed his hand, signaling a change of direction, but his mind was in another place, another time, pondering the nature of the strange light creatures.

“We have to climb,” Fiona said. “But whatever you do, don’t look back.”

Pierce opened his eyes and felt a measure of relief at his ability to see anything at all. There were still a few dark blobs, but he could make out a nearly vertical cliff face. The base of the cliff was strewn with boulders and debris, some pieces worn smooth by centuries of weather, others jagged and sharp, cleaved off from the wall during the recent earthquakes. The fractures formed a natural yet irregular staircase leading up the cliff. High above, a shadowy depression marked the location of a cleft in the rock, perhaps the entrance to the Cave of Moses.

Fiona, still in the lead, scrambled up the staircase and plunged into the cleft. Pierce envied her youthful agility, but then Gallo, who was only a couple of years younger than he was, ascended almost as nimbly. Pierce gritted his teeth, reached down into his reserves, and started up the wall.

Another wave of gunfire erupted in the distance, dashing Pierce’s hope that the gunmen were all dead or otherwise incapacitated. It seemed impossible that the three of them had been spotted, and the absence of any nearby impacts suggested the gunmen weren’t even trying to hit them.

Then what are they shooting at?

The answer, as unbelievable as it was obvious, gave him the impetus to reach the mouth of the cave an instant before one of the bullets found its mark, releasing a brilliant eruption of cleansing light.

The angle of the cave opening protected the three huddled figures within from full exposure, but the flash revealed the interior of the small cleft, a space large enough to hold them all.

What Pierce saw in that instant made him forget about the gunmen’s suicidal actions.

He raised his head, shining his headlamp into the depths of the recess. The LED flashlight was a mere candle flame compared to the brilliance released with the light creatures’ destruction, but it was enough.

The walls of the cave were covered in strange symbols.

They weren’t Egyptian hieroglyphics, or the later hieratic alphabet, or any other form of writing Pierce recognized. He wasn’t even sure it was writing. The symbols might have been intended as decorations. Many of them were illegible, worn down by the passage of time, scrubbed away by the action of wind and sand swirling into the little recess. He doubted it would ever be possible to reconstruct the message. But the symbols were not what had caught his eye. A larger relief had been carved into the rock on the back wall.

From a distance, it appeared to be a representation of the sun, a circle with lines radiating from its underside, but there was something inside the circle, a pair of humanoid figures that looked like kneeling angels, facing each other, heads bowed and wings extended toward one another.

“Oh my God,” he whispered. “We got it all wrong. We don’t need to find the sun chariot.”

He turned to the others, giddy with an excitement he had not felt since he was a child, leaving a movie theater, dreaming of the adventures he would have as an archaeologist.

“We have to find the lost Ark.”