The Cydonia Objective

1.

Cairo, Egypt—Present Day

As the limo violently swerved to avoid something in the road, Orlando Natch held the laptop in his weak grasp, still woozy from blood loss after being attacked by ravenous eels in the mausoleum of Genghis Khan.

But despite everything he’d gone through, he felt rejuvenated, as if his ascent from the depths of that tomb and his multiple brushes with death had transformed him like a veritable Phoenix from its own ashes. Less than twelve hours earlier, that adventure already seemed like a lifetime ago, something that had happened to someone else, someone much braver, more deserving to be here with the beautiful young woman sitting beside him.

Phoebe Crowe continued staring at the laptop screen, even as she flinched at the sound of something striking the limo’s front windshield. The image on the screen—the planet Mars, the red, dusty soil photographed from the Viking Orbiter in 1976, one of over fifty-thousand pictures taken during its mission—depicted a mesa-dotted region known as ‘Cydonia’, home to a certain famously controversial image.

A face.

A trick of light and shadow, most scientists believed, despite other equally incongruous structures nearby—things that looked suspiciously like pyramids, walled enclosures, and geometrically-precise markers aligned in relation to the mile-long, symmetrical ‘face’.

Another object struck the windshield, and Phoebe looked up, annoyed. Cairo’s roads were dusty and decrepit in places, and the bumpy ride from the pyramids toward the airport was jarring, with pebbles flying and--

“Oh crap!” Orlando shrieked, just as the driver grunted and his head snapped back, spraying blood into the back seat. Above the steering wheel, the windshield had a neat hole in it, with cracks spreading out, reaching toward the other impact point where another bullet had glanced off.

The limo turned sharply as the driver slumped sideways and dragged the wheel in his dying grasp. Phoebe screamed, and Orlando reached for her as an oncoming bus slammed into the driver’s side. A moment of tortured metallic screaming, and the limo banked up on its side, then flipped over.

The rest of the windows fractured, and as Phoebe rolled onto the roof with Orlando on top of her, she saw something out the back window. A black Hummer screeched to a halt, turning sideways.

And a man leaned out the window, taking aim at them with a grenade launcher.

Phoebe cursed, held Orlando tight and tried to drag him up to the front, hoping to get out the main windshield. Never make it, she thought, wincing, bracing herself. Any second now–

The ground rocked, the limo shook, and she closed her eyes, hoping she’d feel no pain. The explosion came, except… it sounded less intense than she would have thought. Like it was at a distance. And–

“I don’t believe it.” Orlando pulled her up and dragged her over the seats, over the dead driver and out the shattered windshield. Onto a street littered with crashed cars, the overturned bus, and people filing out, shell-shocked. Phoebe stood and looked back toward the Hummer and saw what was left of it on its side with flames roaring through the shattered windows.

Bewildered, she glanced around just as two more dark forms leapt from a nearby alleyway and raised sleek guns she recognized as MP5s, the kind those commandos had when they’d captured the Morpheus team down in the mausoleum.

“Oh, that’s just not fair,” Orlando said, raising his hands even as the men took aim. Phoebe flinched as the shots rang out—and both men spun around, the backs of their heads simultaneously exploding. Two thin red beams descended from the sky and swept over their inert bodies, before darting over to Orlando and Phoebe.

Dust and wind kicked up, her hair blew back and then forward over her eyes, and Orlando shielded his face as he looked up.

“Helicopter.”

A rope ladder descended and a voice yelled from above, “Climb up!”

Pushed by Orlando, Phoebe reached for the second rung and started climbing. Halfway up, expecting more shots to come from darkened alleys or apartment windows or rooftop shadows, she paused, tensing.

Three shots from above got her back into action. These people knew what they were doing, she thought grimly. I really hope they’re the good guys.

Near the top, she called down to Orlando, who was still struggling at the bottom, trying to hold his laptop and climb at the same time. Finally giving it up, he let it drop with a mournful groan, whimpered as it shattered, then scampered up after her.

In the helicopter, two men with helmets and rifles slung over their shoulders hauled her up while another with an RPG at his side started pulling up the ladder with Orlando still on it.

“GO!” one of them yelled to the pilot. The helicopter ascended and rushed ahead, even as the man with the RPG swiveled, aimed and fired two more shots at rooftop targets.

Orlando tumbled inside and clutched at Phoebe with an intensity that only surprised her because of how strong she found herself returning his hug.

The closest man shut the door, then took off his helmet, revealing a leathery face, a thick head of silvery hair, and pale blue eyes that blinked slowly as he considered his cargo.

“So you two are the ones causing all this fuss.”

Orlando glanced out the window, bidding farewell to his lost laptop. “Who, us?”

Phoebe was shaking her head, still bewildered. “The driver was taking us to the airport. We were told our part was done, that we’d be allowed to leave. It doesn’t make sense. Why would they have attacked us?”

Their rescuer sighed. “The limo was bugged. And so is your house back in New York. You would have been monitored. Everything you said, they’d follow. They would have hacked your computers, your phones…”

“I knew it,” Orlando said. “I was right!”

Phoebe stared at him. “About…?”

The man with the gun nodded. “We tapped into their signal and heard what they heard. Heard you talking. They gave the order to take you out as soon as you mentioned the name of– ”

“Mars!” Orlando shook his head. “Son of a bitch. What does it have to do with any of this? The Face? All that crazy stuff NASA’s been ridiculing for years…?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” the man said. “First things first.” He held out a hand. “Edgerrin Temple, and the others here are what we like to call our Retrieval Unit.”

“Whose retrieval unit?” Phoebe asked, shouting to be heard over the engine.

The man smiled. “We’re not out of the woods yet.” He pointed to a row of seats on the wall. “You might want to strap yourselves in.”

As Phoebe moved into her seat, she peered out the window, seeing the looming Egyptian landmarks coming back into view, and she grinned. “We’re going back for my brother!”

“Actually, no.”

“What? We can’t leave him there.”

“We can. They’ll be all right.”

Orlando finished with his seat belt. “How do you know that?”

Temple smiled as he put a phone to his ear. “We’re not without our own talents.”

Phoebe gave Orlando a look. She caught his hand, squeezed it. They both nodded together and closed their eyes.

“Hey!” Temple slammed the butt of his rifle against the floor. “No psychic-stuff now. Stay with me!”

Phoebe glared at him. “Caleb’s down there, trapped under the Sphinx. With– ”

“Alexander, yes we know. And your half-brother Xavier Montross.”

“Who the hell do you work for?” Phoebe asked directly. “And no more games. We’ve been double-crossed by the CIA, the FBI, the Keepers, and some other crazy religious group. Which one are you?”

Temple’s blue eyes remained radiant and sympathetic. “None of the above, I assure you, but for now, just look.”

As they circled around the Great Pyramid, Phoebe and Orlando were handed high-powered binoculars. Temple pointed down to the forepaws of the Great Sphinx, where a group of figures were standing, some of them glancing up.

Phoebe focused on one figure in particular, the one apparently in charge, barking orders, moving armed men and jeeps into a perimeter, signaling others to descend below. The figure paused, then looked up.

Phoebe said, “Damn. It’s Nina.”

“That bitch,” Orlando quipped. “Figures.”

“Confirmed,” Temple said into his phone, and then promptly tapped the pilot on the shoulder. The helicopter banked sharply, then took off.

“What was that all about?” Phoebe asked. “What’s confirmed?”

Temple smiled. “The Dove’s vision.”

“The what?” Orlando rubbed his eyes. “This sucks! Seriously, tell us or I’m remote-viewing you clowns as soon as you turn your back.”

Temple shrugged. “You might not see much.”

“Why’s that?” Phoebe asked. “We’re good at this, as you must know if you’ve been tracking us.”

“Yes,” he said, “you’re good. But we’ve got a Shield.”

Phoebe and Orlando glanced at each other. “A what?”

“Tell me something,” said Temple as they flew higher, leaving the city far below and heading out over the desert. “Did you ever try to view something, maybe like a religious something… like, I don’t know, the Crucifixion, or the birth of Jesus? Maybe Joseph Smith and his meeting with the angels? Mohammed’s desert vision? Any of that?”

Phoebe paled, her mouth opened. “Yes, of course. What remote-viewer with any skill wouldn’t try to get a glimpse into that kind of thing?”

Orlando glanced at her sharply. “You have?”

She nodded slowly, meeting his confused stare.

Orlando shrunk a little. “I mean, I assumed you just…”

“Didn’t care?” Phoebe raised her voice over the engines. “These are the most important world beliefs, the driving forces behind civilization, wars and everything for thousands of years. Billions of people believe one thing or another—and are willing to kill for those beliefs—all based on ancient events that supposedly happened but can never be verified. If we can go back and see those things first-hand, we can know. Actually, truly know. Forget the debate between science and faith.” Her eyes glassed over, swelling with a wall of pain. “Of course I looked. Tried to look.”

“But…” Orlando leaned tentatively holding her hands.

“Let me guess,” Temple said. “You saw nothing.”

“Not exactly nothing,” Phoebe replied, a little bitterness in her voice. “More like—”

“A soft blue light. A hazy fog?” Temple’s smile widened.

Phoebe stared at him. “Yes. How did you know?”

“Because such things—certain things like that are being shielded.”

“How can that be?” Orlando asked. “And by whom?”

Temple continued grinning at them like a schoolboy with a naughty secret. He held up a finger. “Shielding, we’ve found, is something that’s either being consciously enacted and continuously enforced—as it is in our case to cover ourselves, through great effort. Or in cases like these critical faith-based concerns, it may part of a collective will, that enough people, many of them with unknown psychic talents, are directing their thoughts so much on the present unknowable, unprovable faith, that they have managed to retroactively go back and shield the actual events in an impenetrable veil.”

Orlando merely blinked at him, as if he had sprouted a second head with a gibberish vocabulary.

“I don’t buy it,” Phoebe said.

Temple shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. It is what it is. Our own RV members have experienced the same denial as you have, almost as if something…” he waved his arms. “…out there doesn’t want the truth to be known. Some of our members have even gone so far as to suggest certain nefarious elements have shielded these ultimate answers, so as to perpetuate the multitude of religious beliefs.”

“Why would they do that?” Orlando asked as he held his stomach while the helicopter lurched and dipped again.

“Why not?” said Temple. “If these other forces wanted humans to remain deadlocked, ever at each others’ throats, never advancing in harmony, never speaking the same tongues…”

Phoebe nodded. “Like the Tower of Babel story. Scatter the people, keep them at odds through different tongues and beliefs. My brother Caleb’s always on about that theory too.”

“Yep,” said Orlando. “Except he thinks we all had these abilities long ago, and that language wasn’t necessarily the spoken one, that instead we all had some kind of telepathy and clairvoyance and everything, and the tower symbolized our progress.”

“Until the gods came and knocked it down and ‘confused our tongues’,” Phoebe said.

Temple shrugged. “Whatever the case is, we’re working on it. Among other things, and… we need you.”

Phoebe glanced at him suspiciously. “That’s why you rescued us? Because what? You want us to join you, work for you? Doing what?”

“Doing what you’re doing. We’ve been following you, secretly cheering on The Morpheus Initiative.”

Orlando struggled to follow all this. His head was pounding and his throat was parched. “What the hell for? And why, if you’ve got psychics, didn’t you come to us before? We could have used you.”

“You were doing fine on your own. And if you found out about us, you would have also found out about them. And that would have derailed your search for the relics.”

Orlando shook his head. “Relics, plural? Do you mean the keys? The other tablets?”

Temple shook his head. “Nope. There are only two relics of power that our enemies seek. One is the Emerald Tablet, which they now possess.”

Phoebe leaned closer. “And the other?”

Temple sighed. “For that, I’ll let you use your powers. On the plane ride back to America. We’ll have time for that, and for planning. They don’t know exactly where it is, but I’m guessing you two can succeed where they failed. Ask the right questions, and find it. And give us the chance to stop them.”

“But, Caleb and…”

“They have their own path to take. One that will intersect with ours in time.”

Orlando frowned. “And you know this by… what this ‘Dove’ said?”

“Exactly. Now, enough talk, we’re approaching the airport.”

Orlando’s stomach lurched as they descended, but he was determined to sound like he was in control, despite not once feeling that way since the limo had overturned. “Wait, tell us this at least. Who the hell are you guys?”

Temple stood and bent forward to answer. “Years ago, Phoebe, you and your brother did us a great favor, ridding our organization of its corrupt leader. Since then, I’ve taken his place, done what we’ve needed to do, what we were able to do with limited resources in response to grave threats—so many that we’ve countered and continue to monitor. I hesitate to tell you, because we were responsible for what was done to your father, and what happened to your mother, but I promise you, now we’re more alike than you know.”

“I had a feeling,” Orlando said, “even though it was before my time.”

Phoebe gulped, her heart catching in her throat. “You’re—”

Temple nodded. “Stargate.”

2.

Nina Osseni delivered the last instructions to the squad of men at her command, then looked up toward the flickering lights of the helicopter several hundred feet over their heads. “Is that one of ours?”

“No ma’am,” said the lead agent. “Air support pulled back after you landed. Should we open fire?”

She narrowed her eyes. Directly under the craft now, she took a deep breath. Let her body relax, her mind unhinge for just a moment…

And then she was there, in the cockpit, looking backward.

Ah. Phoebe. Orlando. There you are. And who’s that with you?

She snapped out of it just as quickly. “Never mind,” she called over to the agent. “You have your orders. Discontinue the terrorist threat, but keep this area secure. Say that there’s still concern for a bomb or something. And keep everyone out until Mason Calderon gets here.”

With my boys, she thought, suppressing a rising excitement, finding herself tempted to peer into their lives. Now that she knew they were there. Now that she knew what questions to ask.

I’m a mother…

Twins.

She could hardly wait to see how they had turned out.

Back under the Sphinx, Nina stood before the obsidian door, the one that had slammed down on the hapless Commander Marcos, crushing him in half. His gruesome body still lay there, his left leg and arm splayed out, half in and half out of the mysterious chamber.

Her men had already removed the other body—that of Robert Gregory. One-time keeper and leader of the Marduk Cult. Commander Marcos had shot him in the head after his failed bid to pass beyond the Obsidian Door. Mason Calderon had suspected it wasn’t Robert who was fated to enter the lost chamber. The prophecy called for one of three brothers to be the one to find the way inside and claim the contents of the iron box—the translation of the great Emerald Tablet, now in a pack over Nina’s shoulder.

She could feel the Tablet’s power, vibrating up her arm, calling out to her and to the keys beyond this door. Keys made from the same material as the Tablet, keys that had been secured by great conquerors in history. Cyrus the Great, then Alexander, then passed on to Genghis Khan who had entombed himself with two of the keys, protecting them from the likes of Robert Gregory and Mason Calderon. Until The Morpheus Initiative members found their way down into that nearly impregnable tomb, bypassed the Khan’s defenses and took the keys.

But now they were trapped behind the door under the Pyramids. Caleb, Alexander and Xavier. Trapped… but not without their own resources. Nina had glimpses of other things beyond this door: a long passageway through the darkness, converging with a shaft under the Great Pyramid. Some kind of path used in an ancient initiation ceremony. And beyond that: further labyrinths, multi-level chambers, grottos, winding staircases leading nowhere, tunnels ending in deadly traps and rooms where one false step would lead to eternal imprisonment behind walls of stone.

She smiled, knowing that the three of them would have their hands full, but given their experience, most recently with Genghis Khan’s elaborate tomb defenses, and earlier, with the diabolical traps under the Pharos Lighthouse, they would survive.

Only two questions remained: Where would they emerge, and could Nina’s agents be ready to capture them?

Being Xavier Montross’s companion and aide for over two years, Nina knew first-hand the man’s resourcefulness, and his uncanny ability to foresee danger to himself—and avoid it. She didn’t relish the task at hand, but at the same time, Mason Calderon had made it clear: capture of Caleb and the others was secondary to the main objective. They had to acquire the tablets of translation. And she was reasonably sure Caleb hadn’t been able to open the iron box, despite the keys.

No, the tablets were still there, in the room beyond the door. Waiting for her and her boys. She would get those tablets. Soon. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t try to tie up loose ends at the same time.

There was still the little matter of revenge. Despite the revelation that he was the father of her twins, it didn’t change the fact that Caleb had left her to rot. So many years in a coma under the old Stargate facility, where doctors had tended to her and even delivered her babies all while she was unconscious and possibly deliberately drugged to remain in that coma.

Caleb could have found her. Should have. If he hadn’t been swept away by another woman. Lydia Gregory, Robert’s sister. Another Keeper. Another traitor. She had died—good riddance—after Xavier stole the Emerald Tablet and set off Caleb’s defenses under his own lighthouse basement in Sodus Bay. Lydia had been caught in the inferno, incinerated while Xavier escaped.

Nina still felt the smug satisfaction of that retribution, but now… She was a mother. And things were different. Did she still want to kill Caleb? She couldn’t imagine what he was feeling now, realizing the impotency of his own powers. To think, he hadn’t even considered that Nina was alive, much less pregnant with his boys. She almost giggled with the thought of how his mind must be in turmoil. His place in the world upturned. His responsibilities in flux.

Let him stew, she thought.

And then she realized she had time before Calderon got here. Before she could see her own flesh and blood.

Time.

Time to peek in on Caleb. And on her boys. And possibly, if the visions allowed—her new master.

She took a seat, cross-legged on the cold granite floor beside the dead body of Commander Marcos. Prepared her breathing, relaxing herself until feeling a tingling sensation rushing from the base of her spine outward toward her fingers. And then she reached for the dead man’s hand, finding and needing a connection to something, his lingering force. Willing from the dead flesh a host of memories, experiences and more.

There was so much to see.

Commander Marcos looks away from the mirror, finished with admiring his chiseled features. Turns to the wizened older man in the shadows. Notes the same rugged confidence, the silvery-gray hair slicked back over a lupine face with deep-set blue eyes.

Mason Calderon rises and steadies himself against a sudden shifting of the floor. They are on the sea, rocking with the waves. Calderon leans on a long cane with a gold handle featuring a scaled dragon speared through the throat with a lance. “Soon, my friend. We will be home at last. Rid of this world…” He looks down at his body. “And these… ornaments. For good.”

Marcos bows, then fixes his attention on the head of Mason’s cane, the golden staff. “Then do we still need the other item, the relic the twins are seeking?”

Mason takes his time in answering. “We only need to be certain of its whereabouts—and then protect it from falling into our enemy’s hands. Until we are done. After the translation—after the formula has been obtained and fed to our brothers in Alaska—then it no longer matters what our enemies have. They’ll be powerless to prevent our ascension.”

Nodding, Marcos walks to the only other visible object in the shadowy room. A window. And beyond: waves. Dark water with turbulent crests, and farther away—the glinting lights of a massive city, a skyline punctuated by immense towers and bridges.

And the shadowy form of a single backlit behemoth. An immense statue holding aloft a massive torch…

Nina’s mind moves on.

Two infants swaddled and brought humbly before the man she recognizes as George Waxman, who peers at them with concerned but distant consideration. “These ones will have great power,” he says. “Twins are always stronger psychically, but these—sons of two powerful clairvoyants…” He makes a clicking voice with his tongue. “Keep them here, under observation. When they grow older, I will decide what to do with them.”

The scene shifts, and two young boys, maybe five years old, race big wheels across the polished floors of a great mansion. Blond-haired, both of them wearing matching blue suits, they race around great marble pillars, laughing and screeching until the huge doors burst open.

Mason Calderon stands there, hands on his hips. Dressed in a tuxedo. “Isaac. Jacob. Stop at once. It’s time. Come, we must meet the others.”

They both turn and brake at the same time, skidding to within feet of their guardian.

Isaac looks to Jacob. “Does he mean us, brother?”

“I think so, brother. Step to it!”

Calderon scowls. “I’m not playing, boys. Now!”

“Sounds serious,” says Isaac, backing up, then pedaling forward leisurely before stopping at Calderon’s feet, and then retreating again.

His brother mirrors his actions. “I should say we better do as he says. Righto?”

“You bet!”

Calderon shakes his head with growing annoyance. “Boys, please. Today is a big day. I need you to show them what you can do. Show these men and women why I’ve invested so much time in your development.”

“‘Invested’, he says.” Isaac grins to his brother.

Jacob nods. “Sounds like livestock, we do.”

“Pork bellies, us!”

“Cow hides! Porcupine skins!”

“Boys!”

“What should we speak about, father?” Isaac stops now. He stands up and crosses his arms. His brother joins him.

“Tell them what we sees, should we?”

“Righto,” Isaac says. “Tell them what we likes to draw? The dead things? The bloody things?”

Mason Calderon sighs. “They will ask you questions. You will answer truthfully.”

“Questions,” Jacob says, looking at his brother. “Always questions.”

“Gotta know the right ones to ask,” Isaac explains. “Bigtime smartee pants questions, righto, father?”

Calderon nods. “Righto, boys. Now come.”

“I’d like very much to talk about the Dragon.” Jacob says it. Quietly, looking down.

“The dragon?” Calderon leans forward, his voice catching, eyes sparkling with sudden interest.. “How long have you been seeing… this dragon?”

“Long,” Jacob says. “Long time. Him too.” He points to Isaac.

“Dragon caught in a net. Dragon stabbed with spear.”

“Dragon go boom!” Jacob whispers, eyes wide.

Mason stands up tall.

“Fine, boys. In fact, more than fine. Tell them that.” He smiles. “Yes, I think they’ll like that very much. The dragon. The spear…”

Isaac and Jacob look at each other and grin.

“Righto.”

Later…

Older, a little bigger. The boys, stepping away from their snowmobiles. Taking off their helmets, revealing long blond curls. Shoulders broadening, arms thick, already tall for their age.

They stand over the twitching body of a magnificent stag. The deer grunts, lets out a mournful whine, then kicks helplessly at blood spattered snow.

Isaac removes the scoped rifle strapped on his back, the same one that had felled this creature minutes ago.

“Hardly sporting, brother,” Jacob says, hands on his hips. “Did you really need a scope?”

“Didn’t use it, you know. Never even saw the creature until I pulled the trigger.”

“Oh, you saw it all right. Just with your other eyes.”

“Righto.” He aims for the deer’s head. Fires. Smiles, never once blinking or looking away from the gore blasting outward from between the antlers.

“So much for a souvenir for father Calderon’s wall.”

Isaac shrugs. “He has enough. Besides, this is only practice. Isn’t that what he told us? Practice for when we meet mother.”

Jacob nods, glancing off to the weakened sun dancing between the trees, drooping toward the horizon. A chill wind blows through the dead forest. “Practice.”

“The time is coming soon, brother.”

“I wonder…”

“Yes?”

“What he’s like.”

“Our younger?” Isaac giggles.

Sensing the mood shift, Jacob joins in. “Our brother from another mother.”

“I bet he’s a tool.”

“We’re all tools, brother. But us, we’re tools for the right side.”

“Righto. The winning side.” Isaac slings the rifle over his shoulder and heads for the snowmobile.

“Leave the carcass?” Jacob asks, lingering at the corpse.

“The flesh is nothing.” Isaac closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, and his eyelids flicker as if he’s seeing a vast panorama played out behind them. “Before we’re done, every living thing on this planet will be like this…”

Jacob nods, his smile matching his brother’s. He heads to the snowmobile, and together they drive off, leisurely weaving between the crooked trees, racing toward the spreading darkness.

Nina sighs, trembling. She’s about to let go and pull back from the visions, when one more rushes up at her like a wave and then drags her down into a maelstrom of furious images:

Caleb Crowe, hanging onto his son Alexander’s hand, follows after Xavier Montross, pursuing the red haired man leading the way through the passageways. They pause right before the entrance to a circular chamber with a low chamber that fills suddenly erupts with spring-loaded spikes, skewering the air before them.

Montross then leads them around the perimeter toward an upward sloping shaft where again he holds back a restraining arm—and then abruptly pushes Caleb and Alexander into a recessed nook in the hall, just as an immense block comes rumbling down the shaft and slams past where they had just been standing.

Later: Alexander leads them over a chasm, across a series of stepping stones, choosing only those with certain hieroglyphics.

Then: they come to a chamber with a central pillar and a doorway carved into its base. They gather around the shaft, shining their lights on the images, painted mural-like onto its surface. And they stare, uncomprehending, until Caleb points to something and says-

3.

“Here…” Caleb Crowe’s voice was weak, half-choked with the thin air in the passageways under the Great Pyramid—or wherever they were after nearly seven hours of wandering this labyrinth. They had walked for miles. Winding passageways hewn from the bedrock, doubling back and forth, descending for hundreds of feet in places, then rising again. There were arched bridges spanning over yawning crevasses, and sections where they climbed spirals staircases around tower-like spires thrusting out of the impenetrable darkness below. It always seemed they heard sounds of distant splashing, as if from waves lapping against the foundations.

At first, Caleb had been surprised and relieved at the lack of water. He remembered reading essays on the geological makeup of the Giza plateau, and the speculation that even if there were tunnels or chambers below the pyramids, they would likely be full of water due to their proximity to the Nile and its annual flooding. But apparently the builders had constructed these chambers to resist seepage, or they had drainage tunnels out of sight.

His interest in geology, however, quickly waned as they proceeded deeper and deeper into the labyrinth, pausing only to remote-view the way, each of them occasionally getting glimpses of the ancient past, of robed men and women solemnly proceeding along these very paths. Just snatches of visions, unable to see the purpose to these chambers, or the destination of its early travelers. But they had seen other things: passageways where the floors would have given way or where sliding walls would have imprisoned them after a false step. Rooms where the ceiling was supported on gears that would release and flatten anyone who stepped inside.

They bypassed all of these traps, avoiding death at every turn.

And now, after climbing a steep staircase, they had arrived at the top of what seemed like an enormous rounded pillar. The lights couldn’t probe anything above or below, and there was only one bridgeway leading away into the gloom. In the center of the floor there stood a huge block, inscribed with hieroglyphics and carved images. Caleb stared at it for a thoughtful moment. “This is… I don’t understand this at all. Why should this symbol be here?”

“What is it, Dad?” Alexander had his flashlight highlighting the image of a baboon holding aloft a disc, flanked by royal serpents. The rest of the mural, painted around the immense block, depicted what appeared to be a scene of metallurgy: an ibis-faced man holding a hammer and a long spear, thrusting the lance into a cauldron. On a nearby table, a rectangular sheet of what seemed to be a book, except it was dyed a deep hue of green. The same god-man was bent over it with a quill, inscribing words of power.

“Down here, this section I get.” Caleb pointed. “Here’s Thoth as a smith. Creating, in this panel, a spear-head. In the other, a tablet. A book.”

“The Emerald Tablet.” Alexander said it reverently, fearful of speaking about it in this ancient place—with what might be its first-ever depiction.

But then Alexander saw that Caleb had shifted his flashlight higher, to where the symbol of a god holding two staffs stood in profile, a sphere on his head. Above him, an inverted triangle, and at the top, a coiled serpent caught in a net, its head pinned to the triangle with a long spear.

Xavier Montross had circled around the pillar, giving it little attention, instead eyeing the darkness all around them, as if imagining it concealed a multitude of monstrosities, guardians ready to descend upon them.

“We don’t have much time,” Montross said. “Can we skip the sightseeing?”

Caleb shook his head. “This is important.”

“Yes, yes,” Montross said, finally taking an interest in the carvings. “Our friends, the dragon and the lance.”

“Marduk and Tiamat,” Alexander said, remembering what they had been talking about earlier. “The war god killing the dragon-goddess. Stealing her Tablet of Destiny thing.”

“Yes,” Caleb said, “but it’s astounding that it’s being depicted here, in this ancient passageway beneath the Giza complex. And at a place of seemingly great importance.” He glanced back toward the stairs, ruminating on the series of tests and challenges, the deadly traps and diabolical puzzles they had managed to solve only with the aid of their psychic abilities, glimpsing the past and seeing the way ahead.

He shook his head with wonderment. “This is the crucial lesson. This is what the acolytes were meant to understand, this is the reward for everything we’ve just gone through.”

Montross made a snickering sound. “Bit of a letdown, if you ask me. Risk-reward ratio way out of balance. It’s a nice picture and all, but—”

“But it’s everything,’ Caleb said calmly. He pointed at the god-figure below the triangle. “That’s Ra. Marduk, if you will. But the placement of his symbol, below an inverted triangle, implies to me something about creation.”

“But,” Alexander said, “Marduk wasn’t created after the dragon died, he killed the dragon!”

“True…” Caleb continued staring at the pillar, and his flashlight beam trembled. “But instead of implying that he, personally, was created by the incident, what if it means something else?”

“Like what?” Montross was still glancing around nervously as if expecting something horrific to come slithering down the air shaft and drop on them at any moment. Or the walls to close in or the ceiling to collapse.

Caleb rubbed his chin in thought. “The symbol for Marduk, there with the two scepters, can also mean something literal. Something astronomical. The planet…”

Montross whipped his head around. His eyes went wide. “Mars.” He approached, showing real interest now. “Yes, yes. This, taken a certain way, matches my vision. Your visions too, Caleb. Cosmic history wrapped up in myth. The epic disaster. A conflict that destroyed a planet-sized body out beyond Mars, leaving the current asteroid belt.”

“And something else,” Caleb whispered, pointing again to the triangle. “It’s almost as if this is saying that conflict created Mars itself, and yet…”

“That’s not right,” Montross said. “The myth could even read that Mars the planet acted as Marduk and influenced Tiamat into some kind of collision, if you believe cosmic catastrophic proponents like Immanuel Velikovsky. But it may have been something else, and its destruction may have created—what, a civilization on Mars?”

“Or its moons,” Caleb said thoughtfully. “Depending on how long ago we’re talking, we know Mars had abundant water—oceans and polar ice—millennia ago. But also, its moons—Phobos and Deimos—are highly unusual, with irregular orbits, perplexing lunar craters and other inconsistencies. As recent as the ’60s, some scientists seriously considered the conclusion that they were hollow. Artificial.”

Montross smiled suddenly, pointing to the two scepters of Marduk. “Phobos and Deimos. Translation from the Greek: Fear and terror.” He sighed. “Whatever this is telling us, can we contemplate it later? Nina’s got to be after us by now, and we’re no closer to getting out of here.”

Alexander shifted awkwardly, glancing at the dark passage behind them. “What about going back? Finding the upward shaft and climbing up to the Great Pyramid? I think I saw a way in there.”

“And then what?” Montross snapped. “Just waltz out the main door? They’d be on us in seconds.”

“We could wait it out? Hide inside the pyramid somewhere.”

Caleb shook his head. “Not with Nina out there. And especially not if her… kids show up.”

“You mean your kids,” Montross said with a lopsided grin. Then he added, “So it seems I’m blessed with even more nephews, huh?”

Caleb looked away. Reached for Alexander and squeezed his shoulders reassuringly. “I don’t know what to think about them yet. But I’ve gotten some visions, and I’m… worried.”

Alexander nodded. “I’ve been seeing them too. For a long time, I think. Without knowing who they were or why I was seeing them. I wonder, were they glimpsing me too?”

“Probably,” Caleb said. “If they’re as good as you.”

“Again,” Montross said, his voice rising. “Can we proceed? I say we move on ahead, scout out where this infernal labyrinth winds up. There has to be another exit.”

“Tell that to the minotaur,” Alexander said.

Caleb glanced toward the darkness. “This may be it, and there’s no other way out. The path of the initiate was from the Sphinx to the Great Pyramid. Everything else is mere confusion and more tests of the candidate’s resolve.”

Montross stared at the shadows ahead of them. “No. There’s something else. Another way out. I’ve seen it. Come along, I know the way.”

Caleb lingered for a moment, glancing one more time at the dragon, focusing on the spear embedded in its skull. He reached out and before he knew he was doing it, he touched the image. Traced the dragon’s scales, then after a slight hesitation, put his finger on the raised markings of the lance.

Nothing happened. With a sigh, a mixture of relief and regret, he was about to start after his son and his brother when a question suddenly popped into his head, and the resulting psychic trigger knocked him flat.

Where is that spear now?

The Theban Legion, six thousand strong, stands at the ready in a rocky valley between snow-capped peaks, with a sprawling mountain range at their backs. A light snow falls from a hazy, dark mass of clouds obscuring any sign of the late afternoon sun. Heads high, eyes skyward, the legion stands defiant, motionless until their leader steps forward to meet the regal figure leading a larger force of centurions toward them. The thundering steeds strain to break into a rout and plunge into the midst of the legionnaires.

But one horseman raises a hand and the entire force comes to a stop. Garbed in a purple cloak, with a crown of gold on his head, he leads his horse ahead, directly into the path of the approaching Theban legionary.

The commander of the Theban Legion removes his helmet, revealing a dark-skinned face, a bald head, and shining eyes. He holds a spear in his left hand, sets its base into the cold earth, and then lowers his head and bows.

“My Lord Maximian. You grace us with this unexpected visit. We have just come from Gaul, and have put down the revolt with all speed and success. And minimal loss of life. All glory to Rome.”

Maximian nods indifferently. Glances around at the men, at the state of their armor, their bandaged wounds. “I hear stories, Maurice. Stories, stories. Always stories, all the way across the empire they come, flying like diseased crows, bearing ill news.”

Maurice lowers his eyes. “What news, my lord?”

“Don’t play games, commander. You know why I’ve come. Why I’ve had to personally make this trip…” He waves his arm around the mountainous land. “…to deal with a wayward commander and a legion that refuses orders.”

The centurions at the emperor’s back jitter nervously, hands tightening on their weapons. Tense, eyes scanning the legionnaires with a mix of fear and respect.

The legionnaires make no move, but only return the stares.

“My Lord,” says Maurice. “There is but one order I have had my men refuse.”

“And why is that, might I ask?” Maximian fixes him with a dull stare, then punctuates it with a yawn. “Wait, don’t tell me. You and most of your men have already shifted your beliefs to that of this new cult. This ‘Christianity’. And so, when I tell you to visit violence on any who refuse my divine right of rule, to these… cultists who bend a knee only to their martyred savior, you refuse. You side with them over your emperor. You call yourself loyal, yet you feel it is your right to disobey.”

“My Lord, never. We have always succeeded in our missions. We have found… other ways of enforcing your rule. Without resorting to violence upon your otherwise loyal subjects.”

Maximian rears his horse, and it stomps its forelegs down around Maurice. “Loyal!? Tell me how they are loyal when they bow to another? Tell me too, commander, how are you loyal when you likewise refuse? If I tell you now, march back into Gaul and slaughter every one of these defiant Christians, what will your answer be?”

“My Lord, please. We are your strongest legion, your most able fighters. Feared among your enemies. Even…” He looks beyond the Emperor, at the trembling centurions. “Even among your own private armies.”

Maximian waves his hand as if shooing off a cloud of bugs. “Yes, yes. And that is the only reason I haven’t slaughtered you on the spot. But I must ask, what good is a commander, an entire legion, no matter their battle prowess, if they cannot follow orders?”

“Lord Maximian, please.” Maurice takes his hand off the lance—and for just a moment the spear point catches in a sudden shaft of brilliance as a break forms in the dense clouds and the sun bursts through. An incredibly smooth silver surface, ringed in gold, with a thin sliver of wood set in an indentation in the center of the spear-point.

Maximian shields his eyes. And Maurice stares directly into the fierce glow—and lets his hand drop away. He lowers his head. “If that is what you ask, then I refuse.” He faces his men. “I cannot order you, my soldiers to do the same. I will bear responsibility alone for disobedience.” He turns back to Maximian. “And I alone will suffer the consequences.”

Maximian, still squinting against the glare, has nothing to say. He seems to be agonizing over the intensity of the light.

But then Maurice steps back, out of arm’s reach of the spear, and drops to his knees.

And the sun disappears, hungrily devoured once more by the churning dark clouds. The light goes out, and the spear point shimmers another moment with a residual brightness, then dulls.

Maximian blinks, then leans forward on his horse, composing himself. He raises his voice, and addresses the standing legion. “If your commander refuses my order, who will follow it?”

No one speaks. The snow continues to fall, collecting on their bare heads, on their bloodied, scarred shoulders.

“The penalty for disobedience is death.” Maximian moves his horse around Maurice, riding in front of the first line of legionnaires. Studying each one’s face. He rides down the line, then back. “And the sentence will be carried out here. On this rock, today! Who will step forward and command the legion? Who will march back into Gaul and do as I ask?”

Maurice lifts his eyes to the spear, and it’s as if he still stares into the brilliance of the sun. Tears collect, roll down his cheeks.

And as one unit, the legionnaires set down their weapons.

Drop to their knees.

Lower their heads and clasp their hands together in prayer.

Maximian stops pacing. Stares at them, at the entire force. Rides back to Maurice. “We have determined their loyalty.” He glowers at the commander, fury rising in his blood. “Very well.” He raises a fist, rushes back and grasps the spear, yanking it from the earth and setting it across his lap. He rides into the midst of his centurions. And yells:

“Kill them all!”

He continues riding against the onrushing force, galloping away as fast as his steed can carry him over the rocky terrain. Far into the hills and rocky trails, far enough to escape the sounds of slaughter.

Until he hears the sound of returning hoof beats, Emperor Maximian stares at his prize, the lance and the spear point that seem to pull at his thoughts, influence his emotions and stir up even greater dreams of power, dominance and subjugation.

Caleb interrupts the vision. Tries to peer back further. Willing his mind to track the spear. Where was it before Maurice…?

A series of glimpses, fast and appearing intercut with the darkness, lightning-quick:

A figure on a hilltop before a series of thatch shacks, brandishing a scintillating spear point atop a different-looking staff, thicker, whiter, made of Birch wood. He yells out a command in Spanish, and descends upon a force of invading Roman warriors.

Irish moors, low fog over an ice-packed shore. And an assembly of warriors in fur cloaks and wooden shields. Men of huge stature, led by a hulking brute of scarred man with a misshapen head, and but one eye… Facing him and this immense force is a loose confederation of young men and even women, barely armored, woefully under matched—yet surging with confidence, following a blond youth with a spear held high—its point seething with reflected brilliance, bathing the leader with a fiery aura and causing ripples of panic in the mass of giants ahead.

Further back:

Something brilliant streaks from the night sky, dashing against the barren cliff side, startling the inhabitants of mud and clay huts, who rush into the desert. One man races to the glowing impact site, tools in his hands, shouting to his brothers. They gather around the crater, looking down to the glowing, spherical rock, tinged with cracks of emerald, pulsing and giving off intense heat.

The man’s eyes widen. They all drop to their knees and bow their heads.

“When it cools,” he says. “Bring it up to my workshop. God has spoken to me in my dreams. Told me this was coming. Given me instructions. Shown me what I must create.”

His brothers nod, and the mason trembles with excitement, his hands tingling with power, anticipating what will take years to mold.

“His will be done.”

Too much. Caleb tried to pull back. Dimly aware that Alexander and Xavier were around him, carefully monitoring his condition but fearful of waking him.

Come on. Refine the question. He focused, thought carefully.

Where did Commander Maurice get it?

A blast hit him, bright and intense:

A centurion, this one wrapping a cloak about himself as he races alone on a horse across a craggy terrain. Pouring rain, raging winds. The same spear, strapped to his back as he rides, heading toward a familiar circle of giant stones on the moors.

Caleb groaned. Before that, show me…

Another blast of light. A shadowy image of a heat-riddled city, a crowd of jeering, shouting men in rags. More Roman shoulders pushing the crowd back, making room for…

A blast of BLUE, like a broken reel of film giving way to a blank screen. It jitters, and for a moment Caleb sees a hillside at twilight. The same Roman soldier seen previously on the moors, dragging the spear point behind him. The point, covered in oddly-translucent crimson blood, leaving a trail in the sand. Behind him, up the hill…

The briefest image of crosses…

And then the blue screen again. Fiercely blue like a cloudless sky over the ocean.

And then he’s–

Lurching up into his brother’s supporting arms. Brought to his feet now, against the central pillar.

Alexander moved into view, his face pale by the flashlight glow. Worry crossed his features. “Dad? You okay? Looks like you saw a ghost.”

Caleb straightened, wiped the sweat from his forehead and nodded. “A couple, I think.”

“What were you looking for?” Montross asked. “Not the way out, I take it?”

“No, figured you had that covered. I was checking on our friend, The Spear.”

“And-?”

Caleb rubbed his eyes, then pushed off the pillar after giving it one more glance.

“Now I know what it really is.”

4.

Cairo Airport

“Where are we going?” Phoebe asked, boarding the Cessna-14, a plane she knew was capable of travelling long distances without refueling. She glanced backwards, to the darkened stretch of Cairo Airport’s runway, half-expecting to see armored vehicles racing after them or sleek ninjas bursting out of the shadows.

Commander Temple took her by the elbow and gently led her up the stairs to join Orlando inside. “Ultimately back to our base, but first we’ve got another passenger to pick up.”

Phoebe followed him inside to a luxurious cabin, where Orlando was already sitting in a huge white leather chair, tapping the armrests and grinning as he looked around. Two 40-inch flat screen TVs were built into the wall in front of the seats, a bar rested on the left side and two couches faced each other behind the three rows of seats. Orlando whistled. “Now this is more like it. You guys sure know how to spend the taxpayers’ money.”

As a crewman hauled up the ladder and sealed the door, Phoebe took the seat beside Orlando. “So, we’re going to rescue someone else?” A note of hope flickered in her voice. Maybe they’d found Alexander or her brother?

Temple signaled the captain, then shut the cabin door and sat in a chair beside them. “Yes, and I’m sorry for this, but it’s not going to be without danger.”

Orlando groaned and held his bandaged neck. “Just tell me there aren’t any eels.”

Smiling, Temple said, “No eels. We’re going someplace a lot dryer.”

Phoebe lowered her eyes. “Why can’t we just go somewhere safe, let you pick up this person, then meet us? Seriously, Orlando’s hurt, and we haven’t slept in days.”

“Sorry.” Temple shook his head as the engines breathed into life and the plane rattled. “But this is urgent. And for this mission, well… We kind of need you.”

“Oh great.” Orlando rolled his eyes at Phoebe. “Another psychic gig. We know the drill: all the risk, none of the reward.”

“Your talents…” Temple began.

Orlando held up a hand. “Yeah, yeah. We know. If you ask me though, freakin’ Spiderman ruined it for all of us after the whole ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ mantra.”

“We’re not superheroes,” Phoebe contradicted. “Let someone else go.”

Temple shook his head. “This is part of the deal in rescuing you. Plus, the Dove saw that you’d be instrumental in helping us. Indispensable, in fact.”

“All right, I’ll bite,” Orlando said. “What’s the objective? Who’s the target?”

Smiling, Temple leaned back. “Her name,” he said, “is The Hummingbird.”

The plane lurched, rocked to the side, then ascended. After the rocky take off, Orlando turned to the commander. “Great, another bird.” He scratched under his thick hair. “Doves, hummingbirds…” He glanced at Phoebe. “Crowes.”

She jabbed him. “Okay, who is this hummingbird person, and more importantly, where is she?”

Temple opened a briefcase by his seat and pulled out a red folder, sealed with a string. He held it up. “Exactly where she is, you’ll have to tell us. But the general vicinity is here…” He pressed a button on his seat’s armrest, and the TV screen in front of them lit up. Displayed there was a map.

It took Phoebe a couple seconds to recognize the outlines, but it wasn’t hard. She’d seen it on the news enough lately. “Afghanistan?”

“Uh oh,” Orlando said, straightening up. “Seriously, I didn’t sign on for this. Would’ve joined the army if I wanted to sweat it out in a desert battling Taliban, avoiding roadside bombs and rabid scorpions. Thanks but no freakin’ thanks.”

Temple pressed a couple keys and the image zoomed in to a location north of the center of the country, about a hundred miles west of Kabul. A site marked by rocky hills, huge cliffs and rugged peaks.

“Bamian,” he said, pointing to the screen as he got up and fixed himself a drink. Ice. Gin. “Know anything about it?”

Phoebe nodded, her eyes darkening. “For centuries it was a major tourist site and pilgrimage location. And before that, a thriving city. Part of the ancient Silk Road trade route. Home to the two colossal Buddhas, carved by monks in the seventh century right into niches in the sandstone mountainside. One was like, a hundred and sixty feet tall, larger even than the Statue of Liberty, and the other one was over a hundred and twenty feet.”

Temple returned to his seat. Pressed another button, and the screen shifted to a bright view of the mountainside and the enormous niche housing a standing, faceless Buddha.

“You said ‘was’?” Orlando asked. “Are they…?”

Temple took a sip, then pressed the key again. The same niche now, but inside it was only rubble. “In 2001, just several months before 9-11, Mullah Muhammad Omar ordered that these emblems of the infidels be destroyed. That was after they also raided the Kabul Museum and destroyed countless priceless artifacts from the region.”

“That should’ve been our cue of more to come from those whackos,” Orlando said.

Phoebe swallowed hard, staring at the image. “The statues survived for over a thousand years, even managed to escape destruction when our old buddy Genghis Khan invaded. One of his grandsons had been killed on a raid here, shot by an arrow from the well-fortified guard posts on the ridges. Genghis was pissed, and personally saw to the city’s complete destruction.”

“Yet he left the Buddhas?”

Phoebe nodded. “Maybe he respected them—or the original builders—too much to risk that sacrilege.”

Orlando sighed. “Something the Taliban could care less about.”

After taking another swig, Temple said to Phoebe, “And I’m guessing that you know about the legends.”

“Always legends,” Orlando said, groaning. He eyed the bar and licked his lips.

Temple noticed his glance. “Help yourself. Self-serve around here.”

Phoebe shifted and leaned forward, still staring at the picture. “Well, when it comes to ancient history I guess I take after my brother and my dad a bit. But you’re right. There are myths about this place, namely that those statues were here long before the Buddhist monks arrived.”

Orlando slowly got to his feet and headed to the bar as Phoebe continued: “Legends claim they were built as ‘imperishable witnesses’, reminders left in the mountain by survivors of the great flood.”

Orlando chose an old bottle of scotch after reading the label and whistling. “Let me guess. Atlanteans?”

Phoebe shrugged. “That’s what some believe. That they migrated here after the sinking of the island, that they built a network of caves within the mountain and under it. And the seventh-century monks only found the Buddhas already here, and used the existing caves as their homes, painting beautiful murals and designs—and also I recall, smoothing out the faces on the statues—and covering their nakedness in plaster robes.”

Orlando returned, sat and raised his glass to the screen. “Well, so much for the ‘imperishable witnesses.’”

Phoebe turned to face Temple. “Why are we really going to Bamian?”

Temple turned off the TV. “I told you, for the Hummingbird.”

“And,” Orlando asked, wincing after a swig. “Where is she? Oh wait, you’re just going to say that it’s up to us to answer that question.”

“Exactly,” Temple said. “But I’m glad you’re not uninformed about the caves and tunnels. Because we know this much from our source: that she’s down there under all that bedrock and sandstone. Somewhere in the very network of miles and miles of caves and tunnels in which we believe many of the terrorists are hiding, waiting us out and coordinating their attacks.”

Orlando finished his drink. “And you want us to…?”

“I didn’t say you two need to go down there,” Temple replied. “You have the unique ability to keep yourselves out of harm’s way and still get the job done. Just find her for us. Tell us exactly where they’re keeping her. And then we’ll go in and get her.”

“Wait.” Phoebe faced them. “You said you had other remote-viewers on your team. The Dove, for one. Why not use them? Why us?”

Temple lowered his head. “We’ve tried, but… there’s been difficulty.”

“Like what?” Orlando asked, swishing the ice around in his glass. He glanced out the window at the expanse of moonlight speckling the shrouded desert below.

“They’re using the Hummingbird’s talents. Blocking us.”

Phoebe’s eyes widened. “She’s a shield?”

Temple slowly nodded. “A very powerful one. They have another, as well. We don’t know too much about this one, except that he’s Al Qaeda too. A top-level member. Highly-trained, and ruthless. His shielding skills and the Hummingbird’s extend to technological surveillance as well.”

“Meaning,” said Orlando, “that you haven’t been able to spy on them? Not with satellites or psychics? No wonder we can’t find any of these terrorist cells.”

Temple rubbed his hands together. “Two shields are needed to be effective. One can’t stay awake and in control of the shield twenty-four-seven. But it’s in those times when the Hummingbird is asleep and the other one is, shall we say, not in complete focus, that we’ve been able to get as far as we have. We know their approximate location. At least as of last night. And so, we were dispatched. First to get you, then to get her. We’ve got a small window of time. It has to be now. Before they move again.”

Orlando refilled his glass, then set it down, seeing Phoebe’s reproachful look. “Yes, but again, I don’t see how we’re going to narrow this down for you. If the shields or whatever are working…”

Temple held up a hand, then set his head back, resting against the seat pillow. He fitted a sleep mask over his eyes. “You’ll do fine.”

“How?” Phoebe asked, almost exasperated.

Turning to his side, Temple said, “Because you two are the best. You’ll find her because you know what questions to ask. Questions that will get you past the shield.”

Orlando snatched up his glass again as he headed back to his seat. “What do you mean, get past it?”

Temple smiled. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat. I trust that you’ll find it.”

“But—” Phoebe started, then gave up as the commander fit headphones over his ears and promptly dozed off.

Orlando shook his head. “And we don’t get to sleep?” He shifted uncomfortably, frowned then looked on the seat below him. He picked up the red folder, sighed, then handed it to Phoebe.

“Guess we’ve got our homework assignment.”

Phoebe nodded reluctantly. “Let’s get to work.”

5.

Cairo Museum of Antiquities

“You’re sure they’re coming this way?”

Mason Calderon leaned on his dragon-headed cane as the commandos barred the entrance doors behind him. The sun was just coming up over the high-rises and the bustling traffic began in earnest outside, while inside his team spread out through the exhibits.

The two boys put down their skateboards, set their feet on them simultaneously and grinned back at Calderon. “Oh yes,” said Isaac. “Our brother will be here soon.”

Calderon felt other eyes upon him, shivered for a moment fearing someone distant might be observing him, but then faced the glass case to his left, where a four-thousand year old bust of Pharaoh Ramses II, cast in limestone, stared back at him. Calderon felt those eyes boring into his soul from across the millennia, cold granite eyes that sought him out—possibly, he thought—as an equal. A fellow seeker after immortality, a king, a divinity forced to exist among lesser beings.

A smile crept on his face, a thin mimicry of Ramses’ expression. Destiny was in his corner, and a long line of worthy predecessors awaited his ascension.

He watched the boys skateboard in and out of shadows and cones of light, gracefully moving among the ancient artifacts, past friezes, mummies, trinkets and weapons, rolling towards sarcophagi and shelves of canopic jars.

“This way, Sir.” One of the commandos led him ahead, as two followed at the rear, leaving another pair guarding the main doors against unwanted intrusion. Outside, the administrator and curators were being briefed about another possible bomb threat, and escorted to a safe perimeter.

Calderon followed the commandos and the boys through the halls, past treasures remarkable and commonplace to the eras from which they were plucked. He thought about the power the boys had, the same one shared by their parents, by Xavier Montross and the others in the Morpheus Initiative. Certainly an entire wing of this museum could be filled with the bones of psychics who claimed to share their ability. Other mystics and prophets who could see the past, and some of them even the future. The woman who glimpsed the opening of Thoth’s box by three brothers must have received some vision and spoke of it in a prophecy that had eventually reached Pharaoh’s ears.

Calderon continued into a stairwell where below, the boys’ voices echoed cheerily. They were carrying their skateboards, laughing as they tapped the boards against the stairs. Still, he thought, a shame he hadn’t been born with the gift. To be chosen for such a task, selected by Destiny, and yet not given all the tools and weapons he should have… How he rued that missing aspect, and yet… Perhaps it was a blessing. It kept him single-minded, without the distraction of curiosity and the power to quench it.

He knew what was required of him. Knew what they needed to complete the weapon. The Tablet of Destiny. It was so much more than that fool Caleb could imagine. He’d had it for seven years and didn’t even begin to gleam its secrets. Oh, for sure its latent power would have stimulated Caleb’s mind—and his son’s, and anyone who came near to it; but to really understand its power, its true destructive capabilities…

Calderon was ready. Robert Gregory and the other Keepers had an inkling of what the tablet really was. And so did George Waxman, Stargate’s head man and the originator behind the Morpheus Initiative. In his quest for psychic candidates for the government, he had tested one man who had seen it for what it truly was: a threat to all life on this planet. And, Calderon mused, any other planet or satellite we might choose to target. Good thing Caleb was such a believer in the preservation of knowledge. He would never consider destroying such a find, regardless of what Waxman feared could happen. And so he kept it, believing himself a better Keeper than his other new friends, including his wife.

But he was wrong, and the time was coming. The time of release. Marduk’s vision, nearly achieved. It was so easy to set the gears in motion to retrieve the tablet. Robert Gregory, as the Keepers’ leader, desperately wanted the most prized element from the lost Alexandrian Library. And all Calderon had to do was keep fanning the flames, leaking out information about who had it, and how he might get it.

Of course, to get by Caleb’s defenses, they needed a psychic, someone just as powerful to see the way. And Xavier Montross had been only too willing. Gregory and Montross did all the work, but it was Calderon who had pulled the strings.

And now here they were. Tablet in hand. Translation almost in place. But even without that, the contents of that locked box under the Sphinx, they had what they needed. The Tablet. The ancient piece of technology, an interface between mind and machine.

The weapon was built and ready. Waiting for this final piece, the instructions and codes to harness the power of the universe.

All that remained was to eliminate any threat to its deployment. And that meant the threat to the Tablet itself. The one artifact that could destroy it.

He had to act fast. Their enemies—their real enemies—wouldn’t be idle for much longer. Not if they too, could see.

Calderon watched the boys eagerly glide ahead, deeper and deeper into the museum’s secrets. Now they were nearing a restricted door in the back, which Calderon knew led to a private stairwell that would take them to a basement below the storage sublevels.

“It’s down here, father!” Isaac yelled back, grinning.

Jacob waved his hand. “They’re coming, hurry!”

Were they sure? Calderon hadn’t relied on their talents yet, hadn’t had the necessity. The boys were young, green and untested. The visit to the Statue of Liberty proved that they weren’t ready. They were powerful, to be sure, but just not focused. A wasted trip. And he hadn’t had the time then to help guide them. But if all went well here, if they could capture or kill Crowe and Montross, even eliminate the Morpheus Initiative, then Lady Liberty could keep her secrets for all he cared.

Three mercenaries, HK-45s out in front, filed around him and moved ahead of the boys. They opened the door, and Calderon tapped his cane once, hearing it echo metallically off the walls and amidst the relics, then he followed them inside and down into the subterranean chambers to await their quarry.

Xavier Montross pushed the center stone on the wall. He really didn’t need to remote view this part. He knew this was the door, the exit that in ancient times had led out a half-mile beyond the Khepre Pyramid, where the initiates could exit into a well, then ascend to the desert and see the monuments from a different vantage point. Caleb would’ve said it had something to do with mental perspective and a sense of spiritual evolution, but Xavier could care less.

This part was easy. In his flashlight beam, the light dimming already from four hours of continuous use, he could see three rectangular blocks set in the wall to the right of a large, smooth block. The door. And here, it was too obvious. Two of the blocks had the hieroglyphics facing right, as was typical. The middle one had the characters facing left. While he couldn’t translate these scripts specifically, he didn’t need to. Push the right one, the door opens. Push one of the other two and…

All right, he thought. Didn’t get this far by being impulsive. Better just be safe and take a look…

He closed his eyes, spread out his arms and concentrated. On the door, willing to be shown a time when it didn’t open, when in fact someone had gotten it wrong. Show me.

He teetered unsteadily. A vibration traveled up his spine, tingling the base of his neck. Pushing through his skull to the center of his forehead. His mouth opened and he let out a gasp.

A nervous young bald man with a wavering hand reaches for the middle stone. Pushes it with confidence, smiling–

-right up to the point the block he’s standing on drops. Only a few inches—but it’s enough. Something sharp whisks across, driven with incredible force. The youth screams in agony, slides backwards and lands, lifting his legs to look in horror at the stumps where his feet used to be…

Enough!

Xavier pulled himself back, snapped his mind out of the vision. He’d seen too many of these sights, experienced so much pain and death. As if he’d been there himself. But whether it was one soul or an entire world’s population, death was death. Brutal, remorseless. Uncaring.

Steadying himself, he looked at the stones again. And realized his mistake.

The middle one, while different, was really just a mirror image of the top one. They were one and the same, copies just written in reverse.

The bottom one…

Montross leaned forward. Pushed it—and felt his feet tensing, ready to jump at the slightest movement. Not that he’d have the chance.

But then the wall ahead shook, dust fell from the ceiling, and a thin sliver of light appeared at the left, steadily growing as the block pulled aside.

Light? Xavier squinted. He turned off his flashlight. The stone slid farther. Run back, he thought, and had a flash of a cluttered room, something like a storage area, with crates and boxes pulled back from the wall, from the open wooden door on the other side. Just a glimpse, before the four men in black suits raised their weapons at him and surged through the opening.

Back in the shadows, around the last corner of this point of the labyrinth, Xavier crouched. On his knees. I’m not going to die, he thought. I would have seen it. And then he cursed himself. Too often this gift of foresight about his death led him to a false sense of security. He failed to fully scout out other more uncomfortable situations.

But he was far from without resources.

Calderon walked through his mercenaries as they encircled the red-haired man who had emerged, squinting, from the doorway.

“Ah, Xavier Montross. We meet at last.” Calderon cocked his head. Something was odd. Montross was too calm. He’d just emerged from what should have been a stiflingly hot, oppressive and dank labyrinth, and yet he wasn’t even sweating. His hair was perfect, no dirt on his face, nothing to tell of any ordeal. Like he had just awoke from a peaceful nap.

Isaac scampered between two of the soldiers, approaching Montross from behind. Jacob, meanwhile, had taken an interest in the doorway. The open section of flimsy drywall that had concealed the sandstone entrance beyond it.

“Jacob.” Calderon called to the boy. “Wait.” He moved closer to Montross, easing between two of the guns. “We don’t know what’s down there.”

“I do,” said Isaac. With a sneer, he kicked out with a swipe that should have bent in the back of Xavier’s right leg—but his foot passed right through and Isaac tumbled, off balance and with a cry of shock.

Montross’ image gave a wink—and then disappeared. Furious, Calderon gripped the head of his cane like a sword hilt. “Inside—now! Get him, he can’t be far!”

Or could he? This was it, Calderon thought. One of the gifts bestowed by the Emerald Tablet, a power he needed, and one only he fully understood. Its implications were all-encompassing, not just on a personal level, but what it could do if interfaced with the right technology, such as what they had built up in Alaska.

If Montross had practiced, if had deciphered the Tablet and perfected the skills, he could be anywhere.

But he wasn’t, Calderon realized. The door had been physically opened from the other side. He was close.

Worth a shot, Montross thought as he breathed his consciousness back into his body, just as air would fill his lungs. He had just enough time to start to run back the way he had come, intending to get far enough to trip one of the traps he had avoided on the way here. But it was too late.

They were on him. Pinning him to the wall. Hands behind his back, secured with plastic bonds. Then hauled back out, into the light, surrounded by crates, dust, and two boys.

“Ah, my newly discovered nephews.” Despite his predicament, Montross found it wasn’t that hard to smile, and to mean it. “You actually look a bit like your father, but those green eyes of yours—all Nina.”

“Well, Xavier…” said a voice he had heard many times, but only in visions. In dark, smoke-filled rooms, and once on a massive glacier under the midnight sky, observing the Northern Lights over a sleeping radar facility.

“This time in the flesh.” Mason Calderon leaned forward, both hands on his cane. His skin was lustrous, shining in the lights as if he’d applied a liberal dose of makeup before a stage performance. His eyes were hooded but sharp, moving rapidly, taking in everything about his captive. Thin white hair was slicked back from his high forehead, except for a lone curved strand that fell across his face like a scimitar blade.

Montross stood up straight. “Well, you got me. Not too much effort for you, I hope. But, sorry to say, I’m all you’re getting. The other birds have flown the coop.”

One of the boys moved around so he could stand by his brother. They both glared up at Montross with an oddly similar glints in their eyes. One had slightly finer hair, more chestnut than his brother’s walnut-colored tangle of curls. “We can still get them, father.”

“No Jacob,” Calderon replied. “Not without trusting this man here to guide us.”

“We can do it,” the other boy insisted.

“We can see as well as he can.”

Montross gave a little chuckle, but he had to admire the kids’ guts. Definitely a potent mix of their parents’ qualities.

Calderon shook his head. “Sorry boys. Besides, I believe Montross here did what he set out to do. He bought Caleb and Alexander time to head back and get out the main entrance, hoping to fool us here.” He smirked. “Good thing Nina will be there, waiting.”

Montross shrugged. “Maybe they’re not coming out. Lots to do down there. While traipsing through history’s looking glass, I saw all kinds of ceremonies, people living for years in those ventilated chambers, tunnels that connected to faraway exits, ports along the Nile and farther.”

Calderon sighed. “And I doubt I even need to ask, but I assume you do not have the keys on you?”

Montross laughed. “Wishful thinking, but of course not.” He nodded over his shoulder. “They’re back in there.”

Calderon cocked his head, and Montross knew the man was weighing his words, deciding how much stock to put in Montross’ answer. But at this point, he didn’t care.

Montross took a deep breath. “So, Senator Calderon. You’ve got the Emerald Tablet. Or at least, my former associate does. And you believe she’s now in your employ because of these…” Montross raised his chin toward the defiant boys, who were glaring at him with twin looks of menace. “…these lovely angels. But you don’t have the translation. Nor the keys to get into that box.”

“We will, soon.” Calderon twirled the cane in his fingers, tracing the golden scales of the dragon, letting his index finger glide across the length of the spear thrust through its skull. “Although it’s not essential. From what you’ve just shown us, you’ve confirmed that proximity to the Emerald Tablet alone can get me what I need.”

“Yeah,” Montross said, “but my mind’s better tuned toward it, or am I wrong and you’re actually a psychic yourself?”

Calderon flinched. His eyes narrowed. The twins looked at each other.

Isaac grunted. “But we are, aren’t we ‘Dad’?”

“Righto,” Jacob chimed in. “We can do it, can’t we? Give us the tablet-thing. We’ll show you.”

“Boys, don’t get ahead of yourselves.” Calderon never took his eyes off of Montross. “You may be right, Xavier. Which is why Nina will soon have these boys in that chamber. We’ll get the box, then go after Caleb and Alexander. There’s no way for them to escape, we’ll find them and those keys. Once the translation is in my possession and the Tablet’s secrets are mine, I’m certain that I will be able to duplicate your abilities. And much more. Its arcane instructions, I’m told, will fully reactivate what time and evolution have blocked.” He fondled the dragon’s wings, then smiled. “But more importantly, I will have what I need to complete our facility’s true purpose.”

“Don’t count those chickens yet,” Montross said quietly. “There’s the little matter of the Morpheus Initiative in your way.”

“Oh, I don’t think they’ll be in my way much longer. Last I checked, Phoebe and Orlando had their car destroyed outside of Cairo. And your brother and nephew…” He shrugged. “Only a matter of time. There’s no escape. I may have Nina give them the opportunity to join us in this momentous occasion, but I doubt Caleb’s visions could actually extend so far as to see the greatness of what we’re doing.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Montross asked, his wrists struggling against the sharp bonds. “Besides wiping out everyone on the planet?”

Calderon smiled. “Not everyone.” He tapped his cane against the floor. “It’s heartening to know that despite your powers, you can’t see it all.”

I haven’t asked the right questions, Montross thought. That was something, at least. To know there might be more, another way to save themselves.

Calderon turned and walked confidently up the stairs. The soldiers jabbed Montross along, and as he followed, Jacob and Isaac moved so they ascended on either side of him. Both looked up at him with an unnerving curiosity, like executioners taking perverse pleasure in watching the condemned on his final climb to the scaffold.

Montross tried to ignore them. At the top, as he emerged into the museum’s westernmost wing, he took a moment to get his bearings. He thought about remote viewing the next passage of time, trying to glimpse what lay in store. But instead he got a flash of something else:

Mason Calderon standing on a dizzying metal platform, pale blue electric sparks in his hair, his cane raised high. Like a modern-day Merlin, calling down elemental spirits. The sky itself turns a magnificent swirl of orange and hardened emerald, folding and twisting like a multicolored tapestry, everything churning and exploding over snow-capped mountains.

Suddenly, Calderon’s face appeared in his sight, jarring the vision. “What are you seeing?”

Montross had gone pale. His lips trembled. “I think… it was the beginning.”

“Of what?”

“The end of the world.”

Calderon nodded, with a light dazzling in the darkest centers of his pupils. “I may not be psychic, but that’s one vision I’ve seen as well. Many, many times…”

6.

“This is crap,” Orlando said with a groan about thirty minutes later. He thumbed through the papers, the small-print, the few photographs of the region, the caves seen from a distance, some satellite maps, and a blurred-out picture of a little girl working in the fields with what may have been her parents.

“I agree.” Phoebe snatched up the last photograph, unclipped it from the folder’s edge. “This here, this is all we need. The other stuff will only cloud our thoughts. Focus on her, and let’s get this over with.”

“But there’s a lot of that ‘other stuff’ in here. If this is true, Jesus. She’s only ten! The daughter of an American missionary and a Bamian native woman. Watched her mother butchered before her eyes.”

“Stop,” Phoebe insisted. She closed the folder, tossed it on the floor. And with a scornful glance at their sleeping companion, she reached into her pack and pulled out a scrapbook. Two pencils. Offered one to Orlando and ripped out a sheet of paper.

“I’ll use… damn. No laptop.”

“Sorry to bring you back to the Middle Ages, but just grab a damn pencil.” She took a deep breath, leaned back and grasped her pencil lightly between her finger and her thumb. In a moment, as Orlando watched, her eyes rolled back, her mouth opened and her arm shook.

Orlando sighed. “All right then. Don’t wait for me.”

First: a full vision of Blue. Deep and tranquil like the depths of the Caribbean. Close, and yet impossible to grasp, like the sky.

Phoebe struggled. Pulled back. Sent her questions away from the depths, toward more solid ground. Toward the past…

Blue again. But this time, the pure infinite blue of the Afghanistan sky. Down to the great cliffs of the Kohebaba range. A rock wall pockmarked with caves, ridges and steep grooves beside an immense hollowed out niche. Its smaller twin far to the right.

Pull back…

The fields. Dust and sand. A few straggly juniper bushes. A goat here and there. In the blistering sun, a crowd of villagers stand in the center of a loose scattering of adobe shacks. A lone rusty well sits untended and unused at the edge of the village, and scrawny buzzards perch on its rotting boards.

Riding horses, three men carrying AK-47s are keeping the villagers together in a group. Forcing them to remain. To watch.

A mujahedeen fighter, all in black astride a white horse, unravels the sash from his face. A single eye glares at the villagers; the other—the left, is hidden behind a black patch with jewels embedded in the cloth. He raises his gun and shouts toward the cliff wall, addressing the seemingly empty caves. “Bring her out!”

The walls are silent. The largest niche, holding only the rubble now of the largest statue ever built, trembles slightly as if the earth had just rumbled.

The man known as The Eye shouts again. “Bring her out, infidels! Or the will of Allah will fall upon your friends.” He makes a motion with his left hand, a nonchalant waving in the direction of a bewildered young man standing by himself.

Another fighter on horseback rides up behind the youth and with a ululating cry, brings down a scimitar, silencing the boy’s sudden cry of fright. A spray of blood across the sand, and the other villagers erupt in shrieks and cries.

“NOW!” the Eye shouts again to the hills. In a moment, he points to another villager, a huddled old woman.

But then, motion in one of the caves. A man and a woman emerge, heads bowed. Dressed in tattered clothes.

The Eye holds up a hand restraining his men. Gallops ahead a short distance. “Show me the girl!”

The man’s shoulders slump as he steps away from the woman, letting a small girl walk into the sunlight. Blinking, shielding her eyes, she walks to the edge. Trying to appear brave, she raises her dirty face to the sky and spreads her arms as if they’re tiny wings.

And the villagers murmur to themselves. Some drop to their knees, others whimper.

“Enough!” hisses the Eye. He motions to his men. “Bring her down.” And as they gallop toward the base of the giant niche in the cave-riddled mountainside, he stares at the girl, not more than seven or eight. And he finds it difficult to look at her, despite the grime and dust covering her face and hair, her shredded clothes.

She’s glowing, reflecting the painful brilliance of the sun.

But in minutes, the three of them are down, herded like wayward sheep into the clearing.

The Eye dismounts and stands before them.

“You gave me a good chase, girl.” She refuses to look up at him. Her eyes—bright blue like the sky—stare only over at the headless young man at the edge of the clearing. Her father squeezes her hand tight and her mother clasps her other hand.

The Eye considers the three of them, then tells the girl, “You have the look and the stink of your American father about you.”

“Leave her alone,” the father says, daring a tone of defiance. “We don’t know why she can do what she does, but it’s not evil. It’s not—”

“I know that, infidel.” The Eye grins, and taps his jeweled eye patch. “She is a gift from Allah. A gift I was meant to find. And use.”

“No, please—” the mother starts, and tries to pull her daughter back.

At a motion from the Eye, one of his men yanks the woman away. He pushes her to her knees and pulls out the same bloody scimitar that had just seen action.

“No!” her husband yells, but he too is restrained, dragged away from the girl until she stands there, arms splayed, hands empty.

“You’re my gift,” the Eye says. “But you must understand that I have to ensure your compliance. I leave the choice to you, Hummingbird. Your mother or your father. Which would you have stay in this world?”

She turns to him, and now meets his cold one-eyed stare.

“No,” the father yells. “You can’t make her choose. Take me, kill me.” He struggles, almost frees himself but then the butt of a rifle slams into his back and pins him to the rocky sand.

“Choose,” the Eye repeats, stepping closer so his hulking shadow envelops the girl. His robes flow and whip in the rising winds and sand devils blow around them both.

“Please don’t…” the mother whimpers.

The girl looks over to her, a cry on her lips. “Mother—”

“Good enough for me,” the Eye says, and nods to his man. The woman’s head scarf is tugged back. Her neck exposed and then torn in a jagged, swift cut as the blade digs deep. Flesh and muscle parting, blood escaping. Her eyes go cold with surprise and then… acceptance.

The Hummingbird turns away, an unvoiced cry in her throat.

The father whimpers his breath into the rocks.

And the girl focuses not on the object of her hatred, but on a lone boy standing in the crowd. A grime-faced curly-haired boy her own age. A boy trembling with fear, but whose eyes hold such emotion. He struggles against the clutches of his parents, who hold him back from running to the girl…

-His one friend.

The Hummingbird shakes her head slightly at him as if to say, ‘not now’.

“It is done,” the Eye says matter-of-factly. He points to the girl’s father. “Break his legs, bind him and bring him with us.” Then he kneels down, takes the girl’s chin in his hands and uses a dirty thumb to wipe a tear from her eyes. “You’ll do as I say from now on. You keep us safe, and your father lives. These villagers live. Fail me, and they all join your mother.”

With a flourish, his black robes whipping around, he scoops up the Hummingbird, sets her on his horse and climbs in the saddle behind her. With a joyous shout, he races toward the cliffs.

“And now, my sweet. You will help us navigate the tunnels, and when we have found a place of safety deep within the mountains, my brethren will join us, and our work can truly begin.”

Into the cavern, darkness covering them. A seeping of blue forms around the edges of the vision. Closing over the sparkling reality of everything in the center. The white of the horse’s mane, the thickness of the leather harness, the saddle, and the shaking little hands that hug the horse’s neck, drawing comfort from petting the magnificent beast.

“You will sleep,” the Eye says, “only when I let you. When I am in slumber you must cloud our presence—in the past, the present and the future—as I know you can do. Just as you hid yourself and your parents from me for months. You will do all this, and your father will live.” He strokes her hair as the veil of blue encircles the entirety of the vision. And his last words follow Phoebe out of it…

“The Eye and the Hummingbird. You and I, child. We will be unstoppable.”

Complete BLUE.

Phoebe pulled back. Twitching, eyelids fluttering. Dimly aware of the plane descending, the pressure tightening in her eyes. Stay in it, she thought. Focus… retreat, find something…

Back in the clearing. The villagers disbanding, returning to the fields. Tending to the dead. Saying prayers and moving on.

Except for one.

The curly-haired boy.

He slips away from his parents as they go to mourn and prepare the funerals. Scrambles toward the wall of caves, the place that holds such mystery for him, even though for others the caves are used merely for shelter, for makeshift homes.

He follows the tracks of the one-eyed man. Enters the cavern and quickly makes his way after them. Descending deep into the mountainside. Coming to a branching trail, narrowing passageways.

He follows the light ahead, dimming. But he sticks to the shadows and creeps along.

Blinking, Phoebe stirred and opened her eyes. Yawned and popped her ears.

Gotcha, she thought. The boy is the key.

And then she noticed Orlando, eyelids moving rapidly. His hand, wielding the pencil, was a blur of motion, creating a series of lines and diagrams, twisting trails through a maze.

“You’re seeing it too,” she whispered, but Orlando kept drawing. His lips were dry, cracked, and his face slick with sweat. Phoebe couldn’t help but smile. His face, so scrunched up tight, muscles in his neck taught. His curly unkempt hair falling over his face. Before she knew it, she found herself touching his hair, brushing it with her fingers as he dreamt.

“Sweet and productive dreams, my prince.”

Orlando zeroed in on the boy at once. At first he was but a shadow, a darker silhouette, like a jellyfish bobbing in the blue depths. But the motion was there, pulling at the remote-vision.

Ask the right question, get the right answer. Orlando smiled as he dropped deeper into the trance, willing himself to see it—to follow someone outside of the shield, someone else who tracked the girl. Come on, come to focus. Ah, there you are.

The boy, returning to the caves at night. With a knapsack full of an assortment of dried meats and a few nuts, a dirty bottle of water, an oil lamp, and a blanket. He stopped before the great sandstone cliff and gazed up at the hollow niche. He had been born after the statues’ destruction, but he often came here in the starlight and used his imagination, dreaming up a magnificent protector, a wise and living god to care for the village. And especially for Nadjee, the one they called the Hummingbird.

He moved forward into the cave and retraced his steps from earlier. He had played in these caves all his life, searching out their deepest regions, following miles of twisting passageways, until the rebel Taliban took up residence in some of the outlying tunnels and set up traps and mines. His older cousin, Jalik, had lost a foot in one of the subterranean passages last winter and then his parents had forbade any further play or exploration within the sacred mountain.

But this was different.

He scampered inside

And Orlando followed. Unconsciously sketching the map, diagramming the layout of branching corridors, dead-end caverns and places where the boy noted spring-mines or stepped over wire-triggered explosives.

On and on he moved, cautiously, reverently as if he made his way through the winding intestines of some immense, slumbering deity.

He slowed at one point, glancing to his left into a deep shadowy recess. The darkness blurred and the boy retreated, his back against a wall.

A haze of bright blue pierced out from the shadows—an instant before obscuring the figure of a man in white robes. A kindly face, a bald head and a long beard. A hand reaching out…

What the hell? Orlando thought, grimacing in a migraine-like vise of pain.

But then it was gone—the blue fading, fading, replaced by the dim orange glow of the oil lamp off the dusty rock cavern walls. The boy, moving again. He glances back, toward that alcove and the murky shadows. Shakes his head, then continues.

And Orlando resumes his sketching.

After another twenty minutes of winding passages, twists and turns, the boy slows. Extinguishes his lamp, and eases toward the faint glow at the end of the descending passage.

He creeps to the edge, where he hears soft voices.

It’s the girl’s voice, and the boy smiles, almost chokes on his gratitude for her safety. But then he hears her words…

“Don’t hurt him, please don’t…”

“Sorry, little one.” The Eye’s voice. “He’s managed to track us, and can’t be allowed to live.”

“No, please no, please!”

The boy freezes, then scampers back.

But he’s too slow.

Armed men turn the corner and descend upon him.

The last thing he—and Orlando—hears is the swishing of blades. Quick. Painless.

Then darkness.

Temple shook him, and when Orlando opened his eyes—streaming with tears—he forced himself to focus on Phoebe to help ground his dislocation.

“You’re back,” she said. “Back. Just relax. Take a deep breath.”

“They killed him,” he whispered. “Just a boy, they…”

Phoebe gripped his wrist. “The boy following the Hummingbird?”

Orlando nodded gravely. “Just killed him right there.”

Temple took the pages off Orlando’s shaking hands. “This it? The way to her?”

“Yeah. I saw it all so clearly. But I’d say you have to move fast. I’m not sure how they knew the kid was coming, but if they can see him, maybe they’re sensing us too.”

“Maybe not,” Temple said, as he used his PDA to snap digital pictures of the pages. He tapped a few keys, and the image appeared on the main screen, the pages merged. “Let’s hope not at least. But with this diagram, hopefully we can get in and get her out, quick.”

“There was something else,” Orlando said, getting up. He touched the screen. “At this point, there was something strange. Everything got all blue again, but I swear I saw some kind of bald monk coming out of a hidden recess and touching the boy. Almost as if he knew…”

“What?” Phoebe stared hard at him.

“Knew maybe that the child was going to die. Not sure what he did, but…”

“Blue,” whispered Phoebe. “So this monk guy, he was a shield too. One of the terrorists?”

Temple shook his head. “Bald’s not their style.”

“Then who?”

“Not sure,” he said. “But anyway, we’re landing.”

“Okay,” Orlando said, breathing more relaxed now. “So me and Phoebe can just hang out in the plane while you guys go get her, right?”

Temple smiled devilishly. “And miss out on all the fun? I have a feeling we’re going to need your skills even more down in those tunnels.”

“Come on!” Orlando said.

Phoebe grasped Orlando’s hand, and when he saw her face he sighed. “Fine, I feel like I’m kind of vested in this now. And besides, I want to see that one-eyed son of a bitch pay.”

7.

After they left Xavier, Caleb led Alexander along the side passage he had viewed before saying goodbye to his half-brother.

“We’ll see him again,” Alexander said, his voice hushed in the gloom of the narrowing passageway. Caleb felt a cool breeze brushing across his face from ahead, and knew somewhere up there was an opening to a deeper chasm, some abyss that tapped into the water table far below, with caverns and small tunnels leading to the surface, most of them too small for humans to fit through, but which provided enough ventilation to breathe. At one point, he had seen a glimpse—in the far past, or more recently, he wasn’t sure—of a line of robed figures carrying torches, descending along a narrow ledge towards a sunless sea. A dock, and Egyptian-styled boats moored against the port, waiting to take passengers to some mythical destination.

“I hope you’re right,” Caleb said, shining his light ahead, and keeping his free hand on Alexander’s shoulder, keeping him close. He couldn’t lose Alexander again. Not after finding him, not after what the boy had been through. How he’d been forced to grow up in a hurry. He thought of Genghis Khan’s tomb, and what Alexander had needed to do.

“Son…”

“Dad, don’t worry. I’m fine.”

“You know what I want to talk about. Now that Xavier’s not here, I—”

Alexander looked up at him, and the shadows draped over his face, covering his eyes. “Which thing do you want to talk about? The fact that I have two brothers I didn’t know of, that I saw Mom die, or that I… killed a man?”

Caleb stopped moving, turned toward him and dropped to a knee. He lowered the light and in the soft reddish glow off the confining sandstone walls, he looked into Alexander’s eyes, even as his own were welling with tears.

“I’m so sorry. About all this. Your mother…”

Alexander suddenly lunged forward and threw his arms around Caleb’s neck, crushing him in a desperate hug. And Caleb realized he hadn’t had a moment to grieve. Neither of them. Not since a week ago when this all began, when the fire took Lydia, and Alexander and the Tablet both were snatched from his lighthouse.

They held each other for a long time, neither saying a word until the light started to dim; Alexander pulled away, wiping the dust and the tears from his face. “Come on Dad, we’ve got to help him.”

Caleb nodded. “You’re okay?”

Alexander tried to smile. “No. But hey, we’re Keepers, right? Comes with the job.”

“It’s why they pay us the big bucks.” Caleb stood, rubbing Alexander’s hair. “But soon, we’ll talk. About her. About Xavier and those twins. About everything.”

“How are you, Dad?”

“What?”

“Well, you just found out your old girlfriend’s still alive. And she’s pissed at you, and you’ve both got twins you didn’t know you had. Doesn’t that change things?”

“It does. And I can’t… Can’t even imagine what Nina’s going through now. To know they took her children, kept them from her.”

“From you too.”

Caleb squeezed the flashlight tighter. “But that’s it. I don’t know what they did to them. How they were raised. What they’re like.”

“I think I do,” Alexander said. “I’ve seen them a lot. Thought they were just part of my imagination. Imaginary friends to help when I was lonely. But these playmates, they were always mean to me, even in my dreams. They’re not nice.”

Caleb lowered his head. “I know. But they’re young. They haven’t been with their real parents yet.”

Alexander started walking down the shadowy corridor. “Well,” he said, “you better hope you get to make an impression before they meet their mom. Then, it’s all over.”

“Where are we?”

Alexander shined his light around like a light saber, trying to ward off the darkness. He couldn’t tell how large this chamber was, but it had to be huge. Couldn’t see the walls anymore, and the ceiling—if there was one, was way up high, beyond the reach of his beam that just faded into the hungry darkness. There was something in the center of the room, another massive block or pillar of some kind. Caleb was shining a light at it, inside a square-shaped opening in which there was something that looked like a chair. Carvings and symbols far stranger than mere hieroglyphics adorned the sides.

Caleb moved forward into the structure. He turned and gently sat in the stone chair.

“Dad, wait.”

“It’s ok. It’s not trapped.” Caleb looked around, and Alexander had the impression that his dad was sitting in a cockpit of sorts. Except there was nothing else in there except a slot, a groove in the arm of the chair, by his right hand.

“Its… different,” Caleb said. “I believe we’re directly under the main pyramid. And this…” He looked up, then shined his light up there, and Alexander understood. The interior of the pillar, or shaft, was hollow.

“What do you see?”

“Nothing. It just goes up straight.” He turned off his flashlight, closed his eyes. “Hold on, I’m getting something, seeing more of it…”

Alexander closed his eyes, reached out into the darkness as if to pluck his father’s vision like a piece of fruit. Absently, he switched off his own flashlight. And now in complete darkness, a new light sparked behind his eyes.

A man sits where Caleb had been. This one is dressed in full Egyptian splendor. Colorful breastplate, long golden skirt. Bracelets, necklaces. A crown with two asps in its center. Except he’s glowing, with arching tendrils of electricity or plasma pinwheeling over his body and arcing about the interior of the shaft.

Clutched in both hands is a familiar item:

The Emerald Tablet.

Then there’s a sound, a grunting, then a low moan as the Pharaoh sets the edge of the Tablet against the slot in the chair, and eases it down. There’s a massive sound, a piercing pitch that compliments a deep rumbling vibration.

The chamber fills with light—hot, intense white light, energy great enough to tear flesh and bone apart and pulverize every cell, and yet… The king is unscathed. Still sitting calmly, head back, mouth open. It’s as if he’s directing the energy. Focusing it, sending it up. Up the shaft, and out.

A flash and Alexander’s mind is outside-

-the great Pyramid. Alone on a lush, grassy plain. Dawn, and the sun is just emerging over a thick forest in the east, past the width of the Nile. There is a deep, lush jungle where the other two pyramids should be, and the causeway leading up to the Sphinx has been neatly landscaped, the trees and bushes pared back from the great marble stones. And the Sphinx itself—different. Its head is larger, leonine, and proportional to the immense body; it faces the rising sun, and its eyes hungrily follow the dawn.

But then the golden capstone above the smooth, reflective walls of the Great Pyramid begins to glow. Brighter and brighter. Turning from gold to silver, blindingly bright.

And then a beam stabs out, straight up and out, thrusting into the azure-violet sky…

…arcing toward a single pinpoint of reddish-white light. A faint star.

A planet.

“Mars!” Alexander whispered as he came back to the present. Caleb’s light was back on. His father rubbed his eyes, and cautiously traced the slot with his index finger. “Did you see it?”

“I… saw something. A man where you’re sitting. Putting the tablet in there, and then directing some kind of light beam out the top of the pyramid, toward what I think was Mars.”

Caleb cocked his head, looked sharply at Alexander. “You really…?”

“Didn’t you see it too? You’ve got to believe me. It was a long time ago, had to be. Only this pyramid and the Sphinx were there, but Egypt wasn’t a desert. There was a jungle, and—”

“I believe you.” Caleb leaned forward, rubbing his head. “I don’t want to believe you, but I do. There have been a lot of crackpot theories about this site, this pyramid. I never gave much thought to some of the more outlandish ones, like that the Great Pyramid was an ancient power source, or a weapon used by extraterrestrial ‘gods’ in their own petty wars. But now…”

“But now it doesn’t seem so… crackpotty.”

Caleb smiled. “Nice word, Alexander. No it doesn’t, but I didn’t see all that. I saw something else, I was focused on the man.”

“The Pharaoh guy? What about him?”

“It seemed,” Caleb said, “he wasn’t really there.”

Alexander blinked, trying to recall what he’d seen. The man sitting there, holding the tablet. All that heat and power passing into him, through him. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Caleb said. “I think that was just his projection, whatever it is Montross learned how to do.”

“And Grandpa.”

Caleb nodded. “But somehow, while in that out of body phase, he could still touch the Emerald Tablet. Move it, insert it.”

“Like I was able to move the lever under the Sphinx!” Alexander’s eyes shined with the memory.

Caleb nodded as he shined the light into the groove, trying to see anything down there. “And that’s the key, I think. To what the Emerald Tablet can do. It interfaces with consciousness, or our souls, or something. One and the same and phased together with the spirit, the Tablet’s full power can be consciously controlled, wielded.”

Alexander whistled. “So what did I see them attacking?”

“I can’t say, yet. But I don’t think it helps us now. This… place. This facility is dormant. I can feel it. Even if we brought the Tablet down here, I think they—whoever they were—Thoth’s enemies maybe, dismantled the core. Maybe it was in some ancient war, something that turned this lush land into a desert. Whatever it was, this facility, this pyramid, is nothing now but a tomb. Our tomb, unless we can get out.”

“Perhaps,” said a new voice. “I can be of assistance.”

Alexander spun around, fumbling with his light. Shining it this way and that, finally zeroing in on the presence: back at the passage entrance that led into this chamber. A lone figure stood there.

It took him a moment to see that it was a woman. Someone in a long gray cloak. Actually, he realized, a sari. Draped over her shoulder and wrapped around her body. She had short hair, white, and her face was beautiful despite its age.

“Easy,” Caleb whispered. “I think I know her, but how-?”

“-Did I find you?” The woman approached, her own flashlight aimed down, a large maglite beam glinting off the solid floor and making it seem like she walked on a star. “I got a call from your very concerned sister.”

“Phoebe!”

“She was fine when I talked to her. In a helicopter, heading towards some mission for your American friends.”

“What friends?” Alexander was rubbing his head, shining his light from the newcomer to his father.

“Not important now,” said the woman as she took a moment to shine her light on the central apparatus, following the shaft upwards to where her more powerful light caught it merging with the precipitous ceiling. “I can’t believe it. This really exists.”

“Who are you?” Alexander asked, but then his eyes adjusted, and he saw her more clearly, not as a ghostly goddess of the abyss, but as flesh and blood. He had seen her before, on rare occasions when all the Keepers would gather. When Lydia and Uncle Robert would send him off to play (or learn) in the upper levels of the Alexandrian Library while they met and decided the fate of the recovered scrolls. “You’re—”

“Rashi Singh.” Caleb stood and bowed to her. “Keeper, this was too dangerous, you coming down here. And how did you even bypass the guards up there?”

There was a gleam in her dark eyes as she spoke. “Herodotus. The lost chapters. Deliberately cut from his Histories, preserved and sent away, according to his notes, because the priests at Thebes demanded that what he had seen below the Pyramids be kept secret.”

“I must not have seen that scroll,” Caleb said excitedly.

“You were too busy,” Rashi replied, “apparently with your own secrets.”

Caleb let that slide. “So Herodotus was down here. He had spoken of legends about a labyrinth.”

“Hints, myths. The priests allowed such talk.”

“So the lost chapter had a map?”

Rashi pulled out an iPhone and turned it so Caleb and Alexander could see the screen, where there was a scanned image, a hand-drawn pyramid, and a series of tunnels and chambers sketched beneath it. “It did, one that showed several other exits, including the one at the Cairo Museum.”

“Uncle Montross!” Alexander perked up.

“I believe he’s been captured,” Rashi said quietly. “But you knew that already. I assumed he was your decoy, and you hoped to find one of the other exits.”

“That was the plan,” Caleb said. “But first, this…” He motioned to the central chamber. “Did Herodotus mention what this was?”

Rashi shook her head and raised the phone, scrolling over on the screen. “It’s drawn here, and Herodotus relates in his scrolls that he has heard only half-whispered legends, rumors that it might have been a place of defense, a way for the king to send his divine wrath against any adversary, anywhere on the earth. Or in the sky.”

“A weapon,” Alexander whispered.

The Keeper stared at the chamber, moving closer and stooping so she could look inside. “Herodotus claims even the priests had lost all wisdom about its true function, and any clues had now been transformed into unrelated ritual and half-remembered purpose.”

Caleb nodded. “Then we’re done here. I assume you got in through the more distant entrance point. From what I had RV’d, it was northwest of the city, not far from the Nile.”

“Yes. But come along quickly. Before they brave the traps to search for you. And before they once again try to RV you—and perhaps see us.”

Alexander shifted. “Maybe they’ve already done it and they’re waiting by the exit like they were at the museum.”

“Maybe,” Caleb said. “But hopefully they didn’t ask the right questions and only got that hit for Xavier. But you’re right, they’ll be trying again soon. I just hope Nina’s preoccupied and her kids… I mean our kids… aren’t that focused.”

“We’ll have to take that risk,” Rashi said. “Now come on, I have a boat and a crew standing by to take you.”

“To where?” Alexander asked, giving one last look to the chamber, imagining himself in there, sitting at the controls, with godlike power dancing from his finger tips.

The Keeper smiled. “I have a feeling you’re going to need our help once more. We’re going to Alexandria.”

8.

They landed at the Bamian airstrip, one and a half miles from the town, and an armored convoy waited for them. A contingent of NATO forces, Marines and CIA operatives, almost forty men, armed to the teeth, gathered in their vehicles and took off as soon as Temple herded Orlando and Phoebe into the third jeep and gave the order.

Looking pale as he slipped into a flak jacket two sizes too large for him, Orlando tried to sound jovial. “Just like Saigon, eh Phoebe?”

“Knock it off with the Die Hard quotes,” she snapped as Temple helped her into her vest. “You weren’t even in diapers, much less junior high.”

“Yeah, knock it off. We’re losing the element of surprise.” Temple pointed through the front windshield. The huge sandstone cliffs loomed ahead, pale blue in the pre-dawn shadows. Venus kissed the peak’s crown, then Phoebe watched the morning star disappear in the sand and dust from the lead jeep’s spitting tires. And then the first glint of the sun’s rays touched the upper edges of the mountains.

Phoebe craned her neck to see better. The western niche in the cliff was achingly empty. And far to its right, the other one, smaller but just as lonely. Already plans were being made by several archaeological preservation societies to rebuild the statues, but the region still wasn’t safe. Not yet.

She looked ahead grimly and found her heart racing as they came to a sliding stop in a cloud of dust. To her left and right, the other members of the convoy were leaping out of their vehicles, rushing toward a cave entrance.

“Let’s go,” Temple said, slipping on a helmet and fixing Phoebe’s, switching on the maglite at its center.

Orlando held up his bare hands. “Where’s my gun?”

“You’re just an observer,” Temple said, kicking open the door and leading them out. “If we get to the point where you need to shoot something, we’re already dead.”

Orlando coughed as he jumped out with Phoebe, and the dust and the already stinging heat knocked him back. He staggered, but then Phoebe’s hand caught his, and he was running along with her and six NATO troops—or Marines—he couldn’t tell. Weapons drawn, scanning the cliff side, aiming at the darkened caves. Back at the lonely village tenements a few huddled forms appeared, watching with mild interest.

Somewhere a rooster crowed, and up above, a pair of eagles circled hungrily.

Phoebe paused, steadied herself and stared up at the giant cliff wall, the imposing deeply carved-out niche. And she closed her eyes. “Wait, I just want to see if I can—”

“Not now,” Temple barked. “Satisfy your curiosity later.”

“But, I can see who really built them!”

“Later.” He dragged her forward. “The Hummingbird’s running out of time.”

Orlando followed Phoebe’s wistful glance to the empty niche and the rubble of the once-proud statue. Then he chased after them. “I sure hope they haven’t RV’d us coming.”

As they entered the first cave and took up positions, lining the initial cavern and the first part of the descending passage, Temple said: “Not likely, but we’re on our guard. Hopefully the fact that you only recently RV’d the boy and got us our approach plan, that changed the future sufficiently.”

“I thought this Eye dude was just a shield,” Orlando said.

Temple shook his head. “He’s what we’d call a well-rounded bastard. RV skills just like yours. He was searching for the Hummingbird, and we believe she knew it. She and her family were originally from Kabul, but they fled. Came here while she shielded their movements. Found a cave and tried to stay awake and hidden as long as she could. Probably had her parents try to keep her alert and focused. Coffee beans, whatever, but in the end she couldn’t last. Dozed off and the Eye zeroed in on her.”

He pulled out an iPhone and Phoebe recognized Orlando’s map on it. A few others in the team had the same thing. Temple raised a fist, pointing ahead, and the lead team of four moved off silently, approaching the first of many mined-passageways Orlando had seen.

“Here we go,” Temple whispered, and pushed them on ahead after the others had all descended into the depths of the ancient mountainside.

“We’ll pause at two-minute intervals,” he said. “And give you two a chance to look ahead and see if anything’s changed.”

“On it already,” Phoebe responded, touching her forehead under the helmet. “Multi-tasking.”

“That’s my girl.”

Orlando glared at him.

“Easy,” Phoebe whispered, reaching back to grasp his fingers.

He smiled. “Sorry. Without your big brother around, I have to protect you.”

“Oh? And what about you? Last I recall, you were the one getting your ass kicked by eels and needed me to save you.”

“Fight about who loves who more later,” Temple hissed as they rounded a corner. He raised the phone, spoke something into his microphone, and two more soldiers rounded the right-most corner and doubled back, standing guard.

“Through obstacle three,” came a voice over Temple’s headset. He ordered the team ahead, pushing them on. And then they were moving faster through a section relatively free of mines and traps. Orlando let go of Phoebe’s hand to adjust the light on his visor, and he ducked in several places as the cavern ceiling dipped. Seeing it in this viewpoint, from a higher angle than when he remote-viewed the village boy, left him disoriented.

A few more twisting turns, a short, steep descent, then a sharp turn, and suddenly they all stopped as the lead members went to work disarming another trap.

Temple turned around. “Okay, you two are up. Try RVing–” His eyes went wide. “Where’s Phoebe?”

Orlando spun, reaching out into the shadows. His light probed the walls, the corners. He darted back and turned the corner.

But she was gone.

As part of her multi-tasking, Phoebe was viewing the path ahead, and specifically trying to hone in on the Hummingbird. Hoping maybe the girl was still asleep, without her shield, but it wasn’t working.

Nothing but a wall of blue greeted her when she thought about the child. A repelling force like a shockwave, more powerful than she’d ever felt before, like she’d been slapped away from snooping where she didn’t belong. She groaned, slipped behind the last tier of squad members who kept moving, following their PDAs.

Hugging a wall and catching her breath, Phoebe finally shook her head and tried to follow the dark shadows and the flickering beams of light up ahead. But it seemed they’d sped up, the corridor lengthened, and no matter how fast she tried to move, she couldn’t close the distance. They rounded a corner and she was alone.

Panicked now, she moved faster, scuttling after them, holding out her hands, brushing the rough walls with her fingertips. Reaching a dead end, she turned her head left and then right, shining the feeble beam in each direction, stabbing into the endless gloom of both passageways.

She held her breath.

Listened.

And heard only scrapes and scuffles sounding from each hallway.

She turned back around, but the way she thought she had come from was now blocked by a solid wall of sandstone. She desperately wished Temple had fitted them with radios like the other team members, but now there was nothing to do but stay here and wait. She couldn’t call out and risk alerting the enemy.

Maybe she could RV the way. And for a second, she thought first about her brother, wondering how Caleb and Alexander were faring.

A glimpse—a flash of light in the gloom, and she saw them: following a woman in a gray flowing sari across a stretch of desert, toward a waiting boat on the Nile.

Smiling, she turned her attention to the corridor on her left, and as she was about to project her thoughts in that direction, her light caught the flash of something white darting out of view. Her breath caught in her throat and she staggered forward, mouth open. Still not daring to call out, she rushed ahead then skidded to a stop, suddenly terrified of setting off fish wire traps or buried mines.

Was this a trick?

I saw a face, she thought. Someone all in white, there for a moment, gone the next. Still fearing a trick, she moved cautiously. A few more steps, then she stopped. Flicked off her headlamp. Don’t want to give anyone a target.

Then she tried to peer ahead in her mind.

And once again she winced, reeling immediately from a wall of blue.

A sound up ahead like a throaty chuckling.

“Who’s there?” she called out.

Laughter again. Cruel and mocking.

This time, behind her.

She backed up. Flattened against the wall and crouched. Again she reached out with her mind, trying to see, but there was nothing in either direction, nothing but that awful blue, closing in around her on all sides like a sphere. Shrinking.

And then the laughter again. And footfalls approaching.

“Come out, come out…”

Oh god, it’s the Eye.

“I’ve got you now, another bird for my cage.”

A light sprang on, just feet away, the beam extending—

“I’ve got—”

-then freezing. Dust motes suspended.

“…you…” The word slowed, stretched and faded with a series of echoes as the light dimmed.

And Phoebe realized she was falling backwards, through the wall that now wasn’t a wall. A veil of blackness sucked her in, then resealed where she had been crouching just as time seemed to hiccup, then snap back into place.

“…now!” She heard the Eye speaking, but it sounded like it came from a great distance.

The darkness around her trembled.

Fists pounded on the other side of the wall and a defiant grunting reached her ears.

Dazed, she turned around and saw that she stood on a great precipice overlooking an impossible sight.

A glimpse only, lasting maybe four or five seconds. A time in which she took in an incredible vista, a chasm stretching miles across and just as deep, jagged cliffs encircling and enshrining a valley in the shadowy depths. The gloom was punctuated only by an array of lights—some sort of oddly purple phosphorescence—clinging to unnatural towers of rock or crystal, shimmering domes and palatial hillside gardens. The sound of underground streams reached her ears, the plunking of rocks into a cool lake. A fresh breeze rushed across her hair, cooling her skin, blowing back her dusty hair.

But then the image faded, the darkness closed in around her, and all that remained was a man in a white robe, with a gray beard down to his waist.

He smiled at her and said, “We have watched you for a long time, Phoebe Crowe. Welcome to a place no outsider has ever seen, except in the embrace of dreams that never linger for long upon waking. Welcome…” He spread his arms wide and the darkness behind him unclouded for just a moment, revealing the subterranean city in all its glowing splendor.

“…to Shamballa.”

Orlando wanted to race back through the tunnels looking for her, calling her name, but Temple hauled him back. He waved to two of his men and sent them back, hissing at them that they should have watched her.

“Now kid, we have to move on. We’re losing the element of surprise here.”

“But—”

Temple pulled on his arm and then they were rounding another bend, and then—according to the map, there should be one more looping passage, a quick descent and then the approach to the chamber where the Hummingbird and her father were being kept. “Come on,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

But then a flash of red, a rush of heat, and six men leading their team up ahead disappeared in a blast of fire, rocks and collapsing sandstone. Screams and shouts. The others rushed ahead to help their buried comrades. Temple was yelling, pulling them back, barking that it was a trap, they’d been seen-

And then Orlando’s ears stopped ringing long enough to hear the mocking laughter at his back, accompanying the knife pressed against his throat.

The Eye dragged Orlando back, using his body as a shield as the Americans turned their weapons toward him, but the commander held up a hand to hold their fire.

“Let the mountain claim you!” the Eye yelled as he backed around a corner with his captive. He nodded to one his men, who paused long enough to ensure the forces were following—then pressed a button on a remote.

Orlando whimpered as another explosion rocked the tunnel, this time spitting out dust and rocky debris right past them.

The Eye nodded, satisfied, then continued hauling Orlando off, towards a passage they had skipped on the way down. “Your friends are dead. Or at the least, buried and running out of air. You’re alone now.”

Orlando grunted, choking for breath around the crushing grip of the big arm around his throat. But he managed to get a word out. “Phoebe?”

“Ah, the other bird has flown.” The Eye’s voice faltered. “Somewhere out of my reach, but only for the moment. Somewhere… never mind.” His eye blinked and lines of concern formed on his brow, then smoothed away. “But I have you now, and soon your song will join the Hummingbird’s.”

“I’m not helping you do anything.” Orlando forced his mouth to work. “You’ve got no leverage. Can’t threaten my elderly relatives to make me comply, so why don’t you just suck it, dickhead?”

In the flickering dark, the jeweled eye patch glinted and the lone eye narrowed into a feline slit that regarded him like a helpless, wounded mole. “I know you, Orlando Natch. I’ve spied you ever since your plane approached. Saw who you are, what you are.” His smile broadened and sickly yellow and brown teeth emerged from cracked lips. Orlando winced against the smell.

“Shouldn’t go snooping, you know.”

“Shut up and move, Mr. Natch. You’ll help, or when I find your precious girlfriend, and I will find her, I’ll make you wish you had.”

Orlando winced as something prodded his ribs, and then he stumbled forward, lurching to remain in balance. For a fleeting second he thought he could make a break for it, but then he was shoved ahead, flanked by four other foul-smelling soldiers, and marched toward the Hummingbird.

Her real name was Aria. And her father—Brian Greenmeyer, formerly of St. Louis, except for the past fifteen years ostensibly trying to spread the Word of God to the impoverished Afghan villagers—was in fact a deep-cover CIA agent. So deep he even fell in love, married and fathered a girl of exceptional talents. And found himself devoted to a people whose peaceful and practical existence in the face of such harsh conditions had led him to be the perfect agent. He still gave out the occasional report on Taliban and Al Qaeda activities, and ran courier information and gathered what intelligence he could from unsavory types that nonetheless trusted him, but his foremost mission in the past seven years had been to protect his daughter. To protect Aria.

Protect her from both the radical Muslims who would either kill her or use her for their own protection, and from the U.S. government. Brian knew about the history of the military’s involvement with psychics, and how they had often been treated as strategic assets, not as people.

He wouldn’t let that happen to her. But his options had run out. He had contacted Commander Temple, his old friend, weeks ago, after he had learned that the Eye was closing in on them in Kabul. Told Temple they were going into hiding—but for how long?

And now, his legs were broken and useless. Barely given enough food and water to stay conscious. He could scarcely think, and every minute he was awake, he could only writhe in agony in his chains, unable even to reach the cage where they’d imprisoned Aria.

The Hummingbird.

He smiled. The name fit. Some of her friends back in Kabul called her that because she liked to dart around, flapping her arms, and seemed to move faster than any kid should. Brian met her big blue eyes and he couldn’t help but smile, even as his heart cracked inside.

“I’m sorry, honey. I know I said I’d protect you.”

“Don’t worry, father. You did it. Brought the good guys here. They’re coming for me.”

Good guys? He shrugged. “Not so sure about that, baby, but I do think they’re better than who’s got us now.”

“They are. And they’ve brought others with them. Two people, like me. They’ll help me, you’ll see. But first, it’s time.” She brought her hands up, two fingers outstretched on each, and pressed them to her temples under the tangled strands of auburn.

“Time?”

“To leave the Eye without his protection. Time to drop the shield.”

“But—”

“It’s so she can find me. Get ready, father.”

He pulled himself up to his elbows, wincing in agony, gasping. Turned his body so he could drag himself to the wall of this tiny cul-de-sac. He glanced around the room, his mind clearing suddenly with a rush of adrenalin. He saw the oil lamp. A bunch of old rags. The water jug and bowl for their toilets. And his boots, there in the corner. Long laces still on them.

Perhaps he could rig a trap, trip the guards on their return, break the lamp and set one on fire, but then-

He was still useless to move, would never make it out, much less crawl to Aria’s cage to free her. But if someone else was coming, someone who could help…

“Sit tight, honey. Just try to see. Tell me who’s coming first. Everything you can see, every detail.”

The Hummingbird nodded rapidly as her fingers grasped the bars of her cage. And she closed her eyes and smiled.

“The Eye… he’s almost here…”

“Open your eyes,” the old man whispered. Which Phoebe thought was odd, since her eyes were already open. But she tried to obey him anyway. It seemed the right thing to do, the friendly thing for one who had just saved her life.

Her eyes opened, and she had the sudden impression that everything before this instant had been a dream, one that would quickly fade.

One second Phoebe had the impression of standing in thin air, over the precipice looking down at the fabled city below her dangling feet and thinking: this can’t be real; and the next, she was floating in space over a cratered lunar surface. The cold vastness of the void at her back, winking stars in all directions. Below…

Striated lines, deep gouges in the pock-marked gray-blue surface. A deep impact crater so deep it seemed it must reach the center and punch through.

Phobos, said the old man’s voice in her head.

And the moon turned, revolved as if in a sped-up move-frame, and a bright red glow filled her eyes, and she turned and caught her breath, dazzled at the immense, seething crimson planet looming into view. And below, directly below her feet now, lined up with the Phobos crater…

A familiar section of the planet, just north of the equator. Her mind’s eye expanded and the view enlarged and there, looking back at her—

The Face.

And more… emerging from the red sands… Enormous hands, a chest thrust outward. Two legs, the toes of massive feet. An entire statue shaking free of its dusty prison. The head was tilted back so the face was thrust toward the heavens, the eyes looking up. One arm was at its side, the other reaching, reaching… up… to her…

And then the stars rushed by, filled her view and she hurtled through space, across the millions of miles to another glowing rock, familiar sphere. The Moon’s lunar surface suspended over the green, blue and white hues of Earth.

See, came a command from somewhere close. Her consciousness rushed over the bright cratered surface, over to the wall of darkness, to the opposite side, the shrouded hemispheres, toward a crater with a flashing light, a strobe of some kind.

A beacon.

See…

And then a flash of blue, and everything faded.

A hand on her forehead, gently pushing her back. Back. Her feet moving on her own.

Her eyes blinking furiously, each involuntary motion elicited a vision and formed a montage. The tomb in Belize. The fall, the wheelchair… The laboratory and the unraveled Herculaneum scrolls… the vault door under the Pharos opening at her command… running on the hill with Alexander, her legs healed… the descent into the Khan’s mausoleum… reaching for Orlando, kissing his lips for the first time…

And then…

A frozen wilderness guarded by enormous ice-capped mountains, with a dazzling aurora overhead.

“You have a great destiny ahead of you, Phoebe Crowe. Much work to do, much sacrifice, but equal joy.” The pressure released from her forehead.

“But—”

“Go now.”

Phoebe blinked. “Wait!” She stood in an alcove with three exits—and what looked so out of place she didn’t realize what it was at first—a door. A plain white door with a brass handle. The city was gone, the chasm, the hollowed-out valley. If it ever existed. “Was it real? Shamballa? What you showed me?”

The man, backing away toward the shadows in the central exiting tunnel, merely smiled. “I showed you nothing. I only freed your mind for a minute, long enough for your questions to seek some answers. You saw what you needed to see.”

“But who are you? Can’t you help us?”

He sadly shook his head. “On the contrary, it is you who must help us. You who are still blissfully ignorant, only you can end our suffering.”

“What suffering?”

“Existence without amnesia.”

“Huh?”

“Go now, that door will save your friends. It is all I can do. Go, and remember this one thing. The Custodians are not what they seem.”

Phoebe approached the door. Pulled the old ornate brass handle, glancing behind as she did so. The old man was gone, and she stood in an enclosed cavern, her light dancing across the low-hanging ceiling formations, the rugged walls and rocky floor. One exit at the back.

Suddenly the door flew open, releasing a flood of rocks and debris. And then she heard scrambling. Muffled voices. She shined her flashlight through the door and saw arms and legs, a head. A man pushing through the cave-in.

Temple coughed up a mouthful of sandstone. Staring at the surrounding cavern, weakly shining his flashlight in the direction of the exit. “Just in time. How did you find us?”

“Not now,” Phoebe said. “Get your men out, and come find me.”

Temple started frantically digging. “Did you see-?”

Phoebe’s eyes blinked and her focus shifted. “I can see her. The Hummingbird. She’s released her shield. I have to go. Now.” And then she was off, leaving the commander to double his efforts and free his men, hoping she knew what she was doing.

Orlando moved on ahead, feeling like a human shield. Wrists tied behind his back, he found it harder to walk the rough stones and navigate the dark caverns than he had imagined, especially without using his hands for balance. And the lights from his back were jolting, shifting back and forth, bouncing off the walls, then disappearing, making him feel like he was suffering a seizure, with light and dark spots alternating in his brain. The air was stifling, the oxygen thinning.

Video games never captured this part of dungeon trekking, he thought, coughing and choking on dust that seemed to just resettle in his lungs and esophagus. Something jabbed him in the lower back and he stumbled ahead.

He glanced back into the jumble of lights, the two turban-headed fighters directly behind him, and at the rear—the taller one with the patch. Gathering his balance and his courage, Orlando tried to smile. “So, are we there yet?”

“Shut up,” the Eye snapped. “It’s just around the corner. Farrakh, you go first.”

A hand pulled Orlando back, slowed him down, and then the other man squeezed past. He turned the corner, descended a small, slick trail, and then Orlando could see a light ahead. A dim glow from an opening, a wider aperture. But then the man’s back was in the way.

Orlando closed his eyes for a second and willed a glimpse of the next chamber. And it came at once:

A cage, like for a dog. Metal bars, a bowl in the corner. But it was empty. The door open. Farrakh rushes in, shouting and slips on something slick coating the floor…

He opened his eyes and was about to call out, but instead, he dug in his feet and stopped moving forward. Someone crunched into him and drove him into the wall with a curse, but then the fighter kept running by. There was a shout, a slick, wet sound and a grunt.

Twisting, Orlando turned and inched backward—right into the glowering form of The Eye—who caught his throat in his huge hand. “You saw something?”

But just then a burst of light from the cave, a rush of heat—and a pair of bloodcurdling screams. The Eye swore a local curse, shoved Orlando back, then ran headlong toward the fire. Two flaming, lurching men in robes flailed out into the hallway, and the Eye burst through them, knocking each aside like bowling pins as he leapt over the pool of ignited oil.

Brian Greenmeyer had improvised the best he could, the best anyone could have, having only been able to crawl. But as he was setting up a tripwire made of shoelaces and a coating of oil on the ground below, the young woman appeared.

She was alone, which was surprising. Greenmeyer kept looking past her down the cavern hallway, expecting and hoping to see his old friend, Temple. But the woman stepped by, went right to the cage and knelt in front of Aria.

Their hands touched. “I’m Phoebe,” she said, reaching through the bars and stroking Aria’s hair, gingerly touching her face.

“I’ve seen you,” Aria whispered, eyes wide. “But hurry, he’s coming. The key…”

“I know,” Phoebe said, scrambling to her feet and reaching up to the top of the cage, way out of Greenmeyer’s reach. She found it, dropped back down and unlocked the padlock.

Aria burst out, scrambled to her father and threw her arms around him. “You can come with us.”

But he shook his head. “No time.” He looked back at the corridor. “I hear them, hurry.”

“No,” Phoebe said, glancing around the cul-de-sac, her eyes settling on a blanket and a collection of bags and boxes near the shadowy reaches in the back. “I have a better idea.”

Once everything and everyone was in its place, Greenmeyer scuttled back, holding the sole lamp, cranking its flame inside the glass as high as it would go. It still had a half-full canister of oil, more than enough to ignite and scatter to burn the coating he spilled on the floor.

He heard the footfalls. Then the rushing feet. One of the guards he remembered as Farrakh tripped over the lace and skidded face-first on the oil. He got to his feet, slick and bloody, yelling that the cage door was open, then he turned and saw Greenmeyer just as the lamp was flung to the floor.

Greenmeyer rolled away as the glass shattered, the flames erupted and Farrakh screamed. The whole front of his body ignited, then his dry robes, and then his turban—and he was a walking, flailing inferno that turned just as his partner came barreling in too fast and collided with him. They both rolled through the flames, then got up howling, throwing themselves against the walls, seeking anywhere to roll and put out the flames.

Greenmeyer choked on the smell of burnt flesh. And he hoped his daughter was staying low, covered under the blankets. Not looking…

Then another shape burst past the burning bodies and jumped over the flames. The lone eye sought him out, and a snarling face turned to a mask of rage. The AK-47 was thrust into his face. A boot against his neck. “Where is she?”

Greenmeyer gagged. Smoke stung at his eyes. “Gone. Rescued…”

The boot rose—then fell, smashing against the side of his face. The room dimmed and he thought he heard a choking sound. Stay awake… buy her time… “Can’t… you see…?”

Another snarl. “Her damn shield’s on you fool. I will find her. And then I’ll haul her back by her hair and make her watch as I skin you alive, then burn your limbs off one by one. The agony you caused my men is nothing compared to what you’ll face.”

“Quit talking then.” Greenmeyer forced a smile. “Get to it, or else my little girl will outrun you.”

The Eye kicked him in the ribs, and then again in the side of his head, before he ran back out. The room dimmed and as unconsciousness swirled around him, Greenmeyer relaxed and gave in, confident that The Eye had taken the bait.

Orlando had a small head start, but he knew it wouldn’t last. The light from the burning corpses was fading, and the flashlight strapped to his head had cracked. Its weak bulb struggled to light a few feet ahead, like the glow from a cell phone screen. So he paused, closed his eyes and tried to RV the way.

Crashing footsteps behind him. A curse, and a shout.

Damn it! He had seen a tiny glimpse—a greenish-hued, fast-motion exodus of his mind’s eye through the caverns ahead: straight, then right, then left and-

He was off, running. Trusting his vision.

A light at his back. The Eye rushing after him like a crazed rhinoceros. Orlando raced ahead, started to turn right but jarred into the edge of the cave wall. Grunted, spun, then found the opening and sped up through it. Skidded to a halt. His wrists burned, his shoulders were in agony and he just wished he had time to try that maneuver he saw in the movies where handcuffed heroes were somehow able to step back through their bound arms and at least bring their wrists up front so they could use their hands.

But he kept running in the dark. Bouncing off the walls, jarring his head on a low-hanging section at one point. Stars pinwheeled in his vision, but he kept moving. Skidded to a stop, backed up and took the turn he missed.

Rushing right at him—a bobbing flashlight in the hands of his pursuer. The lone eye locked on him, full of rage. Orlando sped up, attacking the darkness with abandon. Still trusting his vision. Trusting that-

Whoa! He jumped, leapt as far as he could, suddenly recalling that near-instantaneous out of body trek through this section, and seeing now that there was a mine, showing up bright red in his vision. A circular mine set in the center of the passage, about a foot and a half wide. A pressure-sensitive trigger plate.

Orlando leapt it awkwardly, crashed onto his knees and rolled. And kept rolling into the darkness.

He got up and looked back to the approaching light. Hunched his shoulders and ducked his head.

Step on it you sonofa-

But the light just intensified and the thudding footsteps stopped and skidded. The Eye stood right over him. The gun pointing down.

Lucky bastard, Orlando thought, looking up into the glare and offering an exhausted smile. “Got me.” He closed his eyes, ready for a gunshot to the head or at least a punch that would shatter his fragile jaw, knock out his teeth and mess with his almost-good-looks to the point Phoebe would probably never gaze longingly at him again. If we ever even make it out of here.

But instead, he heard an unfamiliar voice.

“Hey ugly! Back here!”

Surprisingly, it sounded like it belonged to a little girl.

Phoebe and Aria made their stand at the entrance to the upward sloping tunnel. “I’ve seen this,” the Hummingbird said calmly. They had followed the Eye back out, after Aria had first kissed her father’s face, almost sobbing but happy he was still breathing. “Let’s end this,” Phoebe said, taking Aria’s hand and leading her out.

They moved quietly but quickly, following the Eye’s bludgeoning track after Orlando.

“We’ll save him,” Aria whispered, sensing Phoebe’s urgency once she realized who that was up there, fleeing blindly into the dark. Once the Eye had glanced back, but the darkness—and her mental shield—had protected them from his sight. He turned one corner, then another.

Phoebe quickened the pace, almost pulling Aria off her feet. What was she thinking? They had no weapons. As much as she had hoped to take the weapons off the charred dead men, the guns were partially melted, and way too hot to touch. So they moved ahead, armed with nothing but optimism.

“Hey ugly!” Aria shouted just as they turned the corner and saw the Eye standing over Orlando. “Back here!”

Phoebe put her hand around Aria’s mouth, but it didn’t matter. The Eye had seen. He shined his light on them, catching and blinding them both.

“Ahhhh,” came the echoing sound. “My lost birds. Thought you could fly to freedom?”

Aria pushed Phoebe’s hand away. “I’ll never be caged again.”

“Think not?” The voice approaching. The light, brighter.

“I’ve seen it,” she said defiantly, holding up her arms, wing-like. “You can’t catch me.”

“Aria—” Phoebe hissed, trying to pull her back. But then she realized it was too late.

He came barreling toward them, charging like a madman, his lone eye gleaming with hate.

Aria smiled as she turned, pulling Phoebe around with her and ducking.

The Eye saw the move and had a sudden flash. A vision. Too late, he couldn’t stop or change his forward momentum—which took him right onto the pressure plate. The mine flattened under his right foot. His left dug in, halting his motion, but he was already falling forward, sliding off the plate.

“This isn’t over.” He dropped to a knee, his back leg twisted at a nearly impossible angle, still exerting just enough pressure on the trap to stave off detonation. He closed his eye.

Behind him, Orlando had stood up, and was backing away after a glance assured him of Phoebe’s safety.

“It’s over for you,” Aria called back. “And soon for your friends.”

The Eye chuckled. “I have many friends. You may get those here, but the others—the masters I truly serve…” His laughter continued as he sighed and moved his foot off the trap.

“There will be nowhere to hide.”

The explosion rocked the cavern and sent chunks of flesh and bone in all direction.

Orlando ducked just in time and kept his head down, hoping the whole roof wouldn’t collapse with the blast.

Finally he stood and looked back, but could barely make anything out. The explosion had taken out the flashlight as well.

“Phoebs?”

“Here,” came the echoing response. “We’re ok. Follow my voice.”

“And watch where you step,” came the girl’s voice.

Orlando moved ahead. “Yuch. I’m so taking a shower after this is over.”

Just then, several flashlight beams converged on Phoebe and Aria. Shouts and screams. In Arabic from the left, English from the right.

Phoebe pushed Aria ahead, toward Orlando and into the branching tunnel just as gunshots erupted. Rushing forward, Orlando met them both and Phoebe threw her arms around him and pushed him against the wall. The gunfire continued. Men screamed and screamed and then…

Silence.

Lights filled the hallway.

Phoebe pressed her lips against Orlando’s ear. “It’s okay, I think…”

“Hi there,” said the little girl, stepping back into the corridor and waving into the light. “My dad said you’ve been looking for me.”

The lights dimmed, moved away, and Orlando saw a half-dozen men, their khakis torn and filthy, some limping and nursing wounds, but alive. Temple lowered his light.

“That I have, little one, that I have.” He looked at Phoebe and Orlando, then at the mess in the center of the tunnel. “Good work, you two. Now come on, let’s get this one’s father, and then get out of here.”

Aria reached back and took Phoebe’s hand and Orlando’s arm and walked between them. She looked up at them both, smiling. “We’re going to the snow mountain where the wizards live.”

Phoebe and Orlando glanced at each other, then shrugged.

Temple shook his head in wonder. “Damn, she’s good. Glad she’s going to be on our team.”

9.

Egypt

Nina strapped the MP5 submachine gun over her shoulder as she climbed the ancient steps out of the Sphinx’s lower chamber. She headed back outside, into the winds and the sound of the helicopter engine. She ascended and moved into the semicircle of soldiers awaiting Senator Calderon and his guests.

As the seconds dragged on and the door still didn’t open, she was surprised to feel so calm. Here it was, finally she was going to meet her boys. Her children. After all those years apart. All that time, did they even know she was alive and sedated? Did they visit? Did they care, or did Calderon shape their minds to one single purpose, stoking their egos and building them up as… what were they to him? Messiahs, or merely tools to his own ascension?

She clenched her teeth and fought a renewed pain from the shoulder wound she’d received back on the Mongolian steppes. She’d have to get the dressings changed and have that looked at soon, but so far she’d been running on adrenaline, purpose fueling her every step of the way. She’d come too far, and now she had a new purpose. A responsibility.

Suddenly she was very jealous, bitter at Calderon for depriving her of the chance to mold these children, to shape them into the future leaders the way she would have wanted. And what about Caleb? She struggled with that the most. Two hours ago she would have gladly stuck a knife in his heart and twisted it slowly. He had left her, presumed she was dead and left her without so much as an RV attempt to check on her. But if he had seen her, lying there helpless in a coma, would he have even come to her aid?

Maybe, she thought, if he had seen she was pregnant.

But none of that mattered now.

Now, the door was opening. Two small forms leapt out in unison. They both set flashy skateboards on the paveway and pushed off together, gliding toward her.

They executed a sharp inward turns, skidded to a stop several feet away, then kicked up their boards into their hands.

The one on the left stretched out his arms. “Hello, mother.”

The other one, his head lowered in slight show of respect, said: “It’s good to see you. And for real this time.”

“Catch up later, boys.” Mason Calderon walked behind them, twirling his cane. “Let’s get down there and get what we came for.” He beamed at Nina. “Good to finally meet in person, Ms. Osseni. May I please have it?”

She nodded, drawn to something about him. The power in his shoulders and in his walk, the dazzling hint in his eyes revealing his utter belief in himself. Without hesitation she lowered the satchel, zipped it open and held it out for him. For some reason she thought she should bow her head, as if offering a grand gift to her king.

He reached inside and reverently took hold of the Emerald Tablet. Pulled it out with trembling hands. It was glowing, brighter now, dazzling in his eyes, swallowing up their blackness, substituting a throbbing green aura. He wobbled and Nina thought he might collapse under the thing’s power. But then it seemed to rejuvenate him. His mouth opened, almost in an ecstatic silent cry. “At last…”

And then he was walking past her without another look, and the boys were in his place.

Nina’s eyes darted back and forth. One child to the other. Both so similar and yet she also saw them with other senses. She saw their differences, little nuances. And she knew, from her glimpses into their pasts, which was which. Jacob on the right: a streak of something… different in him. So different than the cold-heartedness they both chose to portray. A little smoother, Jacob was, his edges not as sharp as Isaac’s. His thoughts more deliberate, his words more carefully chosen. He… he was the reader, when occasion allowed. He did it in secret, when Isaac was asleep. Jacob… he’s more like Caleb, I can see it…

Isaac… Nina smiled at him, and the boy grinned back, taking the attention as a selfish compliment proving he had been singled out over his brother. Competitive from the start. Isaac was definitely hers. She continued smiling, thinking about the contrast that no one else could see.

“Move,” Calderon said, nodding to her and to the troops. “I’m back in charge. Let’s get what we came here for and get out. I don’t like all the attention that’s coming our way.” Beyond the perimeter, news vans struggled to get close enough to see, but were kept back by more Egyptian troops. Bright lights stabbed out, away from the Sphinx so no one could get a clear look at what they’d found.

The boys hurried past Nina, and each grabbed a hand as they passed, turning her around and bringing her with them. She clasped their hands, and she was surprised at how normal this felt. How good. Like it was just another day, and they’d been together all this time.

On her way down, she glanced back and saw two guards leading a red-haired man out of the helicopter, moving him along towards them.

Ah, Xavier. Coming to join the party. I wonder…

But that was when she felt the surge, jolting up her arms from where she held her children. As if they were each live wires, and she was caught in the middle, unable to let go as the currents ripped through her psyche.

It was as if there was a split screen in her mind. On the right, from Isaac came a flood of unrelenting visions, bombarding her with their brazen ferocity:

A younger boy with a mop of curly brown hair stands over a writhing frog, its legs and lower torso flattened. A streak of gore leading to the skateboard a few feet away. The boy has a screwdriver in hand, angling its sharp tip toward the frog’s blinking eyes…

Another shift and he’s a bit older, sitting before a large screen, sipping lemonade while watching scenes of desert warfare: anonymous planes bombarding villages, cluster bombs decimating ground forces, sniper rounds exploding soldiers one after another… Isaac giggling, eating popcorn.

On the seat beside him, Jacob is watching, no less rapt, but seems to wince at every scene of escalating violence. In the shadows near the back, a man stands leaning on a golden-tipped cane.

All this Nina saw in only a few seconds, but what she found herself focusing on was the left-most panel, the one showing only a single image…

Jacob, perhaps only four, lingering by the bedside of a patient, a woman strapped to a table in a familiar room. He looks back at a departing figure on a skateboard and when he’s sure he’s alone, he reaches out. And takes the patient’s hand in his.

The boys let go simultaneously, in their enthusiasm for seeing the door at last. The door under the Sphinx, the one that only they could open. If, Nina thought, staggering a little after the release, they could duplicate what Alexander had been able to do.

She was dizzy, lightheaded. Her arms felt like jelly rolls.

“And how are the little rugrats?” came the voice at her back. She turned slowly to see Montross standing on the last step. His hair was a crimson mess, tangles and strands across his face. His shirt covered with sandstone dust, sweat and dirt, yet he looked radiant. A beaming smile, twinkle in his eye as if despite everything, despite being bound and in the enemy’s camp, he was right where he wanted to be.

I wouldn’t doubt it, she thought. Nor would she let her guard down. She had new allegiances now, and owed this man nothing more. In fact…

“You knew,” she hissed. “You must have.”

Montross let his smile falter. “I didn’t. I never asked those kinds of questions, and didn’t know I needed you until several years after they had taken your boys. I was too busy hiding from Waxman. Hiding, exploring… Researching all this. The Tablet, what it can do.” He cocked his head, looked around her to where Calderon had the boys probing the wall. Isaac seemed morbidly distracted by the blood smears on the floor. The remains of Robert Gregory and Marcos.

“I don’t know if I believe you,” Nina said, keeping her eyes on Montross. She thought about the long journey they both shared. The plans devised late into the evenings. The shared visions, often in bed together, where she returned his thrusts by penetrating his mind, reveling in his visions—those that she could access. She had found it surprisingly difficult to get past some of his defenses, to see the things that truly drove him. Hints of attachment beyond what he had felt for his mother and his foster father, who were taken from him at such a young age. Nina knew there was another woman, someone he was protecting. Someone he might even…love? And that knowledge had both intrigued and infuriated her. That she couldn’t see who it was. That he still had his secrets.

Montross shrugged. “It doesn’t matter at this point. I only hope they know what they’re doing.”

“And do you?”

“Me?” He glanced down at himself. “What am I doing? Nothing, I’m just a captive, my fate at the whim of your new master.” He blinked and glanced over at Calderon. “He is your master now, isn’t he?”

She fumed. He knew that would get to her, still knew how to push her buttons. “I have no master. I choose the best team for my talents.”

“Not always successful at that, right? Could’ve done better than Waxman.”

“Or you?”

“I thought we made a pretty decent team.”

Nina smirked. “Just be quiet and let my boys work.”

“Got it!” Calderon whooped a second before the grinding sound thundered inside the chamber. The wall was rising.

Jacob tottered, appearing dizzy. But Isaac ducked and rolled under the door, taking advantage of his brother’s condition to get inside first. Nina headed toward Jacob, going to check on him. She reached out, but Calderon grabbed her wrist forcefully and brought her with him into the room, illuminated by the bright spotlights set up down here from when Robert Gregory made his attempt at access.

Nina looked back. Jacob was still doubled over from the effort, and Nina realized he was the one that had solved the puzzle and opened the door. And Isaac had just taken the credit. He felt her attention, glanced up and met her eyes and for a moment there was a hint of need. But then he blinked away all the emotion and the coldness set back in as he stood up. He squared his shoulders and quickly moved inside.

“The keys?” Calderon asked hopefully.

Isaac was checking the box, looking at it from all sides. Poking the center piece that held the three triangular slots. He shook his head. “Our dear brother has taken them.”

“Thought as much,” Calderon said. He let go of Nina’s wrist, but gave her a slight push toward Montross. “Xavier, my friend. It’s time to be useful. I’d ask you to willingly tell us what you know, but I’d never trust you.”

Montross clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, then laughed. “Are you saying we just can’t be friends?”

“Not today. Nina?” Calderon pointed with his cane, giving her a target. “Do your thing. Find out what Montross knows about the keys, and where the boy is hiding. We’re going in after them, and I don’t want any surprises.”

Her head down, Nina approached, refusing to make eye contact. When she finally did, reaching for Xavier’s face, planning to start with a gentle caress that would shuffle his memories and visions, causing what she needed to drop into her thoughts, he said in a low voice:

“Your master bids, and you obey…”

Her intensity shocked even herself. Maybe it was knowing that she had spectators and she didn’t want to disappoint, didn’t want to show weakness, especially in front of her boys. Or maybe Montross had just gotten under her skin, and she was striking back tenfold.

Either way, she went at his mind, hard. Dug in deep, forcing herself upon his psyche, taking every inch he reluctantly surrendered, every fleeting glimpse he failed to protect, snatching at the images like a multi-armed Hindu goddess. A hundred eyes, all peering into separate nooks, places Xavier could never blockade, not all at once under such an onslaught.

She saw things, so many, all at once. Too much to process now. She saw a woman on the edge of some monument in the Grand Canyon, with Xavier holding her hand as they watched the sunset paint glorious hues upon the striated cliffs. She saw a warehouse full of shelves a hundred feet high, with locked compartments guarding things of such antiquity… and Montross sneaking out, darting from the shadows with something spherical and shiny in his grasp, a thief in the dark.

And then she saw them: Caleb and Alexander, rushing through a shadowy maze of passageways. Hurrying, following someone in a gray cloak. Her vision fast-forwarded, piggy-backing onto Xavier’s spark of prescience.

And now they’re outside, climbing out of a well onto the desert sands. In the distance, a motorboat revving up. Dark figures on board, holding guns and watching the skies, looking southeast, toward the distant peaks of the three pyramids. Fast forward again:

A giant half-dome of glass, sparkling in the sun, surrounded by high-rises and minarets.

Nina let go, backed away, gasping for breath. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she turned away from Montross, who wouldn’t look at her. “Senator,” she whispered. “They’re not down there anymore.”

“Where-?”

She blinked, standing up straight and focusing on Montross. He shook his head, but she continued anyway.

“They’re heading to Alexandria. To the library.”

Calderon nodded. “Ah, our friends the Keepers.” He started twirling his cane in his fingers, slowly, focusing on the dragon.

“Stepfather?” Isaac asked quietly. “Are we going there?”

“Oh we are, my boy.” And he smiled broadly. “I’m through playing cat and mouse with them. There’s no longer any point to the chase. Not when we have a way to end this once and for all.”

Isaac was rubbing his hands together, and even Jacob seemed excited.

“It’s time,” Calderon said, “for the new library to meet the fate of the old.”

10.

Over Pakistan

“One more unscheduled stop, I swear.” Colonel Temple emerged from the pilot’s cabin and faced his passengers. Phoebe sat beside Aria, who was sound asleep but turning fretfully, her eyelids fluttering. Orlando sat on the other side, as if they were the girl’s protective parents, and for a few minutes before takeoff, he actually let himself imagine such a fantasy—that he and Phoebe were living out normal lives. Maybe returning from Disneyworld with a tuckered out daughter.

But then the plane banked away from the sandstone cliffs and Aria looked back on her father, sedated and asleep, hooked to an IV and sprawled out on the back three seats. Orlando met Phoebe’s eyes, which for a moment were clouded with fear and adrift in loss, before she managed to find strength in him and draw it to herself.

She reached over and held his hand and tried to smile. “So, where are you taking me on our next date?”

Drifting off, Aria managed a giggle. “I like you two.”

“We like you,” Orlando said. “Even if we don’t understand how you do what you do.”

Her eyes were the bluest he’d ever seen, but the pupils were so large, threatening to spill over into the blue. It was as if she had been drugged. And maybe she has, he thought. He knew Colonel Temple needed her fresh and alert when they got back to the Stargate base, and her powers weren’t really needed here, as long as they were a swiftly moving target at fifty thousand feet. They were safe. So maybe he did give her a little help in order to sleep.

“I just do it,” she said. “It just happens. Natural, like if I threw a rock at you. If you couldn’t dodge it, what would you do?”

Orlando looked at Phoebe, then back at the girl. He shrugged. “Try to block it or hide behind my arms?”

Aria nodded. “Just like that. Reflex. Except instead of raising my arms, I raise this… thing. This layer, like a blanket, except it’s really wide and long and stretches pretty far back in time too.”

“Neat,” Phoebe whispered. “But you look exhausted. Your dad’s stable now, he’s resting. You should do the same.”

Aria yawned, closed her eyes and smiled. And then she was out.

Even Temple’s entrance didn’t wake her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We don’t need her for this.”

“For what?” Orlando asked, straining to see out the window. His ears had just popped with their descent. “We haven’t been flying for more than an hour. Where are we?”

“Over part of Pakistan.”

“Ugh,” Phoebe said with a groan. “Please tell me we’re not making another extraction or going into another cave.”

Temple shook his head. “This one’s simple. We land, you get out and you give me your impression of the site.”

“What site?” Orlando asked. And he started wracking his brain for possibilities. What was in the mountains of Pakistan that they needed to see? What, besides another terrorist cell, or a cache of weapons or something?

“Just something I have my team members probe to test their talents.”

“Another test?” Phoebe asked. “Really? After all we just did?”

Temple folded his arms over his chest. “Okay, it’s not a test. I just want to see if you two can give me more information than those other psychics. Please, it’s important.” He took a seat in front of them, strapping himself in.

“Important for whom?” Orlando muttered. He grabbed hold of the armrests, preparing for a bumpy landing.

“For you,” Temple replied. “Because this… you just have to see. I don’t have your gifts, but I’m told it’s quite… earth shattering.”

“Mohenjo-Daro,” Temple said after he had led them from the small landing strip to the edge of a hill overlooking a vast plain and a sprawling view of ancient red brick walls, ledges and boundaries, a few silo-like towers, arches and perfectly aligned streets. “The Mound of the Dead, as it’s translated.”

Orlando whistled. “I know this place.”

“Thought you might,” said Temple.

“Figures,” Phoebe said, rubbing the sleeve of her blouse across her forehead, dabbing the sweat. The sun was just descending, but painfully intense, baking the ancient ruins below. “It’s an old city, right? Archaeologists found it, and yeah it’s pretty cool. So why are we here?”

“We’re here to take a peek,” Orlando guessed. He cracked his knuckles, stretched his arms and gave a little jog in place, as if warming up before a race.

“Yes, a peek.” Temple waved his arm over the view. “Mohenjo-Daro was re-discovered in the 1920’s. They believed it was built in 2600 BC and that it served as one of the centers of the Indus Valley civilization, of which very little is known. An incredible degree of sophistication went into the planning and design of this city. Urban sanitation systems like we wouldn’t see again for two thousand years.”

“Always a good thing, but probably no plumbers union back then.” Orlando grinned, then shrugged at Phoebe.

“Precise geographical and astronomical layouts of the streets and buildings, and despite the best efforts of the world’s leading linguists, a written script that has never been successfully translated. A mature language that appeared in these two cities as well as several thousand other sites across the area—for which they can find no evolution or development. It seems to have just appeared.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Orlando said. “Get on with the real juicy morsels. You know, tell her what’s really crazy about this place.” He glanced at Phoebe. “I tried to get your brother to let us make Mohenjo-Daro an objective that we should scout out during our downtime. But he thought it wasn’t worth our effort.”

“Doesn’t sound like him. He must’ve been preoccupied.” Phoebe kept staring at the city, and in the hazy sun the ancient buildings began to shimmer and wobble. She was feeling the tug of a vision.

Temple coughed. “I can understand Caleb’s reluctance. But I must also now tell you in complete sincerity that what I’m about to say is above top secret, and—”

“Yeah, we know. Tell no one…” Orlando raised his hands in a gesture of being terrified. “…or else you’ll have to kill us.”

“Oh, I won’t kill you,” Temple said with a smirk. “But someone else assuredly will. Now, listen Phoebe, since I gather Orlando has already been briefed by Wikipedia or Conspiracies-R-Us…”

“Hey!”

“But this site, and its sister city not far from here, called Harrapan, are much, much older than 2600 BC.”

“How old?”

“Undetermined. The problem with you psychics is that while you can see the past, you never manage to glimpse a newspaper or something with the date on it.” He grinned. “Just kidding. But the problem of dating remains unsolvable. Best we can do is look to the geographic landmarks—or in some rare cases, we’ve had luck with the remote viewer coming out of the vision and drawing what the night sky looked like.”

“Ah,” Orlando said, clapping. “Plug the constellations into a computer program and let it match up the orientation with the patterns of stellar drift and the Earth’s precession and wobble, and—”

“All right, all right.” Phoebe rubbed her temples. “So did you do any of that with this site?”

Temple nodded. “But I’m not divulging that information yet, as uncorroborated as it is. I don’t want to taint your impressions. Bad enough you already have a guess as to the target, and Orlando has his… theories. I need you to try to see for yourself.”

“The target is Mohenjo-Daro,” Phoebe said, nodding and taking a deep breath, focusing on the city.

“The target,” Temple corrected, “is the event.”

“What event?” she asked.

Orlando let out a big sigh. “What he means, what he’s getting at but won’t tell you, is that the government’s not stupid.” He glared at Temple. “He knows what the scientists and the so-called quack archaeologists found. The skeletons flattened in the streets. Huddled in their homes, holding hands as they met their doom.”

“Flattened?”

“Devastated. The walls bear evidence of extreme heat and exposure to an unknown source of energy. Something that left a radiation signature across this whole place. A signature not seen again until Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

Phoebe frowned at him. “Conspiracies-R-Us?”

“Try, The Mahabarata. The old Vedic epic and holy book… there’s a whole battle scene in there that describes the gods raining these kinds of arsenals down upon their foes. I recall one of the verses went something like: ‘…a single projectile, charged with all the power of the universe/ as bright as the thousand suns / a column of smoke and flame rose in all its splendor.’ Then something about reducing the people to ashes, corpses burning, hair and nails falling out. Descriptions that sounded way too much like nuclear fallout.”

Temple grinned. “You’ve said too much, Orlando. Let her work with an unclouded mind. Phoebe, just try to see what happened here. What did them in?”

“Why?” she asked. “If you guys apparently know it all? What’s the point?”

“Because,” he said. “We need to know exactly what we’re up against, and we need you to understand that what we’re doing isn’t because we’re power-hungry elitists who want to jealously guard the truth from the pitiful masses.”

“That’s a relief.”

“That’s the truth,” Temple said. “We have much bigger problems. Because whatever did this, whatever happened here, it’s going to happen again if we don’t get that Tablet back.”

She saw it on the way down the hill. Just a few steps from the first wall of red brick, the dust already kicked up by her shoes. Maybe it was the smell, the proximity to the ancient stone. The sudden feeling of belonging here. Being one of with Mohenjo-Daro’s population. Seeing it-

-for the first time… The sound, the bustling throbbing sound. A perfect cadence of voice and motion. People, such a mass of people. Bright colors, hats, silken scarves, elegant robes and practical coverings. Commoner and royalty, it seemed, merge as one in the streets and… flee.

Out of the city. Not a mob, but not so orderly as to be a ceremonious event. They’re scared. Carrying some possessions, boxes, bags. A little girl carrying a dragon-shaped doll…

A rumbling in the earth.

Screams, people turning.

Something in the center of the city draws their attention. A tower, of sorts. Pyramid-shaped, glowing at its tip. The rumbling continues, intensifies—and a gathering light at the tip of the pyramid appears. Brighter and brighter, until the crowd moves slowly away, as if mesmerized by the sight, yet terrified of what might happen next.

There are things in the sky. Lights moving bright against the blue background, multi-colored orbs and flattened disc-shaped brilliances. They seem to be at war with each other. Some are spinning, dissolving, falling in snowflake-like patterns across the sky and over the mountains.

And the light from the pyramid turns darker, a deep indigo hue that in the blink of an eye blasts upward with a force that shatters the outer layer of stones from the pyramid and flattens nearby homes. Now there’s a beam of light, pure nearly blinding light stabbing through the sky—and beyond. The air shimmers, people cover their eyes.

And as if in reply to this city’s offensive, something comes down from the sky. Nothing entirely visible, but this nothing lands with an impact like a god’s fist striking the ground. The earth trembles, the walls and buildings shake. But then the aftershocks, like concentric circles of energy, descend one upon the other, in widening diameters until the whole city, the entire plain is caught in its frequency.

A frequency that shatters living beings, flattening them like insects underfoot. The crowds, as one, are gone. Everyone still in the main center of the city—just pulverized. Whatever this force is, it spares the bricks, the earth, the structures, but leaves them smoking, simmering.

Everyone’s gone except those who had just made it out of range. Stumbling away into a ravine, looking back in horror, back toward the beam from the pyramid. The beam that’s flickering now. Fizzling, its power used up.

Amid the wailing, screaming and desperation, a last, lone look up at the sky…

And the tiny light, tinged in the approaching dusk with a light reddish hue. The only object in the sky above the pyramid. The only available target…

“What… the hell…” Phoebe clutched at Orlando’s shirt, meeting his eyes with such lingering horror, “…was that?”

Orlando shook his head. “I didn’t get enough. Just saw, I don’t know, like I was in some structure, and I had a tablet. It might have been the same one you guys found. I was sitting in some throne-like contraption, and all these strange symbols and I don’t know, equations or something, were whirling about my head. And it seemed they were directing this device, this coiled apparatus that had colored electricity sparkling from it, and—”

“Jeez,” Phoebe backed away from him. “Where were you?”

He shrugged.

“Probably,” said Temple, “you could find out with another vision. But not now. I think Phoebe saw what we needed her to see. Now, before we head back. There’s one more target.”

“Come on, man. Phoebe’s been through enough. Let her rest.”

“I’m fine.” She smoothed back her hair, stood up straight and turned back to the city’s ruins, looking over the ancient walls, seeing for a moment the former glory of Mohenjo-Daro, and again feeling the crushing loss, the doom that was so decisively brought to them.

“I saw them! I don’t know, it seemed like it was a war. In the skies, with lights attacking each other. But I think the people here, they got off a shot from some tremendous weapon. Maybe the same thing that hit them a moment later.”

“A shot to where?” Temple leaned in, focused.

“Dumb question,” Orlando said. “If they launched a missile, it would go up straight, then follow the curvature of the earth as it approached its target.”

“Let her finish.”

Phoebe raised a finger to the sky. “It wasn’t a missile or anything like that. It was a beam of light. So I’m guessing it went straight. The only thing I saw up there was a tiny light. Maybe it was a ship.”

Temple was nodding, but looking at her closely.

“…or maybe it wasn’t. It looked like a star. Or a planet. And… it was reddish-colored.”

Orlando closed his eyes. “Mars.” He shook his head and stepped in front of Phoebe, facing Temple. “You know more about this than you’re telling us. Come on, spill it.”

“Not here. And anyway, you need to see one more thing. Final pop quiz, if you like. Before you join us.”

Orlando let his shoulders sag, but his fists were clenched. “You’re really pissing me off.”

“I can live with that. Now here goes. It’s a trick that seems to work well with the other recruits. Kind of like free association. I’ll give you the target, you give me the first thing that comes to you, the first thing you see.”

Phoebe sighed. “Sure, let’s get it over with.”

“Okay,” Temple said, taking a step back. He lifted his face to the sun and closed his eyes. “Here’s the target: Seven-seventeen AM, central Siberia. June 30^th, 1908.”

Phoebe heard Orlando make a choking sound, but it was lost in a tremendous roar, a deafening explosion of sound and fury. She stood on a muddy hill looking down toward a river. But in a miles-long stretch of terrain, the forest was decimated: trees flattened, others blackened, the ground churned up, smoking. A huge swath cut through the wilderness.

And then: it was as if the viewing reversed. A rumbling, which rose and rose to such horrific volume and intensity until it swallowed up the world, the trees rising, filling, turning green just after an immense light retracts into a glowing wave of energy, rippling backwards and up at an oblique angle into the sky…

Orlando was doubled over. “Tunguska,” he whispered. “Another target Caleb should have put on the list.”

“What was it?” Phoebe asked, her lips now parched.

“No one’s really sure,” Orlando said, after it was apparent Temple wasn’t going to speak. “At the time, they thought it was a meteor. But after several scientific teams got there and searched, they found no impact crater and no evidence of meteorite elements. But something sure hit that area with a force like a meteor.”

“Good enough for me,” Temple said. “You passed the quiz. Now back in the plane and let’s get to work.”

“So we’re in?” Phoebe voiced. “Past the bullshit? No more secrets, no more games?”

“Or freakin’ quizzes?” Orlando added.

Temple grinned. “No more quizzes. But as for the secrets… In time I’ll let you in. Don’t want to blow your minds all at once. Then you’d be no good to me. Or your friends.”

“Our friends,” Orlando whispered. “How are they?”

“You can find out soon. Get on the plane and let’s head back to our facility.”

“But…” Phoebe looked back to the ruins, silent and desolate. “But this city was so ancient. And Tunguska was only a hundred years ago. What’s going on?”

“They’re both related.”

“And Mars?”

“We’ll get to that.” He stepped back into the plane. Orlando met Phoebe’s eyes, and saw all her confidence fleeing. Saw her teetering on the edge of exhaustion, overcome by the weight of such visions and responsibility.

He felt the same things, but right now he feared something far more personal. If he didn’t get her out of this, she might never come back. So he did the only thing he could think of.

He took her hand, pulled her close. And kissed the dust from her lips.

11.

Alexandria

Caleb hadn’t been back here, to the modern library, for almost five months. The last time, he and Alexander had spent a couple days in the city, visiting all the tourist spots and sailing in the harbor, where Caleb had pointed out the place where he had nearly drowned that fateful day he had his first vision of the Pharos. They visited Qaitbey’s Fortress, and Caleb had a difficult time keeping Alexander from finding the secret lever that would open the door to the sub-chambers… and the great seal guarding a now-empty vault. The boy wanted to see, and Caleb couldn’t blame him. Someday, he promised, they’d come back when it was safe, when they wouldn’t get caught.

He had vowed that they would do it together, with Lydia. The next time all three were in Alexandria together. The next time…

Caleb had to stop and hold onto a pillar as a rush of images burst into his skull. Like she was still there, still waiting.

“Let’s take him,” Lydia says while propped up on her elbow on the bed beside him. “Tomorrow. He’s ready!”

“Isn’t one vault enough? He’s got enough to do here.”

“What are you worried about? The danger down there…”

“Is still real. It’s not like the traps don’t work anymore.”

“He just wants to see. He’s proud of you. Proud of us—what we did. It’s something before his time, and he feels left out.”

“Well, he wasn’t. He was a big part of it. If it wasn’t for him…”

“You and I would not have been apart. And you might not have found the way in with me holding you back.”

Her eyes are so profoundly large, green like the Emerald Tablet, so deeply resonant and magnetic. It’s as if she knows he’s lied to her. Knows he’s hidden it away, told her it was lost. Should he tell her? Is now the time?

He opens his mouth, but she’s leaning in. Her lips against his, silencing his voice. She pulls back, only for an instant. “Just think about it. We’re running out of time. A boy’s only a boy for so long.”

Caleb caught his breath and looked up to see Alexander and Rashi staring at him, both concerned. They stood between a gap between two enormous rows of shelves. Books as far as he could see in any direction.

“I’m okay. Just had a moment.”

Alexander moved forward. “Was it Mom?”

Caleb smiled. “Yeah… just, I haven’t been here since…”

A flash, an explosion of fire. A charred body, spinning around, and facing him, two green orbs in a blackened skull boring down at him, recriminating…

“Dad?” His hand on Caleb’s shoulder, Alexander pulled him up. His grip was strong, firmer than Caleb had ever remembered. It’s already too late. He’s not a boy anymore. And it’s my fault. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

And Alexander shook his head. “No reason to be.”

“I did to you what my mother did to me. She stole my childhood, and I never forgave her for it, not until the end.”

Alexander rolled his eyes. “I’m still a kid. I’m—what’s the word? Resilient. After we stop the bad guys and save the world, I’m still going to want to watch cartoons and play that 3D PlayStation you’re going to buy me for Christmas.”

A laugh mingled with a choking sob as Caleb stood up and hugged his son under the watchful gaze of the Keeper, Rashi. When they were ready, they made their way through the stacks and the shelves, the seemingly endless texts, volumes and tomes. While they walked, he took a moment to gaze fondly on all these works, and looked up at the sunlight-kissed levels above, all those treasures preserved here, hopefully for a long time to come.

At last, they made it to the elevator and accessed the locked sublevel. As the doors closed, Caleb glanced away from his son, out the doors and saw-

In the center of the library, on the marble floor in a shaft of light, Lydia stood alone, head bowed in silence.

The once metal-walled hallway was now decorated with ancient artwork: Sumerian friezes, Babylonian bas-reliefs, Egyptian murals… Caleb had walked this hallway more than a hundred times, and each time he felt as if he were coming home.

Into the vault, Rashi joined several other Keepers: two men and a woman busy at work at their stations. Hideki Matusi, bone-thin, yet regally elegant in a way Caleb always associated with ancient scholars, stood over a glass table, lit from below, as she analyzed scroll fragments with a microscope. She took a break from translating the ancient texts and came down to greet them.

She nodded sympathetically to Caleb. “We mourn for Lydia. But the work must continue, as she would have wanted it.”

Caleb looked down at his shoes, choked up.

But then Hideki smiled at Alexander. “Ah, the precocious child returns.”

“Hello Hideki!” Alexander waved, beaming at her. “Can’t wait to help out again.”

“Yes, yes, so long as you promise not to spill chocolate milk on any more priceless fifth-century BC papyri.”

“I promise.”

“I mean it.”

Caleb found it surprisingly comforting to laugh, to be distracted from the finality of loss. “She means it, Alexander. And so do I. Socrates would have been pissed.”

Rashi took a seat at the conference table, the very same one used by Nolan Gregory years ago when he had confined the Keepers down here for their protection. That day was the last great crisis for the Keepers. But now, they had lost two key members in the past week. One to tragedy, the other to greed. With Lydia and Robert gone, the Keepers needed a leader, and despite the regard they all held for Caleb, they knew he couldn’t step into the role held by his wife. Not under these circumstances.

Rashi took the reins, and she’d moved quickly but deliberately. They had to be extra careful, but they still needed to replenish their ranks. Hideki had a son, fifteen, who unfortunately showed no promise, or interest. Alexander was almost ready and could soon fill one of the gaps, but Rashi felt deep regret that she had never succeeded in bringing a child into the world. There was always adoption, but for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to that stage where she would have to admit it was physically impossible for herself.

But now, she had a new focus. Leadership.

Their enemies were closing in. What Caleb had discovered, what Robert Gregory was a part of… it stretched back to the dawn of human history, to the very origins of civilization. A conflict, dormant for millennia, about to be rekindled.

“If what we’ve discovered in these texts is true, then we have no time to waste. No time to grieve. No time at all.”

Hideki joined them at the table.

“All these scrolls…” She looked around at the hermetically sealed cabinets, the honeycombed alcoves, filled with the contents of the vanished Alexandrian Library, the most esoteric texts, some so ancient they had yet to decipher the language. “Everything you found, Caleb. And yet…”

“And yet,” said Rashi, leveling her gaze at him, “the one thing that could have helped us most prepare for this moment…”

“You kept from us,” Hideki finished.

Caleb swallowed and looked in turn at the Keepers. He met their stares of recrimination. “I can’t apologize. I didn’t trust you, it’s true, but…”

“You were right not to,” Rashi said, raising a hand. “We are not condemning. We’re merely stating fact, preparing the setting, so to speak. The foundation for what we must do next. We are not judges.”

“How could we be,” Hideki said, “when one of our own, our very leader, was corrupted?”

Rashi leaned in. “If you had not kept the Tablet from us, Robert would have had it, and he would have used it.”

“That,” Caleb said in a low voice, “is what I need to understand. How would he have used it? What are they planning? Xavier Montross saw something. And I did too.”

Rashi nodded. “I can guess. Destruction. You saw it on a scale unimaginable.”

Caleb felt Alexander’s eyes on him. Large, almond-shaped, glassy. A hint of jade, like his mother’s. “The Tablet itself is undecipherable. I got nowhere with it, and honestly I didn’t want to try. It was enough that it fell to me to protect it. But now… Now I wish I had tried a little harder. Maybe I’d know what it is we need to do.”

Rashi kept her head down, contemplating the lines on her hands, between her knuckles. “We’ll tell you what we know, but after this you must rejoin your sister. And the others like yourself.”

Alexander perked up. “More remote-viewers?”

“Soon,” Caleb said. He had seen it, too—brief glimpses of well-trained men escorting Phoebe and Orlando through caves in the desert, then onto a plane, heading back to some well-hidden facility in the snow-capped mountains of the Pacific Northwest. “Soon, and I know they’re looking for answers too, but I don’t believe they know the right questions to ask. That’s why it has to start here. It needs to come from practical research first, grounding us on what to set as our objectives. Otherwise we’re blind mice sniffing around empty cupboards. Wasting time.”

“Time we don’t have,” Rashi agreed.

Caleb leaned back, studying the other members, then looking past them to the scrolls laid out on the work area. To the banks of servers storing all the scanned documents.

The other two Keepers were looking solemn, palms flat on the table. Caleb had taken a seat next to Alexander. He leaned forward. “Tell me what you’ve found. About the Tablet, about… the Spear.”

Rashi closed her eyes, and began to talk. “The first thing we found wasn’t from the Library, it was something much more recent. We looked into Robert Gregory’s files, decrypting his locked folders and accessing what he’d been studying in secret.”

“So basically,” Hideki said, “he had already done the research.”

“Knew what he was looking for,” Caleb said.

“But some of it wasn’t even from what you found under the Pharos. He had access to other books, private collections, heretical texts acquired from individuals with powerful connections, to say the least.”

Alexander was listening to all of this, confused. He kept focusing on the Zodiac images painted above, on the azure-background of the dome, imagining the animals taking form, moving around. He thought of the shapes in Genghis Khan’s tomb, thought of how much he had seen in the past few weeks. How much death, but in the midst of all that life. His eyes settled on the constellation of Gemini, the twins. And he realized couldn’t stop thinking about them, his new brothers. Where were they now?

“…revelations that seemed far too fanciful for us at first,” Hideki continued.

“But,” said Rashi, “now we’ve been reconsidering. In light of other insights. Now that the majority of the Pharos’ documents have been scanned and uploaded, and everything that could be translated has been, we have been able to search for keywords and phrases.”

“‘Tablet of Destiny’ being one,” Hideki said.

Caleb’s lips felt parched. His stomach grumbled. And he thought of Alexander and how neither of them had eaten in more than a day. He looked toward the door set back in a side room off the main domed chamber where they kept supplies, enough food and water for months. Beds, a shower. He thought about getting up and telling Rashi and Hideki to wait until he got a snack, but that was when he felt something.

A rumbling.

The table rattled. The microscope in the other room shook, toppled. The lights overhead dimmed.

Caleb blinked, and across his eyelids flashed an image, a vision in stark clarity:

A snowy field beset by enormous mountains ringed by an emerald aurora. Almost two hundred radar arrays, glowing, sparking with errant electrical discharge. And zooming in closer… through the walls of the main facility, lightning-quick through hallways and down elevator shafts to a control room… and a man in uniform holding a phone to his ear, saying: “Yes, Senator. It’s been done…”

The very chamber shook now, dust fell from the dome, and the barest hint of a crack split through the constellations, ripping apart Pisces and splitting the Twins.

Rashi stood up, eyes wide. “No… They can’t… They wouldn’t dare!”

Hideki screamed and pointed to Alexander, who when he stood, leaned forward so the necklace with the three charms slipped out.

“The Keys!” she shouted. “They’re after the Keys!”

Caleb got up, reaching for his son—but suddenly the room pitched and buckled and the table rocked into his side and thrust him backwards while Alexander stood there, helplessly.

“Dad!”

Caleb climbed over the table, and was about to leap and swoop him up when a huge section of the ceiling collapsed, masonry crashed between them, and everything turned black.

He stayed on his knees, arms outstretched toward the mass of debris: layers of twisted concrete, metal and girders. And all he could think of was: this can’t be happening!

Robert and Lydia and all the Keepers had given their assurances that this library was built to withstand the ages, time and especially, earthquakes. Not only were the upper levels built upon shifting, standalone foundations that should have been impervious to ground fault tectonic shifts, but this sublevel especially was reinforced. A veritable bunker. Even if the unthinkable were to happen up above, the most treasured documents should have been safe down here.

Safe…

The rumbling subsided, the vibrations died down. But now what replaced it was infinitely worse:

Silence.

It was as all-pervasive. One set of flickering lights above remained, highlighting the cracked forms of the lower half of the Zodiac.

“Alexander?”

He held his breath, listening for anything. Studying the wall of debris, trying not to think the worst. Keeping it out of his mind, just as he kept away the horrors of what must be happening on the surface, up in Alexandria. What kind of devastation…?

A glimpse, a curse rewarding his lack of willpower: A birds-eye view from two hundred feet up… The slanting glass roof destroyed, just a jagged semi-circular foundation left in the earth. Great chunks of glass and twisted metal girders strewn about an area that looked like a meteor had struck a direct hit. Centered perfectly on the library.

Not possible, Caleb thought. Pausing now in his search. Going with the vision, the power that wanted, needed him to see.

Show me, he whispered, and mentally stepped back a few moments…

The domed library, scintillating in the sun, through the transparent windows hundreds of patrons could be seen strolling the aisles, reading at tables, looking at exhibits, while outside tourists took in the gardens, the fountains, or marveled at the planetarium.

Then, without warning, without even a flash of light, nothing but a faint ripple in the air, as if an invisible wave had just disrupted the fabric of the atmosphere—the dome imploded, shelves and floor were slammed down and met the exploding ground levels. Chunks of metal, concrete and earth rending and splitting, thrusting up and out and slamming down again, pulverized into Alexandria’s foundation.

The force of a meteor, just like—

He’d seen this before. Something Orlando had shown him…

Caleb shook his head, gagging on the visualization of the complete destruction of such a grand monument, not to mention the instant death of all those people. And only minutes after his arrival!

There could be no natural event. Just like he now believed Tunguska, Siberia was anything but natural. That place by the snowy mountains… Calderon…

He hung his head, fighting the tears, the guilt threatening to rend his heart of its last remaining strength. Willing it all away. He had to get to Alexander.

As much as it might be the final nail in his heart, he had to see…

But before he even looked, he knew what he’d find. Alexander was okay. He just had to be.

If Calderon did this, he would only have gone so far if he knew of the vault down here. Knew they’d be here. Calderon gave them enough time to get settled in, then he brought the world down upon them, sealing them in.

Keeping Caleb and Alexander—and the other Keepers—from the worst of the destruction.

But Alexander had the keys.

That was the one thought that kept Caleb going.

If Calderon still wanted that translation, he needed the keys. Sure he could mount an excavation in the guise of a rescue, and dig up the lower vault to find the keys, but that could take months, especially given the level of response and world attention that would be starting even now.

No, something told Caleb that Calderon knew that there would be an easier way.

One that would only be possible if he knew about the other exit from the vault, and if he knew that Alexander might actually be okay. Or at least reachable quickly.

Caleb knew it had to be true. After all, Mason Calderon was not without his own resources. Resources that could see, most likely, as well as anyone on the Morpheus Initiative.

Caleb’s other boys.

12.

Cairo

Mason Calderon put away his cell phone, slipped it inside his suit coat pocket, and turned back to the twins, standing on either side of their mother.

“It’s done. If your visions were right, your brother is now buried under the sadly short-lived Bibliotheca Alexandrina.”

Isaac shrugged. “We no more doubt our visions than you doubt when you look up into the sky and say it’s blue.”

Mason took a moment. “A shame really, about their library. Such noble endeavors for the sons of Thoth, but in the end, what is it I always tell you boys?”

Jacob looked at his brother, and they both intoned the mantra at once: “Nothing ever lasts, least of all knowledge.”

Calderon smiled, a grin that lingered despite the concern he saw on Nina’s face. “Don’t worry, my dear. I’m sure you’re old lover has managed to survive. Although what he’s feeling right now, I can hardly guess. To actually be witness to the destruction of the great library on both occasions, and with his fondness for wisdom…”

Nina’s lips curled up at the edges. “I still have a score to settle with him. So, are we going?”

The boys looked up at her with something like flashing respect. She was all business, a quality they understood.

Calderon nodded, motioning the soldiers to carry up the heavy chest and prepare to take it away. He addressed the senior guard. “Seal the door when we’re gone. I want no evidence of this entrance, and no further questions. Tell the press the situation is controlled. The bomb threat was a false alarm.”

Nina followed, lost in her thoughts amid confusion about her feelings for Caleb. Feelings now that seemed mired in shifting sands. Caleb and Nina shared something now, a connection to a line of heredity. Their genes, their individuality merged in these two living beings. She never imagined she’d feel this responsibility, this curiosity, or this stake in the future of other beings. Halfway up the stairs, she realized that Jacob was holding her hand, as naturally as if he’d been with her all his life.

Two more steps, and Isaac noticed. Scowling at his brother, he took Nina’s other hand and led her up the last few steps impatiently.

“Come on,” he said, manic glee in his voice. “I want to meet my father. Let’s go dig them out.”

“And get those keys,” Calderon said over his shoulder as he headed for the helicopter. “And then…” He held the briefcase in a tight grip, feeling the handle tremble with the power of the Emerald Tablet inside. Another step and he paused and looked around the perimeter to the armada of jeeps, soldiers and onlookers. Then, back to the imposing sight of the Great Pyramid rising from beyond the Sphinx’s back.

The Shepherd’s tool was blunted, useless. But a new one was operational, halfway around the world. His gaze shifted and he looked up, beyond the pyramid’s hulking outline, to the shining half-moon.

Soon… His destiny was just a translation away.