The Demon Crown

24

A man hung in shackles in the open-air courtyard.

“Well, that can’t be a good sign,” Monk commented wryly, as they neared the prisoner.

Kat didn’t put any stock in omens or portents, but considering all that had happened in Tallinn, she kept her guard up.

Ahead, the prisoner giggled as his photo was taken by his companion, both tourists to Muzeum Historycznego Miasta Gdańska, a museum dedicated to the medieval history of Gdansk. The institution occupied a complex of Gothic buildings dating to the fourteenth century. Back then, the site had served as both the city’s jail and pillory. One of the museum’s towers still contained intact prison cells. There, old torture devices were currently on display in all their bloody glory.

But that wasn’t their group’s destination.

Past the historic courtyard decorated with leg irons and hanging chains, a majority of the museum’s five floors was dedicated to what the city called “the gold of the Baltic.” Over a pointed Gothic arch, a sign read MUZEUM BURSZTYNU.

“The Amber Museum,” Elena translated as they headed toward the archway. Gawking up, she stumbled on a cobble, but Sam caught her arm.

The entomologist had been sticking close to her side after they had landed in Gdansk. Though Elena seemed to have shaken off the effects of the sedative from her attempted kidnapping, Sam hovered next to her, especially as they traversed the length of Dluga Street, a picturesque pedestrian thoroughfare that cut between rows of tall historic buildings.

Kat had also kept a close watch as they’d walked — not on Elena, but on the surroundings. The street was packed with tourists, making her uneasy. To either side, the rows of old homes had been converted into shops, boutique hotels, and cafes. But many of the buildings’ cellars had been turned into jewelry shops or galleries specializing in the city’s “gold,” a constant reminder of Gdansk’s former glory as the amber capital of the world.

After paying at a small desk to enter, Kat led the group up a steep stairway into the museum proper. On the first floor, a sprawl of illuminated glass cases displayed examples of artwork sculpted out of amber. As they headed through this section, Kat’s attention divided between watching for any threat and gawking at the wonders glowing behind the glass. A tree with leaves of amber rose from a landscape of flowers with petals of the same gem. A medieval sailing ship, sculpted of ossified resin, had masts of raised amber sails. Lamps with polished pebbled shades glowed in their cases, adding to the room’s golden sheen.

Elena paused before a prominent case holding a Fabergé egg made of amber that spun atop a turning pedestal inside. Its webbed gold top was hinged open to reveal a polished orb of the same gemstone.

“Beautiful,” she mumbled, holding her reading glasses up to better examine it.

Sam bent down beside her. “Must be worth a king’s ransom.”

Elena nudged him with her shoulder. “You’re right in more ways than you know. I wager this egg, a gift from the tsars, represents the industry’s ties to Russia where a majority of amber — both in the past and today — is mined.”

“And where James Smithson was headed on his cross-continental journey,” Sam added pointedly.

Until it was cut short, Kat thought.

Elena simply nodded. “The Russian mining region is known as the Kaliningrad Oblast. But it was formerly called Königsberg, meaning the King’s Mountain.”

Sam straightened, rubbing a kink in his back. “So then this egg really has a royal history.”

“A history that goes much farther back in time than just the Russian tsars.” Elena squinted at the small polished orb inside the egg. “If you look closely, you can see a small fly floating in the amber.”

She shifted upright and eyed them all. “It’s as if the amber of this region has preserved this land’s entire history. Culturally, politically, and even biologically.”

“Unfortunately for Hawaii,” Monk added, “maybe it preserved too much.”

Reminded of this fact, Kat checked her watch. “We should keep going.” She directed them to a narrow staircase that led up one level. “This way.”

Before leaving Tallinn, she had contacted the museum director here. She had employed the same cover story as before: that her team was looking to rebuild James Smithson’s lost mineral collection, starting with a particular large chunk of amber mined from this region. The director had been happy to offer his assistance, especially upon hearing that the U.S. Librarian of Congress was part of this research team.

Kat only hoped the man’s cooperation did not end as tragically as it had for Director Tamm. The last she heard, the man was out of surgery, but his chances of surviving remained critical. His daughter, Lara, kept a vigil at his bedside.

As she climbed the stairs, guilt ate at Kat. She hated to put others at risk, but with the situation worsening by the hour in Hawaii — where millions were threatened — she had no choice.

They reached the next floor, which dealt with the history of amber. A large medieval map hung on the brick wall to the right. Similar to what Lara had shown them, it highlighted a historic trade route running along the Baltic coast from St. Petersburg to Gdansk, then coursing south through Poland until eventually ending in Italy.

The Amber Road.

Somewhere along that path, Smithson had obtained his artifact.

But where?

“Dear,” Monk said at her side, “I believe that man is trying to draw your attention.”

On the other side of the chamber, a short man in a suit that looked too tight for his ample belly waved to them. It was the museum director. He stood behind a velvet rope that closed off a neighboring room. He must have recognized Elena Delgado. This was confirmed as the man called over to them.

“Dr. Delgado, what an honor!”

The scatter of tourists looked between the man and their group.

Kat held back a groan. She had asked the director to keep this visit secret, but clearly her words had fallen on deaf ears. She herded her group quickly across the floor. As they reached the man, he lifted away the rope to allow them access to the cordoned-off room.

“What a pleasure,” the director effused, “a true pleasure to host the Librarian of Congress at our humble institution.”

Elena took this professional adoration in stride. She smiled warmly and shook his hand. “Thank you, Director Bosko. We appreciate your help… and your discretion.”

She emphasized this last word, while casting Kat an apologetic glance.

The director bobbed his head. “Oczywiście… of course. Come inside where we can discuss this privately.”

Kat followed Bosko into the neighboring chamber. Partitions divided the space, and several display cases stood empty. It appeared the room was being prepped for a new exhibit. The director drew them to the back wall. While the location was out of the direct line of sight of the entry, it was far from private.

Several items rested haphazardly on the table, all of them amber.

“I gathered these to perhaps assist you with your search,” Bosko said. “I hope that wasn’t too presumptive of me.”

“Not at all,” Elena assured him.

Kat frowned at the collection. She saw no documents, journals, or books. “Were you able to find any evidence concerning the travels of James Smithson to your city?”

Bosko pursed his lips and shook his head. “Alas, no. We searched all records leading up to the date when Mr. Smithson boarded the merchant ship and headed to Tallinn.” His sad expression quickly dissolved away, replaced again with his ebullient personality. “But perhaps with more time, we could still discover some reference.”

More time was not a luxury they could grant him.

Kat had a sinking feeling they were wasting valuable time.

“Look at this,” Sam said, as he stooped over one of the items on the table. “This is amazing.”

They all drew closer. A magnifying glass had been positioned over a fist-sized chunk of amber. It was lit from behind and polished to better reveal what was frozen inside.

Elena took a turn looking through the glass. “It’s a lizard.”

“This bit of scientific curiosity is from our collection,” Bosko said, puffing his chest proudly. “It’s rare to see such a creature perfectly preserved in its entirety, from the tip of its tail to its narrow nose.”

Kat also appreciated it as a stark reminder of what it was they pursued. This apparently was not lost on the director.

“When you described the artifact obtained by Mr. Smithson — a large boulder of amber holding the bones of some ancient reptile — I couldn’t help but think of this exhibit piece.” He lifted both eyebrows. “And perhaps a way to help you in your search for its source.”

“How?” Kat asked.

Bosko waved to the lizard in amber. “That little fellow is thirty-two million years old, which is typical for the age of the amber found in this immediate area. The deposits in Russia and around the edges of the Baltic Sea are quite young. They formed during the Tertiary Period, some thirty to fifty million years ago. In fact, despite looking rock solid, our amber has not yet fully set.”

Monk studied the collection on the table. “You’re saying this stuff is still hardening.”

“Indeed.” Bosko smiled broadly, his cheeks blushing pinker. “It’s why I know Mr. Smithson’s artifact did not come from our Baltic coast.”

Kat’s lingering despair settled back to her shoulders.

Have we been on the wrong track all along?

Bosko continued: “For the truly ancient amber, you have to look elsewhere. Deposits scattered around the world. Like over in your country or in Spain — where amber can be found that is two hundred million years old.”

“But what does any of this mean?” Kat asked. Her question came out a bit sharply as her patience wore thin.

The director noted her tone and tamped down some of his natural exuberance. “Yes, I’m sorry. You mentioned in your call that the bones in the artifact were believed to be those of a small dinosaur.”

“That’s correct.”

“Then Mr. Smithson must have collected his sample from a deposit of amber that was very old. If you assume the creature came from as recently as the late Cretaceous Period — when the dinosaurs started to go extinct — then the amber would still have to be somewhere between eighty to a hundred million years ago. That’s twice the age of the amber you’ll find around the Baltic Sea.”

Kat pictured the medieval map on the wall outside. “So the artifact couldn’t have been found along the Amber Road?”

Monk cursed under his breath. He fiddled with the wrist of his replacement prosthetic. From past experience, he always brought along a spare, which he had left on the jet. It was a nervous gesture, as if he were trying to wear in a new pair of shoes.

“I didn’t mean to suggest that,” Bosko corrected her. “I only meant it didn’t come from our coastline. But once upon a time, a prehistoric sea — the Tethys Ocean — covered all of southern Poland. Back then, forests along the Tethys’s coastline oozed thick resin that would eventually harden into amber.”

Kat followed his logic now. “So the farther south you go”—she pictured the map again—“the older the amber.”

The director’s subdued manner brightened again. “Old enough to perhaps preserve the bones of a dinosaur.”

But where?

“You’re probably wondering where that could be,” Bosko added, as if reading her thoughts. The man was clearly sharper than his clownlike enthusiasm suggested. He moved over to the table. “I’ve laid out samples of amber here, from oldest to youngest. Note how the amber darkens as it ages, eventually becoming a deep reddish-brown. Most of the oldest amber is found in blue earth.”

Monk frowned. “Blue earth?”

“The scientific term is marine glauconitic sand. Basically, salty sandstone that forms at the edge of retreating seas.”

Monk nodded. “Like would’ve been deposited as the Tethys Ocean dried up.”

“Precisely. So the oldest and deepest deposits of blue earth are found in southern Poland.”

“A region through which the Amber Road runs,” Kat said.

She suddenly wanted to get a closer look at that map. Something nagged at her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.

Bosko’s grin turned mischievous. “That’s why I took the additional liberty to—”

A loud bang cut him off, making them all jump and turn toward the room’s entry. One of the metal stanchions holding up the velvet rope had toppled over. Footfalls hurried in their direction.

Kat reached for the weapon holstered under her jacket.

Elena retreated to the table as Monk and Kat simultaneously pulled out pistols and pointed their guns toward the doorway. Sam moved to her side.

The director looked aghast at the exposed weapons, but he finally collected himself and lifted a palm. “Don’t shoot. This is what I was about to tell you.”

From around a partition, a tall, stooped figure hurried into view. His long coat billowed like a cape from his bony shoulders as he rushed forward. He clutched a worn messenger bag protectively to his chest. Though the man was likely only in his forties, his gaunt face made him look both older and more dour. As he noted the raised guns, he seemed unfazed, his expression merely gloomy, as if he had somehow expected to be ambushed.

“This is Dr. Damian Slaski,” Bosko introduced, stepping between the newcomer and the weapons. “He’s a colleague. From our sister Amber Museum that opened recently in Krakow. He was already here when you called, to borrow some of our pieces for an exhibit on amber manufacturing during the eighteenth century.”

“How many amber museums are there?” Monk mumbled.

Bosko heard him and took his inquiry seriously. “There’s one in Copenhagen, another in the Dominican Republic, and of course, in Kaliningrad to the north.”

“Do not forget the Palanga Amber Museum in Lithuania,” Slaski added solemnly, then shrugged dismissively. “But it is just a division of the Lithuanian Art Museum.”

Kat cast Monk a scathing look for distracting the pair and tried to get the conversation back on track. “Director Bosko, I’m assuming you must have solicited Dr. Slaski’s help.”

“Yes, yes, that’s right. If you are seeking sources of old amber, deposits hundreds of millions of years, then my good friend, Damian, is our best resource.”

Bosko clapped Slaski on the shoulder; he simply sighed in response. The pair made an odd couple. One short, the other tall. One round, the other thin. But it was their personalities that were the true polar opposites. The ebullient Bosko seemed incapable of forming a frown, whereas Slaski’s lips seemed perpetually frozen in one.

Still, Elena sensed a true friendship between the two men, something more than just a professional relationship.

“Damian oversees the Amber Laboratory at his museum,” Bosko extolled. “His lab has Krakow’s only spectrometer for analyzing the authenticity of amber artifacts. His expertise is in dating amber. There is no one better.”

Bosko grinned at his colleague, who only shrugged, as if acknowledging the authenticity of the compliment but taking no pleasure in it.

“Krakow is not far from Poland’s southern border,” Bosko explained. “That’s where you’ll find very old layers of blue earth, those strata of salty marine sandstone left behind as the Tethys Ocean receded. And that’s where, in rare cases, deposits of ancient amber have been found.”

“How rare?” Kat asked.

Elena knew the importance of her question. If such deposits were few and far between, it would help narrow their search.

Dr. Slaski answered, “I have most of those discoveries — past and present — compiled on my office computer. The project was only possible because of a history museum outside of Krakow, which houses an extensive cartography collection. I spent many months searching their collection. Several of the maps, some dating back to the fourteenth century, mark the sites of old amber deposits.”

“If you could share what you learned,” Kat said, “it could greatly assist us in pinpointing where James Smithson obtained his artifact.”

“Or at least limit the scope of our search,” Elena added.

“I’m not sure that would help,” Slaski said. “I’ve mapped over three hundred sites across southern Poland.”

Kat winced, but refused to let this lead go. “Maybe if we narrowed the search parameter down to the time frame of Smithson’s travels along the Amber Road, we might be able to—”

The dour doctor shook his head. “There is no need to go to that trouble. I was rushing over here because I believe I know where Mr. Smithson could have discovered his sample of ancient amber.”

Kat blinked at this claim. “How?”

Bosko simply clapped his palms together. “Did I not tell you that Damian is your man?”

“What am I looking at?” Kat asked.

She struggled to understand how this had anything to do with Slaski’s claim from a moment before. The group was gathered around a laptop that the doctor had removed from his leather bag and set up on the table. The image on the screen looked like a very old map.

“This is from the museum’s cartography collection. The map was drawn by Willem Hondius back in 1645, though it is believed he based his map from the previous work done by cartographer Marcin German.”

“Yes,” Kat pressed him, sensing each passing minute, “but what’s its significance?”

“It’s one of the maps I used in building my compilation. There are two amber sites noted here. But that’s not why I wanted to show you this.” Slaski stared hard at her. “You have to understand that amber sites in southern Poland are rare, relatively small, and scattered wildly. So no mines were established to solely dig for amber. The discoveries were haphazard and by sheer chance.”

Monk straightened from his hunch over the laptop. “You’re saying these deposits were stumbled upon during other mining operations.”

“Which matches Archibald MacLeish’s account in his journal,” Kat added. “Smithson had claimed over drinks with a geologist that some miners accidentally broke into a rich vein of amber.”

She restrained from sharing the rest of the tale, how something was unleashed in that mine. A horrible disease carried by stinging insects.

Born right out of the bones of the rock, Smithson had asserted.

Kat suspected what had truly happened was that those miners cracked through prehistoric bones trapped in the amber, bones full of the Odokuro’s cryptobiotic cysts. Once aerosolized, those spores were inhaled or ingested by the workers. After that, they’d be dead men walking, with the hatched larvae eating them from the inside out, until finally adult wasps came bursting forth from their corpses.

No wonder they firebombed the tunnels with the workers still down there, then sealed it all up.

Slaski, of course, knew none of this, but he came to a conclusion on his own. “I had already assumed the amber deposit must have been an accidental discovery at an already established mine. During Mr. Smithson’s time, there were many active mines across Poland. Digging for copper, sulfur, silver. But in southern Poland, the largest operations were all salt mines.”

He pointed to the map on the screen. “Like this one Hondius drew. He even included etched vignettes of those operations along the bottom of his map, showing the huge scope of the operations at this particular mine.”

“What mine is it?” Elena asked, as she peered at the drawings along the bottom through her reading glasses.

“It’s one of Poland’s most famous sites. The Wieliczka Salt Mine. It was established in the thirteenth century and continued operations until 2007, after which it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”

Monk frowned. “Why was an old mine chosen for that honor?”

Bosko chimed in, his voice bright with excitement. “Oh, you must visit it. It is quite wondrous. Over the centuries, generations of miners had taken to carving and sculpting the subterranean chambers with elaborate decorations, most of them religious in scope, as the miners sought the good graces of God to keep them safe.”

“For ages, the sights have drawn countless visitors to Wieliczka,” Slaski said, a rare edge of pride in his voice. “The famous astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus toured the place in the sixteenth century. The Polish composer Frédéric Chopin did the same in the nineteenth. More recently, a few U.S. presidents have visited the site, as did the current pope.”

Kat got an inkling as to the origin of Slaski’s earlier claim. “Such a reputation would have certainly reached a geologist traveling along the nearby Amber Road.”

“How could he resist?” Slaski said, with the faintest ghost of a smile. “That is why I went and called the mine and had them check the visitors roster from the window of time when your Mr. Smithson was in the vicinity.”

“And you found his name?” Monk asked.

Slaski nodded.

Kat stared at the map glowing on the laptop’s screen. “And according to this old account, amber had been found there in the past.”

“Correct. It is in such strata of salt where you’ll often find amber deposits.”

Kat felt they were drawing close.

Sam cleared his throat. As an entomologist, he likely didn’t have much to offer to this historical trail, but from his crinkled brow, he must have a concern.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It was something I remember from reviewing Professor Matsui’s research notes concerning the…” His voice trailed off as he glanced at the two Polish men, plainly reluctant to speak too openly.

Kat wanted to dismiss such precautions with time running out, but she drew him aside and kept her voice low. “What?”

“Professor Matsui attributed the amazing death-defying properties of the wasps’ life cycle to genetic properties they borrowed from other insects and possibly what he described as the dark matter of life, those Lazarus microbes that seemingly could lie dormant for hundreds of millions of years yet come back to life.”

Kat vaguely remembered those speculations. “What about them?”

“Professor Matsui made a list of those Lazarus microbes in his notes. Natronobacterium, Virgibacillus, Halorubacterium, Oceanobacillus. All of them were discovered encrusted in crystal formations. And not just any formations. They were all found in the same type of crystals.”

Though Kat could not recall the details, she could guess. She glanced back to the map on the laptop. “Salt.”

Sam nodded. “Perhaps it was the wasps’ proximity to those salt-loving buggers that allowed the insects to be infected by them. And over time, some of the microbes’ genetic code was incorporated into the wasps’ genome, gifting them with the power of cryptobiosis.”

Or life after death.

“If you’re right, that would further support that we’re on the right track.” She checked her watch. “Only one way to find out.”

As she gathered everyone up, Slaski stepped forward. “I was going to return to Krakow today. Perhaps I should accompany you.”

She wanted to refuse, remembering the blood seeping through her fingers as she struggled to keep Director Tamm alive.

Slaski was persistent. “I’m both familiar with the mine and its operators. I’m sure I can convince them to cooperate with your search.”

With time running short, how can I refuse this offer?

She glanced to Monk. He looked worried, mirroring her own trepidation, but he ultimately shrugged, coming to the same conclusion as her.

“Thank you, Dr. Slaski. We’d appreciate your help.”

After also thanking Director Bosko, the group was soon out of the museum and traveling down Dluga Street again, passing jewelry boutiques and tiny cafes. The congested foot traffic forced them to wend between throngs of tourists and locals.

Kat came to another conclusion, sharing it with her husband. “I guess I owe Aiko Higashi an apology.”

“It seems you do,” Monk acknowledged.

Before leaving Tallinn earlier in the day, Kat had asked Painter to lay a false trail, to tell Japanese intelligence services that their group was headed next to St. Petersburg. The strategy of hopping to the northern end of the Amber Road made logical sense and should have been convincing. If there had been a leak out of Japan, the enemy should’ve been looking for them in northern Russia.

That wasn’t the case.

“How many?” she asked.

“I count five.”

They were being followed.

Kat kept going, primed to act if the enemy made any move, but from the pattern of the tail, that seemed unlikely. Whoever had targeted them must have learned from their failure in Tallinn and now sought simply to draft behind them, to try to learn what they knew.

She weighed whether to lose the tail or simply let the others believe they were undetected. Either tactic had its advantages and disadvantages.

For now, a greater worry nagged at her.

How did they know we were in Gdansk?

She came to one final conclusion.

Whether back in D.C. or out here…

We have a traitor in our midst.

25

Powerless, Gray watched the black tide encircle the three trapped men. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth in frustration. There was nothing he could do to stop what was about to happen.

Professor Matsui’s descriptive name for this variation of the wasp drone — a wingless carnivore he called harvesters—foretold the fate of the three trapped men.

Inside the sealed chamber, one intrepid scavenger broke away from the mass and shot toward Kowalski’s toes. With his arms pinioned to the side by chains, he could only stamp a foot at the threat. The man ground his heel atop the insect, his face scowling in disgust. His lips moved in a curse silenced by the room’s insulation.

Kowalski lifted his foot to inspect the damage. There was none. The wasp’s tanklike body had withstood the assault. The harvester sprang upward, landing on his broad foot, then skittered to his hairy ankle.

It latched there.

Kowalski tried to rub it away with his other foot, but he couldn’t budge it.

Then his grimace turned into a shocked, silent gasp.

Gray imagined razor-sharp mandibles biting deep.

Blood dribbled down the edge of the big man’s foot.

Palu’s cousins — Makaio and Tua — noted the damage. They were trussed to the right of Kowalski. They drew away from the horde slowly closing down from all sides, pulling their chains taut. The three men bunched in the room’s center.

“Please don’t do this,” Ken begged. The professor was held at gunpoint at the window next to Gray. Another trio of armed men stood guard behind their group.

“Then tell me what I want to know.” Valya lifted a palm to a large green button, likely an emergency switch to subdue the threat. “And I can stop the torment to come.”

Ken glanced to Gray.

He shook his head, telling the professor to keep quiet.

Valya swung her cold gaze to Aiko. “Any of you may speak.”

Aiko’s face was slightly turned away from the window. It looked like she wanted to squeeze her eyes closed, but she fought not to. Perhaps out of some obligation to the beleaguered men: if they must suffer, so will I.

To answer Valya, Aiko returned to fully facing the window.

Valya lowered her arm. “So be it.”

Masahiro stood at her side with his arms crossed, his expression disdainful — not out of disgust at Valya’s tactics, but because he clearly believed it was in vain. “The woman may very well not be here.”

“She’s not,” Gray growled. “She’s back on Maui, like I told you from the start. You’re torturing these men for no reason.”

Masahiro cast a withering glance at Valya, as if to say I told you so, then checked his watch. “We should already be evacuating the island.” He waved an arm dismissively at the window. “My grandfather has no interest in these three, so leave them here. But we should take the others and go now.”

Valya turned her back on him. “Not without Seichan.”

Masahiro scowled and mumbled a curse under his breath. “Baka mesu…”

She ignored him, plainly content to play this out.

It didn’t take long.

Inside the room, the tide finally broke, likely drawn by the dribble of Kowalski’s blood. The harvester horde descended on the three men chained inside.

Tua rose on his toes, as if to escape the rising threat. His brother, Makaio, even lifted both feet off the floor, but it was to no avail. As he hung from his wrists, the cuffs cut deeply into his flesh. He was forced to drop a leg back down. His foot vanished into the leading edge of the black mass. At his side, Tua danced in his chains as harvesters reached him, too, and climbed both legs in black streams.

Kowalski used his big feet like a pair of brooms, attempting to sweep the floor clear around him. But the wasps’ numbers were too great. He lost the battle as the horde fully converged on their group.

In a matter of seconds, the men were covered from the waist down in a thick mat of biting wasps. The three contorted in their chains — not in a vain attempt to shake their attackers loose, but in clear agony.

Mouths were open in silent screams.

Gray knew it would only get worse from here.

More and more harvesters pushed upward. So far, they seemed to be sticking to the men’s legs and midsections. As Kowalski tried to kick them off, blood spattered outward, striking the window.

Aiko finally broke, turning her head away and closing her eyes.

Gray refused, knowing he owed these men that much.

But how long will this last?

As if hearing his question, Professor Matsui offered an answer. “Harvesters are like the parasitizing larvae. They’ll spare the vital organs.” He spoke dully, likely trying to use a researcher’s clinical detachment to shield him from the horror. “They’ll keep their food source alive for as long as possible. Eating their way from the periphery to the core — from outside to in.”

Gray stared at the tortured men, wishing Ken had remained mute.

But the professor wasn’t done. “Harvesters carry a paralytic venom in their bites. In these great numbers, it will subdue most prey.”

Aiko had listened with her eyes still closed. “Will the paralyzing stop the pain?”

“No,” Ken said, the word coming out like a moan. “Though unable to move, they’ll feel every bite as they’re eaten alive.”

Past the blood-spattered glass, the three men still fought, still writhed. But if the professor was correct, their struggles would soon end.

But not the pain.

Valya spoke with a dreadful calmness as she stared at Gray. “I warned you that I’d give you three chances to tell me the location of Seichan. This is that third chance.”

She again lifted her palm to the green button.

Gray remained silent, but the muscles between his shoulder blades tremored. By now, he could discern faint cries from inside, loud enough to pierce the room’s insulation.

She let him stand there for another long breath — then she reached her other hand and flipped a switch beside the window. Hidden speakers suddenly burst forth with screams, transmitting the men’s agony in full volume.

Gray swore he could hear blood in those cries.

Inside, the horde had crested over the men’s waists. They streamed up their flanks and along their chained arms, consuming their meal as Ken had described.

From outside to in.

Gray could take it no longer. “She’s here,” he gasped out loud.

Valya cocked her head, while flicking a glance at Masahiro. “What was that?”

Fury burned through him, giving him the strength to face Valya. “Seichan’s sick. Parasitized, like I told you. But she’s on the island.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.” He scowled. “I lost sight of her in the lake. She may have been too compromised to make the crossing.”

Valya narrowed her gaze on him.

“It’s… it’s the truth,” Ken said.

Even Aiko nodded, her eyes open again.

Valya studied each of them before coming to a conclusion. “I actually believe you.” She lowered her palm without pressing it. “But it’s not good enough.”

She waved to the armed men, stepping away from the glass.

“We’re finished here. Take them to the plane.”

Inside the room, three men thrashed in their chains, like slabs of meat on hooks. Agonized screams followed Gray and the others as they were forced at gunpoint away from the window.

He stumbled as he turned, numb with the knowledge there was nothing he could do for the men inside, but a new purpose focused him.

He stared at Valya’s back, making a silent promise.

I will make you scream even louder when I kill you.

It’s taken us too long to get here.…

Seichan questioned her course of action as she released ballast and floated her stolen submersible toward the station’s pressurized docking chamber. The steel-floored glass dome abridged the lowest level of the complex, a glowing barnacle on the underside of the research station.

On her approach, she had noted another two matching domes, along with a larger one. The conning tower of a midget submarine poked up into the bigger dock. Its bulk looked like a giant lamprey latched on to the facility. Past its length, her sub’s cone of light revealed the black eye of a tunnel, which likely led out to the open ocean.

Seichan craned her neck as her tinier craft rose toward the circular pool at the center of the docking chamber. The pressurized air inside the dome must hold back the lake from flooding into the rest of the station.

When the sub breached, she ducked her head low over the controls.

Palu crouched behind her on the open deck in back.

As the craft surfaced into open air, salt water drained from his body and off the glass hood over the pilot seat. As it cleared, she spotted the watery image of a dockworker coming toward them.

She scowled at his presence. She had hoped to find the place empty.

No such luck.

The worker waved an arm impatiently. “Hayakusiro!” he demanded, urging them to hurry, believing they were the returning crew.

She and Palu had disguised themselves in the dead men’s face masks, so it was an easy enough mistake to make.

The worker pointed to his radio headpiece and spoke rapidly in Japanese. “The evacuation order was just transmitted. We have fifteen minutes to clear the station.”

Palu hopped off the back of the sub, but he immediately stopped at the pool’s edge and turned his back on the dockworker. He pretended to be waiting to help Seichan.

The worker grabbed Palu’s arm and tried to steer him toward the exit. “Get to the airlock.”

Unfortunately, Palu didn’t speak any Japanese.

Seichan rolled out of the pilot’s seat and over to the back deck. As she stood up, she tossed off her scuba gear.

Upon seeing her, the worker’s pinched expression changed to open-eyed shock.

She expected this reaction. Her lithe form was impossible to hide in a snug wetsuit. Before the man could take a step, she leaped at him, a dagger already in hand.

Palu stumbled out of her way.

She knocked the worker flat onto his back. Her blade sliced his throat, cutting above the larynx so he could not shout into his radio. She covered his death gurgle with her free hand. She watched blood run in a crimson trail across the steel floor and spill into the docking pool.

Palu quickly shed his own gear and moved to the airlock. He kept to one side, away from the door’s porthole-like window. A green light shone above the frame, likely indicating the airlock had already been pressurized to match the docking dome.

She rose from the dead man. Before she could take a step, fresh pain burst through her body. She hunched against it, her legs suddenly weak. She breathed heavily through the flare, willing it to subside back to its steady smolder.

Palu hurried to her side. “C’mon.”

He hooked an arm around her and helped her to the airlock. Each step was like walking through fire. He got the door open, pushed her into the cramped space, and followed her inside, slamming the door behind him.

An illuminated timer above the exit door began counting down from three minutes as the airlock depressurized to match the main station. She cursed the delay but recognized the slow process was to help acclimate divers as they transitioned from the docks, lessening the risk of the bends from nitrogen bubbles forming in the blood.

Impatient, she moved to the tiny porthole in the outer door. She inspected the glass tunnel that extended from the dock. It was thankfully empty.

Small bit of luck there.

Her relief was short-lived.

A Klaxon suddenly sounded. It was ear-shatteringly loud in the small space. She hunched from the noise, trying to judge its significance.

Was it an evacuation siren? Or had they been spotted?

Palu answered it by pointing back into the docking dome, toward its roof.

A mounted camera swiveled there.

Distracted by the worker, addled by pain, she had failed to spot its presence.

She turned back to the other door. Through the porthole, she watched three men in helmets and body armor appear at the far end of the glass tunnel. They rushed toward the airlock, the butts of their rifles fixed to their shoulders.

She checked the timer.

Another two minutes to go.

They were now trapped in a cell of their own making.

She shared a glance with Palu, silently asking him.

Are you ready?

He shrugged, knowing they had no other option.

As the siren continued to blare, Ken stood with his back to the tunnel wall. The others flanked him to either side. Rifles remained fixed on the group, while the chaos was sorted out.

Ken stared back down the tunnel toward the blood-spattered window five yards away. The group had been forced to stop in the tunnel when the Klaxon sounded. Even above the alarm bells, the men’s screams could be heard. By now, harvesters coated their arms and legs and lower abdomen. Their bodies appeared to be struggling less as the paralytic agent in the wasp’s bites began to take effect.

Gray stared back there, too, his face dark with rage.

Aiko simply studied her bare toes.

A few steps away, Valya and Masahiro huddled over radios. He could not make out what they were saying due to the noise. But the pale woman turned her icy stare onto Gray. Her lips thinned, one edge curling up with what could only be satisfaction.

Gray noted her attention.

The siren suddenly cut off, leaving Ken’s ears still ringing.

Valya returned to them. “It seems all our questioning has proven to be moot.”

“Seichan’s here,” Gray said.

“And we have her all boxed up and ready to be delivered to Masahiro’s grandfather.”

Gray showed no distress at this news. Instead, he stood straighter and narrowed his gaze on Valya. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

Through the airlock window, Seichan stared at the trio of armed men as they guarded the tunnel. Above her head, the timer ticked down the final seconds of depressurization, marking when the safety lock on the door leading into the station would be released.

Palu leaned against the wall, accepting the inevitable.

Finally, the timer read 0:00 and its red glow switched to green.

Time’s up.

The three men outside had taken up position. Two of them hung a few yards down the tunnel with rifles leveled at the door. The third shouted through the window.

“Hands on your head! Where I can see them!”

Seichan obeyed, as did Palu.

“When I open the door, you wait. You only step through when I tell you. Do you understand?”

Seichan nodded for them both.

Agony racked the muscles of her legs and arms, making it hard to hold this position. She pictured the tiny larvae carving paths through her flesh, leaving fire in their wake.

Get on with it already.

The guard glared at the trapped pair, then shifted to the side, pulling the door open. He used its steel bulk to shield himself in case they tried anything. His two partners leaned their cheeks to their rifles’ stocks, aiming into the airlock.

Satisfied, the guard at the door yelled, “Exit slowly. Your hands move from your head, you die.”

Seichan led the way, stepping out first. The air inside the station was cooler. She could also feel the difference in pressure. Even this small movement apparently aggravated the larvae. Fresh pain shot down her legs.

Still, she kept her pace slow and steady, her fingers entwined atop her head.

Palu followed, matching her pace and posture.

The guard shifted from the door to cover them from behind with his weapon. “Keep going,” he ordered. “Slowly.”

With no other choice, Seichan allowed the men to herd them down the tunnel toward the main bulk of the station. In her head, another timer was running. Her training with the Guild had taught her this discipline, of compartmentalizing her thought processes.

It was more challenging due to the pain etching every muscle fiber.

By the time they reached where the tunnel turned into the main station, her brow was pebbled with sweat. Her breathing had become gasps. She stopped at the turn, panting, half-hunched. Though her arms now trembled, she kept her hands atop her head.

“Keep going!” the man in back shouted.

Palu twisted and growled back. “She’s sick, brah. And pregnant. Let her catch her breath.”

The guard scowled back, studying her trembling breaths. “Ten seconds.”

Only need another two.

As the timer ran out in her head, she leaped headlong toward the side tunnel, pulling a blade from a wrist sheath.

Palu followed her through the air.

Before the guards could react, an explosion rocked the entire station. Her ears popped from the pressure. She landed atop the nearest guard, who had been knocked off his feet by the blast. She jabbed her knife under his chin until she hit bone, then wrested his rifle away. Still on the floor, she fired at the man who had been behind them, catching him in the throat.

Palu had barreled into the third guard and punched his meaty fist three times into the man’s nose. His body went slack.

Seichan snagged the snub-nosed assault rifle and pointed toward the bulk of the station. “Go, go, go.”

She had studied the rough layout of the station during her approach to the docking berth and fixed it in her head, where it turned like a 3-D model. But it hadn’t been her only precaution before arriving here. In addition, she had readied a stratagem not taught to her by the Guild, but by Gray.

To improvise on the fly — to utilize old resources in new and unexpected ways.

What Seichan had chosen to utilize had certainly been old—going all the way back to World War II. Earlier, before leaving the graveyard of Japanese bombers, she had sought out and found an intact torpedo in the sand. She and Palu had carefully strapped and hidden its length on the underside of their stolen submersible and affixed a demolition timer packed with a small C4 charge to its nose.

At the time, she hadn’t known if the ordnance preserved in these hypersaline waters was still intact.

She certainly had her answer now.

Behind her, as she sprinted with Palu, a massive throaty gurgle grew louder, chasing them. She recognized and expected this threat. She pictured the airlock doors blown off — if not the entire dock. No longer held back by the pressurized dome, the lake was flooding into the station.

She risked a glance over her shoulder. Past Palu’s bulk, water blasted into view at the turn. It struck the corner with enough force to rattle the tunnel. The churning jet swirled around the turn and roiled toward them, pushing a tangle of bodies before it.

“Seichan!” Palu yelled at her, his eyes huge, his voice full of panicked warning.

She turned her attention back around. Ten yards ahead, a steel iris was pinching closed across the tunnel. The explosive decompression must have triggered the automatic closure of emergency hatches, designed to seal off flooded sections of the station.

She dug her toes into the perforated steel floor and sprinted with all her breath, using the fiery pain in her leg and belly muscles to fuel her.

She reached the iris before it closed and dove headfirst through it. She rolled off a shoulder and back to her feet.

Palu…

The large Hawaiian had been unable to match her speed. Water frothed and growled behind him, tearing up sections of steel flooring. The ballistic polymer glass splintered around him. The iris closed tighter and tighter.

Seichan recognized the truth.

Palu did, too — the terror of that certainty shining in his eyes.

He’s not going to make it.

26

Chaos was opportunity.

Gray reacted with an instinct drilled into him by the Army Rangers and honed from his years in the field for Sigma. As the explosion shook the station, knocking everyone helter-skelter, Gray lunged to the nearest guard and grabbed the barrel of his rifle. He yanked the weapon, then punched the steel stock hard into the man’s nose.

As bone crunched, the rifle fell loose. Gray spun it around, dropped to a knee, and shot another guard in the head. To the side, Aiko moved as swiftly, dropping another gunman with a snapped side kick into his jaw. She rolled over his body, coming up with a rifle, and shot the last armed guard.

The action had taken four long seconds — and unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one taking advantage of the moment.

Gray swung his weapon toward the greatest threat, but Valya had Ken hugged to her chest, an arm pinned around the man’s neck. Her other arm pressed a pistol against his temple. Using the man as a human shield, she dragged him to a side tunnel. She herded Masahiro behind her.

They vanished around the corner.

Gray glared after them. “Hold here,” he ordered Aiko. “Cover my back.”

“Hai.” Aiko took a firm stance, her stolen rifle at her shoulder, aiming toward that corner in case reinforcements were sent.

Gray turned the other way and ran down the tunnel toward the three trapped men.

Their screaming had ominously stopped.

His heart pounded. He feared he was already too late.

When he reached the window, he saw their bodies hanging slack in their shackles. He swung his arm wide and slapped his palm against the green emergency button. An alarm sounded and thick streams of highly pressurized white foam sprayed from hundreds of jets in the ceiling. The men’s bodies were immediately coated. From the force of the spray and whatever insecticide was in the foam, black bodies shed from their arms, legs, and bellies. As the mass was washed off, the draining white foam turned bright crimson with the men’s blood.

The three continued to slump in their chains, their limbs limp and lifeless.

The foaming ended with a final sputtering, and the alarm went off.

Responding to this signal, Gray rushed to the door. He spun the locking wheel open. His breath heaved from the effort and the terror.

Am I too late?

“Move it!” Seichan hollered.

She crouched to the side of the closing iris. A tempest of water and torn steel churned violently toward Palu as he crossed the last of the distance to the emergency hatch. As it tried to close, gears ground against the stolen assault rifle she had wedged lengthwise into the center of the iris a second ago, holding the way open for Palu. The force of the hatch’s motor vibrated the weapon, struggling to pop it free.

The barrel began to bend.

C’mon.

Palu reached the hatch and dove headlong through it. His hip caught against the obstruction of the rifle, requiring him to twist and claw himself free. He finally rolled into the tunnel behind her.

Seichan yanked on the assault rifle, trying to free it, but the iris had closed tightly against it. If the hatch remained open, they would never escape the water’s rage.

Palu came to her aid, clearly recognizing her struggle and the danger.

Together, they tried to rip the rifle out.

It refused to budge — then it was too late.

The wall of water hit the hatch, shooting like a fire hose through the pinched opening. Seichan tried to maintain her grip on the weapon, but she was washed down the tunnel. She caught glimpses of Palu. The Hawaiian still clung to his post, his legs braced against the hatch, impossibly withstanding the water’s force.

Then a loud clang rang out, and Palu came rolling toward her.

Seichan sputtered for air, trying to break her tumble.

Then, after several harrowing, breathless seconds, the force of the riptide faded around her. She sloshed a few more feet and came to a stop. Water continued to spill forward, but with little power.

She turned to find a waterlogged Palu crawling toward her. He clutched the rifle in one hand.

“How… how did you…?” It hurt too much to speak, so she nodded to the gun.

He looked down at its bent barrel and tossed the useless weapon aside. “Not me, kaikaina.” He glanced back to the sealed hatch. “Big piece of the steel floor smacked into it on the other side. Popped it right out.”

She nodded, relieved but still concerned.

And for good reason.

The station groaned under the weight of the flooded section. Around the edges of the sealed iris, the ballistic glass began to splinter.

It’s not going to hold.

Confirming this risk, she watched the docking dome break away and slowly fall toward the lakebed.

Time to get out of here.

She hauled to her feet, while Palu did the same with a loud groan.

“Where to?” he asked.

She simply headed away, avoiding the question as much as the truth.

I have no idea.

Gray wheeled the door’s locking mechanism until it released. He took a deep breath, then pulled the steel hatch open. Residual foam spattered into the hallway, bringing with it a stench that immediately churned his stomach. It was a cloying sweetness mixed with rotted meat.

Grimacing, he stared at the trio of slack bodies hanging from cuffs. Blood and foam ran down their legs and dripped from their fingertips. From this distance, it was impossible to tell how much damage had been inflicted by the horde of biting wasps.

Only one way to find out.

He climbed inside. His bare feet crunched over the dead or listless carapaces of the wingless wasps. As hard-shelled as they were, it was like walking on marbles — marbles with sharp edges. The bottoms of his feet were sliced by mandibles that could no longer bite but remained razor sharp.

As he reached Kowalski, a thick-knuckled hand weakly lifted, then dropped, as if waving Gray off. Relief flooded through him. He noted the two cousins’ chests heaved shallowly up and down as they hung.

Still alive… but for how much longer?

He hurriedly released the clasps on their cuffs and soon all three men were slumped on their sides in the slurry of foam, blood, and dead wasps. Through the window, he spotted Aiko, who still guarded the tunnel leading here. Gray knew he had only moments before reinforcements would arrive. When that happened, Aiko could only hold them off for so long — certainly not long enough for him to move the three paralyzed men to safety by himself.

Past the window, he spotted his only hope.

He rushed back outside, skating treacherously over the slick, wasp-pebbled floor. A white metal box hung on the wall outside with a red cross emblazoned on it. He prayed the presence of the emergency first-aid kit at this location was significant.

Like eye-wash stations positioned near toxic chemicals.

He yanked open the kit’s door. Inside, half the contents were a row of self-injectors. They looked like EpiPens, and maybe they were. Back on Maui, epinephrine had been used as a counteragent to the sedative effects of the egg-laying wasps’ venom.

He grabbed a handful of the injectors and raced back into the room.

He knelt first next to Kowalski, ripped off the syringe’s wrapper with his teeth, then jabbed the needle into the man’s neck. The contents spurted through Kowalski’s skin — the little that was left of it on his body.

As he repeated the emergency treatment with Makaio and Tua, he finally took notice of the damage wrought. It looked as if the skin had been flayed from their arms and legs, along with large swaths across their backs and lower bellies. Closer inspection, though, showed the skin was relatively intact, pocked by thousands upon thousands of pea-sized bites. Blood pooled and spilled from the countless wounds, but at least nothing showed overt arterial spurting.

Their chests, necks, and heads had also been mostly spared.

He remembered Ken’s description of the harvesters avoiding anything vital, keeping their food source alive and fresh as long as possible.

Still, the men were far from safe. Exsanguination from so many bites remained a significant threat. All three men needed medical treatment, possibly blood transfusions, as soon as possible.

A guttural groan drew his attention back to Kowalski. The man slowly lifted his head, then sat up, wobbling dazedly. For him to already be moving, those syringes must have held something more potent than simple epinephrine. Likely some antagonist to the harvester’s paralytic poison.

Moments later, Makaio and Tuo also stirred.

“My… my head’s spinning,” Kowalski complained.

“How much pain are you in?”

He stared groggily at the bloody ruin of his splayed legs. “Don’t feel much of anything?”

If that was true, the injectors must have had some type of analgesics mixed in with their load, possibly opioid pain relievers.

“Can you stand?” Gray asked.

“Do I have to?”

A spatter of gunfire answered him.

Gray faced the window. Aiko retreated down the tunnel toward the chamber, firing at the far corner. She must have spotted someone and sought to hold them at bay.

In the room, Kowalski tried to stand, but he looked like a bull trying to roller-skate. Makaio and Tua were only beginning to sit up.

They were in no state to move yet.

Aiko fired off another three rounds, then dashed to the open door. “We must go now.”

Gray glanced over to the slowly reviving men.

I will not abandon them.

Ken stumbled down the last of the stairs to the middle level of the hub. He was dragged by strong pale fingers digging into his forearm. Valya threatened him with a black pistol in her other hand. The retreating party had also gathered a pair of armed security guards in helmets and body armor, who flanked Masahiro protectively.

And for good reason.

This section of the hub was in chaos. Evacuating lab techs and maintenance workers had fled the upper and lower levels. They all crowded toward the main tunnel back to the island, resulting in a bottleneck, which only added to the panic as everyone tried to escape the threatened station.

Valya nudged one of their armed escorts with her pistol. “Clear a path for us. We’re leaving now. Shoot if you must.”

The guard nodded and began to leave Masahiro’s side.

“Stop,” Masahiro ordered. He pointed to the open doors to his office. “I’m not taking any chances. Follow me.”

He led the group through the doors into his teak-paneled office. Ken again noted the fiery phoenix depicted in gold on the wall behind his desk, the logo for Fenikkusu Laboratories. If Ken survived the next hour, he knew that was where he would be taken, where he’d either agree to cooperate or be killed.

Valya scowled at Masahiro. “Why are you wasting time?”

“A fail-safe,” he snapped back at her and crossed behind his desk.

“What fail-safe?”

“In case of an enemy intrusion.” He reached a palm up to a glass rectangle below the phoenix symbol. It bloomed to life with his touch.

“Why wasn’t I informed of this?”

As his palm was scanned, he cast her a withering glare of disdain. “This is my facility. Despite my grandfather’s trust in you, I’m not so gullible as to share everything with a gaijin.”

Valya’s features hardened.

Ken imagined the woman’s albinism had always made her a gaijin, an outsider, someone always held as suspect due to a genetic trait beyond her control. Plus, she was not Japanese. He knew how much heritage mattered in such a closed culture. Even his mixed blood — half Japanese, half German — had cast him a shade lower in the eyes of his fellow researchers in Kyoto. He remembered bristling against this age-old prejudice.

Valya clearly also rankled at her lower status, forever destined to be considered less than by her Japanese superiors. To have Masahiro cast this aspersion now plainly inflamed her.

The fingers still clutching Ken’s elbow dug deeper into his flesh.

As the scan of Masahiro’s palm completed, a hidden teak panel swiveled open, exposing a single red button. “We’ll have four minutes,” he warned. “Trust me, we’ll want to be beyond the station’s blast doors by that time.”

He punched the button with a fist, his aggravation showing.

Valya frowned as he turned back around. “What’s going to—?”

Masahiro cut her off and pointed to the door. “Now we can go.”

The man stalked around the desk and ordered the two guards to clear a path ahead of them. Such an order was no longer necessary. Beyond the doors, the outer hub had mostly emptied as the earlier bottleneck finally broke. The final stragglers fled down the long tunnel.

But they were not the last.

A spatter of gunfire echoed down the stairs from the level above. Valya had sent an armed team to deal with Gray and Aiko. Apparently, the firefight was still under way.

Ken stared up, willing them to hold out.

But in the end, what good would it truly do?

He pictured the red button under the fiery phoenix.

They had less than four minutes.

Valya looked up also, her expression wary. It was that wariness that saved her life. She suddenly swung around, yanking Ken to her chest as a pistol blast rang out behind them. A round whistled past the side of his head, burning through the edge of his left ear. Pain flared, momentarily blinding hm.

As his vision cleared, he saw Seichan running toward them, her pistol raised, the barrel smoking.

How could she be here?

Upon seeing the witch’s tattooed face, Seichan had reacted hastily. She had fired immediately at the impossible apparition, knowing it was her best chance to eliminate this dread threat. But in her desperation, she must have given herself away — maybe the scuff of her feet on the steel stairs, the strained panting of her breath — or maybe it had simply been the woman’s innate sense of danger.

The Guild had taught them both to be forever on guard, to draw every detail from their surroundings at all times and be ready to act.

Cursing the woman’s preternatural senses, Seichan fired at one of the gunmen. The round struck his shoulder and sent him spinning away, the rifle flying from his fingertips.

The second gunman grabbed a Japanese man dressed in a business suit and rushed him out of the line of fire and into a side tunnel. From the map turning in her head, she knew it was the main passageway leading from the station to the island.

She ignored the fleeing men and concentrated on Valya Mikhailov.

The woman continued to use Professor Matsui as a human shield. Seichan fired two more rounds, not intending to hit her target. She couldn’t risk striking Ken. Instead, she used the shots to drive the woman away from the exit tunnel, to keep her from escaping. Simultaneously, she ran for the only cover: the open door of an office.

Valya fired back at her, but Seichan had been just as well trained to anticipate danger and react. She responded mindfully but instinctively to the woman’s body movements and to her gaze. She slipped through the rounds, the bullets ricocheting off the steel behind her.

Just keep focusing on me.

From the corner of her eye, she spotted Palu bolt from the lower stairwell. Cleaver in hand, he fled across an open gap of floor to the steps heading up, where spats of gunfire still rang out.

Minutes ago, while traversing the station toward the central hub, she had heard those same shots. She paused long enough to strip and clean her waterlogged SIG Sauer, readying it for use again. All the while, the compromised station had creaked and groaned around her, reminding her to hurry.

As did every gun blast echoing from above.

There could be only one source of that firefight.

Gray…

Knowing that, she had finally rushed up the central hub toward the fighting — only to discover Professor Matsui on the middle level being dragged toward the exit by a ghost from Seichan’s past. She had only moments to attempt to rescue Ken, while also sending Palu off to help Gray and the others.

As she ran for cover now, Valya finally shoved Ken to the floor, frustrated by the man’s thrashing, which confounded the woman’s aim. Unencumbered now, Valya fired two fast shots. One sailed past Seichan’s head, the other grazed her hip.

Fiery pain bloomed, but she ignored it and kept running.

Almost there…

Once she was safely shielded in the office and Valya was exposed on the open floor, she could either eliminate the witch or drive her off.

But before Seichan could reach her goal, both of her legs broke.

Or at least, that’s what it felt like.

The burst of exertion had finally roused the horde inside her. Pain racked through her, cramping the muscles of her legs into unpliable stone. Her limbs refused to cooperate and sent her crashing to the floor. Agony narrowed her vision and weakened her control.

As she hit, the impact knocked the pistol from her palm. It bounced, then skidded into the office. She tried to follow it, struggling to get her legs under her.

Then a presence loomed over her.

She glanced up, knowing who was there.

Valya had collected Ken again. She had a fist knotted in his hair, pulling his head back. Blood ran down his neck from his ear.

Her pistol pointed at Seichan.

“I’ve waited a long time for this,” she said. “Tracking you and that bastard halfway around the globe, almost losing you twice.”

Through eyes watery with pain, Seichan glared back.

So that’s how the enemy knew we were on Maui.

Valya shoved her pistol closer.

Ken moaned. “Don’t…”

His plea fell on deaf ears.

He tried again. “She’s… she’s pregnant.”

Valya froze for a moment — then laughed, a chilling, hollow sound. “That’s perfect… just perfect. Better than I could’ve hoped for.”

She lifted her pistol high and brought its steel butt crashing down, cracking Seichan across the temple. The world turned bright white — then faded to darkness.

Final words chased her into oblivion.

“If you survive long enough, I may keep the child for myself.”

Numb with shock, Ken shambled down the tunnel toward the exit. Hot blood trickled from his wounded ear. He was followed by the gunman who had fled with Masahiro during the brief firefight. The man returned after sending his charge to safety.

Ahead of them, Valya led the way. Two workers behind her dragged Seichan’s unconscious body. They all moved quickly.

Twenty yards away, the glass tunnel ended at the thick blast doors.

Masahiro stood there, arms crossed. “Twenty seconds,” he hollered over to them. “And this door closes.”

Valya moved no faster, defying the man even in this regard.

Ken suspected Masahiro would’ve already sealed them inside, but he must have spotted Valya’s prize in tow. The man had been humiliated by Seichan back on Maui, and from the vengeful glint to his eyes, he wanted her in hand before they fled this island.

In his head, Ken counted down the final seconds.

They neared the threshold as his internal timer reached zero.

A series of chained detonations blasted behind him. He swung around, noting flashes of fire throughout the station. Closer at hand, smoke and flames burst into the glass tunnel from a side passageway to the right. A bent steel door crashed into view.

“Get through here!” Masahiro ordered.

Ken hurried, following the others, while still staring back into the tunnel.

The true purpose of the timed explosions came into view.

The smoke darkened as a frenzied swarm burst into the passage, coming from the test chamber he had spotted earlier when they had arrived. He remembered the room had been crawling with soldier drones. Angered by the noise and the flames, the wasps hummed through the smoke, seeking a target.

“Now or never,” Masahiro warned.

From the other blasts throughout the station, all of the glass-domed test chambers must have had their doors blown off.

After years of captivity, the Odokuro were free at last.

But the wasps were not the only threat.

The station rumbled and shook. Water flushed into the tunnel from the direction of the test chamber.

Ken recognized the truth.

It’s all coming down.

27

Deafened by the nearby blast, Gray crouched in the hallway outside the foamy ruins of the torture chamber. Smoke choked the room. The hatch that opened into the harvesters’ neighboring pen had blown off its hinges and sailed across the chamber, crashing through the observation window on the far side.

A few stray harvesters who hadn’t joined the others for the feast wandered out through the smoke, but once they crawled into the foam, their pace slowed, then stopped, poisoned by the insecticide.

It was by sheer luck that Kowalski and Palu’s cousins had revived enough to crawl or stumble out of the chamber into the hall before the blast happened. The three men were on their feet but still needed the wall to support themselves.

Blood seeped from their limbs, but the flow was less as their bite wounds clotted.

On Gray’s other side, Aiko leaned against the wall next to him. She hugged her rifle to her chest. Around the corner, two men lay dead in the next tunnel.

It was the only way out of this section.

Still, Aiko had proven herself to be a crack shot. She was the only reason they were all still alive.

But for how much longer?

Aiko held up one finger, indicating she was down to her weapon’s last round.

He prayed it was enough. After the blast, the gunfire from the far side of the tunnel had stopped. He didn’t know if the others fled or if they were waiting to ambush them, hoping the explosion would send their targets scurrying into view.

When the blast had first occurred, he had considered that option, believing they were doomed if they stayed. And that was certainly still a possibility. Water rained down in the harvester’s pen, pattering against the steel floor. The explosion must have cracked the pen’s glass roof.

It would not be long before the pressure at this depth imploded the dome and flooded this section.

Aiko glanced to him, her expression easy to read.

What do we do?

A pounding of many feet drew both their attentions back to the tunnel. The enemy was attempting a final full-on assault. Aiko dropped to a knee and peeked around the corner, leading with her weapon.

One bullet against how many?

To find the answer, Gray stayed high and leaned over her to gauge the threat. Two figures raced toward them, single-file, about five yards apart. The one in the lead was attempting to free a sidearm from a hip holster.

It was odd that he didn’t already have his weapon in hand.

Perhaps recognizing this, Aiko restrained from shooting, reserving her one shot.

The lead runner finally yanked his pistol free, twisted sideways, and pointed the weapon behind him. Before he could fire, something struck his back leg. He crashed against the wall, turning enough to reveal a wide steel blade impaled in his thigh.

Still, the gunman had the wherewithal to keep his pistol leveled at the second assailant. Before he could fire, Aiko’s rifle cracked. The man’s head exploded.

The second figure skidded to a stop, hands up, showing no weapons.

Palu.

Aiko and Gray both tumbled into view. Palu’s raised arms were soaked in blood. Gray recognized the blade in the dead man’s leg. It was from Seichan’s arsenal. He must have fought his way through the small force still on-site, using both the element of surprise and the explosion to take them all down, except for this last one who had tried to flee.

Gray reached him. “Where’s Seichan?”

Palu grimaced. “Taken. When coming up, I saw her through the glass below being dragged toward the exit to the island. They had the professor, too.”

Gray was already moving. “Then let’s go get them.”

Palu blocked him with a thick arm. “No. Never make it.”

Aiko agreed, lifting her rifle and reminding him. “Out of bullets.”

“We can find more ammunition, other weapons. If we hurry before they seal—”

A deep boom cut him off. The trickling of water in the neighboring dome became a heavy torrent. Water flooded out of the pen and into the torture chamber.

They were out of time for debate.

The flooding flushed Kowalski and the other two men into view. Palu did a double take upon seeing his cousins here — and in their condition. The Hawaiian must not have known about the raid on his men’s catamaran.

Gray didn’t have time to explain. “We have no choice now. We’ll have to make for the exit.”

Palu refused to lower his arm. “Not that way.”

“Then where?”

He finally dropped his arm and pointed down. “All the way to the bottom of this damned place.”

“Why? What’s there?”

Palu turned and led them. “Hopefully a way out.”

Masahiro stood beside the open blast doors as the unconscious woman was finally dragged out of the station and into the rock-hewn island tunnel. He stared at the blood dribbling from her left temple. Someone must have pistol-whipped her.

Serves her right.

He wished the same fate had befallen her captor, the pale Russian. As if flaunting her prisoners, Valya had deliberately taken her time moving her party out of the station.

She gave Masahiro a smug look as she strolled past him.

Fury stoked inside him, knowing this gaijin would take full credit for the captures.

He stepped back as smoke rolled from the station into the outer passageway, carrying with it the angry hum of the freed wasps.

“Close it up,” Masahiro ordered, turning his back on the station.

My work is done here.

He was wrong.

Valya nodded to the two guards, both part of her personal team.

One grabbed Masahiro by the lapels of his jacket and shoved him back through the blast door into the station. Masahiro tripped over the edge and landed on his backside. The other guard leaned a shoulder against the thick steel door and began to close it.

No…

He tried to get up, but something landed on his cheek. He swatted, panicked. The sting felt like a burning coal jabbed into his flesh. Then the entire side of his face ignited with fire. He patted a hand there, as if trying to put out those flames. He expected to find his skin melting off his cheek.

Through tears of pain, he watched the blast doors slowly shut. Before it sealed, Valya stared back at him from the other side, her eyes shining with cold victory.

Then she was gone.

In that last moment, Masahiro knew his ultimate failing: underestimating the depths of the woman’s ambition.

Behind him, the humming grew louder, drawn by his frightened breath and pounding heart. As the swarm swept over him, he closed his eyes. His body was pelted from every side, like the hard hail that frequently assailed the heights of Mount Fuji.

Only here ice was fire.

Screams ripped from his throat, which only opened himself further. Wasps crawled into his mouth, crowding inside, pushing deeper, stinging all the way down.

Their sheer numbers choked his wails to whimpers.

Until finally fiery pain chased him into oblivion.

Gray followed the others in a mad dash down the stairs of the central hub. They paused only long enough to collect weapons along the way, removing them from dead bodies, the grim handiwork of Palu and his cleaver.

By now, the entire station trembled and shook.

The footing on the steps was treacherous as the staircase had become a waterfall. Other domes in the upper tier must have collapsed. The lake was rapidly flooding into the station from multiple directions. Gray felt the pressure in his ears building as the remaining air was squeezed by the closing walls of water. It was also harder to breathe as smoke was compressed into those same tightening spaces.

And it wasn’t just the smoke.

As they reached and ran out onto the middle level of the hub, he smacked a stray wasp from his hair. Still, he felt a mule kick to the side of his head as it stung his ear. Between them and the sweep of stairs to the lower level, a dark swarm hovered at the mouth of the main exit tunnel. The wasps milled and churned. In the enclosed space, their humming sounded like an electrical fire.

With no other choice, the group skirted the swarm’s edge.

“Don’t slow,” Gray warned. “Keep running.”

The group hugged the outer walls of Masahiro’s office. Still, as they passed the cloud of wasps, the swarm was drawn by the wake of their passage. The buzzing intensified as the wasps finally found targets to vent their fury.

“Faster!” Gray urged the others.

He knew he asked the impossible. Aiko led the way with Palu, who supported Makaio, all but carrying his cousin. A step behind them, Kowalski tried to do the same with Tua.

The swarm closed in on their group, a dark wave threatening to crash over them.

Gray did his best to herd the others toward the stairwell to the lower level. Wearing only swim trunks, he felt exposed. His skin pebbled with anticipation of more stings.

Kowalski suddenly swore, crashed to one knee, and swatted at his neck.

Gray rushed to his side. He grabbed Tua with one arm, while offering the other to Kowalski.

The big man simply glared and pushed up on his own.

Together, they chased after the others.

Gray felt strikes against his right leg, his left arm. Fire burst from those spots. He forced himself onward. Adrenaline fought against the pain. Tears coursed his cheeks. His legs stumbled under him.

Kowalski must have noted his distress and shifted to half-carry both Gray and Tua. Gray was in awe of the man’s constitution, especially noting the number of wasps perched on his shoulders and back. The man’s muscles twitched and shuddered as he was stung multiple times.

Maybe it was the antidote in the syringes or the opioid analgesics that kept Kowalski moving, but Gray suspected it was the guy’s sheer stubbornness.

Ahead of them, Aiko and the others had reached the stairwell. They vanished into the smoke billowing up the steps.

Like a long-distance runner spotting the finish line, Kowalski grunted and hauled harder for the stairs. As they finally shoved into the thick pall, the leading edge of the swarm retreated from the smoke.

Even the wasps on their bodies fled.

Gray quickly understood their precaution. He coughed on smoke that smelled of scorched rubber. He tasted burning oil on his tongue. He tried to hold his breath but pain and exhaustion forced him to keep gasping.

Finally, the group splashed into the lower level. The floodwaters were knee-deep down here. Once free of the stairwell — which had been funneling the smoke upward like a chimney — the air grew clearer. Smoke continued to flow along the roof of the tunnels, but by ducking their heads, they found a stratum of breathable air.

The ice-cold water also helped reduce the pain from the stings.

“This way,” Palu said, pointing to a tunnel on the left.

The Hawaiian set off, wading swiftly.

The surface of the water was full of debris, all covered by a dense layer of drowned wasps of every iteration: tiny scouts, larger egg-laying breeders, and others he did not recognize.

“Should be just down this next tunnel,” Palu promised them. “If it’s still here…”

The next passageway was long, extending to a remote corner of the station.

He prayed such isolation had kept this section undamaged and intact.

As they traversed its length, the water quickly crested their waists. It became easier to half-swim, floating and kicking off the floor with their feet. This method also kept their heads away from the layer of smoke above.

Finally, the tunnel ended ahead at a sealed door.

An airlock.

Just as Palu had promised.

The Hawaiian had told them how he and Seichan had spotted a small submarine docked down here. It had likely been used to ferry in supplies, maybe even sections of the station while it was being constructed.

Now it was their only hope of escape.

And not just their only hope.

A trio of station workers shivered in front of the airlock. They looked like drowned rats. It seemed their group wasn’t the only one trapped in the flooded station.

Aiko pointed a rifle at them and spoke rapidly in Japanese. She then turned to Gray. “It’s the sub crew. They were assigned to move the vessel.”

Gray felt a surge of relief. He had planned on doing his best to figure out how to operate it. This was even better.

But Aiko did not look happy and explained why. “They’ve been trying to get inside, but the airlock mechanism is damaged. There’s no way to get through.”

Gray shifted forward, waving the crew out of his way. He peered through the double set of windows to the dry dock beyond. The conning tower of a small submarine poked from a pool inside, just waiting to be used.

Despondent, he rested his forehead against the glass.

So close, yet so far.

Ken braced himself in the cargo hold of the transport plane as it took off from the island’s airstrip. Due to the short runway, the aircraft accelerated powerfully — then lifted skyward at a steep angle.

From the Cyrillic script stenciled on the inside of the hull, the plane was likely former Russian or Serbian military. Its design was simple. The flight deck was enclosed behind a door. The rest of the aircraft was a hollow shell. Jump seats lined the inner walls, but the bulk of the hold was empty space.

Not that it was empty now.

The hold was packed with crates, boxes, and barrels, all tied down or covered in netting. It was everything salvaged from the station.

As the plane tipped at an angle, circling around, Seichan’s head lolled in her restraints. The blood had dried on her temple, but she remained unconscious. Still, their captors were taking no chances with her. Her wrists and ankles were secured in steel cuffs and chains. She was belted into her jump seat. A guard sat next to her with a pistol in hand. Another sat across with an assault rifle across his knees.

A door slammed, drawing Ken’s attention.

Valya left the flight deck and pointed to two other men. Ken eavesdropped as she spoke in Japanese. “You and you. With me.”

The men snapped out of their seats to follow.

Ken knew all the crew were loyalists to her ambitions. None of them had questioned her when she had abandoned Masahiro in the station. She had also taken additional steps to cover everything up. When their group had reached the former Coast Guard building, Ken discovered the place had been turned into a slaughterhouse. It appeared others on her team had ambushed everyone as they evacuated via the freight elevator, mowing them down with submachine guns. The bodies had been dragged to the side and rested atop a lake of blood.

Valya had barely given the pile more than a dispassionate glance.

Ken recognized a coup when he saw one.

Confirming this, a loud explosion shook the craft. Ken craned around to a window behind his seat. The rusted tin roof of the Coast Guard building sailed high into the air, propelled by a column of smoke and fire.

Definitely erasing her tracks.

Winds suddenly howled into the cargo hold. Ken flinched, fearing some flying shrapnel had struck their aircraft. Instead, he spotted a hatch at the rear of the plane hinging open.

Valya stood back there and pointed below.

Two men rolled an orange barrel to the door once it was fully open. Upon her signal, they shoved the large canister out the back of the plane.

Ken turned his attention to the window. He followed the barrel as it tumbled down. It struck the island’s pier, where the station’s hovercraft was docked. Upon impact, a fiery blast mushroomed skyward. Fountains of flame swept outward, covering both the wooden pier and the boat.

As the plane circled the island, more of the incendiary charges were dropped. Smoke and flames spread over the atoll. It was all too reminiscent of the destruction he had witnessed at the Brazilian island of Queimada Grande.

They’re going to burn it all down to the bedrock.

But they had one additional step.

Valya pointed again, hollering to be heard over the wind. Ken couldn’t make out all she said, but he did hear the word mizūmi.

He cringed, suspecting what was about to happen.

The plane swung out over the ocean, then tilted around for a final bombing run. Only this time the barrels were not going to be used to set anything on fire.

Instead, they would serve as makeshift depth charges.

For mizūmi meant lake.

“This is friggin’ nuts,” Kowalski noted, but he bore a savage grin on his face.

Gray couldn’t argue. But if they died in the next seconds, Kowalski would do so happily. There was nothing Sigma’s demolition expert liked more than blowing stuff up.

Gray and the others sheltered behind a pried-up section of steel floor. They were positioned some twenty yards away from the damaged airlock. Earlier, Kowalski and Palu had rigged a cube of C4 to a timer. It was the last of the fireman’s supply from the cache they had obtained back on Maui.

This either worked or they were all dead.

The plan was to blow the airlock and gain entry to the docking dome. But so much could go wrong. If the charge was too weak, they would fail to blast their way through both doors. If it was too strong, they risked damaging the submarine or even collapsing this section of station.

Still, they had to take the chance.

As the two men had prepared the charge, Gray had listened to blasts echoing through the water from above. From the dull glow overhead, he knew the enemy must be firebombing the island on their way out.

“Get ready,” Kowalski warned. He studied Palu’s wristwatch and counted down the final seconds by holding his fingers outstretched and curling each digit, marking the time.

By now, the floodwaters swirled chest-high — which was a good thing.

Gray knew the docking bay must be pressurized to keep the lake from flooding though the pool inside there. When they blew the doors, the violence of the decompression could immediately let the lake rush in. Their only hope was that the trapped air in the flooded station was compressed enough to somewhat match that pressure.

Just one other detail that could go wrong…

Kowalski curled his last finger, forming a fist.

Gray had warned everyone to open their mouths and expel their breaths, to help them withstand the blast’s concussion. It failed miserably. The explosion slammed his eardrums and squeezed his rib cage to the point that he didn’t know if he’d ever breathe again.

Then it was over.

He gasped along with the others.

Ahead, both doors were gone.

Past the airlock, the pool around the conning tower welled upward, meeting the waters flooding out of the tunnel and into the chamber.

He sighed.

The pressure seemed to be holding for now.

So far so good.

They lowered their section of flooring and allowed the current to drag them all into the docking bay. As they all washed into the chamber, sheets of water started jetting from the domed roof. The force of the blast had splintered the glass.

As Gray watched, the cracks spread and widened.

He pointed to the conning tower. “Inside! Now!”

One of the crew swam to the tower’s ladder and clambered to the top. Once there, he crouched and twirled the locking mechanism to open the hatch.

The others climbed up. When the door was heaved open, the perched crew member helped them all — one after the other — down into the safety of the small submarine. Gray went last, making sure everyone was aboard.

He matched gazes with the terrified man atop the tower.

Together in this, they were no longer enemies.

Movement through the glass wall drew Gray’s attention. A bright orange barrel fell past their position.

No, no, no…

Gray lunged forward, grabbed the crew member, and rolled him headfirst through the opening. He then swung down to the ladder inside and slammed the hatch behind him as an explosion rocked the sub sideways.

The conning tower struck the edge of the docking pool with a loud clang.

He hung on to the ladder with one hand and spun the lock on the underside of the hatch with the other. He then dropped down. He was relieved to see that the man he had tossed below had landed on others, cushioning his fall.

Gray shouted. “Get us mov—”

The engines engaged with a rumble, cutting him off. Clearly the other two crew members had already rushed into position.

Gray stalked forward, ducking his head from the low roof. He recognized the small vessel. It was a Una-class submarine built by the Yugoslav navy. The midget sub had been engineered to lay down mines in or deliver Special Forces into waters too shallow for larger vessels. It had clearly been decommissioned and modified for private use. The solid nose cone in front had been replaced with polymer glass.

Seated in front, the pilot lowered the sub away from the station.

Gray joined him in time to witness the final destruction of the station. The concussion of the depth charge had shattered one side of the facility. Air bubbled upward, while broken tubes tumbled toward the lake bed. In slow motion, the rest all came down. With a last flicker, the emergency lights died, turning the lake dark again.

One of the crew flicked a switch and a beam of light shot forward, revealing the dark eye of a tunnel to the open ocean. The pilot guided the vessel toward it. Even taking into account the small displacement and draught of the midget sub, it looked like a tight fit.

Gray noted another crew member, acting as navigator, bent over a Krupp Atlas sonar array. The sensor suite could run active or passive.

Worried, he leaned to Aiko, who had joined him. “Tell them it’s okay to use the light to traverse the tunnel, but once in open water, they’ll have to douse it and run on passive sonar so we’re not detected.”

She nodded and transmitted his orders.

He looked up as the nose of the small sub entered the tunnel. Whoever had dropped those depth charges could still be up there, monitoring the surrounding seas.

As the tunnel fully swallowed the sub, he drew his attention back to the crew, “Are the batteries fully charged?”

One of them spoke enough English to answer with a thumbs-up.

“Then once free of here, make for Midway. Max power.”

He got a nod.

Grimly satisfied, he followed the beam of the sub’s light as it pierced the darkness ahead and made a silent vow to Seichan.

I won’t stop until you’re back in my arms.

28

The world slowly returned, bringing pain with it.

Seichan’s left temple throbbed, and her limbs burned. Agony knotted her guts. She wanted to vomit but feared it would only make matters worse. She blinked her eyes against a glaring brightness that spiked through her skull.

Groaning, she tried to shield herself from the radiance, but her wrists were cuffed and bound by chains to her ankles.

It took her another few breaths to recognize she was in a cargo plane. From the timbre of the engine’s whine, probably a turboprop. She swiveled her head, which set the world to spinning.

Still, she spotted Ken strapped in the jump seat next to her.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

She simply scowled and forced her dry tongue to form a few words. “Gray… the others…”

Ken looked down at his bound hands. “Don’t know. Still down there.” He glanced sorrowfully at her. “She firebombed the entire island. The station is destroyed.”

She twisted enough to stare out the bright window. The sun had finally risen and shone brightly across a calm ocean, revealing the damage wrought overnight.

Behind the plane, the island burned, cloaked in smoke.

She stared back there, refusing to accept that Gray was gone. She grasped on to that hope, trying to make it certainty. But pain and exhaustion confounded her. Tears welled, which only made her angrier.

As she faced forward, that knot of pain in her gut exploded.

She cried out, doubling over her bound hands. She closed her eyes and panted, as if trying to blow out the fire inside her. After what felt like tens of minutes, it finally subsided enough for her to sit back up.

As her gaze focused, she found a familiar tattooed countenance staring back at her. Valya was down on one knee.

“So you’re awake?”

Seichan didn’t bother answering her.

Valya turned to Ken. “You’re the entomology expert. What stage is she in?”

He winced at Seichan. “By now, from the pain she is experiencing, it suggests the larvae are likely beginning to molt into their second instars.”

“So that means the real agony is about to begin.”

Seichan could not help but quail at such a thought.

Ken looked with pity on her. If her hands were free, she would’ve punched him. She did not want pity — not from anyone.

“She has another day,” he continued. “Then the third instars will begin migrating into her bones.”

Seichan knew what that meant.

Valya stared at her belly. “And her child?”

Ken shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Ice-blue eyes studied Seichan with a calculating look. “Then we’ll discover her status when we land in Japan. A pregnancy could prove useful to Fenikkusu Laboratories’ plans. If that ends up being the case, it looks like I’ll be arriving with three prizes, instead of just two.”

Valya glanced at them both as she straightened.

Before she could turn away, one of her men came rushing from the back of the plane. “Spotters have identified the submarine from the air. It just exited the island and is crossing the shallows.”

Valya’s fingers curled into fists. “I knew that rat would find some way to escape the sinking ship.”

Gray…

Seichan grasped this thin hope with all her heart.

“It could be our people,” the man warned.

“Doesn’t matter.” She pointed to the plane’s rear. “How many barrels do we have left?”

“Ten.”

She twirled a hand in the air. “Bring us around and open the rear hatch. We’ll drop half the load to soften them up, then swing back and dump the rest.”

“Hai!” The man ran back to pass on her orders.

Valya faced Seichan again. “There are miles of shallow waters aproning the island. There’ll be nowhere they can run where we can’t spot the vessel from the air.”

Seichan’s hope began to crumble.

Valya must have noted her despair. “Fear not, at least you’ll have front-row seats to the death of the father of your child.”

Gray cursed the new day.

He leaned on the back of the pilot’s chair. The Una-class sub glided low over ridges of reefs. Schools of fish flashed out of their way, their scales reflecting the morning sun’s brightness.

Though the midget submarine had been specifically engineered to traverse such shallow water, he felt exposed.

“How deep are we?”

The pilot, a man named Nakamura, spoke English. “Thirty meters.”

Gray knew they needed to find depths of at least two hundred to be able to sink into the shadows of the deep sea. From Gray’s constant gaze upward, the pilot must have guessed his worry.

“There’s a deep trench that we usually run along to stay hidden. About ten klicks ahead.”

Perfect.

“Get us there as fast as the engines will allow.”

“Hai.”

Aiko stood at Gray’s side. She still had her rifle, but it was hung over her shoulder now. There was no need to coerce the crew’s cooperation. After their own people had tried to kill them, they were happy to switch allegiances.

Palu crowded up to them, his head bowed from the low roof. He had spent the past twenty minutes using a first-aid kit to bandage the bloody limbs of the three injured men. In addition, he had taped gauze sponges over the wounds on their backs and lower abdomens.

“How are they doing?” Aiko asked.

Palu grimaced. “They lost a lot of blood. And Tua’s too pale. He’s slipping into shock.”

Aiko turned to Gray. “Midway is still eighty miles away. Even at top speed, it’ll take us seven or eight hours to get there.”

She glanced at the men in back, her thoughts easy to read.

They won’t last that long.

Gray recognized this, too. “Once we’re well enough away from here, we can risk raising an antenna and sending a mayday to the station at Midway. Get them to dispatch an airlift to us.”

Palu nodded. He squinted at the seas, at the spread of reefs. “We better not wait too long.”

Understood.

Weighted down by the press of time, Gray followed Palu’s gaze.

“It’s beautiful out here,” Palu mumbled, his voice mournful, as if reflecting on all that had already been lost. “We should be entering the waters of Papahānaumokuākea soon.”

Gray recognized the name of the protected marine monument that surrounded these remote islands. As if mirroring Palu’s mood, a dark cloud swept over the bright waters.

It took Gray a breath too long to realize the truth.

The cloud was moving too fast, aiming straight for them.

Aiko grabbed his arm. “Plane.”

Gray jerked forward. “Hard to port! Now!”

The pilot responded immediately. He heaved on the boat’s rudder, while trimming the dive planes in opposite directions — raising one, lowering the other — to cut sharply away. The sub listed hard into the turn, tossing everyone sideways.

Kowalski groaned in back. From the sudden maneuver, he must have known they were in trouble.

Gray leaned forward, looking up through the glass nose cone as the shadow passed overhead. Through the water, he could make out the silhouette of a cross sweeping the sky.

Definitely an airplane.

But was it the enemy?

The question was answered as a rain of dark objects plummeted into the sea off their starboard side. As the plane’s shadow swept away, fresh sunlight revealed orange barrels.

“Brace yourselves!” Gray yelled.

The cascade of blasts pummeled the sub. Shattered bits of reef and coral pelted their flank. The concussion rolled the boat. Gray held his breath, willing them not to go upside down. If that happened, with the ballast doors open under them, they would sink.

As the explosions faded, the sub righted itself.

Gray gasped with relief.

But they were far from safe.

The strain had stressed the seal between the nose cone and the sub’s body. Water seeped through. Even more concerning was a noticeable crack in the glass. It appeared to be holding, but if there was another attack…

He searched the waters. Off to the starboard side, the seas had vanished, obscured by blasted silt and rock. He craned all around for the return of the black shadow, not knowing from which direction it would come, only certain that it would.

They were sitting ducks out here.

“How long until we reach that trench?” Gray asked the pilot.

“Still another eight klicks.”

Too far.

They would never reach the trench’s dark harbor before the plane overtook them.

Gray searched the seas again — not for the enemy, but for some answer.

“Maybe we should return to the island,” Aiko suggested. “Perhaps we can hide in the tunnel until it’s safe.”

Gray shook his head.

Even if they could turn around and reach that shelter in time, he didn’t like the idea of being trapped there. A few well-placed charges and they’d be sealed in their own grave. But her words gave him another idea, another place to hide.

He placed his hand on the pilot’s shoulder. “Forget the trench. Power to the southwest.” He pointed in that direction. “With everything your engines have.”

He turned to Palu, silently thanking him.

The Hawaiian’s confused frown suddenly brightened into a knowing smile. “Like I said before, you be one lolo buggah.”

“Where the hell are they going?” Valya asked.

Seichan took satisfaction in the woman’s frustration. The witch leaned over a window next to her, plainly wanting to stick close to savor Seichan’s pain when the submarine was destroyed.

Only the tables had been turned.

It had taken the large plane too long to circle back around and search the bright waters for their target. By the time they had returned, the first bombardment had cast up a silty cloud that spread far over the seas. At first, it was unknown if the initial barrage had already destroyed the vessel. It could be sunk under that cloud, resting dead on the bottom.

As a precaution, Valya had ordered the plane to search a path out to some trench. When that failed to reveal them, she seemed to grow more confident in its destruction. Still, she had them circle back and make sure the sub hadn’t retreated to the island.

Again no sign.

Afterward, Valya had loomed over Seichan with her hands on her hips. She wore a self-congratulatory smug expression.

“One down,” she gloated, casting her gaze from Seichan’s face to her belly. “Two to go.”

Then the radio cut in as the pilot called from the flight deck. “Target acquired. Running to the southwest.”

As the plane banked in that direction, Valya’s expression hardened. She cursed in her native tongue and swung back to the window. “Where the hell are they going?”

Seichan twisted around, too. She ignored the flare of pain, using the woman’s irritation as a balm. She caught Ken’s eye, reading the hope there. She refused to match it. Not yet. Gray may not even be aboard the submarine.

Suddenly Valya shoved away from the window, her eyes wide with fury. She grabbed the closest man and pushed him toward the flight deck. “Tell the pilot to dive at them. Now! Get us as close as possible.”

The man looked baffled, but he nodded and ran.

Valya turned in the opposite direction and rushed for the open rear hatch, where the last five orange barrels waited to be dropped. As she left, she mumbled under her breath in Russian, a clear sign of the woman’s agitation.

Seichan pretended not to hear her or understand, but she did both.

“I can’t let the bastards get there,” Valya had said.

Curious, Seichan returned her full attention to the window. Sunshine stung her eyes as she strained to discover what had so angered Valya.

“Look!” Ken said. “Across the ocean ahead.”

She squinted into the glare — then saw it, too.

A mile off, a flotilla of wide rafts and small islands rode the swells and waves. They spread across the breadth of the horizon. As the plane raced in that direction, the clogged seas seemed to stretch ever onward.

“What is it?” Seichan asked.

Palu had supplied Gray with the answer, a possible source of shelter in the open ocean. Back aboard the catamaran, the Hawaiian had warned Gray of the danger lurking at the fringes of the region’s marine reserve, threatening both the islands and the surrounding sea life.

Even now as they raced toward it, evidence appeared in the water: a black tire resting on the seabed, a knotted tangle of plastic bags swirling like a frond of pale kelp, a lost fishing net waving from where it had snagged on a branch of coral.

But the true bulk of their refuge lay directly ahead.

It was known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a morass of floating refuse larger than Texas, where marine debris was funneled into this spot by a vortex of ocean currents. The surface was dotted with small islands of accumulated trash: plastic bottles and bags, Styrofoam cups, barrels from oil rigs, crates from ships. But the real danger lurked below. To the depths of several meters, a toxic slurry of photodegraded tiny bits of microplastic fogged the waters.

While such pollution was a growing environmental disaster, for their group it offered a hope for shelter from the coming storm.

As they sped toward this refuge, Gray sensed time was running out. He crouched low beside the pilot. Though he had no way of knowing for sure, he could picture the shadow of that airplane closing in behind him.

His fingers dug into the back of the pilot’s chair.

“Almost there,” Aiko whispered, as if fearing the enemy above might hear her.

Palu scowled, matching her whisper. “Don’t jinx us.”

The nose cone of the midget sub aimed for the darker waters ahead, where the debris field shielded the sun.

And soon hopefully us.

Gray held his breath, willing the engines more speed. Then at long last, the sub glided under the thick layer of soupy microplastics. The world grew immediately dimmer. Ahead, darker patches of the ocean marked trash piles on the surface.

He let out a rattling sigh.

Made it.

Then a muffled BOOM shook the back of the boat. The vessel momentarily lifted up on its nose as a shock wave struck their rear.

Gray crashed against the pilot’s seat. “Hard to starboard!” he hollered and pointed to a shadow-mottled section under the garbage patch. “Max power!”

The pilot expertly drove the boat into a sharp turn as more bombs smashed through the trash and filth, exploding like fiery stars in the night. A darker shadow enveloped them as the plane passed over the debris field. More charges exploded in its wake, but the barrage was scattershot and spread out.

They’re shooting blind, he realized.

Even better, the explosions blasted up sand and silt, further obscuring the path ahead.

A moment later, the ocean went silent, marking the end of the initial bombing run.

But would they come around again?

Knowing they needed somewhere to hide, Gray spotted and pointed to a large carpet of debris ahead — and the dark shadows beneath it.

“Bring us to a stop under there.”

The pilot nodded sharply. He slowed the sub and glided it to a hover under the protective blanket of garbage. The underside was woven together by a tangle of nets. Several draped lower, hanging from above like Spanish moss.

The nose cone brushed alongside one, setting the net to twirling. As it turned, the carcass of a seal revealed itself caught inside. The flesh had mostly been picked clean, leaving rubbery fins and bones.

Aiko gasped.

In the murk, even Gray shuddered at the sight.

“We call it ghost fishing,” Palu said, nodding to the carcass. “Hundreds of tons of nets find their way to the Patch. While carried by the currents, they trolled the seas on their own, catching and tangling prey, carrying their ghostly cargo here.”

Gray stared up at the netted mass of debris and bones.

Let’s hope we don’t suffer the same fate.

Seichan enjoyed the exasperation on Valya’s face as she stalked forward from the back of the plane. Behind her, the rear hatch was already closing after the last of the barrels had been dropped overboard.

As Valya approached, Ken whispered over from the next seat. “Do you think they survived?”

Seichan only had to stare at the woman’s face to know the truth. Valya glowered darkly. Storm clouds hung over her head. Even the tattoo on her face stood out more starkly.

“I’d say so,” she whispered back.

Valya stopped and barked to one of the crew in Japanese. “Tell the pilot to head away. I want to be wheels-down in Tokyo before sunrise.”

Ken leaned toward Seichan. “Is it over? Are they giving up?”

“I don’t think they have much choice.”

Valya heard their whispering and crossed to them. “Another word and I’ll have you both gagged.”

Seichan did her best to shrug in her shackles. “Seems you were wrong earlier.”

“About what?”

“About being one down and two to go,” Seichan said, throwing the woman’s words back at her. “Something tells me your score is back to zero.”

Valya balled a fist and turned away — then, unable to help herself, she swung back around and punched Seichan in the mouth.

Seichan’s head bounced back and rang off the hull. She tasted blood as those knuckles split her lip. Pain flared, but it was nothing compared to what raged inside her. The abuse also failed to quash her amusement, her certainty.

Through bloody lips, she laughed.

Valya scowled and continued toward the flight deck.

Seichan continued to laugh, unable to help herself. Only one person would think to find salvation in garbage.

She now knew for certain who was alive and aboard that sub.

The father of her child.

“Do you see anything?” Kowalski asked.

Gray studied the sky through the raised periscope. He had waited an hour before feeling confident that the plane had vacated the area. Either the enemy had exhausted their arsenal, or they had run out of time. He knew the plane couldn’t circle around forever, not without risking exposure. The burning island would eventually draw attention, most likely from the U.S. military.

“Skies clear in all directions,” Gray announced. He backed from the scope, which had been raised through the raft of debris overhead, and turned to the crew. “Let’s get that radio antenna up.”

He glanced over to where Palu sat with his cousin Makaio. Both looked on Tua with concern. The man was trembling, his lips cyanotic. Exposure, blood loss, and terror had taken their toll.

Aiko stood next to Kowalski, who huddled under a blanket. “What’s the plan after we get these men to a hospital on Midway?”

For Gray, there was only one option, one path from here.

His eyes settled on Aiko.

“We’re going to take the fight to them.”

29

“I’m sorry, Jōnin Ito.”

Takashi knelt at his kotatsu table. He no longer felt the warmth of the coals hidden under the antique quilt covering the frame. His morning cup of green tea, roasted with brown rice, sat cooling and forgotten in his palms.

His head remained bowed, ignoring the pale woman’s face on the screen of his laptop. Her words from a moment ago were still a knife in his heart.

Those bastards killed your grandson.

He needed to let that sentiment sink to his bones, to settle there, before speaking. She had told him of the midnight raid upon the island base, of Masahiro’s bravery, of the cunningness of the man who took his grandson’s life. The details were irrelevant; only the outcome mattered.

He wondered as he did many times during his long life.

Am I cursed?

He had lost his beloved Miu in a burst of gunfire in a dark tunnel. Then many years later, his new wife — a kind woman with sweet lips — had succumbed giving birth to Takashi’s only son. He had named the boy Akihiko, meaning bright prince, hoping such a blessing would balance his tragic entry into this world. And how Takashi had loved the young man he grew into, straight as a reed, with an intelligence that surpassed both his parents. Eventually Akihiko gave Takashi his only grandson — and with this duty done, promptly died a year later with his wife in an automobile accident.

Afterward, Takashi had raised Masahiro as if he were his own son. But there was always a bitterness in the boy, a darkness in his blood, as if the tragedy of the family had taken root in his heart. Despite all his efforts — both gentle and firm — the two of them had never deeply bonded. There had remained an aloofness between them.

Still, one fact was undeniable.

He did love his grandson.

He finally lifted and sipped his tea. He woke each morning at four, using these early hours to meditate with his tea, to watch the sun rise over Mount Fuji from the vantage of his office. The ritual prepared him for the day.

Even this day.

He whispered his breath over the edge of the cup, “Ichi-go ichi-e.”

The origin of the old phrase was ascribed to the sixteenth-century tea master Sen no Rikyū, roughly meaning one time, one chance. It was a reminder to appreciate those who crossed your path, since they might never do so again. It was a testament to life’s impermanence.

It was a lesson Takashi knew all too well.

As the tea wet his lips and loosened his tongue, he stared over the rim of his cup. The early spring morning was cold, etching the flanks of Mount Fuji in frost. Sunlight reflected off the thin ice, setting fire to it.

Both echoed to his heart.

Ice and fire.

He allowed his heart to remain cold, while fury heated his blood.

He spoke with his cup still at his lips. “The bastard who killed my grandson. Where is he?”

“I do not know,” the woman admitted.

His eyes flashed back to the screen, letting some of the fire show.

Valya Mikhailov acknowledged his anger with a bow of her head. “But I know where he will be. I have his woman.” She lifted her gaze, her own eyes flashing. “And his unborn child.”

Takashi lowered his cup to the table. He pictured Miu’s smile, her hand on his cheek, her lips on his own. “He will come for them.”

“Hai.” Valya’s lips formed a hard line. “She is also sick, parasitized by what Masahiro unleashed back on Hawaii.”

He sat straighter, finding satisfaction in this small measure of revenge exacted by his grandson.

Valya continued, “So, yes, he will come for her, for his child — but also for a cure to her affliction.”

“Then he will fail.”

Takashi stared down into the cooling depths of his tea. He touched the ice in his heart and admitted a secret he had not even shared with Masahiro. Despite decades of research, one outcome had become clear.

He spoke it aloud.

“There is no cure.”