Vostok

25

“Zachary! Zach, honey, wake up. Driver, pull over!”

I opened my eyes, my brain buzzing with electricity, my body weighed down by a sudden sensation of gravity.

“Zach, are you all right?”

I turned and stared at my research assistant and lover, and the buzzing stopped.

“Susan?”

“Thank God. I thought you were having a stroke.” Susan McWhite, Ming Liao’s former assistant, turned to the dangerous-looking fellow in a buzz-cut and dark suit leaning inside my open window. “Jim, tell the driver we need to skip the hearing and get Dr. Wallace to a hospital.”

I turned to my head of security. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m just tired from the flight. How soon until we arrive?”

Jim Clancy checked the GPS on his watch. “Twenty-eight minutes. You sure you’re okay, boss? You look kinda pale.”

“I’m fine.”

The armed bodyguard waited until I closed the window before signaling to our motorcade over his radio. Then he climbed back into the front passenger seat, and we continued our journey through the District of Columbia.

The Subcommittee on Energy and Power falls under the auspices of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, its congressional members exercising control over the broadest jurisdiction of any congressional committee on Capitol Hill. These powers include overseeing national energy policy, energy conservation and information, energy regulation and utilization, regulation of nuclear facilities and waste, the Clean Air Act, and all related Homeland Security issues.

Democrats sat behind a stretch of elevated wood-paneled tables at the front of the assembly room. Chairing this morning’s event was Congresswoman Cassandra Boyd of Texas’s twelfth district.

I found myself seated at a small table on the assembly room floor next to my attorney, Scott Schwartzberg, whose team of litigators occupied the first row of seats behind us. Behind them were my fellow defendants — inventors, scientists, and entrepreneurs. The rest of the galley overflowed with private citizens, all of whom had to pass through security.

I wondered if the members of the media who were seated on the floor by my table had been subjected to similar scrutiny.

Scott pointed out the woman seated behind my research assistant. “Jaqui Billups; she’s from the New York Times. She’s been hounding me all week to set up an interview. Next to her is Dawn Warfield, a video columnist from The Huffington Post. She wants to do a podcast before we leave the building.”

“I’ll do the Post. Forget Billups. The CIA will redact anything positive in her article. What about 60 Minutes?”

“I’m still waiting for a confirmation.”

Congressman Boyd took her place behind the dais, adjusting her microphone. “The subcommittee will come to order. This morning we’re going to hear statements from members of the science community who oppose H.R. 1691, the Alternative Energy Fraud Act, sponsored by Congressman Jaime Watkins of Kentucky, and our esteemed co-chair, Lorey Schmidt. This much-needed piece of legislation will protect investors who have lost vast sums of money to charlatans who claim to have designed clean, abundant, and non-polluting energy sources, only to learn later that they were duped.

“Our first witness is Dr. Zachary Wallace. It should be noted for the record that Dr. Wallace is not a physicist. He is, in fact, a marine biologist who earned his fifteen minutes of fame resolving the monster mystery at Loch Ness. Seven years ago, Dr. Wallace survived a manned descent into Antarctica’s Lake Vostok. When the mission lost its funding, Dr. Wallace returned to his teaching position at Cambridge. At some point he left the university to work with John Searl, the British inventor who is best known for the Searl Effect Generator, a device Searl claimed could levitate like a flying saucer, though conveniently it was never filmed doing so. Dr. Wallace refined the design so that it functions as an electrical generator. He then used investor capital, most of it coming from the Tanaka Institute, to fund his own company, Wallace Energy, a privately held corporation with headquarters in Edinburgh and San Francisco.

“Dr. Wallace, you have been granted five minutes to explain to the subcommittee how this device works. Then we’ll open it up to questions.”

I waited while a large flatscreen television was rolled into position before the assembly and powered on. Using a DVD remote, I pushed PLAY.

Appearing on screen was a doughnut-shaped metal disk the size of a dinner plate. Spaced out along its surface were three one-inch-wide rotating rings.

“Energy surrounds us. The challenge is to convert it to power, defined as voltage multiplied by current to equal wattage. This is the Vostok, a closed-circuit perpetual generator. It produces a quantum vacuum flux field using zero point energy. It is powered by the electrons that perpetually surround us, producing clean and unlimited electricity. As you can see, its doughnut-shape design contains three circular ring plates. Held within these ring plates are rollers, each the size of a D battery. These rollers, along with their ring plates, possess a magnetic north and south pole. As a result, the rollers float on the magnetic field without actually touching the ring plate.

“The process of rapidly circulating these rollers around the ring plates in order to generate electricity begins when one powers up the positively charged neodymium core. Negatively charged electrons immediately rush into the device, where they join together to form boson pairs. The pairs compress and then exit through the central core to the first outer ring, where they cause the twelve rollers to accelerate to speeds averaging 250 miles an hour. From there they pass through a magnetic layer that both excites and pulls them through the second ring, where they cause these rollers to revolve at a velocity exceeding 600 miles an hour. Finally, the electrons exit to the copper emitter layer, where they join trillions of other boson pairs in ring three, spinning these rollers at over 1,500 miles an hour.

“A switch directs the generated electricity through standard coils, completing the electrical circuit. Unlike conventional generators that heat up after prolonged use, the Vostok remains cool no matter how long it runs. There’s no fuel needed and no toxins released. The unit is powered solely by electrons entering it and the unit and the internal tensions of the atoms. It is, literally, a source of endless clean energy.”

Several subcommittee members stood and applauded, irking their chairman who looked down her nose to address me. “Theories are different than working models, Dr. Wallace. Where’s your prototype?”

My blood pressure ticked upward. “In fact, Chairman Boyd, we had thirteen working models of varying sizes and outputs that were all beta-tested. Three were designed to power cars and trucks, two for trains, and two larger models for commercial jets. The rest were designed to power single-family homes and high-rise commercial structures. Our entire manufacturing plant in Edinburgh ran on a single unit no larger than this table.”

“And where are these prototypes now?”

“Perhaps you should ask the two CIA agents, posing as technicians, who stole the prototypes from our R and D safe shortly before my Edinburgh factory burned to the ground.”

“Sir, you dare to accuse the CIA? Where is your proof?”

“You mean that I was robbed, or that the thieves were CIA agents? Maybe they were MAJESTIC-12. Does it matter? Whoever they are, they’re being funded by Congress with zero oversight. These guys make their own rules and don’t care who they hurt.”

The chair held up a CD file. “The official report indicates the fire was a direct result of your invention overheating.”

“The official report, congresswoman, was prepared by the same investigative firm who cleared British Petroleum in last year’s oil rig explosion in the North Sea.”

“Why is it, Dr. Wallace, that every inventor who fails to produce a working model of their so-called ‘new energy technology’ always has a conspiracy story to tell?”

“My story’s real. So is the security tape of my safe being robbed, which we posted on YouTube — until the network was ordered to remove it. I guess triple-X videos are fine, but energy systems corrupt the minds of our youth.”

The audience in the galley stood up and applauded.

The chair banged her gavel for quiet. “Does anyone have a question for the witness? The chair recognizes the junior congressman from Montana.”

Justin Willems nodded to his colleague. “Thank you, Ms. Chairman. Dr. Wallace, I’m impressed by the Vostok, and I’ve always supported alternative energy. The problem you seem to have is credibility. Sex scandals, accusations of financial abuses. Even your partners, the Tanaka Institute, have been named as defendants in a series of lawsuits—”

“The Tanaka Institute is an investor, Congressman Willems. The Taylor family runs an aquarium that features the most dangerous predators that ever lived. Sometimes accidents happen. But Jonas Taylor and his wife, Terry, are good, moral people who I’m proud to be associated with. As for my own credibility, none of the accusations made about me are true. This is all part of a disinformation campaign that began two years ago, shortly after we made a technological breakthrough that allowed us to adapt the Vostok power generator to motorized vehicles, directly threatening Big Oil’s stranglehold on the transportation industry.

“A short time later, unsubstantiated rumors were circulated on the Internet and various news organizations that I had used investors’ monies on lavish trips to Beijing, which wasn’t true. Then a former associate went on a news show and accused me of rape, which led to her giving birth to her daughter. She sued me for $20 million. The woman’s attorneys were paid from a private offshore fund. The DNA evidence acquitted me, but my reputation was soiled. Weeks after the trial, I began receiving death threats and had to hire a private security team. The paranoia helped to end my first marriage.

“For the record, these same strong-arm tactics were used on Professor Searl, who was poisoned while eating in a diner with Intel agents posing as investors. Dr. Searl was wrongfully imprisoned, and all of his equipment and papers were destroyed. Similar things have happened to other courageous citizens and inventors like T. Townsend Brown, John Keely, Victor Schauberger, Otis Carr, and Dr. Steven Greer. It seems like every time a scientist or private company attempts to market a device that threatens the fossil fuel industry, the powers that be strike back without mercy.”

While I was speaking, Chairman Boyd handed a note to an assistant, who took a roundabout route before slipping it to the court stenographer.

My attorney immediately grabbed my microphone. “Excuse me, Chairman Boyd. May I inquire what was in the note your assistant just handed to the stenographer?”

The congresswoman’s cheeks flushed. “The official transcript of these hearings is not the appropriate venue to cite innuendo. As such, I asked that the witness’s last statement be stricken from the record.”

The members of the galley lost it. Shouts and threats and catcalls rained upon the members of the committee — along with several shoes.

It was exactly the response the chair had hoped to elicit. Within minutes, security had cleared the hall of all visitors.

With order established, the hearing resumed. “The chair recognizes Congressman James Hinks from New Mexico.”

“Thank you, Ms. Chairman. Dr. Wallace, I’ve been reading stories about lawsuits filed against your company by the Chinese and Australians, something about fiduciary claims on behalf of investors who funded your Vostok mission years ago. Could you expand on that?”

“Congressman, the lawsuits are ridiculous and unfounded, and that’s all I’m at liberty to say.”

“Then you’re denying this technology originated from an extraterrestrial spacecraft abandoned in Lake Vostok?”

Scott Schwartzberg took the microphone. “Congressman, my client is not at liberty to discuss proprietary claims from the lawsuit you mentioned, or any of these other ridiculous claims. The underlying issue here is whether the Vostok works. It does. Whether its designs were inspired by collaborations with Dr. Searl, Dr. Wallace’s pet goldfish, or little green men has no bearing on this hearing.”

The scientists in the galley laughed. A few members of the subcommittee smiled.

Not Congressman Hicks. “You may well find my line of questioning amusing, but in New Mexico we take these matters quite seriously. There have been fourteen incidents of UFO sightings in the last four months, and some have suggested these sightings have coincided with the testing of your devices — something to do with accessing a trans-dimensional conduit, I don’t know exactly. So I ask you again, on the record, have you ever seen or had access to an extraterrestrial spacecraft?”

Scott Schwartzberg leaned over again to instruct me.

“Dr. Wallace, why do you need your attorney’s help to answer a simple question?”

“Because it’s not a simple answer, congressman. The very nature of asking me about extraterrestrials characterizes my work as fringe science. It’s not. Have I personally witnessed an unidentified flying object? The answer is no. Do I believe they exist? Having listened to the sworn testimonies of several hundred high-ranking military officers, jet fighter pilots, and commercial airline pilots — all of whom claim to have seen these E.T. vehicles — I’d have to say yes.

“The military must think they exist, otherwise why spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars building top-secret underground facilities in the southern desert of Nevada. Again, none of this has anything to do with the Vostok power generator, which absolutely works. If it didn’t, why would Peter McLaughlin, the former CEO of General Motors, have offered us a three-billion-dollar contract two years ago to produce Vostoks for a new line of passenger vehicles?”

Congressman Brian Ullom motioned to the chair to respond. “If that’s true, Dr. Wallace, then why did General Motors cancel the deal?”

“They cancelled because the United States Patent Office refused to issue patents for our design. In fact, the patent office has turned down patent requests for over five hundred alternative energy devices, many of which, like the Vostok, would render fossil fuels obsolete. It also doesn’t help our quest to take our company public when members of this very committee threaten to issue a Section 181 order, as per title thirty-five of patent law that allows for military seizure in the event that we ever do receive a patent. You see, Congressman Ullom, the real reason we’re still polluting our air and biosphere with carbon dioxide and why wars continue to rage in the Middle East is not because we lack energy solutions. It’s because the concept of free, clean energy threatens Wall Street and its six-hundred-trillion-dollar derivatives and commodities market. That’s who your subcommittee should be protecting the American public from, not us.”

Three hours later, Susan and I walked out to a late October afternoon and were greeted by a brisk wind and a wild crescendo of cheers. A sea of humanity spread out before the entrance of the Rayburn House Office Building, covering Independence Avenue all the way to Union Station and beyond. A million strong, maybe twice that, based on a quick glimpse down the mall. Thousands bore handheld signs expressing Thank You, Dr. Wallace and Free Us from Big Oil and Save the Planet a hundred different ways.

It was as gratifying as it was frightening. I was completely at the mercy of the crowd and every wacko with a gun.

At the Capitol building a stage had been set up facing the mall. Jim Clancy grabbed one arm and Susan the other as our security team surrounded me and pushed their way through the parting masses toward the podium. It was as loud as a college football bowl game, and I heard Jim shouting instructions about a bulletproof shield.

The shield was an eight-foot-high, three-sided Lexan enclosure that surrounded the podium. Jim opened the back panel and I ducked inside. There were no air vents other than a few slits atop the slanted ceiling, and the effect created a stifling silence.

“Good afternoon.” My greeting repeated across dozens of speakers in a staggered delay throughout the mall.

Muffled by the bulletproof plastic, the crowd’s response returned to me in waves, concluding with the distant din from the masses gathered around the Washington Monument almost a mile away.

“Imagine your home powered by an infinite supply of free, clean electricity. Imagine never having to fuel your car again. Imagine free public transportation, reduced manufacturing costs, urban areas with clean air, and oceans with reduced levels of carbon dioxide. The threat of global warming addressed, the threat of a war in the Middle East defused. Energy is the life-blood of civilization, the key to our survival as a species. For most of the last century, our fossil-fuel masters have used energy to maintain control of the masses. I say, enough is enough.”

Staggered cheers moved across the multitudes, the sound reverberating off the surrounding buildings.

“The powers that be refuse to go quietly in the night. When we demonstrated the Vostok prototype, they offered me five billion dollars to buy the company. When I refused to sell out the people of this planet for a few trinkets of silver, they stole it. When we received funding to begin manufacturing our line of generators, they burned our factory to the ground. They play by their own set of rules, and—”

I paused. In the distance, the crowds gathered around the Reflecting Pool and Washington Monument were gesturing to something in the eastern sky. Like a stadium crowd doing the wave, section by section looked up and pointed.

I turned to see for myself, only my view was obscured by the Capitol building.

And then I saw it.

The vessel was imposing, as dark and wide as a B-2 Bomber, only saucer-shaped. It descended majestically and then hovered, motionless over the mall, as if it were going to perch on the tip of the Washington Monument. The teardrop belly was flashing lights and emitting a magnetic field that I knew all too well, and those people caught in its gravitational vortex found themselves levitating fifteen to twenty feet in the air.

The crowd went wild as hundreds pushed and climbed over one another to experience zero gravity within the UFO’s shadow.

I stared at the scene, dumbfounded. Everything about this felt wrong. Through my own experience in Lake Vostok, I knew these vehicles were organic in nature, flown telepathically by beings whose aura of sharing could be detected by humans involved in the close encounter. This was corroborated by the testimonials from military personnel who had been the first boots on the ground when a UFO had crash-landed.

This experience felt cold and calculated, and the way in which the E.T. moved seemed too mechanical.

It’s not an E.T. It’s an ARV — an Alien Reproduction Vehicle — designed by MJ-12 to fool the public!

I grabbed the microphone. “Run! It’s not a real—”

What happened next occurred so quickly that only super-slow-motion replays of the historical event could reveal the truth, which is why they were subsequently banned and removed from both the television networks and the Internet.

That alone should have been enough to redirect the public’s rage.

First, there was a loud humming noise. That was followed by a brilliant flash of light originating from the vessel’s power source, immediately followed by an explosion at the base of the Washington Monument.

In the six seconds that followed, the world changed. That was how long it took the 555-foot tower to collapse, crushing and instantly killing more than one hundred people.

Flying rubble wounded hundreds more, and the panicked crowd increased that number into the thousands as people trampled one another to flee the area.

Concrete gravel struck the outside of my plastic enclosure as I watched the fake alien craft fly off. It did not slingshot into the atmosphere like the real thing. Instead it gained altitude like a helicopter before racing to the west.

Then the soldiers in black camouflage fighting gear arrived. I saw Jim Clancy go down. Susan was carried off as smoke grenades closed the curtain on the scene seconds before I was dragged away.

26

“True, don’t do this!” I followed my best friend across the dilapidated harbor dock to the parking lot of the Clansman. Once the crown jewel of Loch Ness, the hotel and its waterside restaurant, had been bashed into a barely recognizable pile of brick rubble.

The sun had dipped below the Monadhliath Mountains. With darkness approaching fast, the crowd had swelled to several hundred men and women, many villagers openly carrying shotguns. They stood solemnly, watching as True and his deckhand, Jim Clancy, unloaded a two-hundred-pound cow carcass from the back of the former U.S. Army Ranger’s pick-up truck.

“True, listen to me. There are better ways to kill this monster. Stuffing a dead cow with C-4 explosives and dragging it around Loch Ness — it’s crazy. The croc’s bigger than your boat.”

“Nessie was bigger than my boat, too, but it didnae stop ye from diving the loch in a Newtsuit. Unlike ye, Zach, I brought this nightmare to the Highlands, and now I’m goin’ tae end it.”

True tightened a steel cable around the dead animal’s neck while Jim slit open its belly, anchoring a plastic thermos packed with C-4 inside the ribcage.

“Secure the udder wit’ those clamps, Jimmy, but let the entrails leak oot a bit. We’ll need a good stench tae lure tha’ bitch up from the bottom.”

Turning to my right, I saw a BBC camera crew filming a female news reporter from behind a police barricade. Keeping my back to them, I eavesdropped on her while she read from a teleprompter:

“Its name was Purussaurus, and it was a gigantic caiman, a prehistoric ancestor to the modern-day crocodile. Reaching lengths of more than fifteen meters, it lived in what is today the Amazonian rainforest but was eight million years agoa vast inland sea teeming with freshwater whales, giant turtles, and enormous rodents. How one of these monster predators survived to inhabit Loch Ness remains a mystery.

“It’s a mystery that became public seven years ago when Highland resident Finlay McDonald found an ancient egg frozen in the bowels of Aldourie Castle, a three-century-old chateau that looms over the eastern shoreline of Loch Ness. An ancient aquifer connects the Moray Firth and the North Sea with Loch Ness beneath the castle grounds, and so it’s not unusual to find sea creatures venturing inland. Still, no one had ever seen an egg quite like this.

“Footage of the egg’s discovery went viral after scientists were astonished to discover a life-form still alive inside. Three months later the egg actually hatched, producing a living, breathing, four-legged, gilled reptile roughly the size of a Bassett Hound.

“The animal, dubbed Plessie by locals, was kept in the swimming pool at Nessie’s Retreat, a luxury hotel located in the shadow of Urquhart Castle. Experts debated over the identity of the species, conducting daily examinations, while over four million visitors flocked to the Highlands that first summer to see the creature, which the hotel owner insisted was a Plesiosaurus.

“As the creature grew larger, it became apparent that Plessie was not a Plesiosaurus at all, but a species of crocodile. Marine biologist Zachary Wallace added to the controversy by claiming the creature was a Purussaurus, an extremely dangerous predator that dated back to the Miocene era. Wallace warned residents that the pen would not be able to contain the animal, which now exceeded three meters in length and was predicted to grow five to six times that size. A larger containment area was cordoned off at Loch Dochfour, a narrow waterway at the head of Loch Ness, with a series of gates established to secure a seven-acre pen. An observation galley was erected in time for tourist season, providing visitors with a bird’s-eye view of the pen’s truck-sized occupant.

“For the next four years, Plessie made the Scottish Highlands the number one tourist destination in the world, the crocodile surpassing sixteen meters and weighing an estimated thirty tons, ten times the weight of a double-decker bus. During the warmer months, the croc spent its days sunning itself on the walled shoreline, to the delight of onlookers. At night and throughout the winter, she remained underwater in the muddy bog. When her handlers attempted to flush her back to the surface after a long winter’s hibernation, they discovered that the underwater gate separating Dochfour from Loch Ness had been ravaged.

“A massive search began in the Great Glen. During the investigation that followed, one handler told authorities that three months prior to Plessie’s escape, keepers had so feared the creature that they’d kept it on a steady diet of tranquilizers. As the weather turned cold, the croc, now a juvenile adult, spent more time underwater, gradually weaning its system off the drugs, affording it the opportunity to escape.

“Throughout March and into late spring, there were no sightings. Many believed Plessie was dead, poisoned by Loch Ness’s heavy peat content. Others claimed the crocodile was secretly being fed from Aldourie Castle’s subterranean caverns. Water bailiffs reported that the local deer population no longer crossed Loch Ness. When a reptile claw footprint measuring two meters was found on the shoreline near Foyers on May 29, residents grew worried.

“The first probable attack on a human being took place two weeks later, when the remains of a fishing boat piloted by Glasgow resident Martin McCandless washed up on the shores of Tor Point. Police painted a grim picture. The creature had bludgeoned the keel from below, sinking the vessel and taking its lone occupant. Still, with no overwhelming forensic evidence to indicate a change in the creature’s diet, Inverness officials waited to exercise boating restrictions on the loch.

“On the evening of June 21, everything changed. Hours earlier, a small ferry had left the wharf located here at the Clansman Hotel. Returning from Fort Augustus loaded with thirty-seven passengers and three crewmen, the boat was passing Urquhart Castle when it was rammed from below with what many eyewitnesses described as the force of a locomotive. Though the boat took on water, the engines remained intact and the ship’s captain managed to make it back to the dock. Then, as shaken passengers disembarked, Plessie surfaced half a kilometer to the north of where I’m standing. Hungry from her long months of hibernation, the creature went after the fleeing tourists.

“The first victim was Magdalena Hicklen of New York. The South Bronx native, who had survived drive-by shootings and a counter-culture of drugs and crime, was vacationing in Scotland with her husband, Nate, and their young son, Spencer. When she saw the giant caiman coming down the A-82 highway, Magdalena yelled to her spouse to get the boy inside the hotel. Witnesses say the woman distracted the thirty-five-ton crocodile, ducking between parked cars before hurrying inside the Clansman’s lobby herself. The enraged animal smashed through the entrance and emerged from the wreckage with Magdalena dangling from its mouth by her left leg. The woman thrashed and kicked the creature with her other leg but was unable to free herself as the giant caiman returned to the water and submerged with its meal, leaving behind a decimated hotel and locals fearing for their lives.

“Two more attacks have occurred since the Clansman feeding, all around dusk and at four- to five-day intervals. Lorey Schmidt was taken as she walked along the shoreline in Foyers, texting her girlfriend back home. Ernest Lazano was reported missing from Invermoriston, where he was staying at a bed-and-breakfast. His severed right arm was found thirty meters upstream from Loch Ness in the River Moriston.

“While members of Parliament continue to debate over whether to capture or kill the Purussaurus, the man who discovered the egg has decided to take matters into his own hands.”

I followed True as he and Jim wheeled their bait back down the wharf to his boat. Jim clipped the end of a steel cable around the dead cow’s neck collar while True used a hose to wash the animal’s blood from his hands.

He grabbed my arm in a wet, vice-like grip when I tried to board the vessel. “Sorry, lad. You and Jimmy are stayin’ here.”

“True, there’s no way I’m letting you do this alone.”

“Yeah, there is. It’s my fault all this happened, an’ we both ken it. But before I go, there’s one thing I need tae hear from yer lips: how did ye do it, Zach? How did ye escape from Vostok seven years ago?”

“I told you. I found the subglacial river and followed it all the way back to the Amery Ice Shelf.”

“Yer lyin’, lad. Even if ye had a GPS that would ’ave worked beneath all that ice, the Barracuda didnae have enough battery power left nor air tae breathe for ye tae complete the eight-hundred-mile journey. So how did ye do it?”

“Don’t get on that boat, and I’ll tell you everything.”

True smiled. “Ye don’t ken yerself, do ye lad?”

He tossed me aside, then climbed aboard the twenty-eight-foot boat and gunned the engines, sending the cow carcass flying into the water past a stunned Jim Clancy. The two of us watched as True motored half a mile out before circling the bait into a tight figure-eight pattern.

That’s when I knew…

There was one other craft tied off at the wharf — Brandy’s old tour boat. The engine was shot, but the radio worked. I climbed aboard, hurrying to the pilothouse—

— Waaa-boom!

The blast tossed me to the deck. Seconds later, a bloody stew of flesh and innards rained across the windshield, adding a lasting stain to the boat, wharf, and tarmac.

I emerged from the cabin in a daze, Brandy’s boat rocking violently beneath me. I heard the report of wood landing on the rock-strewn shoreline, so I didn’t need to look out upon those tea-colored waters now running crimson, or inventory the collection of floating debris, to know what had happened.

I already knew.

I already knew…

I already knew…

“What did you know, Zachary?”

“Sir, he’s still under the effects of the medication. It’ll be another—”

“Wake him.”

A rush of ice water blasted through my veins, forcing me to swim to the light.

“Huh?” I awoke, disoriented. I was inside a chamber, seated upright before a machine that resembled something an ophthalmologist might use to examine one’s eyes. My wrists and ankles were strapped to the chair.

Seated next to me was Colonel Stephen Vacendak.

27

There were electrodes attached to my temples and forehead, and an I.V. bag dripped into a tube in my left forearm.

“Dr. Stewart, your patient’s out again.”

“Sorry, Colonel. We’ve got enough Dilaudid in him to numb a horse, but I’ll hit him with another shot of B12.”

“I want him coherent, not in a stupor. Give him something with a little kick.”

“Huh!”

My eyes snapped open. My heart was racing, my lungs heaving to catch up. I was dressed in surgical greens, my wrists and ankles strapped to a leather lounge chair.

Before me stood a big man about my father’s age dressed in surgical greens and a white lab coat. He had long, graying blonde hair and a goatee. My eyes focused on his identification badge.

“Dr. Chris Stewart. Levels twenty through twenty-six.”

“Good, the fog is lifting.” I detected a trace of Scottish Highlands tucked into the physician’s British accent. As he backed away, I realized I wasn’t looking at him; I was watching a flatscreen monitor on my left. The man’s face suddenly multiplied, as if he were looking into a mirror that was facing another mirror, only everything that appeared on the screen was originating from my vision.

“Let me turn that away from you, it’s too disorienting.” He pushed the monitor around on its swivel arm.

I heard a hiss of air pressure as a pneumatic door opened behind me. I caught a whiff of cheap aftershave and knew it was the Colonel.

He positioned a stool on my right and then spun my chair around to face him. “What did you know, Zachary?”

“I don’t understand.”

“In your last memory emergence you said, ‘I already knew.’ You were at Loch Ness, the day your best friend, True, died. What is it you knew?”

“That he wanted to die. That he was wracked with guilt over the deaths caused by the Purussaurus. I knew when I saw him circling in his boat that he had rigged the keel with explosives. How did you know I was dreaming of that day?”

He pointed to the optical scanner. “I know because this machine reads the electrical signals perceived by the brain and plays them on this monitor for me to watch. In the last seventeen days, I’ve dialed up every pertinent memory you’ve experienced, and it’s been quite an adventure. Your life is a paradox, Dr. Wallace… No, let me rephrase that: Your death is a paradox. I’ve watched you die so many times that I feel I owe you flowers. From your drowning as a young boy in Loch Ness to your drowning in the Sargasso Sea, to at least a dozen horrible deaths in Lake Vostok. And yet, here you are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I had a few near-death experiences, so what?”

“Not near-death, my friend. You died.”

I laid my head back, feeling lightheaded.

Dr. Stewart leaned in with an apple juice, which I sipped from a straw.

“Thank you.”

“Let me know if you want more. And if you feel like you have to urinate, go ahead. We have a catheter in you.”

I felt queasy. “Why am I here? Is any of this even real?”

“Good questions,” the Colonel said. “Over the years, many individuals have experienced a close encounter with an extraterrestrial, either physical contact or a mind-to-mind interaction. What determines the extent of the experience is the level of consciousness of the E.T.; the higher the being, the more positive the interaction. Seven years ago you channeled soul to soul with the highest being our paranormal experts have ever found trace memories of in a close-encounter subject. That makes you a conduit into another dimension. As a result, your consciousness has the ability to selectively route your soul through a multiverse of infinite probabilities.

“Let me give you an example. On your ninth birthday you caught your father cheating on your mother. Incensed, you rowed out on Loch Ness by yourself to test your sonic lure. Your invention attracted a school of salmon, and one oversized Anguilla eel, which sunk your boat and left you flailing in near-freezing water. At that moment your consciousness created a dozen possible scenarios, all but one ending in your death. Call it multiple forks in the road. The thing is, your consciousness bypassed the eight-lane superhighway and followed a torturous dirt road, and the life of Zachary Wallace miraculously continued.”

“So what? So I cheated death a few times. Every day, every person chooses between infinite possibilities. Some days we avoid death and never know it, simply because we took another route to work or didn’t book a plane ticket or didn’t trip on the cat and fall down the stairs. How is my life a paradox?”

“Because you’re here. Because you made it out of Vostok alive when there wasn’t an escape option — No, that’s not true. I was your escape option. Unfortunately, Captain Hintzmann told you a conspiracy tale that obviously painted me as the bad guy. I’m not the bad guy, Zachary.”

“Bullshit. You threatened to leave me stranded in the borehole.”

“It was only a threat. I didn’t trust the personnel inside Vostok Command, and I needed answers. I never expected you to climb out of the sub and disconnect the umbilical. That’s what’s known as being hero-stupid. Suicidal. And yet, in a hundred multiverses of death, your consciousness managed to find the one possible outcome that led you back to that extraterrestrial vessel. And that, my friend, was your emergence point into the higher dimensions.”

Colonel Vacendak popped a straw into another box of apple juice and held it up to my parched lips. “You asked me what is real. Every possible outcome in our lives creates an alternate universe, and every one of them is real. Our consciousness selects the routes. Who knows, perhaps somewhere out there exist trillions of parallel universes and hundreds of each one of us living out these alternative lives. But I’ve spent the last two weeks scanning your memories, Zachary, and you never made it out of Lake Vostok alive.

“I know you think you piloted the Barracuda through a subglacial river. I’m also certain you’re convinced that when you ran out of river and found yourself trapped, you were able to use the lasers to create your escape. But it never happened.

“That river you saw on the satellite chart, it wasn’t complete. To make it out through the Amery Ice Shelf, you would have needed a hundred Valkyries powered by a small nuclear power plant. Not to mention air. The most you had left while the umbilical was still attached was twelve hours. Even with two completely functional lasers fed by an endless surface supply of power, it would have taken you eighty hours to cover eight hundred miles through near-solid ice. So how did you do it? How did you manage to get to Prydz Bay and the airfield at Davis Base to board your father’s chartered jet, which just happened to be there to whisk True and his crocodile egg to safety?”

“I don’t know. I was out of it. I spent a month in the hospital. I remember bits and pieces, but the rest is a blur. Yet I was there, and I’m here. I didn’t die. You can’t go from being trapped beneath the ice to Davis Station without the journey in between.”

“Or maybe you can. Have you ever heard of quantum tunneling? No? When we examine the inner workings of an atom, we know that it is about 99.99 percent empty space. In fact, all matter is mostly empty space. So why, then, if that’s true, can’t we walk through walls? The reason is electrons. Electrons are tiny, but they pack a strong negative charge. These electrons are continuously moving around the circumference of the atom at the speed of light, repelling each other. It’s their repelling charge that prevents us from walking through walls. Did you know we go through our entire lives without ever actually having touched anything? When we stand, the electrons in our shoes repel the electrons in the floor, levitating us about a millionth of a centimeter. Of course, you already know that from having spent the last seven years marketing an alien electron generator.

“Quantum tunneling is the quantum mechanical process by which a particle can pass between two separate points without passing through all the intermediate points. Extraterrestrial aircraft move from point A to point B in the blink of an eye, appearing to stop on a dime when in fact they’re quantum tunneling. Oh, yes, we know a great deal about our alien visitors, and I want to share everything with you.”

I stared hard into his eyes. “Why? So you can start some bogus space war predicated on a false flag attack that your phony spacecraft initiated? How many innocent people have to die so you and your big-oil allies can stay in power? These beings mean us no harm. Why do you want to kill them, too?”

“Don’t be so quick to pass judgment. There’s a reason they gave you access to the higher dimensions, and it wasn’t so you could battle the Loch Ness monster and sell books.”

He looked up at Dr. Stewart. “Give us some privacy, please. I’ll call you when I need you.”

“Yes, sir.”

I heard the physician leave, the door hissing closed behind him.

“I need to trust you, Dr. Wallace. More importantly, I need you to trust me. So I’m going to debrief you. In doing so, I’m going to reveal events so incredible they defy belief, things that are so shocking your first instinct will be to dismiss them simply out of self-preservation. The truth will sound like a combination of fiction and conspiracy theory, but it’s absolutely real. To keep these truths from the public, the Constitution has been trampled upon and the United States government subverted. Good, moral individuals like yourself have been murdered, including a world leader who attempted to derail the people who now hold power. If someone of this man’s stature was expendable, then you and I are barely an afterthought. And yet you may hold the key to saving our world, or destroying it. Thus, you need to know everything.

“Are we alone in the universe? Far from it. There are countless species out there vying to influence our evolution. The question now is whether humanity can survive the encounter. Although these visitations date back thousands of years, the first modern-day encounters occurred two years after the atomic bomb was used to end World War II. The crash outside Roswell, New Mexico, occurred when a new electromagnetic scalar weapon was switched on, causing two of the E.T. aircraft that were phasing out of super lightspeed to collide. Between January 1947 and December 1952, our EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapon brought down thirteen alien spacecrafts: eleven in New Mexico and one each in Nevada and Arizona. Two other crashes occurred in Mexico and one in Norway. Sixty-five bodies were recovered, including one alien that was kept alive for three years. Of special importance was an alien craft, one hundred feet in diameter, recovered on a mesa near Aztec, New Mexico, on February 13, 1948. In addition to its dead crew, the vessel contained stored human body parts.

“In December of 1947, President Truman secretly approved Project Sign, a program that recruited America’s top scientists to study the alien phenomenon. A year later Sign evolved into Project Grudge, which included a disinformation campaign known as Blue Book. Special Ops groups known as Blue Teams were trained and equipped to recover the crashed spacecraft and their alien crew, everything overseen during these early years by the newly formed United States Air Force and the Central Intelligence Agency, the latter created to deal exclusively with the alien presence.

“On November 4, 1952, President Truman established, by secret executive order, the National Security Agency. The NSA’s primary task was to decipher alien communications and establish a dialogue with extraterrestrials. They were also charged with monitoring all communications worldwide for the purpose of gathering intelligence, both human and alien, and to containing the secret of extraterrestrials’ presence. Truman’s executive order exempted the NSA from all laws that did not specifically name the agency in the text of the law, essentially placing the NSA and its activities above the law, allowing them to operate free of oversight. President Obama learned this the hard way when he found out the agency was eavesdropping on the German chancellor without his administration’s knowledge.

“Truman’s actions created a plausible deniability buffer between the White House and the ‘do whatever is necessary’ tactics of his newly established intelligence agencies. In years to come, this order effectively prevented future presidents from accessing information from the intelligence communities regarding E.T.s. In other words, when it comes to aliens, these intelligence agencies report to no one.

“Truman’s Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, objected to the secret executive orders and was asked to resign. Convinced he represented a threat to their secrecy, the CIA tailed him around the clock. The resultant paranoia was diagnosed as a mental breakdown, and Forrestal was forcibly committed to the mental ward of Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he was isolated and denied visitors. When Forrestal’s brother notified authorities that he intended to remove James from Bethesda, CIA agents tied a sheet around the former defense secretary’s neck, fastened the end to a room fixture, and threw James Forrestal out the sixteenth-story window. The sheet tore and the fall killed him, his murder made to look like a suicide.”

“I don’t care about your conspiracy tales, Colonel. I’ve heard them all before.”

“Have you heard about the captured alien? He was a Gray. Grays come in different sizes, but they all share the same basic DNA structure. We’ve encountered reptile-like beings as well as humanoids, which we call Nordics. Each species has a different agenda, but I’ll save that for later. The first Gray was called Ebe, short for Extraterrestrial Biological Entity. Like all Grays, Ebe was hairless, with a slightly elongated skull and big black eyes that had no exterior lids. A Gray’s neck is centered at the base of its skull, giving the head a top-heavy, unstable appearance. Their hands are thin and double-jointed, possessing three long fingers and an opposable fourth digit.

“Ebe’s sexual organs were internalized, but after two years of attempted communications, we were pretty sure he was a male. The alien’s internal anatomy was chlorophyll-based, and it processed food into energy and waste material in the same manner as plants. It had to be kept in a Faraday chamber, which disrupted its ability to control electromagnetic currents. Otherwise, Ebe would escape by walking right through the walls.

“We learned a lot from Ebe, everything compiled into what became known as the Yellow Book. Unfortunately, the Gray became ill in late 1951. Medical specialists were brought in to treat him, along with a botanist. In a futile attempt to save the being’s life and demonstrate our peaceful intentions to a superior race of beings, the United States began broadcasting radio signals into deep space. These distress calls, part of a project called SIGMA, went unanswered. Ebe died on June 2, 1952; Spielberg’s movie E.T. was loosely based on these events.

“Fearing an alien invasion, Truman made sure our allies and the Soviet Union knew about the E.T.s and their technology. Because Congress couldn’t be trusted, a small group of world leaders were organized to strategize how to deal with the threat. This ruling body became known as the Bilderberger Group, named after the hotel where they first met.

“The alien encounters grew more frequent in 1953 after President Dwight Eisenhower took office. To deal with the problem, Eisenhower appointed Nelson Rockefeller as chairman of a Presidential Advisory Committee on Government Organization. His first assignment was to create a secret task force.

“By 1955, the new entity, known as MJ-12, was placed in charge of all alien activities. The secret society included Nelson Rockefeller, Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson, CIA Director Allen Dulles, Secretary of State John Dulles, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Arthur Radford, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. There were also six men selected from the Council on Foreign Relations and six from a scientific group formed during the Manhattan Project, known as the JASON Society. Policies could only be mandated by a majority vote of twelve, thus the name MJ-12.

“Power breeds contempt, Dr. Wallace. Over the years MJ-12’s top positions were dominated by members of the CFR and the Trilateral Commission. This group of elitists ruled in favor of its own special interests. Buoyed by Eisenhower’s hands-off executive orders and Rockefeller’s restructured government, this secret society had essentially been given the keys to rule the world, and they intended to shape it in ways that ensured they remained in power.

“Trillions of dollars have been secreted into covert funds over the years, to feed the military industrial complex without congressional oversight. Billions more were raised by exploiting the opium market. Working with South American drug cartels, cocaine shipments were brought by boat to offshore U.S. oil-drilling platforms, where CIA operatives would then transport them ashore with the rig’s supplies, bypassing customs. New Orleans and California were the primary destinations, targeting minorities and the poor, an element the elite considered to be our nation’s weakest links. Even today, the CIA controls most of the world’s illegal drug markets, as well as its major newspapers and media outlets. Some of these vast appropriations were used to build elaborate underground facilities, supposedly to house the government in case of nuclear war. In reality, these bunkers are part of a plan known as Alternative Two. Alternatives One, Two, and Three are contingency plans that deal with the threat of an alien invasion.

“When President Kennedy learned what the CIA was doing, he threatened to shut down the agency, and with it MJ-12. In doing so, he underestimated the lengths the elite would go to, remain in power. If you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald and his magic bullet assassinated JFK, then I’m wasting my time with you. Most of the Warren Commission was made up of CFR members; you know how that investigation played itself out.

“There are secret underground military bases across the United States, including one in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, run by Army Intelligence, which houses nine extraterrestrial vessels and the remains of their crew.”

“Is that where we are?”

“No, you’re in Dreamland, better known as Area 51. We run a program here where our pilots test alien aircraft. We also run a fake test program to fool the public.”

“You mean like the bogus alien craft you used to launch your false flag event?”

“That wasn’t us. But I can see you don’t believe me.” He touched something in his right ear. It must have held a communication link because a moment later, the door hissed open and someone entered.

Her perfume arrived before I saw her. “Susan! Susan, are you all right?”

She knelt and kissed my cheek. “I’m fine. It’s you I’ve been worried about.” She looked up at the Colonel. “You’ve accessed enough of his memories for a lifetime. I want these tubes taken out of him.”

“In a moment. He needs to know who we are and where we stand.”

Searching through a drawer beneath my table, she located gauze and tape and then set to work removing my I.V. tube. “Zach, MJ-12 fractured into two ideologies years ago. Our group is made up of intellects from the JASON Society and seeks peaceful relations with the E.T.s. The other group, composed of radical members of the Bilderbergs, Trilateral Commission, and CFR, seek to exploit the aliens’ technology for their own New World Order.”

I winced as the tube was extracted from my vein. “You’re a part of this?”

“I was recruited into the JASON Society my senior year at Yale.”

“What about… us?”

“I was told to get close.”

“In other words you used me.”

“Yes, but for the greater good. There’s so much you don’t understand.”

“Try me.”

Colonel Vacendak interrupted. “As I explained before, we’ve figured out how these saucer-shaped E.T. vessels appear to violate the laws of physics, hovering in mid-air and changing directions at will, moving at beyond-lightspeed. They’re phase shifting in and out of a higher dimension, using a device similar to what you wanted to unleash upon the world, an energy device that creates a powerful rotating electromagnetic field that interacts with gravity. For some reason, the being you were in contact with seven years ago chose you to deliver it to humanity. Care to tell us why?”

“Maybe because it knew you and your kind would exploit it instead of share it, like the other assholes.”

Susan stepped in between us. “The E.T. communicated with you while you were in a lucid dream state, something we refer to as a conscious-intelligent visual, or CIV. Existence is all about consciousness. Among higher souls like your alien friend, it transcends the limits of both time and space. While the Creator represents the absolute universal mind, physical beings like ourselves can tap into the same energy, or light vibration, to experience precognition, inspiration, intuition, creativity, and even remote viewing. This can be achieved because a link exists between awareness and matter. When you entered the ice tunnel, the purity of your consciousness allowed you to gain entry into the ship.”

The Colonel nodded. “Tell him more about the different species we’ve encountered.”

“Nordics are physical beings that resemble humans. They prefer to observe from a distance, though at times they’ve flown over our nuclear missile bases and short-circuited our weapon systems. They have communicated messages intended to awaken a spiritual evolution. Grays and Reptilians are darker beings who visit evolving worlds under the guise of serving as a ‘mentor’ species. They come bearing gifts, which they offer those who share the same negative vibrational frequencies as their own. Secret societies like the Bilderbergs, who are misled into bringing about mass destruction on a planetary scale, become their puppets.

“Zachary, a spiritual revolution is already upon us as the masses refuse to accept poverty, inequality, and endless war spawned by class warfare and greed. In order to control the populace, the elites have once again created the illusion of wolves stalking the flock, this time in the guise of aliens hell-bent on destruction. These contrived threats will lead to the forfeiture of even more personal freedoms, in this case the energy system you introduced to the public. It’s a page straight out of the 9/11 playbook, except on a global scale, spawned by a Faustian agreement entered into between the elites and their alien counterparts, placing all of humanity in grave jeopardy.”

“How is humanity in danger? And what does all this have to do with me?”

“It had nothing to do with you,” the Colonel said. “All we wanted you and your team to do was plant a few sensors around that damn ship and get out of Dodge. Instead, you triggered a portal that our alien visitors have been trying to access for years. If Susan and her fellow JASONS are right and some kind of cataclysm is going to hit—”

“Catacylsm? What kind of cataclysm?”

Susan held my hand. “Zach, honey, there was a reason you were contacted seven years ago in Lake Vostok. We believe an extinction event is going to happen in the near future. It could be natural or man-made, or induced by the E.T.s. To prevent it, we need to know what it will be and when it is supposed to happen.

“I’m sorry, baby, but we need to take you back.”

28

“Take me back where? To Lake Vostok? You’re nuts!”

“Zach, the space-time portal you accessed allows you to move within the multiverses of your soul’s existence. You can use the portal to access the future. Not only can you learn what disaster awaits us, you can determine the proper course of action that will save our species.”

“And how the hell am I supposed to get back down into that godforsaken lake?”

“The Colonel will explain everything. For now, let’s get you cleaned up and moving about.”

I let out a loud yelp as Susan removed my catheter. She pulled loose the Velcro straps from my ankles and wrists, then removed the EKG tabs from my chest.

“Ow.”

“Sorry. Try to stand.”

I attempted to climb out of the chair, but my legs lacked the strength.

The Colonel summoned his physician, who returned with a wheelchair. “Susan, take him to the dining hall and get him something to eat. The transport leaves tomorrow morning at 0800 hours. I need him fit enough to travel.”

“Twelve hours? I’ll do my best. Zach, let’s see if we can get some solid food into you.”

Susan wheeled me out of the pneumatic door to an antiseptic-white, tiled outer corridor. We passed a dozen similar doors, each chamber’s electronic keypad marked by either a green or flashing red light. I wondered who else they had hooked up to their insidious machines, whose memories they were probing.

At the end of the hall were three elevators. Susan swiped the magnetic strip on her identification card and pressed the UP button. The middle car arrived and she backed me inside.

We were on the twenty-third floor. The thirty-three elevator buttons were arranged in ascending order to reflect the subterranean location of our facility, the top floor listed as G.

She pushed SEVENTEEN. “Zach, we’re being watched. Don’t react — I know you can hear my thoughts. I want you to tell me you’d prefer to take a hot bath to get your circulation going before you eat something.”

My pulse raced as I heard her words whispered into my consciousness. “Susan, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to take a hot bath to get my circulation going before I eat something.”

“Good idea. I’ll take you to your quarters.” She pushed FIVE.

The elevator passed the seventeenth floor and stopped on the fifth.

The doors opened and Susan wheeled me out to a seemingly endless corridor that felt more like a dormitory than a secured floor. Corkboards spaced at intervals along the walls held flyers advertising the week’s schedule of social events. We passed a dozen rooms, a lounge, and a weight room before we reached Suite 514.

Susan indicated the keypad, and I pressed my thumb to it, unbolting the door.

The room brightened as we entered, revealing a small living room that looked out onto a dazzling view of a Mediterranean beach and an azure sea. The balcony door was open, venting the air-conditioned apartment with warm gusts of briny air. I heard the ocean washing along the shoreline and seagulls cawing — and none of it was real.

Susan shut the door of the video-screen balcony, extinguishing the view.

“Zach, keep all verbal communication to small talk. Once we’re in the bathtub, I’ll answer all of your questions.”

I caught myself nodding. “Uh, nice place.”

“Let’s get you into a hot bath.”

I stood and leaned on her shoulder as she led me into her bedroom.

A queen-size bed faced bay windows that were part of the same holographic system as the balcony. There was a sound system and a flat-screen television. A wall of mirrors concealed a closet.

I stripped out of my surgical greens while Susan ran the bath water. My arms were covered in bruises from multiple I.V.s. My leg muscles had atrophied. Remembering the weight room, I decided a workout would follow my meal, if only to regain some strength to escape.

Susan was naked, waiting for me inside the whirlpool tub. “Come in and lean back against me. I’ll massage your shoulders.”

I climbed in and lay back against her breasts.

She wrapped her muscular quadriceps around my waist, running her hands along my groin.

I grabbed her wrists. “Hey, knock it off! I want answers, like how we’re able to communicate telepathically.”

“Now, don’t react… I’m a Nordic.”

I tried to sit up, but her legs were far too strong.

“I won’t harm you. I’m here to help you, but you have to trust me. The Colonel lied. He needs you in Vostok to access the alien vessel. Once MJ-12 has access to the portal, they’ll be able to time-jump, altering third-dimension reality. We can’t allow that to happen.”

“What’s this ‘we’ stuff? You don’t need me, Susan, you’re Nordic. Destroy the damn portal and be done with it.”

“We can’t. The magnetic shield is far too strong. Even if we could destroy it, there’s a hierarchy in play. The being that communicated with you exists in the upper dimensions. When it comes to these higher-vibration entities there are no coincidences. The portal is in Lake Vostok because it knew you would be there. It offered you the gift of energy for a reason. If it knows what is to come, then we must trust it.”

“And why should I trust you?”

“Nordics have been mentoring humans for thousands of years. The Mayan teacher, Kukulcan, was a Nordic, as was the Inca leader Viracocha. If Colonel Vacendak knew I was a Nordic, neither one of us would ever see daylight again.”

“Where do Nordics come from? How long have you been on Earth? Were you born here?”

“I’ll tell you everything, but you must remember we’re being watched. Close your eyes.” She kissed the back of my neck while massaging my shoulders. “Life thrives in multiple plains of existence throughout the universe. Imagine each galaxy as a garden, most of its flowers cultivated within its central greenhouse. Star systems like yours, situated along the fringes of the galaxy, must be seeded for life.

“Seeded how?”

“The process begins with water. Billions of years ago Earth was bombarded with asteroids and comets, each impact releasing moisture into the atmosphere along with the chemicals and amino acids necessary to foster single-celled organisms. Life took root almost four billion years ago; however, eons of evolution failed to produce a species worthy of harboring a higher soul.

“Cataclysms are a means of testing the worthiness of a species or merely starting over. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was intended to end their reign and pave the way for the ascension of mammals, primates, and finally primitive man. When it comes to hominids, Nordics are purebreds: our genome possesses DNA strands designed to adapt to each world’s unique environment. Homo sapiens were selected for an interspecies breeding program designed to accelerate your hybrid faster up the evolutionary ladder.”

“Why?”

“The purpose of existence in the physical dimension is to provide suitable harbors for the soul. Intelligence is a trait that blossoms when fertilized by a higher species. Nordic hybrid development tends to follow similar progressions, spurred by adversity. Nomads forge clans and clans form alliances, usually out of the need for protection. Eventually, these unions expand to tribes, with the manner in which disputes are settled determining the potential reign of each budding group.

“Agrarian societies replace hunter-gatherers with farmers, stone tools with metallurgy, chaos with the rule of law. Chiefdoms and kingdoms are absorbed into geopolitical systems. Geographical territories are defined and redefined, with empires rising and falling as the world seeks equilibrium. Market-driven economies empower democracies over autocracies, with the availability of energy determining population levels, wealth, and military might.

“It is at this stage that every intelligent species either succeeds or succumbs to its own weaknesses. Technology is the great equalizer. As it evolves, global communication and information challenge the elite, the majority demanding freedom and an equitable share of a better life. The institutions in power either raise the standard of living among the masses or seek violent means to preserve the status quo. What’s at stake is the future of the species.

“Equality is the key to survival, Zachary. It leads to free-market globalism and new energy systems that eventually unite the entire planet. Energy, both physical and spiritual, is what ultimately transforms a Type-0 civilization like yours into a Type-1 civilization. It is at this point that the dangers of splitting the atom are replaced by the threat of extinction. Cataclysms like asteroid strikes, caldera eruptions, lethal viruses, and ice ages induced by climate change will either unite a species or destroy it.”

“Assuming we survive these challenges, what then?”

“Unity is what defines a Type-1 civilization. Societies thrive using clean, renewable energy. Type-2 civilizations are those which terraform other worlds within their solar system. Type-3 civilizations — the highest level attainable for third-dimension physical beings — have mastered zero-point energy and faster-than-light travel, uniting them with the community of intelligent beings in their galaxy.

“What prevents a Type-0 civilization like yours from evolving and ultimately surviving is the resistance by institutions to turning their power over to the people. When economic tribalism dominates the political system, civilization reverts to a system of fiefdoms. Contempt divides the masses, and conflicts result in war and a deeper divide. When the first potential extinction event arises, the stagnating Type-0 civilization will always perish.”

“And what is my role in this equation?”

She slid me around, slipping her tongue in my mouth. “Colonel Vacendak and his MJ-12 brethren are convinced the space-time portal you accessed in Vostok will give them access to zero-point energy, a technology reserved for Type-3 civilizations. You must pretend to assist the Colonel—”

“Susan, I’m not going back in that subglacial icebox. No way.”

“You have to. The future of your species is at stake. It’s the reason the Grays are here, the reason the trans-dimensional being sought you out.” She gripped my face, staring hard into my eyes. “Unless you act, your people and every air-breathing being on your planet will perish.”

29

Over the next twelve hours, I managed two meals, dedicated a few hour-sessions in the weight room working my atrophied muscles into shape, and spent a restless night curled in bed next to Susan.

Who was she? What was she? Frankly, I didn’t care if she called herself a Nordic. It wasn’t like she had two heads. What bothered me more was that our relationship had been strategic, not emotional. She had baited me into loving her to satisfy her species’ agenda, and that meant I couldn’t trust her.

They came for us at six in the morning.

Two armed security men escorted us up to the third floor to a chamber the size of a middle school gym. Members of the team that were being flown out to Antarctica waited in line to receive shots and collect their Extreme Weather Gear, most of the crewmen already dressed in nylon Bio Suits.

Dr. Stewart pulled us out of line and led us into a private room. We were handed dressing gowns and asked to strip down for our pre-flight exams. The “booster shot” into my right buttock administered the requisite biochip and tracer into my bloodstream.

We dressed in nylon navy-blue Bio Suits and boots, selected our breakfast from a buffet line, and ate. When we finished, our armed escorts took us down to Level 16.

Susan reached for my hand as we stepped off the elevator. There’s a Gray on this floor. You’ll feel it reading your mind. Don’t think about last night; focus on a distant memory.

We entered a small room with porous steel walls that exuded an electromagnetic current that caused my hair to dance away from my scalp. Two chairs sporting wrist and ankle couplings were bolted to the white tile floor, facing dark glass that spanned most of the front wall.

Colonel Vacendak directed me to occupy the chair on the left, Susan the one on the right. I sat upright, wincing as my limbs were secured in place.

“My apologies, but this pre-flight pep talk could get emotional. Captain, are you carrying a firearm?”

The senior security guard nodded.

“I’m going to ask Dr. Wallace five questions. At the first wrong answer or his refusal to respond, you will shoot Ms. McWhite in the head.”

The guard methodically removed his gun from its holster, coldly chambered a round, and then pressed the barrel to Susan’s left temple.

I felt a wave of hot blood rushing to my face. “What’s your problem, arse? Weren’t you hugged as a child?”

“Question one: Dr. Wallace, is Susan McWhite able to communicate telepathically with you?”

I glanced at Susan, who was staring intently at the dark glass. “Yes.”

A green light flashed on from behind the glass for just a blink.

Colonel Vacendak nodded. “So far, so good. Question two: Is Susan McWhite a Nordic?”

I felt myself shaking. “How the fuck would I know a Nordic from a human?”

A long moment passed before the green light flashed again.

“Your answer is deceptive, but accepted. Question three: Can I trust Susan McWhite once our team has gained access to the interdimensional portal?”

I stared at our reflections, registering a strange sensation inside my head that felt like icy fingers probing the crevices of my brain. I hesitated, knowing a truthful answer would condemn Susan as much as a lie.

And then another thought occurred to me, one that altered my interpretation of the question. Maybe the bitch is setting me up again.

I looked at Susan. “Yes, you can trust her.”

The light flashed green.

Susan exhaled.

Colonel Vacendak’s eyebrows raised. “Question four: Can I trust you once we’re in Lake Vostok?”

I turned to face him. “No.”

I didn’t bother looking for the light.

“So far, you’ve been truthful, confirming things I already knew. And, by telling me that I can trust Susan, you’ve told me that you don’t trust Susan. By now, you must have considered her role in the theft of the Vostok units from your warehouse safe?”

I closed my eyes. “I trusted you, Susan. I loved you! How could you set me up like that?”

“I’m sorry, Zach. But there are things in play that you can’t see. If it means anything, I do care about you.”

“Stay out of my head!”

The Colonel was watching us, smiling. “A lover’s telepathic quarrel? If only we humans could handle them the same way. One day, perhaps, assuming we can survive what lies ahead. And that, after all, is the point of this mission, is it not? To see what catastrophe lies in wait for us, the very survival of an entire species hanging in the balance.

“This exercise served its purpose, I believe, for it made you realize that our Nordic friend here can’t be trusted. And now I realize that if a come-to-Jesus moment arises in Lake Vostok that requires you to trust me to do the right thing, you no longer value Ms. McWhite’s life enough to persuade you. So then, we’ll need to up the ante. Question five: What do you value above even your own welfare?”

The Colonel signaled to the glass.

A moment later a hidden door pushed open along a sidewall, and another guard entered the room with a ten-year-old boy.

His hair was raven-dark like his mother’s, and when William saw me, he ran to me and hugged me, curling himself in my lap. “Da, I don’t like this place. Mum blames ye fer us bein’ here.”

I stared venom into Colonel Vacendak’s eyes. “Where’s the boy’s mother?”

“She’s safe. She’s a handful, that one. Your son and ex-wife will spend the next few weeks with us here at Dreamland. Once you complete the mission, they’ll be released unharmed.”

“Why should I believe you?”

The Colonel signaled for the guard to remove Willy from my lap. He waited until the two had left the room and the door clicked shut before nodding to the guard aiming the gun at Susan’s head.

“No!”

The muffled blast splattered a Rorschach pattern of blood, brain, and bone across the white tile.

I turned my head and puked up my breakfast.

“Trust is all we have, Dr. Wallace. Susan McWhite was a valued ally and friend. She was also my lover. If I was willing to sacrifice her life for the greater good, you have to trust that I won’t hesitate to kill you and your family should you attempt to deceive me in Lake Vostok.”

He turned to the guard who had shot Susan. “Have her remains taken to the seventeenth floor for dissection, then clean him up and get him aboard the transport.”

“Yes, sir.”

Thirty minutes later I rode the elevator up to ground level with my armed escort. A wave of early-morning Nevada heat greeted me as we entered a “scoot and hide” hangar the size of six football fields. Beneath the high roof I could see a slice of red rock, the mountains concealing the rising sun. To the west rose a cluster of radar antennas. To the north a building meant to resemble a mess hall was flanked by several antiquated housing facilities, and farther down the road, by a perimeter fence, stood a guard house.

The surface facilities were there for window dressing because Area 51 conducted most of its business deep underground.

Two long tarmac runways, constructed on a dry lake bed, ran parallel to the hangar. My escort led me to a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, an immense military transport that dwarfed everything else under the roof. Painted in green camouflage, the plane — nicknamed FRED (Fucking Ridiculous Environmental Disaster) by its crew — had twelve internal wing tanks and was equipped for aerial refueling. The T-shaped tail towered three stories overhead, its nose and aft loading docks lowered open to receive its payload.

The payload was a thirty-seven-foot submarine named the Tethys, the very ship described to me seven years earlier by Ben Hintzmann. She had been named after the Titan goddess of freshwater rivers and streams, and the ancient sea that harbored prehistoric life 200 million years ago. The vessel had been designed for one purpose: to access Lake Vostok by traveling beneath the East Antarctic ice sheet through a network of subglacial rivers.

To accomplish this, the sub housed two ice-melting elements in its reinforced, chisel-shaped bow. The first was a Europa-class Valkyrie laser. Like the two Valkyries that had been mounted on the Barracuda, it was designed specifically for Jupiter’s frozen moon. The E-class, however, was three times the diameter of its predecessor and was powered by a nuclear reactor.

To help the sixty-three-ton ship’s twin engines propel the Tethys through the ice, the sub had been equipped with a bow and flat bottom composed of a calcium isotope, the plates of which could be superheated to temperatures exceeding fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The end result was a dagger-shaped vessel that melted ice like a hot knife through butter, keeping the submarine hydroplaning toward its target.

Technicians loaded the ship aboard the transport and secured it in chains. I boarded through the open nose to the forward passenger section, where seventy-two business-class seats were set in eighteen rows facing the rear of the aircraft. The plane was empty, the sub’s crew still finishing breakfast. The guard stopped me at the third row and motioned for me to occupy a window seat while he took the aisle. Reclining the chair, I closed my eyes and tried to settle my nerves.

But the thought of William and Brandy held captive, along with the image of Susan’s skull splattering across the white tile floor, wouldn’t leave me. The guard’s presence only added to my anxiety.

Unable to take it anymore, I stood and confronted the armed man. “I need something to put me out. Drugs, booze, a bottle of cough syrup — I don’t care what it is, but I need it now!”

“How about I just punch you in the face?”

“Do it, arse. Then you can explain to the Colonel why his lead scientist can’t function when we get to Antarctica.”

Realizing he needed to deal with my issue, the guard radioed for a physician.

Ten minutes later Dr. Stewart was rigging an I.V. drip to service me in the first-row window seat. “This will put you in La La Land for a good fifteen hours. When you wake up, you can take these pills, one every four hours. Just make sure you eat something first.” He slid the needle into a vein in my left forearm, securing it in place with medical tape. “By the way, I’m sorry about Susan. To waste a life like that… It’s not why I joined MJ-12. All life is sacred. No matter the species, we’re all God’s creatures. Even the bloody Irish.”

He winked, started the drip, and left.

I reclined my seat, pulled the blind down over my window, and closed my eyes, allowing the liquid elixir to float me away.

30

Susan’s soul came to me, only it was harbored in the physicality of another.

As was mine.

We were on a mountain bluff overlooking a tempest sea. The sky was violet, but not by dusk’s cool touch, for the sun was still high in the sky. She was picking purple flowers that grew from vines twisted around branches of a scarlet oak, and the wind kept catching her tunic, causing the sheer fabric to bloom above her hips, revealing her naked torso to me.

“You’re using the wind to tempt my loins.” I said aloud.

“And why would I do such a thing? This is my fertile time, and the Council has placed yet another moratorium on conception. Or perhaps you’ve spent so much time in your cave that you haven’t heard?”

“I am a scientist, Lehanna. The decree is in response to the latest Miketz update. The magma chamber’s internal pressure has risen higher than our geologists predicted.”

“How much longer do we have?”

“It’s best not to dwell on predictions.”

“Avi Socha, as your senior wife I need to prepare our home for every eventuality.”

“The Miketz is a probability, not a certainty. It could still subside.”

“How long?”

“Two solar orbits, with the pyroclastic blast most likely occurring before the spring harvest.”

The new doomsday timetable hit her hard. “And how many escape ships has the Council commissioned for Charon’s lower rungs?”

“So far, only sixteen — just about enough for a single tribe.”

I watched as the sadness in her eyes changed to anger. “And for the Council?”

“They are keeping the number secret, but I sincerely doubt any of the Appointed Ones will be left behind.”

“Sixteen ships… And the lottery determines which tribe will be saved, correct?”

“Or which seven hundred. To the Council the twelve tribes are simply a minority to be managed. Not that it matters. The transports only carry enough supplies to orbit Charon for one solar year. Most of us scientists in purgatory agree, the effects of the Miketz will render the planet uninhabitable. We need a new planet to call home, but none of the other worlds in this star system are capable of sustaining life. And the transports lack the technology to venture beyond the asteroid belt.”

“What about Berudim? The Council believes the third world possesses water.”

“Berudim’s atmosphere is toxic. And the planet is far too close to the sun to inhabit. The Council is offering the people false hope in an attempt to maintain order. Lehanna?”

She was calculating odds. “Our tribe has a one in twelve chance of being chosen. We can increase those odds with a better harvest and by obeying the Council’s new edicts. Avi, you’ve already been forbidden to practice the mystic wisdom. For the sake of our loved ones, I ask you now to end your midnight activities in the caves.”

“It’s not mysticism, Lehanna. Soul searching is a higher form of meditation which taps into the universal consciousness.”

“It is heresy and a violation of Council law. If you are caught, our tribe could be excluded from the lottery.”

“What good is it to be orbiting a dead world? If I succeed in communicating with my soul’s future incarnates, perhaps they can provide me with the knowledge to prevent the Miketz.”

“It’s utter nonsense.”

“Not true! In the past year, I have communicated with an ancient one whose physicality housed my soul long before me. He described Charon as it was a century before the Council divided our people into tribes. He taught me about the upper worlds, a wonderful existence our souls inhabit between incarnations. Time does not exist in these other realms, which makes it possible for me to communicate with a future me.”

“There is none after you, Avi Socha! This planet is doomed. Ours shall be the last generation to inhabit Charon. Now wake up.”

“Hey, pal, wake up.”

I opened my eyes. My face was covered in tears, my mind lost in a stupor. Everything was gone — the violet landscape, the ocean… the woman. Instead, four men in neoprene jumpsuits stood over me, chuckling, their presence anchoring me to my new surroundings, even as my growing wakefulness drained the memories from my bizarre out-of-body experience.

I was confused. I felt empty inside. Wherever I had been, I wanted to be back there. I belonged there.

I took a deep breath and smelled Susan. In the lucid dream, I had called her by another name. Lehanna. She had referred to me as Avi Socha. She had called the planet Charon. Was it a Nordic world? Had it survived the doomsday event we were talking about? Or was this a future event in a multiverse still to come?

No. Our conversation had been vocalized; there was nothing to indicate an evolved ability to communicate telepathically.

Try as I might, the memory of the dream dissipated too quickly to analyze. It was then I realized something was happening.

Dozens of crewmen were hovering by the windows on my side of the plane, many snapping photos with their iPhones. I raised the window shade and looked outside.

Sweet Jesus…

We were flying over water, the night illuminated by the patterns of light emanating from countless UFOs. Whether their intentions were to escort us to Antarctica or shoot us down, I didn’t know. But they were everywhere. Some flew in formations of up to a dozen, while others zipped close to our wing and hovered, only to accelerate out of view. Then there were those that preferred the cheap seats high above our altitude, their lights appearing like stars. One massive triangular craft the size of a small city dominated the heavens. Every so often it would execute an incredible end-over-end 360 as if just to show us it could do it.

It was a mind-boggling, humbling, and surreal spectacle, and I might have actually enjoyed it had I not feared they were only here because of me.

31

Fear shuts down the mind and paralyzes the body. It unleashes thoughts that smother reason and strangle hope, reducing consciousness to a dying ember.

Sitting on the transport, I realized that I no longer cared whether I lived or died. In truth, it was only the need to save William and Brandy that forced me to take another breath. Yet, even in my state of anxiety, I knew there was zero chance of Colonel Vacendak ever releasing any of us. The only thing keeping us alive was MJ-12’s belief that my presence was needed to access the object in Lake Vostok. When the mission was finished I, along with my loved ones, would be disposed of as collateral damage.

Logic therefore dictated that in order to keep William and Brandy alive, I needed to escape.

That, of course, would be far easier said than done. Besides being guarded around the clock, there weren’t many places one could hide in East Antarctica. Not to mention the interest of the extraterrestrials. They had been following our transport for the last twenty-four hours, and there was a feeling of trepidation among the crew regarding what they might do after we landed. Gazing out of my window at a spectrum of alien lights, I realized something far more important than that my miserable life was at stake, but it was unclear whether the aliens supported my return to Lake Vostok or sought to terminate it.

As my mentor, Joe Tkalec, used to say, “Don’t accuse God of being a bad dealer until you play out the hand you’ve been dealt.”

And then Lake Vostok anted up and the cards were reshuffled.

We were crossing over the South Pole, passing through neon-green curtains of energy that marked the Aurora Australis. Manifested by electrons accelerated by the solar wind colliding with protons and atoms in the upper atmosphere, the Aurora danced its charged waves across the midnight sky, the lime-green color defined by the presence of atomic oxygen over the pole.

Having passed over the bottom of the world, Colonel Vacendak ordered the pilot to adjust our course farther to the south and take the C-5 transport into a gradual descent. Many of the crew wondered why we were landing.

Twenty minutes later, we found ourselves soaring over a seemingly endless desert of ice at an altitude of six hundred feet.

As we passed over Lake Vostok, the buried magnetic anomaly seemed to reach up from the subglacial lake like an invisible hand. It shook the plane with vomit-inducing waves of turbulence. We pitched and dipped, our engines sputtered, and the lights went off several terrifying times. Yet this was nothing compared to what happened to our alien escorts.

Facing backward in my seat, I saw a mega-sized saucer trailing below our plane phase in and out before it fell out of the night sky like a bowling ball. Seconds later, it smashed sideways onto the ice sheet, blasting snow a hundred feet into the electrified air.

By the time I glanced out of the window at the other craft, it was raining UFOs.

Unable to match the power of the force field being generated from the buried vessel, the smaller E.T. ships went into free fall, crashing to the ice with thunderous wallops that could be heard and felt for fifty miles in every direction.

The alien craft high overhead broke formation and dispersed.

Having flown beyond the anomaly’s reach, the pilot increased our altitude and adjusted our course to the northeast, heading back toward Prydz Bay.

Round One was over, and it was a clear victory for the Colonel.

We touched down on the rock runway at Davis Station ninety minutes later, everyone on board relieved to be on the ground, their fears now focused on a possible retaliatory response.

It never came. Ground radar indicated that the surviving E.T. vessels had moved into the stratosphere. After another hour of waiting, the Colonel gave the order to unload the Tethys, a process that would take two days. Then the submarine would be wet docked by her surface ship, which was still en route. In fact, the only vessel visible in Prydz Bay was a 319-foot-long hopper dredge that was slowly working its way toward the Amery Ice Shelf.

It was November 2, spring in Antarctica. The sun hung low in a hazy gray sky when I stepped off the plane, the sub-zero continent welcoming me back with a blast of minus-seventeen-degree wind. Dressed in full ECW gear, I followed my keeper across the tarmac like a penguin waddling after its mother, only I purposely lagged behind just to piss him off.

I was assigned a room at Davis Station and released on my own recognizance. With a biochip circulating in my bloodstream, I was hardly a flight risk. Besides, where was I going to go?

Yet, I did have a plan.

The E.T. vessels had disappeared into the ether once we’d begun our initial descent over East Antarctica. Assuming they had been there to escort yours truly to Vostok, perhaps a few of the more sociable aliens might wish to communicate with me in what the Colonel had called a lucid dream state.

Reaching out to communicate with an extraterrestrial is defined as a close encounter of the fifth kind, or CE-5 initiative. Developed and practiced by Dr. Steven Greer and his supporters, the protocol uses vedic-style meditation to initiate telepathic communication between humans and extraterrestrials, in order to forge a mutually beneficial, sustainable, and cooperative relationship between our species. According to Dr. Greer, once an E.T. exceeds lightspeed it enters a state of cosmic mind. Humans can therefore use coherent thought sequencing to interface with an extraterrestrial, causing the craft to actually vector in on the group’s location through their collective consciousness, culminating in some incredible experiences. Not only have lights appeared out of the ether to signal to CE-5 practitioners, messages of peace have been downloaded to the human participants.

Greer found that there was a universal readiness among extraterrestrials to engage in peaceful communications with the common man rather than our appointed leaders, who have downed dozens of crafts using EMP weapons over the last five decades. There are no secrets when communicating through the conscious mind, so if a human participant possesses a dark agenda, contact is cut off. CE-5 participants believe warfare and the use of nuclear weapons have led to Earth’s isolation, our visiting E.T. ambassadors seeing humanity as an aggressive, divided civilization armed with knowledge that could lead to self-destruction. As such, these entities are hesitant to share advanced technologies until a lasting world unity and peace is achieved.

The fact that one of them had chosen to share its knowledge with me gave me hope that I could use Greer’s CE-5 protocols to communicate outside of Lake Vostok.

What was I hoping to accomplish? In truth, I didn’t know. I felt desperate and alone, and Susan’s murder had rattled my nerves. With my son’s life hanging in the balance, I needed something — anything — that might give me an edge, be it information or a weapon… or an alien ally whom I could convince to free my family.

After consuming a mug of clam chowder in the Davis cafeteria, I returned to my room to change into my extreme weather gear. I was pulling on my boots when I heard a phone playing the Rolling Stone’s Gimme Shelter, one of my favorite songs. Searching the room, I traced the sound to a cell phone stuffed inside my pillowcase.

A text had been sent.

My pulse raced. Only one person had ever called me Dragonslayer — my father.

I quickly finished dressing. Slipping the phone inside my jacket pocket, I left my room and headed out of the nearest exit, my face cloaked behind goggles and a ski mask.

It was dusk and curtains of green light were already forming in the eastern sky by the time I made my way down to the frozen surface waters of Prydz Bay. I followed the shoreline north as instructed, abused by a twenty-knot wind carrying a wind chill of minus thirty-five.

I heard someone trudging through the snow behind me. It was my guard. He was following me on a parallel course farther inland, trying to stay out of sight.

The cell phone vibrated in my jacket pocket. I pulled it out, using my body to conceal its light from my shadow.

The bay? They must be sending a helicopter. I glanced overhead, listening for rotary blades. Would MJ-12 shoot it down? Did my intended rescuers know I had a tracking device circulating through my bloodstream?

I hesitated, then turned and walked out onto the frozen bay. The ice seemed plenty thick, the spring thaw having gained little traction. Counting my strides, and trembling from the cold, I continued to scan the star-filled sky for my ride.

Two hundred paces brought me some distance from shore. The surface remained solid beneath my boots, but there was still no sign of a chopper.

The wind howled in my wool-covered ears, sweeping snow particles across the barren ice. Tugging my jacket over my buttocks, I sat down and closed my eyes to attempt a CE-5 communication.

When it comes to meditation, I’m strictly an amateur. Hunkering down in the bone-chilling cold, I ducked my hooded head and closed my eyes, attempting to imagine the Milky Way galaxy and the spiral arm that harbored our blue speck of a planet. When that seemed silly — the E.T.s knew where I was, having just followed me halfway across the world — I shifted my internal eye to the patch of ice beneath me.

I don’t know how long I remained in this position. I may have fallen asleep, but at some point I felt another presence.

Opening my eyes, I found myself surrounded by mist. Directly overhead, a triangle of light seemed to be materializing out of another dimension, along with the flat metallic bottom of an extraterrestrial vehicle. It had to be hovering incredibly close, for it blotted out the stars.

I registered a brief fleeting moment of elation, then sudden panic as the ice beneath me evaporated and I went under, my lung-collapsing yelp stymied by a mouthful of salt water. Rational thought left me as unseen tentacles dragged me deeper into water so frigid it curdled my blood into jelly and strangled my circulation. It was Loch Ness all over again; the darkness, the paralysis of cold, the mind-snapping terror. I caught a glimpse of an immense, dark object moving beneath me as a pink fluorescent light sparked to life before me, revealing a scuba diver.

He shoved a regulator into my mouth, the device attached to a small container of air.

Pinching my nose, I inhaled a dozen quick breaths, struggling to get them into my failing lungs. The diver motioned below to a bullet-shaped canister the size of a double-wide coffin. Grabbing my left wrist, he dragged me to it, the dark container yawning open like a clam as we approached. He laid me inside as another wave of anxiety hit.

He squeezed in next to me and sealed the canister by pressing a device attached to his buoyancy control vest. The moment the pod sealed, a blue light activated.

The diver held up a plastic card.

The top of my head struck the inside of the container as the pod jettisoned through the sea and a second laminated card appeared before me.

I closed my eyes, comforted by my rescuer’s knowledge of the biochip, my body convulsing in the twenty-nine-degree water.

Two minutes.

120 seconds.

119… 118… 117…

Coherent thought goes hand in hand with core temperature. Stray too high or too low and you start to lose it. You start to die. In a battle of neurological functions, my mind fought to maintain a foothold of sanity as my hypothalamus struggled to control my body’s internal thermostat.

It takes a lot to overcome this almond-sized super-organ, but subfreezing water is its kryptonite, the effects rapid and catastrophic. Within seconds of submerging, my brain had ordered the capillaries in my skin to squeeze out the blood, pushing it inward to help maintain my core temperature, and thereby inflicting horrendous pain upon my pinched extremities in the process. My muscles tightened and contracted as hypothermia swept through my body. For the first minute my muscles fought back using high-speed involuntary contractions, but the heat generated through shivering required more blood, which accelerated the drop in core temperature.

100… 99… 98…

The muscles in my face were fluttering. The diver noticed and clamped his hand over my mouth to keep the regulator in place.

95… 94… 93…

My hypothalamus continued hoarding resources, the organ willing to sacrifice a few pawns and knights to save the king. My thoughts dulled, my mind slipping into a stupor.

90… 85…

23…

My oxygen-starved brain struggled to keep me awake. Urine seeped into the canister, my flooded kidneys overwhelmed by an influx of fluids.

Just a quick nap…

The diver shook me awake.

What was a scuba diver doing in my bathroom stall?

Timpani drums throttled my chest as my heart became arrhythmic and limited the oxygen to my brain. I turned to my right and saw True.

“Relax, lad. Him that’s born to be hanged will never be drowned.”

“You big lummox. I’m not drowning, I’m freezing to death!”

“Aye. But yer not swinging from a rope, are ye?”

Suddenly my skin was on fire.

“True, help me! I’m burning up!”

“Nothing I can do, lad. Yer hypothalamus has blown a fuse. Paradoxical undressing, it’s called. Yer brain’s last-ditch attempt at saving yer arse. Look at ye, yer blue as a fish. Ye haven’t even got a pulse. Yer not alive, but yer not quite dead either. Better pray yer rescuers ken enough tae warm ye slowly, or yer constricted capillaries will reopen all at once and cause a sudden drop in blood pressure that will send yer heart into ventricular fibrillation.”

“True, are you here to take me to heaven?”

“If need be. For now, jist close yer eyes.”

32

I rode a wave of pain to consciousness but refused to open my eyes, afraid to see what monster was chewing on my extremities.

And then the monster spoke.

“Christ in Heaven, enough with the bloody whimpering. There’s old women in the Inverness Polar Bear Society tha’ jump in Loch Ness every winter’s morn, and ye don’t hear those daft bitches yelping. Open yer eyes.”

I opened them as my father commanded. He was seated beside me, dressed in a wool sweater that matched his hair and beard, and his Gael eyes had fire in them.

“There now, tha’s better. There’s work tae be done if ye want tae see yer family again.”

I sat up, looking around the small infirmary. “Where are we?”

“Aboard Jonas Taylor’s boat, the McFarland. She’s a hopper dredge. Been in these waters since before ye went missing in D.C.”

“I don’t understand. How did Jonas know I’d be in East Antarctica?”

“He didn’t. I contacted yer friend after Doc Stewart let me ken where ye was bein’ held and whit fer.”

“Doc Stewart? You mean the English physician who worked on me back at Groom Lake? Angus, the guy’s MJ-12. He’s one of the bad guys.”

“First, they don’t call themselves MJ-12 anymore, it’s SECOR, short for Security Organization. Second, Stewie’s only part English; his father wore the plaid. And he’s an old friend. We grew up together before he left the Highlands to join the RAF. Caught the UFO fever back in 1980 when he was stationed at a NATO air base in Suffolk — Bentwaters, if memory serves. It was right after Christmas when one of yer alien vessels appeared over Rendlesham Forest, jist east of Ipswich. According to Stewie, a triangular metal object lit up the entire forest with this brilliant white light. Lots of folk saw it, but the RAF made no claims. From tha’ day forward Stewie worked tae get himself involved with the MAJESTIC crowd. I hadnae a clue he was stationed in Dreamland Base ’til he contacted me.

“Stewie told me this Colonel Vacendak is forcing ye tae lead him intae Lake Vostok. Stewie says most of these MJ-SECOR lads are secretly rootin’ fer ye tae succeed in bringing these free energy devices out intae public. The problem is Big Oil and the sociopaths in SECOR like this Colonel Vacendak, who enjoy killing. It’s the crazies tha’ keeps the others in line. They’ll kill my grandson and yer ex without batting an eye.”

I shifted uncomfortably, my skin still burning despite the I.V. drip. “Angus, can Jonas get me into Lake Vostok?”

“Aye. He has subs on board, and they’re equipped with those lasers tha’ melt ice. We rescued ye in one of ’em.”

“We? That was you in the dry suit?”

“Yes, Gertrude. And did ye have tae make such a fuss?”

“You try submerging in subfreezing water for that long and see how you handle it!”

“Stop yer whinin’. I teld ye in my note, we had tae drop yer core temperature tae disable the tracking device Stewie shot intae yer vein. The Colonel’s divers stopped searchin’ for yer body an hour ago. They gotta think yer dead. Tha’s whit we want.”

Angus stood to leave. “Finish yer I.V., then get dressed and find yer way to the pilothouse. Jonas says he needs tae train ye before he’ll give ye one of his subs.”

I had met Jonas Taylor and his friend James Mackreides eight years ago, shortly after my book, The Loch, was published. The Tanaka Oceanographic Institute had offered to host a public signing event at their California facility on the coast of Monterey. Constructed twenty-five years earlier by the late marine biologist Masao Tanaka, the Institute featured a man-made lagoon with an ocean-access canal that intersected one of the largest annual whale migrations on the planet. Designed as a field laboratory, the waterway was originally intended to be a place where pregnant gray whales returning from their feeding grounds in the Bering Sea could birth their calves. Masao was so convinced, his facility would bridge the gap between science and entertainment that he mortgaged his entire family fortune on the endeavor.

Instead, the lagoon would become home to Carcharodon megalodon, the sixty-foot prehistoric cousin of the great white shark.

Like Livyatan melvillei, megalodon was a Miocene monster believed to be extinct. Jonas Taylor had discovered them inhabiting the deep waters of the Mariana Trench while piloting a top-secret dive for the Navy. According to his testimony, “I was staring out the portal at the hydrothermal plume when sonar picked up an immense object rising from below. Suddenly, a ghost-white shark with a head bigger than our three-man sub emerged from the mineral ceiling.”

Two scientists on board had died during an emergency ascent, and the deep-sea submersible pilot was blamed. Discharged from the Navy, Jonas decided to become a marine biologist, intent on proving the megalodon was still alive.

Seven years later, rising construction costs on the Tanaka Institute forced Masao to accept a contract with the Japanese Marine Science Technology Center. The mission: to disperse sensory drones along the Mariana Trench that would function as an early-warning earthquake detection system. To complete the array, D.J. Tanaka, Masao’s son, had to anchor each drone to the trench floor using an Abyss Glider, a sub resembling a one-man version of the Barracuda. When several of the drones stopped transmitting data, Masao needed a second diver to help retrieve one of the damaged sensors.

He selected Jonas Taylor.

Jonas accepted the offer, desiring only to recover an unfossilized white megalodon tooth photographed in the wreckage. But the dive ended badly.

Jonas and D.J. came face to face with not one but two Megs. The first was a forty-five-foot male, which became entangled in the surface ship’s cable. The second was its sixty-foot pregnant mate, which was accidently lured topside.

The Tanaka Institute took on the task of capturing the female. Jonas and Masao were determined to quarantine the monster in the whale lagoon, with JAMSTEC agreeing to refit the canal entrance with King Kong-sized steel doors.

The hunt lasted a month, culminating in an act that surpassed my own nightmare in Loch Ness. In the end, one of the megalodon’s surviving pups was captured and raised in Masao’s cetacean facility — and a monster-shark cottage industry was born.

Angel, dubbed the Angel of Death, was a 70-foot albino, so fearsome she was easily one of the most terrifying creatures ever to exist. The monster would earn the Tanaka-Taylor family hundreds of millions of dollars. She also managed to escape twice, birth two litters of pups, and devour no less than a dozen humans, five of them in her lagoon.

Yet people still lined up by the tens of thousands to see her, and they wept when they learned she had died. Angel had met her own Angel of Death last summer, following her most recent escape. She had been tracked to the Western Pacific and had been caught in open water in an industrial fishing net, where she became entangled and drowned.

At least, that was what the world had been told…

The rusted-white steel superstructure of the 319-foot-long hopper dredge McFarland towered five stories above the deck and nearly twice that over the waterline. Everything aft of the command center and crews’ quarters was dedicated to the business of dredging. Built in 1967, the ship was designed to clear waterways of sediment by vacuuming up slurry — a mixture of sand and water — from the sea floor using two large drag arms. After being pumped through pipes, the slurry would be deposited in a hopper, a massive hold that occupied the mid- and aft-decks like an oversized Olympic swimming pool. The McFarland’s hopper could hold more than six thousand tons of slurry and evacuate it in minutes through its keel doors.

The Tanaka Institute had purchased the McFarland a year after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had decommissioned the ship and three months after Angel had birthed her five pups in captivity. Jonas had been looking for a vessel large enough to safely transport the juvenile sharks to another aquarium, knowing the Institute simply wasn’t large enough to house six full-grown megalodons.

It was still dark outside when I left sickbay and made my way to the bridge, the hood of the crewmen’s jacket Angus had left me pulled tightly around my head and face, just in case the Colonel had one of MJ-12’s satellites watching the boat.

We were headed north at three knots, the ship’s bow maneuvering through lead-gray surface waters dotted with islands of ice. To port rose the snow-packed cliffs that dominated the East Antarctic coastline; to starboard, the dark horizon and open ocean. I paused at the guardrail to look down at the ship’s main deck and its mammoth hopper. The open hold occupied the deck space between the bridge superstructure and the ship’s bow. The 175-foot-long, 45-foot-wide, 55-foot-deep tub remained in the shadows, the machinery designed to stir the captured slurry long since removed.

Locating an interior stairwell, I ascended to the bridge.

The McFarland’s command center seemed far too big for its solitary row of computer consoles. Large bay windows surrounded the chamber on all four sides, looking out nine stories above the ocean. There were two men inside. The boat’s captain, a Georgia man named Jon Hudson, was at the helm. The other man sat at a chart table, studying a map of the continent.

Gray-haired and in his mid-sixties, Jonas Taylor appeared fit, but the dark circles under his eyes told a different story. Rising to meet me, he greeted me in a bear hug.

“Zachary Wallace, you look good for a guy who didn’t have a pulse an hour ago. Sorry about the way we had to bring you aboard, but you’re messing with an intelligence agency exercising a mercenary mentality. I guess that’s a necessity when dealing with extraterrestrial threats.”

“There is no extraterrestrial threat. The D.C. attack was a false flag event staged to look like an E.T. vessel.”

“Staged by whom?”

I glanced at the Captain, whose back was to us. “Is there somewhere we can speak in private?”

“Captain, how far are we from the Amery Ice Shelf?”

“Just under five nautical miles. No close contacts on sonar or radar.”

“All engines stop. The bridge is mine. Get some breakfast.”

Jonas waited until the Captain left. “For the record, I trust the Captain.”

“I have no doubt he’s a loyal employee, but we’re dealing with sociopaths. Killing is as natural to them as it is to Bela and Lizzy. If you have the information they want, they’ll get it.”

“They being MAJESTIC-12?”

“MJ-12 oversees the black ops weapon systems and the military bases. The guys calling the shots are a cartel of power brokers, bankers, and egomaniacs who think the rest of us are here to serve them. These are the same assholes that stole my Vostok generators and burned our factory to the ground. They act above the law, have no interest in improving the lives of the seven billion people on this planet, and don’t give a damn that their organizations are destroying the earth’s biosphere.

“And they kidnapped William and Brandy to force me to lead them back to Lake Vostok.”

“Why? What’s in Vostok?”

“I’d rather not say, but it’s important enough that MJ-12 designed a sub to travel beneath the ice sheet through a network of subglacial rivers into the lake. Jonas, it’s critically important I make it to Vostok before them.”

Jonas scanned his chart, using a slide rule to measure distances. “Vostok’s at least eight to nine hundred miles away. My Manta subs are equipped with Valkyries, but they don’t pack nearly enough juice to take you that far.”

“They don’t have to. MJ-12’s sub will lead me into the lake’s northern basin. Once I’m there, I’ll be able to overtake them and get to where I need to be before they do.”

“And how will making it back to Lake Vostok ahead of these guys save William and Brandy?”

“Again, I’d rather not say. The less you know the better.”

“It’ll take you twenty to thirty hours just to reach Vostok. Maybe more. Who’s your copilot?”

Angus must have been eavesdropping from the interior stairwell, for he came bursting in on cue. “I’m going with the lad.”

Jonas and I looked at one another with the same startled expression.

“Wha’s with the long faces? I can handle it.”

“Forget it,” Jonas said. “I have no interest in sponsoring a suicide mission. If this is really about saving your family, then let’s go to the authorities. I campaigned heavily for the President, and the Institute was a major donor to his election campaign. One phone call and you’ll be speaking with the national security advisor himself. ”

“I appreciate the offer, Jonas, but these guys operate outside White House jurisdiction.”

“Tell Jonas everything, lad. Him not knowing isn’t going to matter tae these people. The moment they see the Manta, they’ll realize he arranged yer escape.”

I knew my father was right. “There’s an extraterrestrial vessel in Vostok. It’s unlike anything we’ve seen. Seven years ago I was allowed access.”

“Allowed? By what?”

“An entity… a higher life-form. It shared the secret of zero-point energy with me. I need to destroy it before MJ-12 finds it. Once that threat is removed, I’ll initiate a dead-man’s trigger — a threat to expose Colonel Vacendak’s entire operation if he doesn’t release William and Brandy within twenty-four hours.”

Jonas was about to respond when a man dressed from head to toe in ECW gear entered through an exterior door, blasting us with a gust of frigid air. As he stripped away his hood and mask, I could see it was James Mackreides, Jonas’s partner at the Tanaka Institute — his most trusted friend.

Mac acknowledged me with a nod, then handed Jonas his binoculars. “The Tonga just came into view; she’s headed toward Prydz Bay.”

Jonas moved quickly to the starboard windows and focused on the dark horizon, using the night-vision glasses. “That’s her, all right. Where’s the Dubai-Land?”

“Out in front. I caught sight of her bow wake.”

“If the trawler’s out front, then David may already be in the water.”

“I don’t think so,” Mac said. “They’re using the two boats to drive the creature to the ice shelf. David won’t launch until the Tonga drops her nets into the water.”

I looked at Jonas, confused. “David? As in your son?”

Jonas let Mac answer for him. “Remember that arse marine biologist, Michael Maren? Before he croaked, he discovered the remains of an ancient sea called the Panthalassa, buried beneath the Philippine Sea Plate. After he died, his fiancée sold maps of the subterranean sea to a guy named Fiesal bin Rashidi. Bin Rashidi happens to be a first cousin to the crown prince of Dubai.”

“The guy you sold two of the Meg pups to?”

Jonas nodded. “The crown prince is constructing a new theme park called Dubai-Land. The jewel of Dubai-Land will be an aquatic exhibit featuring a dozen of the largest viewing aquariums ever conceived.”

“And what goes inside the other tanks? Creatures from this Panthalassa Sea?”

“That was the plan. David impressed the crown prince and his cousin with his ability to pilot the Manta subs. Against my wishes, he joined other trained pilots who were recruited to entice these prehistoric sea creatures out of the Panthalassa and into their nets. David and another young submersible pilot — a young woman — were trapped in a bathyscape. I used Angel to escort me down to them, where she squared off with another alpha female, a 120-foot Liopleurodon.”

“My God.”

“I managed to free the bathyscape from its anchors and float it out of the Panthalassa. Angel and the Liopleurodon followed us up. The Meg had the creature’s neck in its jaws like a bulldog. Then the crown prince’s tanker passed by, sweeping everything off the sea floor and into its wake, including the bathyscape. The two kids escaped. Unfortunately, David’s companion didn’t make it.

Mac shook his head. “David’s first love. Bin Rashidi managed to tag the creature with a homing device before it swam off.”

“David’s twenty-one,” Jonas continued. “He went through a lot. Losing someone you love in any manner is hard. The kid left California seven months ago. We found out that he and a friend rejoined bin Rashidi’s team assigned to capture the Liopleurodon.”

“That’s why you’re in Antarctica…it prefers the cold water.”

Jonas nodded, handing me the binoculars. I focused them on a set of lights growing larger on the eastern horizon, an oil tanker appearing out of the darkness.

“The tanker’s called the Tonga. She’s a Malaccamax VLCC, a very large crude oil carrier designed with a draft shallow enough to navigate the Antarctic coast. She’s as big as they come, over a thousand feet long and two hundred feet wide. The crown prince had her scrubbed and refitted to haul his sea monsters. Inside the cargo hold are saltwater pens three times the size of our hopper. David told me they had already captured a Dunkleosteus, a sixty-five-foot Ichthyosaurus, and a Helicoprion shark.”

“That’s incredible. And these species all survived the trip to Dubai?”

“The Dunk was in its aquarium when David saw it; the rest I don’t know about. Bin Rashidi’s kept everything quiet, since he ordered his team to follow the Liopleurodon ferox. Moving out ahead of the Tonga is the Dubai-Land, a 280-ton fishing trawler. That’s the hunter’s boat. David’s on board with one of the Mantas.”

Jonas turned to Mac. “What’s the status on our subs?”

“Number One is being recharged. Number Two is in the dry dock ready to launch.”

“Inform Mr. Reed I want to be in the water in fifteen minutes. Zach, you’re with me; it’s time for your first piloting lesson.”

I followed him out the door and down the steel stairwell, my heart racing.

33

I followed Jonas into the bowels of the ship. Reaching the lowest deck, we made our way aft through a tight corridor, past the engine room to a watertight door.

The light was off, the door open.

Jonas led me inside.

Perched on rubber blocks above a pair of sealed horizontal doors in the ship’s keel was the Manta submersible. Aptly named, the hydrodynamic vessel was dark brown on top with a white belly, its body nine feet long with an eighteen-foot wingspan.

“She really does look like a giant manta ray. What’s the hull made of?”

“Layered acrylic,” answered a mechanic, his navy-blue jumpsuit and leather jacket stained with grease.

“Zachary Wallace, Cyel Reed, our chief engineer.”

Reed snorted sarcastically. “One chief, no Indians. And still no damn heater down here. I had to pour boiling water over the starboard wing just to tighten the support struts on your damn laser.”

Jonas examined the Valkyrie. “It came loose when I pulled out of a barrel roll. Think it’ll hold?”

“Will it hold? Yeah. If you quit trying to fly it like an F-15. Weight distribution’s off. You don’t put a luggage rack on a Ferrari and expect it to perform. Barrel rolls or the ability to melt ice — pick your poison, J.T.”

Jonas turned to me. “We can pull the Valkyries. It’s your call.”

“Melting ice is more important to me, especially where I’m going. Maybe the additional weight will help stabilize the sub in the currents.”

“And maybe if I eat coal for breakfast I’ll shit diamonds later,” the mechanic scoffed. “Only I wouldn’t bet my life on it. Anyway, she’s ready to launch.”

Four minutes later, I found myself seated in the starboard cockpit while Jonas methodically ran through an abbreviated systems checklist from the portside command console. “Hatch sealed. Life-support: go. Batteries: go. Back-up systems: charged. Valkyries: charged. Chamber is pressurized. Mac, are you online?”

“As always. Why does this feel like a bad déjà vu?”

“My life is one big déjà vu. How far away are bin Rashidi’s ships?”

“The trawler’s still a good four miles out. The Tonga’s changed course, moving south. As for the creature, there’s nothing on sonar. Maybe they’re just coming ashore to get supplies?”

“Maybe. Keep us apprised. Mr. Reed, Manta 2 is ready for launch. Flood the chamber.”

Water rushed into the compartment, lifting the buoyant submersible off its blocks. Rusted hinges groaned as the keel’s three-inch-thick steel doors opened beneath us, venting the chamber to the Southern Ocean.

Jonas maneuvered the two-man submersible out of the flooded dock, into the ink-black sea. Rather than power-on the headlights, he adjusted the cockpit glass to night-vision mode, our surroundings blooming into a tapestry of olive-green.

Below us lay a carpet of sea stars and urchins. Above, a blizzard of shrimp-like krill congregated beneath an island of surface ice. Seconds later the ocean rained emperor penguins, their tiny arms propelling them into the depths, their darting forms trailing bubble streams.

Jonas gave them a wide berth. “You ready to take over?”

“Give me a quick tutorial.”

“Joystick steers, the two foot pedals accelerate the port and starboard propulsors. It’s all about coordinating your limbs with your navigation console. Just remember green is right-side up, red means you are upside down. Switching control to your command console… now.”

I grabbed the joystick while my feet searched for the foot pedals that operated the sub’s twin thrusters. Within seconds our smooth ride became a herky-jerky nightmare.

Jonas pointed to my navigation monitor. “Watch the current, you’re buffeting. The gauge will suggest a course adjustment.”

I glanced at the reading and banked three degrees to starboard, the slight change smoothing out the ride. “It’s an incredible machine. How much pressure can she handle?”

“More than Vostok can deliver. But I’m not sold on lending her to you just yet.”

My stomach tightened. “Jonas, my son—”

“I don’t see how getting to this alien vessel before MJ-12 will force this Colonel to release Brandy and William. Seems like there’s something you’re not telling me. As for this E.T. who helped you seven years ago, how is that even possible? The ice sheet’s been in place for millions of years. How could it still be around? For that matter, how important could its technology be? And depending on your father to function as a reliable copilot isn’t exactly a selling point.”

“Jonas, this extraterrestrial exists in the upper dimensions, where time has no relevance. It’s the reason I know about zero-point energy. As for Angus, he can be taught to maintain the autopilot.”

“Maybe. But this is more about your credibility, Zach. As someone who’s been the target of smear tactics, I can discount the things I’ve read about you in the paper; however, strictly from a business perspective, we’ve already invested a lot of money in your energy company. With the Institute essentially out of business, the conspiracy stories are starting to wear a bit thin.”

“Jonas, the generators worked. We still have the schematics and more than thirty countries who are ready to do business.”

“Not anymore. While you were out of commission, NASA announced that the E.T. attack on the Capitol may have been provoked by gravitational fluxes caused by your Vostok generators, which affected the aliens’ life-support systems. It’s a lie, I’m sure, but it’s an effective one. No nation on the planet will risk using your generator to supply power.”

I felt exasperated. Once more, the powers-that-be had reasserted control over humanity’s future.

Mac’s voice over the radio interrupted my thoughts. “Jonas, another vessel just entered Prydz Bay. Looks like it’s the support ship for that submarine Zachary described.”

“Download its bearing to our navigation system. We’ll take a look.”

A line of position appeared on our monitors, connecting our present location with Mac’s destination, the eastern face of the Loose Tooth Rift.

For the next twenty minutes, I kept the Manta on a northwesterly course that brought us to inside a mile of the Amery Ice Shelf. To simulate the feeling of operating in a tight enclosure, Jonas insisted I keep the sub within six feet of the frozen surface while maintaining a velocity in excess of twenty knots, a harrowing endeavor culminating in no less than half a dozen wing scrapes and Valkyrie collisions.

“Jonas, it’s my first time out. Give me a chance to get a feel for her.”

“This is your chance, Zach. From here you graduate straight to a subglacial river squeezed beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. If you can’t handle this, how are you going to deal with that claustrophobic nightmare?”

Jonas checked our target’s position on sonar. “That’s close enough. Slow to three knots and power up the Valkyries.

“Now dive to fifty feet and put us in a slow, steep ascent. Allow the lasers to open a hole in the ice directly above us. The moment you see the night sky, cut your engines and the Manta will float topside.”

I followed his instructions, opening a gap in the ice large enough to accommodate the sub. We surfaced, bobbing beneath a star-filled sky awash with a pink swoosh of southern light. A quarter mile to the west, we could see the surface ship’s stern lights, our night-vision binoculars revealing an A-frame towering above her aft deck, a Canadian registry, and the name Tortuga written across her backside.

Mac searched the ship’s name on the McFarland’s computer, finding three dozen matches but only one vessel her size flying a Canadian flag. “She was built by the U.S. Navy, decommissioned in 2002, then purchased and refitted by a private Toronto firm owned by a subsidiary of the Bank of Liechtenstein.”

I turned to Jonas. “The bank’s a private institution, a tax haven for billionaires. I realize this will sound like more conspiracy theory, but hundreds of billions of dollars have passed through the Bank of Liechtenstein to fund MJ-12 projects. I think we’d better submerge. There’s a GeoEye-1 satellite over Antarctica, equipped with an imaging payload that can locate any surface object on the planet.”

I descended the Manta to ninety feet and leveled off just above the sea floor.

A blip appeared on sonar as we headed for the Tortuga’s keel.

Jonas donned headphones. “Lots of noise up ahead. Sounds like it’s coming from the ice shelf. Come to course two-seven-seven, we’ll take a look.”

With the early arrival of its support ship, the Tethys had launched fourteen hours ahead of schedule. Jonas and I arrived at the Amery Ice Shelf moments before the tail section of the thirty-seven-foot submarine disappeared from view, following its laser-spewing bow on a thirty-degree down angle into the base of the Loose Tooth Rift and a newly formed underwater cavern.

Jonas stared at the hole, dumbfounded. “That was impressive. You say Skunkworks built that beast?”

“With your tax dollars.” Banking the Manta into an awkward turn, I raced east toward open water.

“Zach, where are you going?”

“Back to the McFarland. I need to pick up Angus, load the Manta with supplies, and get through that passage before the Tethys gets too far ahead of us.”

“It’s a suicide mission. You’d be lucky to make it a mile before getting lost down there.”

“I’m not just going to let my son die.”

“Agreed. But how will getting you to Vostok save your son? Explain that part to me, and I’ll take you there myself.”

A text message flashed on both our monitors: MOVE!

My eyes darted to the sonar where dozens of blips were converging upon us. “Jesus, what is that?”

“Whales. And we’re in their path. Shift controls back to my console—”

A forty-five-foot humpback whale shot past us out of the ether, its thrusting gray fluke barely missing the sub.

Two more bulls followed, and suddenly there were whales everywhere. They were not just humpbacks. I saw minkes and fins, and a pygmy sperm whale struck our portside wing, spinning us about.

Jonas attempted to accelerate out of the roll, only to have the Manta sideswiped by another fleeing dark gray body.

It was a cetacean stampede, and we were swept up in it.

Jonas ignited the Valkyries, attempting to fend off the swarm. “Zach, start pinging. Find that monster before it finds us.”

“What monster? You mean the Liopleurodon? ”

“What the hell else would be causing these whales to panic? Ain’t no Megs in these waters.”

Manning the sonar, I attempted to switch from passive to active, only nothing was working. The monitor blinked off and on. The radio turned to static in my headphones.

I tossed them aside. “The Tortuga’s jamming our electronics.”

Having managed to point our bow east, Jonas accelerated, maneuvering ahead of the panic-stricken behemoths before banking hard to port, momentarily freeing us from the frenzy of moving goliaths.

Then I saw the cause of the cetacean disturbance, and fear suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

34

In Loch Ness, I had confronted a legendary beast. In Vostok, I had been attacked by giant crocs and Miocene whales. Years later in Monterey, I had watched a captive megalodon feed and thought I had seen the definition of true terror.

Nothing could have prepared me for the monster racing at us out of that olive-green sea.

Its jawline alone had to be thirty feet long, its mouth filled with ten- to twelve-inch dagger-like teeth, the largest of which jutted outside of its mouth. Big? It seemed as long as a city block, propelled by thirty-foot flippers — all wrapped around a lead-gray-and-white hide that partially blended into the backdrop of ice.

Most frightening, it seemed to be hyperactive, its movements on overdrive. Its head turned on a swivel as its crocodilian jaws snapped at the fleeing whales, its mind unable to single out the most vulnerable member of the herd until it saw our twin lasers blazing in the darkness like two vermillion eyes.

“Oh, geez. Jonas, hard to port!”

Jonas tried to get us out of its way, but the creature was far quicker and cut us off. My eyes bugged out as the left side of the pliosaur’s mouth suddenly bloomed into view, its jaws agape.

The back of my head slammed against the seat as the Manta leaped forward, Jonas attempting to escape by passing between those hideous rows of curved teeth like a car trying to beat a train across railroad tracks.

I squeezed my eyes shut—

— and we were through, only the creature was right behind us, snapping at our tail.

We were dead.

And then it was gone.

I took a moment to catch my breath before I relocated it, the dark blotches of its back and tail blending in with the sea. It was up ahead chasing another Manta, this one far quicker than ours.

“David?” Jonas switched his headphones to the radio setting. “Mac, contact the Tonga. Have them put me through to my kid. Damn this static!” He slammed his fist against the dome above his head, then accelerated after the monster, now chasing his son’s submersible.

“Zach, there’s a communication panel by your right foot. Pop it open.”

“Got it.”

“You’ll see a series of toggle switches set in the OFF position. Is there one with a blinking blue light?”

“Yes.”

“That’ll be David’s sub. Flip it on. Hopefully he’s turned on his inter-sub comm link.

“David?”

“Dad? What took you so long? I’ve been hailing you since the Lio went after those whale pods.”

“I didn’t know you were in the water. Thanks for saving our arses.”

“Consider us even. But, Dad, seriously — stay back. I’ve been playing cat-and-mouse with this pregnant bitch for weeks. This time she won’t escape.”

Escape? The crazy kid was trying to capture it!

Our sonar array flickered back on as we continued to distance ourselves from the Tortuga. The monitor revealed the presence of two surface ships that were entering the bay from the north, and David was leading the Liopleurodon right for them.

The two Dubai ships had converged upon the bay’s entrance the moment the creature had entered the shallows. Deck hands aboard the Tonga hustled to lower an immense trawl net over the tanker’s starboard side, while their counterparts on the Dubai-Land retrieved it from below, attaching cables to one side of the net’s loop. When everything was ready, the trawler gradually separated from the tanker, stretching the trap in place.

From the bridge of the Dubai-Land, Fiesal bin Rashidi, first cousin to the crown prince of Dubai, ordered the two ships under his command to shut down their engines.

Now it was up to the American daredevil.

David Taylor was out in front of the creature, making his way toward the net. He knew the pregnant behemoth was nearing exhaustion. Every time she seemed ready to quit the chase, the twenty-one-year-old pilot would slow down and bank hard from side to side, succeeding in keeping the tiring pliosaur interested, while taking some of the fight out of her.

Our sub surfaced south of the tanker. We watched on sonar as David led the Liopleurodon east toward the two motionless vessels.

Jonas was tense, counting down the distance. “Two hundred yards… one fifty… a hundred yards. Come on, kid, you’re moving way too slow to jump that net. Throttle up!”

Sweat poured down David Taylor’s face. Cruising at only eighteen knots, he knew the Manta could not generate enough lift to leap out of the sea to clear the net. Yet he also had to keep the creature close. He knew she was tiring, knew that if she sensed the net, she’d turn on a dime and flee.

So he took a chance.

Throttling back, he dropped his speed to thirteen knots, allowing the Liopleurodon to move in close enough for her nostrils to inhale his sub’s jet-pump propulsor bubbles.

Reinvigorated, the creature opened its jaws to devour its prey as David slammed both feet to the floor and pulled back on his joystick, easing up on his starboard engine a few precious seconds before he reached the surface.

Instead of attempting to clear the net, David launched the Manta sideways out of the sea. The submersible cleared the steel cables running from the trawler to the left side of the net—

— And smashed nose-first into the Dubai-Land’s portside bow.

Unaware that its prey was gone, the Liopleurodon swam into the trawl net, stopping only after its fore-flippers struck the unseen object. It attempted to turn and run, but the crew manning the Tonga’s starboard winch was already tightening the noose upon the unnerved colossus, whose reflexive maneuver only succeeded in gathering its lower torso into the closing net.

And that’s when all hell broke loose.

Before the hunters stationed behind their deck-mounted harpoon guns could aim their drug-filled steel lances below, the enraged pliosaur twisted its one hundred tons of fury beneath the starboard keel of the tanker.

Having been refitted as a mobile aquarium, the Tonga lacked the ballast of an ocean-bound tanker filled with crude. The unstable ship was pulled hard to starboard, flinging its harpooners and winch crew seven stories into the bay. Anything not bolted down — equipment, crates, and humans — was hurtled across the tanker’s plunging deck.

Aboard the Dubai-Land, the winch that had been holding the net open was bent sideways, making it impossible for the trawler’s crew to release control of the captured pliosaur over to the Tonga. Instead of being hauled out of the water, the Liopleurodon was left to twist and turn in the net, caught in a tug-of-war between both ships.

Jonas tried to reach his son by our sub-comm link, but David didn’t reply. Accelerating to thirty knots, he raced for the tanker. “Zachary, start pinging. Find me David’s Manta.”

I switched my headphones to sonar, my ears assaulted by a cacophony of sound.

A minute later we arrived on the scene.

Jonas slowed our approach, in order to sort through the chaos. On our right was the Tonga, its towering superstructure surreally swaying east to west and back again like a giant steel buoy. On our left was the trawler — at least what was left of it. The vessel had been flipped completely over, its barnacle-encrusted keel now an island of survival for its crew, who were hanging on for dear life, the inverted boat dropping and rising beneath them.

Ahead of us was the center of the maelstrom.

One hundred sixty million years ago, Liopleurodon had ruled the ocean as a carnivorous marine reptile, all except for the subspecies that had evolved gills to inhabit the Panthalassa Sea. Caught in the net, the creature before us couldn’t swim. And if it couldn’t swim, it couldn’t breathe.

By swaying the two ships, the monster managed to channel just enough water into its mouth to keep from drowning. It had flipped the Dubai-Land, but the steel cables connecting the trawler to the net had remained in place, keeping the trap sealed.

“Zach, where’s David’s sub?”

“There… by the trawler’s bow. Those crewmen are using it as a flotation device.”

The water was a frigid thirty-three degrees Fahrenheit. The paralyzing temperatures had already claimed at least a dozen lives. I was about to radio Mac to send the hopper-dredge when we heard the unmistakable snap of steel.

It was the last cable connecting the trawler to the net.

The Liopleurodon felt its bonds loosen. With renewed vigor, the trapped beast began to worm itself free.

“Zach, it’s getting free!”

“Kill it.”

“How?”

“Use the Valkyries. Aim for its neck.”

Jonas dove the sub to avoid a swirl of lifeless bodies, moving us steadily toward the opening net, the lasers heating up. The inverted trawler appeared on our left, along with David’s Manta. The disabled vessel bobbed upright along the surface, surrounded by seven pairs of kicking legs.

Jonas would not allow the creature to escape.

“Its head is free. Here it comes!”

The monster lurched forward, catching its left hind flipper in the net.

That was all Jonas needed.

I ducked as the Manta’s bow forcibly struck the Liopleurodon just above its chest cavity, the twin lasers burning matching holes three feet deep into the creature’s flesh. Blood spurted across our cockpit glass as the insane beast flung us to and fro until we were tossed free.

Mortally wounded, the animal propelled itself away in obvious pain.

The hopper-dredge arrived ten minutes later. Jonas maneuvered the sub into its berth, impatiently waiting for the chamber to drain and pressurize before he could open the cockpit and make his way up five flights of stairs to board a waiting lifeboat.

Waiting inside the craft were Mac and the ship’s physician.

I watched from the starboard rail as Jonas used a reach pole to pop open David’s hatch. The physician climbed inside the cockpit to work on him.

After a few minutes Jonas climbed in.

The captain of the hopper-dredge approached and handed me his radio.

“Mac? How is he?”

“The impact broke his neck. David’s dead.”

35

When a loved one dies, we grieve. And through that process we are offered words of comfort. “They are out of pain. They are in a better place — the soul immortal, an eternal spark of perfection. One day we’ll be reunited in the ever-after.”

There are no words of comfort for a parent who loses a child. Children are simply not supposed to die before their parents. It’s unnatural. It defies universal law. The loss of a child is a loss of innocence, a promised future stolen. Hopes and dreams shattered.

A child’s passing affects a community. But from the parent, it takes a piece of the heart, and in its place it leaves a hole that can never be healed. A hole infected with depression and often filled with anger. Anger aimed at God. Anger that targets a spouse or a physician, a stranger at fault, a path crossed by evil… or oneself.

When you play with fire, you risk getting burned. Skydiving, surfing big waves, cliff diving, drugs… That’s the problem with addictions: you never know when you’ve crossed the line until you cross it. Adrenaline junkies know the risks. They shrug them off. “Hey, everybody dies. You could die crossing the street. At least I have a choice in how I go.”

That choice, that philosophy, that line of reasoning changes when you have children. And when your child dies participating in an activity that you taught him to do…

Part of Jonas was in shock, the other part of him detached so he could function. He made sure his son’s remains and the remains of the other crewmen were placed in body bags and stored in a freezer. He spoke to the captain of the Tonga and saw to the survivors of the trawler. And when he was done, he went into his stateroom to speak by Skype to his wife, Terry.

I gave him an hour and forty minutes before knocking on his door.

Mac answered, red-eyed and more than a little inebriated. “Doctor E.T.?”

“Mac, I need to speak with Jonas.”

“Not now. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s too late. I need to speak with him now.”

“Yeah, well, that ain’t going to happen. Oh, and the mission you had planned? Forget about it.”

“Mac, I’m geared up. The Manta’s being prepped—”

“No more Mantas. No more missions. Boss’s orders.”

“Then let the boss tell me himself.” I pushed past my fellow Scot and entered the cabin.

Jonas was propped up in bed, a half-empty bottle of whiskey on his night table. He looked up at me with sullen eyes and shook his head. “He was such a good kid. As a father, you want your son to be better than you. He was better. A lot better.”

His words made my eyes burn. “Jonas, back in the Manta, you asked me how returning to Vostok could save my son. The answer is complicated but—”

“The answer is no. As my soon-to-be ex-wife so aptly pointed out, my choices have led to enough loss of life.”

“As have mine. And I need that sub to rectify things.”

Mac grabbed me by the biceps. “You heard the man.”

“Let him go, Mac.” Jonas stood, staggering close enough for me to smell the alcohol on his breath. “All right, Dr. Wallace, I’m listening. Tell me how returning to Vostok gets your son outta whatever trouble he’s in.”

“There’s more than just an alien ship down there. Inside is a portal, a junction that allows one to access the higher dimensions. Jonas, I can go back in time to a different point in my life and prevent these events from ever happening.”

“A time machine? That’s what this is all about?”

“Not exactly. How did the entity explain it? Every choice we make creates an infinite number of alternate universes. David, for instance, could have leapt the sub over the net or gone under it, or swerved around the tanker. The possibilities are endless, and each choice leads to a parallel existence. Consciousness is the variable that differentiates a potential outcome from reality. I died multiple times in Lake Vostok, but after each death the entity kept bringing me back, until I followed the path where I acquired the knowledge of zero-point energy it intended me to have. The portal allowed me to explore multiple existences until I found the one that led to my survival.”

Jonas fought to dissect the information. “Say you go back and jump into another parallel universe… how can you be sure it’s one where David survives, where your son’s not kidnapped?”

“The extraterrestrial that communicated with me definitely has an agenda, but it’s one that I sincerely believe is intended to help humanity. I’ll ask it to allow me to go back to a multiverse where I can change the events that took place in Washington, D.C. Before the congressional hearing takes place, I’ll use the media to expose MJ-12’s false flag event, preempting it while saving hundreds of lives. That will force the Colonel to cancel the attack, prevent the kidnapping, and remove me from today’s events.”

Jonas stared at me, red-eyed. “There’s no guarantee your absence today will change a thing. David may still die.”

“I won’t stop jumping multiverses until I find one where I can warn you.”

Mac remained skeptical. “Were you able to warn yourself when you kept dying and reviving in Lake Vostok?”

“No. But the entity can read my mind. It will know what I seek. One thing I do know: if Colonel Vacendak gets to the portal first, it gives the military access to a device that can alter our species’ evolution in the cosmos. And that makes us a threat to these E.T.s. Humanity’s already in timeout for detonating nuclear weapons; there’s no way MJ-12 will be allowed to access the higher dimensions. Our species will be annihilated before that happens.”

Jonas turned to Mac. “Have Mr. Reed prepare one of the Mantas for launch. Get Dr. Wallace everything he needs, and pack my ECW gear as well. I’m going with him.”

Mac looked shocked. “Jonas, you don’t honestly believe this nonsense?”

“I’ve been drinking, so I’m not sure what I believe. All I know is that Zach was given information seven years ago that could have altered our planet’s future for the good. Maybe this was just a trial run to see if humanity was ready. Regardless, if there’s even a remote chance of altering what happened today and saving David, then I’m willing to take it.”

The two men embraced.

“Mac, see to it that my son is taken to Davis Base and shipped to Monterey for the funeral. If his mother calls again, tell her—”

“Tell her nothing,” I said. “Mac, whether you believe this or not, no one can know. The people on board that research vessel, if they suspect I’m alive and chasing down their sub, they’ll go after your loved ones just like they went after mine.”

Jonas sat down to think. “Zach’s right. We need to fly both of our families somewhere safe until we return.”

“Terry’s in shock, Jonas. She won’t go anywhere until after the funeral, and there will be no convincing her otherwise.”

“Contact bin Rashidi, tell him I need to speak with the crown prince. I’ll ask him to arrange a special ceremony at the Dubai aquarium, honoring David and all those who died today. You call Terry. Tell her David’s body was flown to the United Arab Emirates along with the other dead crewmen. Tell her I’m already en route. Then have your wife arrange a private jet to fly both our families to the Middle East as soon as possible. I’ll ask the crown prince to safeguard them and delay the ceremony until you and I arrive.

“If this works”—Jonas looked hard at me—“there won’t be a funeral.”

“And if it doesn’t…? Never mind. C’mon, Zach, let’s get you what you need.”

Angus and I loaded the Manta with climbing equipment, flashlights, and extreme weather gear for two, while Mac stocked the sub with food and water. He wanted to add a few guns, only I stopped him. Violence had already gotten our species into enough trouble with our extraterrestrial visitors. The last thing we needed was to end up in a shootout, fighting over an advanced technology we lacked the morality to use.

Jonas had sobered up by his third cup of coffee. After a final trip to the toilet, he climbed into the port cockpit, lowered the acrylic glass over our heads, and signaled to Cyel Reed to flood the chamber.

Mac’s voice came over the radio. “Jonas, can you hear me okay on this frequency?”

“Yes. Are you in place?”

“We’re en route. What’s your ETA?”

“Twenty minutes, using a biologic pattern.”

“Roger that. Angus and I will be ready.”

The keel doors opened, releasing the Manta into a sun-lit emerald sea. “Jonas, what about the Liopleurodon? Should I go active on sonar?”

“It’s probably dead. If you start pinging, that research ship will know we’re down here.” Jonas kept the sub close to the sea floor, our movements and speed intended to mimic those of a giant manta ray.

We were less than two miles from MJ-12’s surface ship when our sonar monitors began to flicker.

“We’re being jammed. Zach, how close are we to that hole?”

“Six thousand feet. And the Tortuga’s sitting over it like a mother hen.”

“Then what we need is a fox. Mac, you ready to ruffle a few feathers?… Mac, can you hear me?”

The radio spat back static, followed by an unnerving quiet that ended with a crunch as the sub’s belly settled upon the silt-covered sea floor.

“Sonuva bitch, our engines just powered off.” Jonas fought the suddenly rigid controls. “Your pals aren’t playing around this time. Everything’s down — including our life-support system.”

The supertanker Tonga pushed its way south through Prydz Bay at a steady eight knots, her starboard flank hugging the eastern face of the Amery Ice Shelf.

Mac stood on her bridge next to my father, both men’s binoculars focused on the surface ship less than three nautical miles away. The Tortuga’s bow was pointed at the Loose Tooth Rift, her starboard flank exposed.

“Captain, any response from the Manta?”

“Nothing but static, Mr. Mackreides.”

“Shut down your engines. Full reverse. Mr. Al Nahyan, you may begin transmitting the message.”

The radio man spoke with an urgent British accent. “Mayday, mayday. This is the United Arab Emirates research tanker Tonga. Our rudder is badly damaged. We cannot navigate. We strongly advise you to move your ship or risk a collision.”

Mac stared at the steel vessel growing larger in his binoculars. “Angus, I believe it was Robert Burns who once said, ‘No man can tether time or tide. Time is short and the tide is out.’”

Angus grinned. “Those tha’ cannae be counseled cannae be helped.”

“Who said that?”

“My father, before he’d beat my arse with a hickory switch. Jist a wee love tap, he’d say.”

“What say we give MJ-12 a wee love tap?”

We were powerless, our sub lying on the floor of Prydz Bay, weighed down by our two lasers. Silt had buried all but the Valkyries and the top of our cockpit dome. The Tortuga’s keel was just visible in the distance, anchored in 320 feet of water.

We felt the rumble of the steel beast before we saw it, its 300,000 tons displacing the surface while vacuuming up the bottom, its presence causing the ice sheet to reverberate.

Then I saw the 1,100-foot supertanker’s bow converge upon the Tortuga’s starboard flank, and for the second time that morning I prepared to meet my Maker.

The process of slowing a supertanker must be initiated miles in advance using a braking pattern called a slalom, which veers the ship back and forth from starboard to port while her engines run full astern. Mac had either seriously miscalculated Newton’s Law of Conservation of Momentum, or he simply didn’t give a damn.

The prow of the supertanker struck the exposed flank of the Tortuga like a steadily moving train plowing through a double-decker aluminum bus, crushing the starboard infrastructure while its submerged bulb-shaped bow scooped up the vessel’s disfigured hull and carried it away with hardly a drop in speed or forward momentum.

Passageways crumpled. Water blasted through shredded steel plates. Internal pipes and cables ruptured. From Angus and Mac’s perspective, it must have appeared as though the supertanker had bitten off a chunk of the Tortuga’s ribs. From our perspective, it looked like a megalodon had snatched an orca in its jaws and was carrying it off to be consumed.

And then an unseen force swept us off the bottom into the eye of a hurricane.

I squeezed my eyes shut and held on as the vortex created by the two passing ships inhaled us, spinning us end over end toward the supertanker’s propeller shafts, the blades churning in reverse.

Jonas was a rock. Knowing the Tonga’s impact would shut down power to the Tortuga’s sonar array, he focused only on his command console. The moment the lights powered on he jammed the controls hard to port and pulled us away from the spinning blades into a steep dive.

Moments later a submerged wall of ice materialized into view. Jonas quickly honed in on the Loose Tooth Rift’s jagged chasm, which harbored the cavernous opening created nearly six hours earlier by the Tethys.

The borehole was now a clogged artery of white ice. Powering up the Valkyries, Jonas pressed the Manta’s nose to the frozen gauntlet, which quickly liquefied and inhaled us into its dark, widening orifice.

We were on our way.

36

The sub’s lights illuminated a near-vertical shaft of ice so crystal-clear that Jonas struggled to discern the boundaries of the funnel. After the Manta’s fifth collision with the borehole’s walls, he shut down the exterior lights and relied strictly on the cockpit’s night-vision glass, which generated a view that reminded me of a miniature medical camera plunging down an olive-green esophagus.

After descending nearly six hundred feet, the passage leveled out, depositing us in a shallow sea of meltwater that separated the bottom of the ice sheet above our heads from the floor of Prydz Bay. Squeezed between these two titanic forces, the water pressure within this narrow, seemingly endless cavity registered an eye-popping 12,656 psi, the weight above us muffling everything but the sound of our breathing.

Visibility was limited to an olive-green patch that extended ten to twelve feet in every direction. For several minutes we maintained a snail’s pace through this vast, dark, liquid space, until the overwhelming sensation of claustrophobia sent Jonas fumbling for the lights. He flipped the switch, and our beams illuminated a hidden chamber of breathtaking beauty.

For millions of years the ice sheet had surfed this watery conveyor belt as it inched its way across East Antarctica before slaloming along the Amery Basin into Prydz Bay. Perpetually melting and refreezing, the bottom of the glacier appeared a rich azure-blue, its sculpted patterns and textures creating a three-dimensional mosaic so mesmerizing I was tempted to ask Jonas to direct a light at the ceiling, just so I could absorb its incredible details.

Complementing this chapel of art was a boundary of fresh water so pure and clear it actually magnified our twin beacons of light, extending visibility for miles. As for what resided below, for now it was dark silt. But that would change.

Jonas was still too overwhelmed by grief to allow himself to be dazzled. “Zach, this subterranean waterway seems to run forever. How do we know which direction to go?”

“We need to follow the Amery Ice Shelf inland about 340 miles, where it will meet the Lambert Glacial Basin. A subglacial river with a northern outflow should merge with this meltwater. We follow it southeast into Lake Vostok.”

“Not exactly navigating by the stars, is it?” Jonas typed a search command over his computer’s keyboard. The GPS finder zoomed in on East Antarctica, honing in on the Loose Tooth Rift. “Here we are. Here’s where the ice shelf meets that glacial basin. That’s a huge expanse. How the hell are we supposed to find a river amid an ocean of meltwater?”

“I don’t know, Jonas. Maybe we’ll be able to hear it on sonar.”

“So that’s 340 miles to the north and at least another five hundred to the southeast. At our best speed, it’ll take us eleven hours just to hit the river, assuming this meltwater remains stagnant. Traveling another five hundred miles into a head-current — that alone could take twenty-four to thirty-six more hours.

“When I was an undergrad at Penn State, my roommate and I would drive down to Fort Lauderdale over Christmas break. We’d take two-hour shifts, twenty hours straight. We were so wiped out by the time we arrived that we’d have to sleep all day. And we were nineteen.”

“Is there any way you can program the autopilot to at least get us to the river?”

“The GPS navigator isn’t functioning with that ice sheet over our heads. What I can do is program the autopilot to remain on a solitary heading. It’ll use the Manta’s sonar to navigate around perceived obstacles, but one of us should still stay awake to monitor our surroundings. I’ll take the first shift while you sleep.”

I reclined my seat, removed my shoes, and covered up with a wool blanket. I was exhausted, having barely slept since arriving in Antarctica. Lying back, I looked up through the thick cockpit glass, gazing at the bottom of the ice sheet.

Jonas accelerated to thirty knots, turning the glacier’s artwork into a blue blur.

Within minutes I was asleep.

I awoke as Avi Socha.

I was in a cave close to the ocean. I could hear the echo of the sea and feel the pounding surf through the rock upon which I sat. The night howled at my back, glistening with stars. Berudim shone brightly in the northern sky, a cloud-covered world orbited by a solitary moon one-ninth the mass of Charon.

I was anxious to begin; the alignment of Berudim with Charon was a powerful cosmic antenna that facilitated the best reception with the upper worlds. Closing my eyes, I recited my mantra, tapping into the universal consciousness.

ANA BEKOACH… GEDULAT YEMINECHA… TATIR ZERURA …

My consciousness was moving through the void, passing over a dark sea.

KABEL RINAT… AMECHA SAGVENU… TAHARENU NORA …

The sea moved inland, becoming a twisting river that separated a rift valley.

NA GIBOR… DORSHEY YICHUDCHA… KEBAVAT SHOMREM …

Mountains rose along either bank as the river emptied into a vast lake, its waters dark and forboding…

BARCHEM TEHAREM… RACHAMEY ZIDEKATCHA… TAMID GOMLEM …

On the western bank appeared an alien dwelling that was somehow familiar…

HASIN KADOSH… BEROV TUVECHA… NAHEL ADOTECHA …

My consciousness hovered over the center portion of the dwelling until it was drawn through a glass partition.

YAHID GE’EA… LEAMECHA PENNE… ZOCHREY KDUSHATECHA …

I was inside a dark chamber, the only light coming from the floor-to-ceiling windows, which offered a view of the lake and the snow-covered peaks of the mountains rising above the far eastern bank. An extraterrestrial being was seated before the glass, its demeanor melancholy as it stared outside at the weather.

SHAVATENU KABEL… USHEMA ZAKATENU… YODE TA’ALUMOT… I had moved to hover over the life-form when my consciousness was suddenly drawn into its aura by a magnetic force, inhaling me into a vortex of physicality. And I could hear!

“Zachary, this woman is here tae speak with you. Are ye sober?”

I stood, my temper flaring. “Of course, I’m sober. Hi, I’m Zachary Wallace.”

“C’mon, Zach, wake up!”

I floated in a pool of warmth and serenity, my consciousness gazing down upon the Manta, adrift in the crystal-clear water. Through the cockpit glass I witnessed Jonas straddling my vacant body, pushing against my chest until—

— Gravity gained a foothold, dragging me back into my flesh-bound prison.

Registering the blood rushing into my face, I opened my eyes. “Sorry. Did I oversleep?”

“Oversleep? Jesus … ” Jonas climbed off me, falling back into his seat. “According to the bio-sensors built into your harness, you all but died.” He pointed to a flashing screen showing my steadily rising vitals. “At one point your heart rate dropped below ten beats a minute, and your blood pressure hit goose-eggs. What the hell happened?”

I adjusted my seat, sitting up. “I don’t know. I mean, I know what happened, only it wasn’t me doing it. I was just sort of along for the ride.”

“Try speaking in coherent sentences.”

“I had an out-of-body experience, and instead of sticking around, my consciousness was in another time and place. It had slipped inside another being’s body. And then I was back in my body, in my father’s resort. Seven years ago.”

Jonas just sat there and stared at me like a guy who realizes — too late — that he’s hitched his mule to the wrong wagon.

“Something big is happening here, J.T. Get us going and I’ll try to explain.”

Jonas shook his head, then buckled his harness and powered up the engines, reengaging the autopilot. “I’m listening.”

“There’s a big piece of the puzzle still missing, but I’m beginning to grasp what’s going on. At first I thought this entity had selected me to disseminate its zero-point energy technology to mankind because, well—”

“Because you’re smart.”

“More like intuitive, but, yeah. Then I started having these really lifelike dreams, like this one and the one on the plane. In these dreams I’m living on another planet during another time period.”

“Past or present?”

“To be honest I’m not sure, but I’m leaning toward the past. The planet — it’s called Charon and it’s in big trouble. Something devastating is going to happen and this guy, the one I share my consciousness with, is trying to figure out a way to save his people. By reentering the E.T.’s ship and accessing the portal, I think I might be able to help him.”

My analysis did not sit well with Jonas. He stared at the portside wing, his mind grappling with this new information. Glancing at his bio-sensors, I watched as his blood pressure climbed.

“Jonas, you okay?”

“You said you were back at your father’s resort seven years ago. You realize that none of this would be happening if you hadn’t come to me back then, asking me to invest in your company? Your son would be safe, and David would be alive.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Yeah, we do. Because if David hadn’t died, I sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting in this sub with you. So why do I get the distinct feeling that these extraterrestrials are manipulating events in order to make sure you get back to Lake Vostok to save their sorry asses!”

Jonas was livid, but I understood where he was coming from. David Taylor had been an experienced pilot. Out of all the possible multiverses that could have been realized from his recent encounter with the Liopleurodon, my guess was that only a few would have actually resulted in his death.

Was Jonas right? Was I being maneuvered into a specific reality that served the E.T.s?

It made me wonder how many cause-and-effect dominoes had to tumble into place just for me to be en route to Vostok. Big Oil conspiring to subvert new energy systems, MJ-12 burning my assembly plant to the ground, William and Brandy’s kidnapping, Susan’s murder… Was I living out this specific multiverse of eventualities through free will, or was I following a course of the entity’s choosing?

“Jonas … ” I turned to console him, only to realize he had fallen asleep.

The farther we traveled inland, the deeper our underwater passage descended, reflecting the thickening ice sheet overhead. Donning a headset, I passed the hours switching back and forth from the white noise of sonar to a classic rock CD.

We had closed to within fourteen nautical miles of the Amery Ice Shelf’s intersection with the Lambert Glacial Basin when I heard a faint rush of water over sonar. Disengaging the autopilot, I altered our course and honed in on the sound, which was originating from the southeast.

The horizon of water sandwiched between the bottom of the ice sheet and East Antarctica’s ancient geology was changing rapidly, the dark silt below yielding to patches of brown sea grass, the width of the passage narrowing quickly, forcing me to reduce our speed. Once placid waters became a minefield of eddies, each invisible swirl of current threatening to drive the Manta into the ice sheet.

Jonas awoke on our second collision, the submersible pilot disturbed to find our passage reduced to a ten- to twelve-foot-wide divide. “Where are we?”

“We’re nearing the glacial basin, the very beginning of the ice shelf. The subglacial river’s close. You can hear it on sonar.”

Jonas took over command. Guided by sonar, he directed us farther to the south.

We felt the river before we saw it, the current pelting us with watermelon-size ice cubes too clear to see and too numerous to dodge. Fifteen million years ago, the waterway had been as wide as the Amazon, twisting across East Antarctica to empty into the enormous delta now occupied by the ice shelf. We only realized the extent of the river’s boundaries when Jonas dived the sub to escape the current and found that the bottom had dropped nearly one hundred feet.

Hazards were everywhere. The riverbed was littered with vortex-channeling boulders and petrified tree trunks as wide as redwoods. Chunks of ice gouged out of the bottom of the ice sheet soared past us like miniature comets.

“Activate the sonar, Zach.”

I pinged, sending sound waves reflecting off objects both stationary and propelled by the current. It was impossible, similar to driving a racecar down a crowded speedway — the wrong way.

Then a different blip appeared on sonar, and I knew this one was going to be trouble.

37

“I am the captain of my soul.”

— William Ernest Henley

Jonas read the incoming data as it crawled across his sonar screen. “Range: twelve kilometers and closing. Still too far out to gauge its size, but it’s way too quiet to be that other sub. Maybe it’s an alien vessel, come to collect you and save me the trip.”

“Jonas, I think it might be a life-form.”

“A life-form? Come on. What kind of life-form could survive down here?”

“Vostok’s rich in geothermal vents. There’s a thriving food chain that dates back to the Miocene. How close do we need to be to get a size reading?”

“On a biologic? Less than six kilometers. What are you afraid of, Zachary? Don’t tell me a Meg—”

“It’s not a megalodon.” I tapped my index finger repeatedly on the sonar REFRESH button until new data scrolled across the monitor.

Jonas swore. “The damn thing’s over sixty feet long, and it’s headed straight for us. Speak to me, Wallace. What’s out there?”

“There’s a species of Miocene sperm whale inhabiting Vostok. Ever hear of Livyatan melvillei?”

“That whale with the big teeth and the lower jaw of an orca? Damn it, Zachary. Why didn’t you mention this to me before?”

“I didn’t think they could follow the river this far from Vostok. Once we were in the lake, I figured you’d be able to outmaneuver them in the Manta.”

“Not with these lasers strapped to our wings — Geez! There it is.”

A dark mass appeared in our starboard headlight’s periphery some two hundred yards ahead. Jonas was about to make an evasive maneuver when we both realized something was wrong. The whale’s movements seemed erratic, the tip of the creature’s box-shaped head scraping the bottom of the ice sheet. As we halved the distance, we could see the fluke hanging motionless below the leviathan’s body.

It wasn’t swimming; it was dead. The current was propelling its carcass along.

Jonas banked into a tight turn and brought us up beside the whale. Along its right flank was a fresh wound scorched ashen-gray, a twelve-foot-wide crater of blubber corresponding to the approximate dimensions of the bow of Colonel Vacendak’s submarine.

The next twenty-seven hours were maddening — the equivalent of flying from Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia, and back again, in heavy turbulence, while being forced to remain seated. Under its best behavior, the subglacial river ran deep over stretches of flat bottom. Under the worst conditions, it was a twisting vortex with rapids that caught the Manta’s wings and threatened to flip us head-over-tail — which happened twice, the last time sending us tumbling like a pinwheel a half-mile back from whence we’d come.

Then there were gaps where the river simply stopped flowing, walled off by a dam of ice. The first time this happened left us both disoriented and unnerved, and too mentally exhausted to reason. A twenty-minute yelling match ensued, after which we decided to shut down the engines and get some much-needed sleep.

The thought of having another out-of-body experience didn’t bother me as much as it did Jonas. The last thing he wanted was to awaken beneath the Antarctic ice sheet next to my cold, lifeless corpse. Not that a part of him didn’t want to strangle me, but I was no good to him dead. And so he kept vigil until he was convinced I had entered R.E.M. sleep.

Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Brandy woke me.

I was sneaking in a nap, sequestered in my study in our home in Solihull, a quaint town in England’s West Midlands. The window was partially frosted, our garden blanketed by last night’s snow. The air inside my office was tinged with the scent of a basting turkey and the dying embers from my fireplace.

Life was good. I had retired seven months earlier, having served the last nine years as the Dean of Solihull College. With pensions coming from Cambridge and S.C., along with royalties generated from three patents, we were well-off financially and able to assist our three children and their families.

The boys had arrived last night: William, his wife, Jackie, and their two girls from London, and Andrew, his wife, Rachel, and the baby from Drumnadrochit. Claire and her fiancé were due in, their plane arriving from Boston later this evening. I heard the boys playing ping-pong in the basement and the grandkids playing with their Christmas presents in the den.

Brandy’s dark hair was pulled back in a tight bun, revealing a few gray roots, her apron tied around her torso. Feeling slightly guilty over having fallen asleep while she cooked, I feigned innocence. That’s when I noticed that my wife’s blue eyes were red-rimmed and frightened.

“Zach, something terrible has happened.”

My chest tightened. “What’s wrong? Is Claire all right?”

“It’s not the kids.” She searched my desk for the remote and turned on the television.

The news was on every station, the story coming from the States. Reporters talked over fluctuating images: lava as wide as a river, swallowing a neighborhood; collapsing bridges and billowing chocolate-brown smoke; highways backed up in traffic as far as the eye could see.

While I slept, hell had opened its gates beneath Midwestern America.

Brandy paused from channel-surfing at a newscast featuring an animated aerial view over a national park.

“ …to recap if you’re just joining us, at approximately 4:47 a.m. Wyoming time, the Yellowstone Caldera, an underground magma chamber fifty-five miles long, erupted beneath Yellowstone National Park. Categorized as a supervolcano, the Yellowstone Caldera has erupted three times in the past 2.1 million years, the last major eruption occurring 640,000 years ago to form the crater beneath the park. Experts say this morning’s blast was two thousand times more powerful than the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.

“Dawn Marie Hurtienne is a volcano expert working with the U.S. Geological Survey. She joins us now from Wyoming. Dr. Hurtienne, this is Melody Matney. Thank you for taking time to speak with us. We understand you are in the process of evacuating your family. Was there any warning this eruption might occur?”

“Scientists began warning Washington about this event as far back as 2004, when the ground above the caldera began rising at a rate of 2.8 inches a year. Yellowstone trails had to be shut down when ground temperatures exceeded 240 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet they never took our warnings seriously.”

“Was there anything that could have been done to prevent it?”

“We proposed several potential solutions to deal with the caldera threat, including the construction of a deep-well venting system. Congress vetoed the deal three years ago, claiming the $23 billion price tag was far too excessive for a tourist attraction. When we protested, news pundits on one politically slanted network accused members of the U.S. Geological Survey of using scare tactics to fund our department.”

“Obviously, a blast of this magnitude striking so early in the morning represents a worst-case scenario. We’re getting death estimates ranging from eight to ten thousand—”

“Ms. Matney, I don’t think you comprehend the magnitude of this event. It’s not the initial blast or the lava flow we have to fear; it’s the ash cloud. As it rises into the stratosphere it will span the entire globe, blanketing the atmosphere and blotting out the sun’s rays. Photosynthesis will cease, which means crops will fail, leading to mass starvation. The Earth’s temperatures will plummet, initiating another ice age. What we’re looking at is the opening act of a planet-wide cataclysm — an extinction event.”

The announcer couldn’t find her voice, forcing her colleague to take over the interview.

“Dr. Hurtienne, this is Tyler Bohlman. How long will this theoretical ice age last?”

“I can assure you, Mr. Bohlman, the ice age is not theoretical. Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid struck the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out the dinosaurs. It wasn’t the impact that caused the mass extinction, but rather the ash cloud that caused a radical change in climate. As for how long the ice age will last, the answer is anywhere from a thousand to a hundred thousand years.”

“Huh!” My eyes snapped open, my heart pounding in my chest. For a distressing moment I felt lost.

Jonas was snoring softly in his command chair, his congested breaths nearly concealing the faint sound of rushing water. Locating my headphones, I listened in on the sonar.

The sound was coming from the riverbed below the Manta, along the base of the ice sheet now walling us in. Deciding not to wake Jonas, I restarted the engines and dove the sub to the bottom.

The subglacial waterway hadn’t ceased; its outflow had been dammed by ice extending from the bottom of the glacier to within seven to ten feet of the riverbed. Reduced to a narrow bottleneck, the current was rushing beneath the ice sheet at a swift twenty-three knots.

It would be a tight squeeze, but the Manta could slip through. The danger lay in the fact that the extended bottom of the glacier was essentially river water that had frozen, rendering it unstable. Traversing the passage could cause the ceiling to collapse on the sub and trap us for all eternity.

The Tethys had most likely forged its own tunnel through the glacier, its superheated bow plates eliminating any risk. I thought about searching for their borehole, but we were already six hours behind.

Gritting my teeth, I guided the sub through the horizontal channel.

It took full throttle just to enter the restricted passage. The ungodly current rocked the sub, slamming the cockpit repeatedly against the ceiling of ice and grinding its undercarriage into the gravel riverbed.

Jonas woke up. Taking command of the pitching submersible, he powered up the Valkyries and ignited the lasers, creating a vacuum effect that accelerated the Manta smoothly through the widening crawl space.

“Guess I should have used the lasers to begin with, huh?”

He shot me a pissed-off look. “Next time wake me.”

“I was afraid you might not risk it.”

“Obviously you have me confused with someone who has something to live for.”

“Be careful what you say. I had another dream.”

“Which planet were you visiting this time? Uranus?”

“The dream took place on Earth, about twenty years from now. Brandy and I were still married, with three kids and a slew of grandkids. Not sure what year it was, but it was Christmas, give or take a day — the day the Yellowstone Caldera erupted.”

Jonas looked at me, incredulous. “Was this real or just one of those multiverse things?”

“There’s no way to tell; it hasn’t happened yet. Obviously. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it parallels the event that must have destroyed Charon.”

“Zach, scientists have known about the Yellowstone Caldera for decades. You think a dream is going to convince the authorities to take the threat any more seriously?”

“No, but I do think the dream serves a purpose. I just haven’t figured out what that is yet. What’s our ETA to Vostok?”

“How the hell should I know? We’re still over two hundred miles away. Who knows if we’ll even get out from under this giant ice cube?”

As if the glacier heard him, the passage suddenly reopened, depositing us back in the main river.

For the next thirteen hours, we forged our way to the southwest, averaging eighteen knots. We stretched and ate and relieved our bowels and bladder, and we watched movies over the computer and alternated piloting duties with restless catnaps. Finally, the waterway twisted to the north, the riverbed dropping away several hundred feet as the ice sheet receded overhead, creating a six-foot space of air into which we surfaced.

Lake Vostok. The northern basin.

We had arrived.

38

Migrating from the ocean, a salmon will fight its way upstream to return to the river where it was born so it can spawn and die, completing its circle of life.

My circle had begun seven years ago when an alien entity had redirected my life, sending me down a multiverse not of my choosing. Now I had returned, hoping for a do-over at the point where my consciousness had jumped the tracks into a radically different reality, which had somehow become my destiny.

Multiverses.

Ten dimensions of existence.

The theory that started it all originated in 1997 when a physicist by the name of Juan Maldacena introduced a model of the universe in which gravity arose from thin microscopic vibrating strings residing in nine dimensions of space, plus one of time. Quantum theory became a mathematical Rosetta Stone, filling in key gaps within Einstein’s theory of gravity. More unnerving were Maldacena’s implications — that the nine upper dimensions were the true reality, while our physical lower dimension of time was the equivalent of a hologram.

In 2013, two physicists from Japan’s Ibaraki University made huge strides in proving Maldacena’s theory when they discovered that the internal energy and properties of a black hole precisely matched the internal energy of our physical universe — that is, if there were no gravity.

Was our physical universe simply one big holographic projection?

Was time an illusion and gravity its shepherd?

Seeking to rise above “the hologram” and rediscover my life, I had returned to Lake Vostok, arriving nine hours after Colonel Vacendak and his MJ-12 maniacs.

Having entered the northern basin, I instructed Jonas to take us deep and go active on sonar, warning him that the lake’s bull sperm whale population was extremely aggressive when it came to safeguarding their pods. My concerns seemed unfounded, as we made it all the way to the plateau without a single sonar contact.

It took Jonas twenty minutes to locate the river we needed to follow inland. Reducing our speed to five knots, we entered the Livyatan melvillei nursery.

“My God… how could he do this?”

The Tethys had shown no mercy. The tributary flowed red with blood, the shallows clogged with the butchered remains of the Miocene whales. Beached cetaceans lined the snow-covered banks, bleeding out from laser burns that had effortlessly sheered blubber from bone. The dead were too numerous to count; those few still dying slapped the surface with their flukes as a warning, and the survivors clicked the waterway in search of their missing calves.

The scene sickened us. Once more, man’s ego had blinded him to recognizing that there was a universal consciousness in play; every negative action causing a ripple that would one day come home to roost.

The E.T.s were here as mentors, reaching out to those who demonstrated purity of heart. As such, I knew the Colonel and his fear-mongers would not be granted access into the alien vessel. And that would lead them to desperate measures.

“Jonas, we have to hurry before there’s no vessel left to access.”

Thirty minutes later we were moving through the partially frozen waters of Lake Vostok’s bay. Jonas used the ice floes as sonar camouflage as we progressively made our way toward the shoreline — like everything else about the island— was undergoing beyond which we would find the extraterrestrial vessel.

Aided by night-vision binoculars, I located the Tethys. The nuclear submarine was anchored offshore, only the shoreline, like everything else about the island, was undergoing a rapid transformation.

Teams of men dressed in ECW gear and wearing chemical tanks strapped to their backs were using flamethrowers to melt the ice and snow, exposing sections of what appeared to be a metallic, saucer-shaped vessel, whose diameter rivaled that of an aircraft carrier. While most of the crew focused on clearing fifteen million years of packed snow from the floating alien landscape, a dozen men had forged a path to the base of the mountain, their wall of flame focused on the summit. The intense heat caused great swaths of ice to fall away from a four-story dorsal-shaped mast, partially concealed behind swirling curtains of steam and fog.

Jonas stared slack-jawed through his binoculars, the sight of the E.T.’s vessel no doubt changing his attitude about our mission and energizing his hope to alter his son’s fate. “It’s real. Everything you told me is real. But how the hell are we going to get you inside that thing without being seen?”

“Dive the sub. There may be an entrance near the saucer’s belly.”

Jonas banked the Manta into a deep descent, giving the Tethys a wide berth as he approached the submerged alien hull. The superstructure materialized out of our olive-green night vision, its disk-shaped keel plunging ninety-six feet below the surface and its dark mass hovering above us like an enormous thundercloud.

Jonas powered on an exterior light in the Manta’s prow. Aiming the beacon, he illuminated a smooth expanse of dull-gray metal, its surface devoid of ice, rust, or barnacles.

As we passed beneath the vessel’s teardrop center, a blue ring of light sixty or seventy feet across materialized overhead, its luminescence bathing us in its aura even as it held us within its grip. A moment later a dark pupil opened in the center of the circle, its widening orifice slowly drawing us in.

The Manta levitated into the vortex until we were enveloped by a darkness so dense that even our exterior light couldn’t penetrate it. We registered the hull resealing beneath us and the pressure differential changing as water was vented from the docking chamber, leaving our submersible to settle on an unseen surface.

For several long minutes we simply sat there in the dark and waited. Then white recessed lighting flickered on like a swarm of fireflies, illuminating an auditorium-sized chamber. Our sub was situated in the center of a circular ring that resembled one of my Vostok energy generators, only this one was twelve feet high and large enough in circumference to corral a Miocene sperm whale.

The device looked like it hadn’t been operated since Antarctica was free of ice.

Jonas was busy running an analysis of our surroundings. Determining the air fit to breathe, he popped open the Manta’s cockpit and stood up on his leather bucket seat, groaning in pain from having been stuck in such a cramped space for more than thirty-six hours.

I followed suit, my leg muscles burning as I stretched. Attempting to increase the circulation in my knees, I performed a slow squat and recovery — shocked to find myself levitating away from the cockpit!

“Zach?”

“We’re in some kind of anti-gravity well. Try it.”

Jonas jumped — only way too hard — and shot straight toward the dark recess above our heads.

“J.T.?” Hovering in mid-air a foot above my seat, I stared up at the void. “Jonas, are you okay? Can you hear me? Jonas!”

Nothing.

Damn.

Placing my right foot on my headrest, I launched my weightless body into the air like Superman, the sensation of flying causing me to grin from ear to ear despite concern for my colleague. Within seconds I was high above the Manta, looking down at the triple-ringed generator, the interior rollers of which were either rotating very slowly or at a speed so fast their velocity rendered them an optical illusion.

Looking up, I realized a polished metal ceiling loomed less than twenty feet overhead and there was no way for me to slow down. Covering my head, I braced for an impact that was going to hurt — only to feel a bizarre, titillating sensation from my hands down through my skull, neck, upper torso, and legs as the atoms of my body passed through the surface.

Opening my eyes, I found myself on the opposite side of the permeable barrier, standing in a dimly lit circular chamber on a polished metal floor, my body once more weighed down by gravity. The circular walls and twelve-foot-high ceiling were made of the same metallic substance that seemed to radiate its own blue-white light.

Ten feet to my left was Jonas. He was on his hands and knees, a dark figure standing over him.

The surface of the circular floor beneath us brightened, revealing Colonel Vacendak—

— The barrel of his Beretta 9mm pistol pressed firmly against the back of Jonas’s skull.

“Nice to see you again, Dr. Wallace. You’re looking well for a dead man.” The Colonel nodded to two armed men, who stepped from out of the shadows to guard Jonas.

The Colonel approached me, one hand reaching out to grip my right arm above the elbow, the other poking the gun barrel against my temple. “You look surprised to see me. Did you think we lacked the knowledge to access this ship? MAJESTIC uses a neutrino light detector to track E.T. vessels as they enter our dimension. Then we bring ’em down and reverse-engineer them. Been doing it since your father started making young girls cry.

“You didn’t really think his ploy would fool us, did you? We practically invented disinformation and misdirection tactics.” He leaned in. “If I had a dollar for every time one of our guys kidnapped some dumb hick farmer and put him through an alien abduction… Of course, I’m sure a few of them actually enjoyed the anal probes.”

Without warning, he struck me on the top of my skull with the butt-end of the Beretta’s magazine.

I dropped to one knee, warm blood pooling around the wound.

Then I lost it.

With a primal yell, I drove my right shoulder into the Colonel’s gut as if he was a blitzing linebacker, slamming the older man flat on his back. The guards stayed with Jonas, allowing me a few seconds to pummel Vacendak’s face into a bloody pulp before one of them dragged me off him.

Furious, the Colonel regained his feet and aimed the gun’s barrel between my eyes, his body trembling. For a moment I was convinced my life was over — but I’ve been there before.

Spinning around to face Jonas, the Colonel fired.

The force of the gun blast startled me, the sound echoing in my ears. I saw a puff of smoke leave the barrel as it burped a slowly spinning lead projectile through gelid air, which appeared to ripple outward from the Beretta.

The bullet made it a third of the way to Jonas’s brain before it stopped. In fact, everything stopped except for yours truly and Joe Tkalec, who now stood beside me, observing the frozen scene.

“Joe, is he going to die?”

“Yes. But he served a greater good. He brought you here.”

“To the portal?”

“To a state of universal consciousness known as Da’at; a place of infinite light, energy, and perfection, where all ten dimensions are united as one. Physical beings who are giving, like your friend, are able to draw from its energy. Those who receive for themselves alone cannot access it. One who has awakened Da’at is able to perform the miraculous. Are you ready to perform the miraculous, Zachary?”

“What miracle, Alien Joe? What are you asking me to do?”

“I cannot say without jeopardizing your free will. However, if you choose to bring your consciousness into Da’at, then the multiverse you entered seven years ago and everything hence forward shall become the reality.”

“Whoa, hold on. You’re asking me to sacrifice William and Brandy, now Jonas and his son, plus all the people that these bastards killed in D.C.? For what? For some alien race on a distant planet that died long ago? Why are you placing that burden on me? I mean, come on, isn’t that God’s will?”

“God has given you the will to choose.”

“Okay, so what happens if I choose not to go to this Da’at place? What happens then?”

“Then you’ll return to seven years ago to the ice tunnel, and whatever reality has manifested as a result of your decision. Of course, this time, instead of entering this vessel, you’ll simply come to a dead end.”

“In my last lucid dream, I was much older. Brandy and I were still together; William was a man. And the Yellowstone Caldera erupted… Was that real?”

“It was one reality among a multiverse of possibilities.”

“You know what I’m asking! Will it really happen, or did it occur as a result of my decision to enter Da’at?”

“Entering Da’at resolves nothing. It simply returns your soul to a past life.”

“You mean Avi Socha?”

“He is known on his world as a soul searcher. Once you enter Da’at, your consciousness will awaken to his reality. You will retain no memory of ever having been Zachary Wallace.”

“Then how do I get back to this life?”

“There’s no guarantee you will. The soul is immortal, of course, but the only certainty once you enter Da’at is that you will live and die as Avi Socha, and the course of action you take, or refuse to take, may determine the future of your species.”

The blood drained from my face.

There are times when life shits on your head, when reality unravels with a diagnosis of cancer or paralysis or the loss of a loved one. That’s the moment you realize your contentment was all an illusion, that you never had any control, that the money and notoriety and long hours and better job titles and great sex and the whole rat race chasing after the pursuit of happiness was all bullshit. Because if and when you do find yourself alone in that foxhole or on that surgical table, in a sinking boat or a hospice bed or trapped on a dying planet, and it’s just you and your fear — that’s the moment you realize the only thing you have left, the only thing of substance that life can’t strip away from you, is your faith in a higher power.

For me, Dr. Zachary Wallace, lord of the skeptics, I had to believe because the alternative — going back seven years to the ice tunnel — was a death sentence.

Sometimes, better the devil you haven’t met…

“Okay, Alien Joe, I’m ready. Send me back.”

I felt myself sinking feet-first through the floor, my body atomizing as my consciousness was inhaled into the center of the whirling electrogravitic rings.