The Depths: A Technothriller
Date: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
Publisher: Conundrum Publishing
Rights: Copyright 2022 Nick Thacker. All rights reserved.

THE DEPTHS

A Technothriller

NICK THACKER

Copyright © 2014-2018, 2022 by Nick Thacker, Conundrum Publishing

Printed in the United States of America

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

CONTENTS

Wait!

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Epilogue

Afterword

Author’s Note

Books by Nick Thacker

About the Author

WAIT!

Before you get started, did you know I’m giving away three free books?

Just head over to nickthacker.com/free-books and sign up!

1

“Hello?" Jen answered the phone, confused. It was past ten on a Wednesday night, and Jen normally would have been pouring herself a glass of red before bed.

No response.

Again, she spoke into the cell phone. Louder and more direct this time. "Hello?" She heard shuffling on the other end, fumbling. Then a breathy sound.

It sounded like breathing, but no words were spoken. She frowned, taking her phone from her ear and pressing "End." The number flashed once—an unknown caller—and then was replaced by the home screen.

Weird, she thought. It must have been a wrong number or an accidental dial. Her son, twelve-year-old Reese, would have called it a "butt dial" or something like that. She laughed to herself, placing the phone back into her coat pocket.

A gust of brisk February air forced Jen to walk faster. Her car was on the other end of the commuter lot, a five-minute walk from the campus. After tonight's lecture, she'd stayed late answering questions and grading some papers before leaving the darkened halls of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

Mark Adams, her husband, hadn't called, meaning everything with Reese was going well. She expected Mark to drop their son off at her place tomorrow after work, though she knew he'd be about an hour late, as usual.

The lot was dark. Only a few dim streetlights bathed the black asphalt in a drab yellow glow. She could hear her heels—an unfortunate necessity for tonight's formal lecture—clicking on the hard pavement, but no other sounds interrupted her thoughts.

She was tired.

She'd been awake for almost thirty-six hours researching, planning, teaching, and finally delivering the lecture she'd spent months on. It had been received well, to thundering applause from scientists, professors, and a few higher-level graduate students. She was proud of herself, but it was time to sleep.

The small Honda Accord appeared out of the darkness as she approached. Man, how long have I been here? she thought, noticing the water streaks of a long-gone mist dried on her windshield. The top of the silver sedan was covered in a shining glitter of frozen specks, remnants of the brief snowfall they'd had earlier that day.

She reached into her other coat pocket, looking for her keys. Her cell phone chirped again and began vibrating.

Again? Who is it this time? she thought as she saw another unknown number flash on the screen.

"Hello?" she called into the phone, this time her annoyance coming through in her voice.

"Jen? Hey. It's Mark."

She reached her car door and frowned. A shadow danced behind her, and its reflection on the window caused her to jump. She whipped around, not knowing what to expect.

The lights were playing tricks on her. A cat, bounding across the parking lot chasing some unknown prey, disappeared behind an SUV. She let out a sigh and spoke again into the phone.

"Mark? Hi — sorry... it came up as an unknown number. What's up? Everything okay?"

"Well, no… Jen. You need to come here. Hurry. It's Reese."

Her heart immediately began to rise in her throat. Of all the calls she hoped she'd never get... She grabbed her keys, hands shaking, clicking the unlock button before they were out of her pocket.

The car clicked as it unlocked, and the headlights flashed twice. She reached for the door, preoccupied with the phone call, her mind racing in terror. "Mark, what happened?" She tried not to panic, telling herself that his asthma must just be flaring up again or that he had a bad scrape.

But her motherly instincts knew better.

“I came home after I went out to grab ice cream. He just wanted ice cream." Mark's voice was shaky, almost in a panic. "I mean, I was only gone for ten minutes. I should have made him come with me," he stammered.

Jen listened intently as she pulled the handle. The creak of the door was accompanied by the dome light flicking on as the door opened.

The car’s interior was immediately illuminated, and her eyes had to adjust to the sudden change in light. As they did, they noticed something that caused her to stumble backward, tripping in her heels.

On the other end of the phone, Mark continued talking. "Jen, I'm so sorry. Reese is… gone. I came home; he wasn't here."

But the words didn't register in her mind, at least not yet. Jen was staring, horrified, at the man in the driver's seat of her car.

A man she worked with: Dr. Elias Storm.

He was motionless, not breathing. Jen began hyperventilating, a tightening scream working its way up her throat. She dropped the phone and let it bounce away.

Then she noticed the blood. Deep crimson covered his body, the rest of the seat, and most of the dashboard and windows. It also covered his face, dripping from his eyes.

His eyes.

Two long metal rods protruded from Dr. Storm’s eyes, partially embedded in the man’s skull. The kind of support rods they often used in the lab to prop up fossilized test subjects. They glistened in the dim lamplight, and the horrific scene finally took its toll on Jennifer.

She collapsed onto the pavement, blacking out on the hard ground.

2

“Jen? Are you okay?”

The voice was melodic, floating somewhere in front of her eyelids.

“Jen, wake up. They need to ask you some more questions,” the voice said.

She nudged her eyes open. Blinking, she saw Mark standing in front of her with a cup of coffee.

He handed her the cup. “Hey, there you are. Sorry to wake you. I know you need to rest, but Officer Rodriguez needs to verify a few things with us. Is that okay?” They were separated, but she and Mark were still legally married. She could tell he now danced between wanting to pull her close, console her, or give her space.

She nodded in response to the question, sipping from the coffee. Its acidic burn as it slid down her throat didn’t phase her. How did I fall asleep? she wondered. After the events of that night, it was amazing that she had calmed down.

She was curled up on the couch in Mark’s apartment. A blanket had appeared over her feet, and now Mark and the two police officers—Rodriguez and Sanderson, she remembered—were seated across from her on kitchen chairs.

“Thanks, Ms. Adams. I understand it’s been a rough night for you both. I need to make sure we haven’t forgotten anything.”

Again, she nodded. Breathing deeply, she forced herself to recollect the events that had transpired four hours ago.

The parking lot. First, the strange unknown caller.

Then Mark’s frantic call.

Walking to her car.

Dropping the phone as she saw her colleague.

And Reese was gone.

It didn’t make sense, any of it. Who would take our son? And why? Did it have anything to do with Dr. Storm’s death? These were questions for the police, to be sure, but they had not left her mind since she woke up during the car ride to Mark’s apartment.

“Ms. Adams,” Rodriguez said. “About that unknown caller — you said you answered the phone, correct? And that no one was on the other end?”

She thought for a moment before responding. “Right, I guess. I mean, I thought I could hear breathing.”

“And when Mark called, that number also came up as ‘unknown?’”

“Yes.”

He jotted down some notes, the other cop just staring straight ahead.

She knew they were doing their job, trying to help, but it was still uncanny how calm and collected they seemed. She could sense how frazzled she must look. Her dark brown hair, normally trained and collected conservatively into a bun or single ponytail, was sticking out in every direction, even drooping down into her eyes.

The officers asked a few more questions, which she knew she’d answered at least twice. They checked their notes, compared them, and then stood to leave. Mark stood up as well and walked the cops to the front door.

“Mr. Adams, Ms. Adams—” Officer Rodriguez looked at each of them individually, “we’re going to maintain surveillance on your block to be safe. As you know, at least three patrol units are out searching for your son.

“I know it’s extremely difficult for you right now, but with the possible connection to the murder, we can’t allow you to search on your own.”

The pair nodded in unison at the officer’s masked order. Where would they look, anyway?

“We feel it would be safer for you both if you were in one place. Is that going to be a problem?”

Jen glanced at her husband. “It should be fine. Thank you, officers. For everything.”

“Very good. You have our number. If you need us, don’t hesitate to call.”

The door clicked closed behind them, and Mark returned to the small living room. Without saying a word, he fell into the old couch next to Jen.

Both of them silently stared down for a moment, and Jen could sense her tears beginning to well up again.

Before they fell, Mark wrapped his long arms around her. Their past was their past, and now she needed him; needed anything. She let herself be consoled for the first time in years. Never in her life had she felt so vulnerable.

She heard Mark draw a quick breath in, about to speak. “Jen—”

He paused.

“There’s something else. Something I didn’t show the police.”

3

Detective Craig Larson clenched his teeth in frustration at the unbelievable number of people converging on the downtown department store. He was in one of the many toy aisles at the back of the store, searching for that perfect gift for his only grandson’s birthday.

Unfortunately, it seemed everyone else in the Georgetown area was as well.

This is ridiculous. It’s not even close to Christmas.

He should have stayed home and done the shopping online as he did for most things. At 57, an age his colleagues claimed was “esteemed,” he sometimes had a hard time with online shopping. It felt impersonal, or at least too easy.

He was part of a generation that still believed in the value of personal relationships, communication, and taking the time to truly get to know a friend. Online shopping and a slew of similar activities like texting, online dating, and social media felt like a violation of that belief system. It felt wrong somehow.

Yet Larson was slowly getting indoctrinated into the culture of an interconnected world. He’d finally set up a Facebook account at his daughter’s prodding and was soon hooked. He’d even sprung for an iPhone when his contract upgrade had come up for renewal.

Still, he had promised himself that today he would actually get up, get in his car, and go out and shop for his grandson. He was turning six, and as his only grandchild, he was also his favorite.

He dodged a younger couple standing smack-dab in the middle of the aisle, apparently oblivious to his presence. Two screaming kids playing tag nearly collided with him as they raced around the next corner.

He felt his phone start to vibrate before he heard his ringtone—a throwback rotary-style sounding ring—and reached into his pocket to grab it.

“Larson.”

It took him a second to place the voice on the other end of the phone—familiar enough for the speaker not to introduce himself, yet the man’s name didn’t come immediately to mind.

Finally, Larson recognized the accent and realized who it was. Gregory Durand from London.

“Shit, Greg, how are you?”

“Fine. Listen, Craig—I’ve got something for you. A kidnapping case.”

Detective Larson frowned. “Kidnapping?”

“Right. A child, twelve-year-old from somewhere outside of New Bedford, Massachusetts. I have a friend of a friend who’s a cop there, and he called it up.”

“And it got to you?” Larson asked.

“It did, but not because of the kidnapping. He was taken, but the mother found out about it at the same time she found a dead guy in her car.”

“What do you mean, a dead guy? And who was this kid?”

Larson snapped his head up as he listened and peered through a store window.

“Yeah, a homicide. And it was the kid who was taken,” Gregory Durand said on the other end of the line. “Not by force, we don’t think, and we have no reason to suspect that the kid’s in immediate danger. The guy who was killed was her boss, some old professor at the university where she worked. But he had a brother, another scientist who fell off the grid years ago. We think he might have had something to do with it, and so by extension, she might as well. Don’t worry about the mom or husband, though. I was hoping you could help with this kid; see if you can dig anything up about the people who took him.”

“Right, but do you know who took him?”

“Not yet, but it’s a bit odd. The whole thing was orchestrated well, and aside from the brutality of the murder, it’s very much like they targeted this lady, Jennifer Adams. My boss isn’t taking any chances and wants to ensure it stays out of the media.”

“Of course.”

“Of course. So I’m asking for your help.”

“I see. Why me?” He sighed. He’d been a member of the Washington police force for almost forty years, and his political connections had stacked up nicely in his favor throughout his distinguished career.

It seemed that the older he got, the more inane the requests became. Kidnappings, car thefts, mall heists—things that in his field, at least, were considered to be the private inspector’s version of “rescuing a cat from a tree”—worthless.

What had happened to his golden years? Car bombings, tracking terrorist infiltrations, hijacked airplanes? He was the best at what he did, and age had nothing to do with it.

“Look, Larson, I know you’re the guy we need. Like I said, my boss told me to call you. He said this was something that fell within your ‘jurisdiction.’ It didn’t seem like he meant just your geographic area, either.”

Detective Larson knew he didn’t. He was usually told things were in his ‘jurisdiction’ when they were political favors. Situations that required more thinking on his feet, problem-solving, and espionage activities that were not exactly considered kosher in the law-enforcement business.

He frowned, then responded. “Okay, right. A kidnapping.” He hung on the word a bit longer. “A kidnapping that falls into my jurisdiction. Gotcha.”

“Good. I’m glad you’re on board. I’ll email the details to you as soon as I can. I’m on my way back to London now.”

4

“They what? They left a ransom note?” Jen’s voice was shaky, strained from the stresses of the previous few hours.

“I know. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do, and I thought the cops would put Reese in more danger. The note says—”

“Of course the note says no cops, Mark. They always do.” Jen was standing in the kitchen, pacing in nervous anxiety as Mark sat at the kitchen table. The kidnappers’ ransom note rested in front of him, the only clue to their son’s whereabouts.

Mark was characteristically calm, even under present circumstances. “Jen, calm down—”

“I’m not going to calm down!” she yelled, turning to face him. “Reese is gone, and you didn’t think it was important to mention that whoever took him left a ransom note?”

He sighed, trying to explain. “No, I just thought we should try to talk to someone else, maybe someone they won’t be able to track.”

“We don’t even know who they are! Who are we going to talk to? Even if we went back to the police now, they’d bring us both in for not telling them about the note sooner,” Jen said.

“I know, I know,” Mark said. “Look, let’s see if there’s anything we can piece together. They’re obviously looking for something. Was there anything at work you were doing, something—”

“No, I already told you it was routine stuff.” Jen couldn’t help but interrupt. Her nerves were starting to get the best of her. It was hard enough to try to forget the brutal murder that had taken place earlier that night; now it seemed possible—likely even—that her son could somehow be caught up in all of it too.

She walked back over to the table, sliding the ransom note around in front of her, and read the chilling words aloud.

“We have your son. No police.

Find Dr. Storm’s answer. You have four days.”

There was no byline.

Unlike most ransom notes she’d seen on television, this was simple copy paper that had been through a typewriter. Other than its message, it was almost indistinguishable from a normal office memo printout.

But the importance of the note was not lost on Jen and Mark. They knew it was real. Their son had been taken almost precisely when Dr. Storm had been murdered.

They had searched on both sides of the paper for a mark of some sort, any type of anomaly that might lead them toward an identity, but there was nothing to be found. Even the typed words were without fault, a difficult feat for even the best typewriters still in existence.

“We need to go to my office,” Jen said, abruptly glancing up from the paper.

“What? Jen, we can’t,” Mark said.

“We need to. There’s obviously something that I’m missing, something that Dr. Storm was working on.” She frowned, brainstorming out loud. “Maybe it has something to do with our last project, the studies we ran out of Pennsylvania.”

“Jen, they’re going to be watching. Even if they aren’t keeping an eye on the university, the police will be searching Dr. Storm’s office. And the cops…” Mark’s voice still sounded steady, but Jen could hear the hidden pangs of distress. He was certainly struggling as well.

“No. Don’t you see? They want me to find it, whatever it is,” she said. “They gave me four days, Mark. Four days to figure out what the hell Elias was working on. They need me to get it for them, and if that’s the only way to get Reese back—”

Before she could finish the sentence, her voice cracked, and she began to choke up. Mark reached out his hand to comfort her, but she pulled away.

“I’m going to the lab, Mark. I will figure out what they’re looking for, and I will get Reese back. We can get in from the back of the lobby. The police aren’t going to be watching that side of the building.”

She knew he wouldn’t try to stop her. He was as stubborn as she was.

5

Larson’s laptop dinged as soon as he walked in the door.

The email was from Durand, sent through a secure address from his office in London. It was a forward of a short thread between Durand and his boss.

>>Subject: Fwd: Re: Larson

>>From: . Vertrund, Investigative Head, NETA

>>Get him on it. I’ve heard of him, and he’s probably got the connections to the top that we need on this one, but keep it quiet. We need in, if it’s going to fall the way I think it is.

>>I looked at the file Diane sent over. If it’s related, it’s probably going to blow up. Make sure Larson stays out of the way.

He scrolled down through the remainder of the thread.

>Subject: Larson

>From: G. Durand, Assistant to the Investigative Head, NETA

>I need your approval on this one, boss. Craig Larson’s an old friend of mine, and I’d like to have him look into something for us. Last night a kidnapping coincided with the murder of a professor in Massachusetts.

>Diane got a flag on a name related to the case: Dr. Elias Storm, who’s got a brother in the system. The kidnapping victim is the son of a woman who worked for Dr. Storm, and I just want to cover all our bases here.

>Obviously we can’t make much noise, as it’s a little out of our area, and we don’t want to get the cops over there riled up. Larson moves under the radar, and he’s the ear we’ve got for this.

So the Brits wanted information too. Whatever this thing was, they wanted someone with connections helping them out.

Political connections.

Larson knew that could mean anything, but at the very least, he understood that if the British intelligence community were interested in something that had happened on American soil, the Americans surely would be interested.

But Durand trusted him, and he had no reason to betray that trust.

He had no political enemies in England, and he didn’t have any loyalties to the current governing administration of his home country. He’d do exactly what Durand and Vertrund asked: snoop around and see what was going on. If anything was interesting to find, he’d figure out what to do with it then.

Detective Craig Larson turned on the small 4-cup coffee pot in his kitchen. It was going to be a long night.

6

The car was silent. Neither of the pair had spoken a word since they’d left the apartment.

Mark Adams knew better than to break the silence with his wife. Jen was on edge, terrified, and hadn’t slept in more than a day, and besides, he didn’t have anything useful to say.

It’s my fault Reese’s gone, he thought. He knew it wasn’t true; if he had been home, he might have been injured—or worse—and Reese would have been taken anyway.

But it didn’t change the fact that he had been kidnapped on Mark’s watch.

He rubbed his eyes. He had taken a nap for a couple of hours after work before Reese had gotten home from school, but the events of the evening seemed to have erased any sleep he’d had and replaced it with anxiety and fatigue.

Mark’s beat-up ’97 Ford pickup sailed off Main Street and onto Academy Drive, the main road leading through and around the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. He circled the lot once, trying to find a secluded spot to park.

* * *

Jen looked through the window onto the well-manicured grounds, still smelling the faint scent of lawn clippings and light dew from the evening’s humidity.

The school, established in 1891, rested on a small peninsula on Cape Cod that jutted out into the bay, about an hour south of Boston and just under an hour east of Providence. Specializing in Marine Transportation and Marine Engineering, Mass Marine had been established to serve the merchant marine transportation industry and the United States Navy. To this day, the Academy worked closely with the Navy for the commissioning of officers for the nation’s marine vessels.

Jennifer Adams was brought on as an associate professor for the new Energy Systems Engineering program the school launched two years ago. Her job included teaching undergraduate and graduate courses and assisting the tenured professors in her department.

Mainly, however, her time was usually spent assisting Dr. Elias Storm in researching submarine geothermal energy production. During her own graduate years, Jen had been recognized—and recruited—by Dr. Storm for her breakthrough work designing a structurally sound prototype for energy extraction in high-pressure environments. A week after she had her diploma, she found herself side-by-side with one of the world’s renowned and leading experts on underwater energy production. The two years at Mass Marine working in the labs with Dr. Storm were some of the most challenging, rewarding, and exciting years she’d ever spent, and she loved it.

Until now.

It felt unbelievable, knowing someone close to her had died, but she didn’t quite realize it. Walking into the building with Mark, she felt like Dr. Storm would be bustling about, hurrying through the halls like a doctor in an emergency room. He would stop, as if deep in thought, quirk his head sideways, and grin when he caught sight of his younger research assistant. “Jen! Hello, I’m glad you’re here—” he would say, and before she could hear the rest of his sentence, he’d be off to another corner of the building.

But not tonight.

Tonight, they were alone. The walls seemed to loom over them, the darkness pressing down. She felt smaller. Are we even in the right building? she thought. Before even the cleaning crews arrived, she’d never been here this late at night.

Rounding the first corner, they came to a long hallway. Storm’s office was on the right, the fourth door down. Before they reached it, Mark and Jen could see that this section of the hallway had been roped off with police tape.

“Someone’s already been here,” Mark said.

“The cops, I’d guess,” Jen said. “Maybe they just checked it out for evidence. They wouldn’t know to look for anything else, would they?”

“Probably not. But still, I don’t want to get caught with my pants down. If they come back—”

“They’re not coming back, Mark. At least not tonight. There’s no reason for the police to watch an empty office, especially since the murder’s already happened. Come on.”

She started away from the intersection of the two halls and continued toward the professor’s office. Reaching the police tape, she hesitated for a moment, then ducked underneath the line of plastic caution ribbon. Storm’s office door had been left open, and she could already see as she entered that the police had rummaged through the file cabinets, desk drawers, and shelving units lining one side of the large room.

“Looks like they didn’t clean up after themselves very well,” Mark said as he appeared by his wife’s side. “I wonder if we should have brought gloves or something. I don’t know if they’ll send forensics, but I don’t want to be associated with this.”

Jen frowned, then dismissed the idea. It was so like Mark, she thought. Always afraid to get his hands dirty. He was more anxious about getting involved with things than finding a solution to a problem. Maybe that was part of why his career had never really taken off.

Mark Adams was a good security expert. Great, even. He’d been in charge of a few projects for his current company that had brought them to the forefront of the computer security and intelligence world, and he’d been the man behind most of the research and development. His boss, however, had taken most of the credit, while Mark received a small bonus and a pat on the back from management.

It had seriously pissed Jen off. They had just finalized the separation, and tensions were high as they balanced their now-single lifestyles with their parenting duties. Jen remembered screaming at Mark—the frustratingly well-tempered man he was—and accusing him of being a pushover. He’d argued, albeit weakly, that it “wasn’t his place” and “he just wanted to be a good employee.”

And he’ll always remain just a “good employee,” Jen thought to herself that night. He was the same gentle, helpful man she’d fallen in love with thirteen years ago, but she quickly discovered that what she’d originally labeled as carefree resolve was a lack of willingness to make important decisions.

Jen had basically run the entire relationship, and the effect was a broken family.

Snapping her focus back into their current world, she took another few steps into the office and glanced around. For the most part, aside from a few empty styrofoam coffee cups and the caution tape left by the police, everything was as she remembered. Books lined the shelves to her right—chemistry, physics, and a few geology numbers. On the man’s desk, which was usually kept spotlessly clean and free from clutter, sat an amethyst geode and a trilobite fossil. Papers were strewn about. They were documents and reports that Jen recognized from her work with the man.

“I don’t see anything out of the ordinary,” Jen said. She wasn’t sure what they’d find or if they’d find anything at all.

“What kind of project were you working on?” Mark asked. Since they’d been separated for over a year, he hadn’t kept tabs on her career. “There has to be something important, something they’d do anything to find out,” he said.

“No. Nothing. I mean, we were just doing standard research. Underwater geologic mapping of thermal activities, that kind of stuff. We were working long hours, though, since it’s getting to be the end of the semester, and his course load was getting hectic.”

She reached toward a stack of papers on Dr. Storm’s desk. Storm was characteristically organized—unlike Jen—and the shuffled stack of loose documents was obviously left by a careless police officer from earlier that night. The top few pages were student assignments, ungraded, followed by a few internal office memos. She almost laughed at the sight of them. Storm was old-fashioned in every way. He would print out almost every email and memorandum and file it away in the long row of filing cabinets on the left side of the room.

Mark was rummaging through the top-left file cabinet now, being sure to use a pen he’d grabbed to slide through each document. “Mark, don’t. There’s nothing there. It’s all old stuff. Graded assignments, letters, stuff like that. I can’t imagine there’d be anything of value—”

She stopped short as her eyes stared down at the pile of papers she was shifting through.

“What’s up?” Mark looked up from his cabinet to see what Jen had found.

“It—it’s a letter. At least an envelope. It’s empty, but it’s addressed to Dr. Storm.”

“So? Who’s it from?” Mark asked.

“It’s also from Dr. Storm,” Jen said.

“You mean, like he sent a letter to himself?”

“I think so.” Jen opened the empty envelope further to take a peek inside. It was empty, but she ran a few fingers through the inside just to be sure. “The return address, though, is from some town in Pennsylvania. It says, ‘Dr. Storm, Aberdeen, Pennsylvania.’ That’s not where Dr. Storm lives—lived—though. He’s got a house just off the coast here.”

“Hmm, interesting. Keep it now that you’ve got your prints all over it. Let’s keep looking.”

Mark returned to rifling through the file cabinets but stopped a few seconds later. “You hear that?”

“What?” Jen wiped her balmy hands on her jeans—she didn’t even remember changing into jeans—and looked up. “I didn’t hear anything—”

“Shh! Listen!” Mark crouched, and Jen copied the movement.

The sound of footsteps, light but quick, echoed down the hall and into the room. One set of footsteps or two? Jen found herself thinking.

The pair turned to face the door, and Mark reached out to shut off the office light.

“Don’t,” she whispered. “If someone’s coming, they’ll know we’re in here. Get behind the desk. It’s solid wood, and you can’t see underneath it,” she added.

Mark followed the order, and Jen tiptoed around to the backside of the shelving unit. It was a floor-to-ceiling model, no doubt from Ikea or another large big-box store. Storm wasn’t the vain kind of man who cared much for fancy furniture or expensive adornments. The shelving unit stood about a foot away from the back wall, and there was just enough room to wriggle her small frame into the space between the wall and the side of the shelf.

It’s not going to hide me for long, especially if they come into the room. Jen held her breath as the footsteps got louder.

The footfalls stopped just outside the office door, and she thought she could hear whispers. She couldn’t distinguish the words or place exactly where they came from.

She looked down at Mark. His head was poking out from under the massive desk. He’d pushed the rolling office chair back a bit and crouched into the space beneath the desktop. He wasn’t a large man—thin and barely six feet tall—but she was surprised at the amount of space left over under the desk. She wondered if it may have been a better idea to share his hiding spot.

Too late now.

The voice outside the door whispered again, and Jen heard someone stretching the police tape away from the door.

Again, the whispers.

“—night vision” was the only word she could make out.

The lights in the office, as well as throughout the hallway, immediately flicked off.

Jen panicked. As the initial shock of darkness wore off, Jen noticed a light glow spilling into the office window from some outside source. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to maneuver through the room.

They’d cut the power to the building, and they were coming in! She dove forward, trying to get behind the sturdy desk. There wouldn’t be time to crawl underneath, but at least she’d be offered more protection.

Shouts, now. “Stop! Come on out. I know you’re in there!” she heard a man’s voice say. British? She couldn’t tell.

Mark grabbed her hand. Squeezing, he shook his head. “Don’t,” he whispered.

Jen ripped her hand out of his. What the hell am I supposed to do? she thought as her eyes caught his.

“Again—Ms. Adams, I need you to step out from behind the desk. I’m not here to harm you, but I need your full cooperation.”

A panicked expression came over Jen’s face as she mouthed silently to Mark. “The police?” He shrugged, and his eyes widened as Jen stretched an arm above her head.

“Jen, stop! Get down!” Mark whispered aloud.

She ignored him and raised another arm over her head and above the top of the desk. Slowly, she stood, her back to the door.

“That’s it, Ms. Adams. Turn around slowly and walk over here. We need to have a little chat,” the man behind her said. Definitely British, she thought again. Too refined to be Australian.

Jen turned around. Standing in front of her was no policeman. The man, dark-skinned, was dressed head-to-toe in black body armor, complete with an assault rifle pointed directly at her. His face was emotionless, though his eyes were covered by wraparound black goggles. Without speaking, he jerked his head and gun simultaneously, motioning for her to walk toward him.

She did. A second body appeared in the narrow doorway, this one leaner, like a woman’s. Sure enough, as Jen approached them, she could see that the second person was female. Her face was fair-skinned and smooth, with full lips, but that was all Jen could see of her. Like the first man, this woman’s face was mostly covered by a large set of night-vision goggles.

“Come outside with us. We need to discuss something. You came alone?”

Jen thought for a second. They didn’t know Mark was here. Or did they? She didn’t have time to ponder the question.

“Y—yes. I’m alone.” She hoped Mark could hear her. She didn’t want him overreacting and getting them hurt. Whatever this was about, they obviously wanted to speak to her, not kill her. If Mark was his usual self, he’d stay under the desk until everyone had left, and then he’d sneak out and try to phone for help.

The woman spoke this time. “Good. Let’s go.” Her voice was as cold and hardened as a war criminal’s, and her grip around Jen’s arm matched. She yanked Jen through the door and began walking down the hall. The large black man followed behind them.

“Who are you? How did you find me here?” Jen asked.

The woman didn’t respond. She didn’t even glance in Jen’s direction.

“We didn’t want to get the police involved, Ms. Adams,” the man said. “Unfortunately, we believe there’s more to your son’s kidnapping than what you’re currently aware of.”

So they knew, she thought.

“You’re going to come with us. We have a secure facility outside of town where we can debrief.”

As he finished his sentence, Jen heard a scuffle and a muffled shout from behind them. She whirled around to see a third soldier, this one a young man, blond, running toward Dr. Storm’s open office door from the other side of the hallway. Mark was also running—directly toward Jen.

“Jen! Let’s go!” he shouted, almost catching up to them. They were about twenty feet from the intersection with the other hallway and about 100 feet from the exit.

There was no way they could outrun them.

Mark was going to get them killed. She struggled to free herself from the death grip of her captor, the iron lady. It was no use; the woman was unbelievably strong.

Mark was getting closer.

What is he going to do? She thought to herself as the large man turned and prepared for a fight. He’ll kill him. The man outweighed Mark by at least fifty pounds, and he was certainly better prepared for a skirmish.

It didn’t matter.

Before Mark could get any closer, a loud gunshot reverberated through the hall of the dark school. Mark’s body was flung forward with a jerking motion, dropping to his hands and knees onto the marble floor. Behind him, Jen could see the third soldier still aiming down the sight of his smoking assault rifle.

Mark looked up at Jen quickly, teeth clenched in defiance, then collapsed all the way onto the cold tile.

7

Detective Larson’s evening was not going well.

He’d promptly called up his second-in-command, Ken Dawson, after talking with Durand on the phone and reading through the email thread. Larson briefed him on the call he’d gotten earlier and on the email that had come through about fifteen minutes ago.

Ken agreed that it sounded like the English were out to make a power play somehow. The problem was that was about all the information they had so far. Neither could figure out exactly what the connection was between the kidnapping, the murder, and why the British intelligence agency was interested.

Ken hung up, agreeing to head over to Larson’s apartment. While Larson waited for him, he poured himself another drink: Jack Daniel and Coke, his third that night. He flipped on the TV to catch the end of the evening news as he waited and sipped his beverage.

Kidnapping, the murder of an old professor, British intelligence. What the hell did they all have in common?

He swirled the ice around in his glass and thought about the problem until Dawson arrived. The knock on his apartment door fifteen minutes later alerted him that he’d been drifting off. As he rose to let the younger man in, the front door opened, and Dawson walked straight into the entryway.

“Well shit, Ken, why don’t you go and give an old man a heart attack?”

Dawson was about ten years younger than Larson, but he’d been Larson’s right-hand man for about as long as either of them could remember. They’d been on cases together, trained people together, and their families even vacationed together once a few years back. Their relationship now was interesting––stronger than ever, but as Dawson was gearing up for the pinnacle of his career, Larson was winding down for retirement.

“Haha, right. I’ll be damned if you die before the rest of us, Craig. Eating right, no smoking, and—” he glanced down at the highball glass in Larson’s hand “—up until tonight, no drinking either.”

“Ah, well, you know. I guess I just decided that life isn’t long enough. Speaking of, need a drink?”

“Vodka, if you got any. Any news?”

“Nope, not unless you brought some with you,” Larson responded. He motioned for Ken to sit down at the kitchen table and went to make his drink.

“Well, I found that folder I was talking about, but it’s old. I’d used it for a case as reference material not too long ago, so I had it sitting around. But everything inside is dated at least twenty years ago. I’m not sure it’ll be much help.”

“At this point, I think anything would be helpful. Greg’s tone was a little hesitant, almost reserved. We can assume something’s heating up. Anything in that folder about Dr. Mitchell Storm?”

“Storm, right. He was an environmentalist from way back in the day, but no one’s heard from him in, like, thirty years. He worked on some projects that led to very important research in geothermal technology, geology, and even nuclear power. I only remember the name because one of his projects led to immediate interest from governments and research corporations worldwide.” His voice trailed off as Craig handed him his drink. He sipped it, winced, then smiled. “Perfect. Thanks. Anyway, these guys all wanted a piece of what he was studying.”

“Which was?” Larson asked.

“No idea. You can flip through the folder yourself. It just has a few clippings from trade journals about the Storm brothers and their research. It’s a bird’s-eye view, though; nothing incriminating and nothing of interest.”

“To you.”

“Ha. Right. Nothing that I’d bat an eye at.”

Larson flipped through the folder, verifying that nothing inside was of much use to the case.

“It seems odd that the attacks involved the same person: Jen Adams. She was working very closely with Dr. Elias Storm from that university. On what, we don’t know. He was considered rather tame compared to his older brother. Could be that Elias was continuing the research on something Mitchell started back in the seventies or eighties before he fell off the radar.”

“Hmm. I get it, but I’m just not seeing the connection. If this Dr. Elias Storm was in fact working on something that his brother had started years ago, it makes sense why they would kill him. Maybe he wouldn’t give them information or something like that. Then they turned to the only other person who would know what he was doing––Jen Adams—and went after her by way of kidnapping her son.”

“Right, go on.”

“But that does not explain why the British cared about it. I just don’t see how it fits in,” Larson said.

Dawson frowned, then spoke. “Well, you said Durand called in a favor since one of his acquaintances heard about the attack from local police. Maybe they’re not interested yet. Just covering all their bases.”

“No, you and I both know these agencies don’t chase weak leads very long. For it to blow up this quick, they have to be thinking something. They’re all related, and I need to figure out what it is. Greg’s a friend, but he’s not going to screw himself over just to give me the full scoop.” Craig left the kitchen and came back holding his laptop. He sat in the chair across from Ken and slid the computer over so both men could see the screen.

Larson typed a search query into the bar at the top of the browser and pressed enter. England America Mitchell Storm. He quickly scanned the first three pages of results, finding nothing of importance. He changed the query, adding the word research.

Still nothing on the first three pages. On the fourth page, however, he paused and clicked on the fourth result. A webpage opened. It was a poorly designed blog from what seemed to be a conspiracy theory nutcase.

Abandoned American Research Station Sold to British was the title of the post. The post was written around two letters the author had allegedly come across at his office during his working days, but he was trying to build a case on a severe lack of logic and no hard facts.

“…Mitchell Storm worked with the Agartha crew among British and American private companies for three years before resigning from the program, eventually moving to the backcountry to Canada.”

“Agartha,” Dawson said. “Interesting name for a research station.”

The article didn’t link to any other sources, nor did it cite any in the content. Further, the author seemed to have forgotten the title of his post, never mentioning more about the “research station” or “Agartha.”

“Well, that’s a bummer,” Dawson said when he had finished reading the post.

“You’re telling me. This nut job is the only thing even close to real information, and there’s no way we’re getting anywhere by tracking him down.”

“Even if it was a good lead, I’m not sure I’d want to track him down.”

Dawson and Larson perused a few more posts—collections of “research” on Area 51, scraps of newspaper headings that the author claimed were forgeries, and other bits of old-fashioned American propaganda.

Larson stood and searched the apartment for his cell phone. He dialed a number and waited for a response.

“Greg? Hey, did I wake you?”

Dawson looked toward Larson as the man continued his conversation.

“I don’t care. Listen. We need more. What—” he paused a moment. “Of course the line’s secure; you think I haven’t been doing this job for thirty years?” Again, he paused as Gregory Durand spoke on the other end of the phone. “What? What are you talking about?”

“What is it?” Dawson asked, now standing at the doorway to the living room.

“Durand… what do you mean ‘you sent in a team?’”

He frowned, then hung up the phone. He slammed it down onto an end table and stormed back into the kitchen, a wide-eyed Dawson waiting patiently for an explanation.

“We need to move. Durand’s group apparently sent a team to the states right after we talked last. They don’t want this getting out, and he said it’s a matter of ‘national security.’ Apparently, I’m not enough of an asset to them. They had to take matters into their own hands.”

“But what do they want to do? What do they want you to do?” Dawson asked.

“Ken, I don’t think they want me to do anything other than pick up the pieces. Durand got me in this thing before the rest of his organization got wind of it. I’m pretty sure we’re lucky to know about it at this point. We’re not getting anything else from them. We want this, it’s on us.”

“Okay, we can work around that. When’s this ‘team’ supposed to get here?”

Larson stared at the younger man in his living room. “They’re already here.”

8

0226 Hours

Jen heard a loud groan. Her husband. She stood and walked over to his bed, a hospital gurney set up in a makeshift operating room. The powerful lighting in the room projected shadows along the warehouse walls—brick, no doubt old. She took in the surroundings. Why a warehouse? Who are these people?

The old brick building loomed overhead. Though the room they were currently in was small, the walls climbed almost a hundred feet to meet the structure’s sloping corrugated steel roof. The door to the room was also modern reinforced steel. It was an odd juxtaposition, but Jen felt there was a reason for the setting. No doubt this place looked innocuous from the outside.

Mark Adams was lying on the bed wearing a hospital gown and trying in vain to scratch an itch on his shoulder but finding it impossible to lift his arm. A military doctor, Dr. Pritchett, was bustling about in response to her husband’s waking.

That ass, she thought. “You okay? What the hell was that?” she asked him.

Mark just frowned. “That bastard shot me!” he said.

“Well, no shit, Mark, you ran from a man with a loaded gun. I told you to stay down.” Her voice shook; she knew she couldn’t feign anger with him. After everything that had happened, she was in no place to lose another person close to her.

They needed to find Reese.

“Well, I wasn’t going to sit there and let them kill us. If he would have just said he wanted to talk…” his voice died as the metal doors to the small warehouse’s inner room opened.

“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Adams. Excuse me—you prefer ‘Ms.’?” Jen didn’t know how to respond to the question.

She recognized the man’s voice was the same as their captor’s from the university: British, deep, posh, and educated.

She turned to look in the man’s direction and almost choked. The man in front of her was absolutely huge—at least six-foot-five and made of pure muscle. The hulk of a soldier walked up to the bed, and only then could Jen see that he was being followed. When she’d seen his outline in the hallway at the Academy, she noticed he was a large male figure, but seeing him in the surgical light of the warehouse was shocking.

A woman—the same one she’d “met” before—strode up behind the large man. She was almost as tall as the man. A small torso and short, skinny arms rippling with well-formed muscle made her look like a runway model-turned-mercenary. God, who are these people? Jen thought. The woman nodded once, curtly, and stood at attention behind and to the left of her commanding officer.

“Thank you for your cooperation thus far,” the man continued. Jen couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. “I’m sorry to have met under these circumstances, and I am especially sorry for your shoulder. How are you feeling?” He faced Mark.

“It’s, uh, well, it hurts like a bitch, but I guess I’m fine.”

“The rubber pellets we used are meant to stun but not seriously injure. I’m glad you weren’t closer when I fired. Either way, I’m sorry we had to use force. We just cannot allow any unnecessary setbacks.”

“What’s going on? Who are you?” Jen straightened. She sensed she needed to be as straightforward as possible. “If you don’t know, my son—”

The man held up a hand, and Jen immediately fell silent.

“Yes, yes. Your son, Reese, has been kidnapped. We’re aware of the situation. That’s what we’re all here for.” He stretched an arm out to signify a look around. “This is a warehouse my superiors purchased for inconspicuous rendezvous such as these. It’s completely safe, and you have nothing to fear.

“My name is Daniel Carter, and this is Rachel Saunders.”

“Military, right?” she asked.

Carter didn’t respond, but Rachel Saunders spoke up. “Used to be. We work privately now.”

Carter continued. “We’ve been tracking the group that we believe kidnapped your son and killed Professor Storm. They’re a mostly underground unit, completely self-sufficient and irrelevant to the outside world.”

Jen looked confused. “You think some radical religious group took my son?”

The woman, Rachel Saunders, spoke. “Not religious, Ms. Adams. This group, at least from what we can tell, seems to be focused on environmental targets.”

“Environmental? Like trees and Earth and Mother Nature crap?” Mark asked, now fumbling with the bed-raising lever.

“Well, somewhat, yes,” Carter responded. “They’re interested in preserving the Earth in its natural state. We don’t know much about them except that they’ve been dormant—as much as we can tell—for the last thirty years after a brutal massacre in the seventies. They killed thirty-seven men and women, all scientists and engineers.”

Jen’s heart raced. “What? They killed all of these people? And Professor Storm?”

“Ms. Adams, we have no reason to believe they’ve harmed your son. Honestly, they have no need for him except to get to you.”

“To get to me? What the hell does that mean?”

“I don’t know. We don’t know what exactly they want. But you worked with Dr. Storm, and one of these people who were murdered was Dr. Storm’s brother, Mitchell Storm. For whatever reason, it seems the group wants you to find the information they think Dr. Storm was withholding.”

Jen shook her head. “No, that’s not right. I mean—I don’t—I have no idea what they want from me. And Dr. Storm didn’t have a brother… at least not one he ever mentioned.” She realized then that she didn’t have a clue as to what her late boss’s family life was like. Besides knowing he was unmarried, she didn’t know much about his personal life.

“Yes, Jen, he did have a brother. And he was very wound up in this group. At least until they cracked and killed his research team at their small firm. Look, we’re still trying to piece this together as well. But we need your help. You’re obviously a part of this puzzle for some reason,” Carter said.

Rachel Saunders picked up where Carter left off. “We need you to come with us and help find what they want. We know this group. They’re completely under the radar when they want to be. We know they left you a message to find this—whatever it is—for them, and we don’t think they’re going to interfere with you while you find it,” she said.

“Chances are they’re holding your son over your head to motivate you, to make sure you know how serious this is. But they won’t do anything—or even show up—until you find their prize.”

“Ms. Adams—and you, Mr. Adams—we’d like for you to find this missing link, this item they’re looking for. We’ll get your son back, but if you can make them happy by delivering on their expectations, it’ll be much quicker, and we might have a chance at catching them.”

Jen looked at Mark, who gazed back at her in disbelief. It was all too much to take in. How in the world was she supposed to find something if she didn’t even know what she was looking for?

“Can’t we just wait and see what the police figure out?” she asked. She knew it was a pitiful question. Still, the panic and hysteria she’d been feeling had now seemed to settle into a comatose state of numbness. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to find some stupid artifact these murderers were after. Especially since they’d be looking in—

“Wait,” she said, before anyone could respond to her previous ridiculous question. “You never said where we were going. Do you know where we’re supposed to be looking?”

The two soldiers shared a quick glance at one another, and Carter turned to respond to Jen. “Yes. We think they’re after a specific piece of research your professor was working on prior to his death. And have reason to believe it’s in an undisclosed location in the Atlantic Ocean.”

The Atlantic, she thought. “So, like an island. The Caribbean, maybe?” she asked.

Carter smiled a half-grin. It appeared and disappeared within a second, and it was first time she’d seen a hint of emotion other than stoicism from the man. “Something like that. We can talk as we prepare. The other half of my team has already been dispatched and is preparing for the briefing.

“Mark will be in good hands as well. My doctors are the best in the world, and so are their drugs.” He winked at her husband, but Mark squinted, still in pain. “Let’s get you two outfitted and ready, and we’ll meet back here at 0300 hours—that’s half an hour from now. We’re catching a flight to Miami, then leaving from the base there. We’re all tired, so I’ve scheduled some downtime for us before we launch.”

Before they could respond, the pair of mercenaries turned and left the room. The doctor, as well, had left.

Jen thought about this turn of events. She wasn’t relieved; there was still so much confusion and strangeness surrounding it all. What the hell is all of this? Most importantly, though, her son was still missing. Mark was still trying to sit up in the bed, and she walked over to help him.

She had no idea what was happening around her, but she knew one thing: she needed to keep moving, pressing on. The longer she waited and the more inactive she was, the stronger the images and memories of Reese flashed through her mind.

If she had to, she’d give her life to make sure her son wouldn’t become just a memory.

9

The man didn’t come this time.

Instead of the tall red-haired man, Reese Adams was surprised to see a woman enter his room. The woman was also young, like the red-haired man, but she was blond and much shorter. He immediately didn’t like her. She reminded him of the people Mom worked with, the ones who didn’t have kids and probably didn’t like them much, either. They didn’t understand kids, and they treated him like he was four.

She slid a chair out from underneath a desk against the wall and sat beside the bed. She was wearing a white lab coat, and when she sat down, the back crinkled out of the hole in the back of the chair. She placed a clipboard on her lap and produced a pen from her lab coat pocket.

“Good morning, Reese. Were you able to sleep?”

He nodded. He had slept, as much as he’d tried not to.

“Did you eat?”

He nodded again. Wouldn’t they already know this?

“And how do you feel now?”

What kind of questions are these? He didn’t know how to respond, so he just blinked. The woman didn’t seem to care, and she kept asking more questions.

“How old are you, Reese?”

He answered this time. “Twelve.”

“And do you have many friends at school?”

“Where’s my dad?”

“Reese, we’re keeping you here for your own safety. We explained that to you already.”

“But I don’t remember… I don’t remember what happened. I was at home with Dad…”

“I know you’re confused, Reese, but if you just answer my questions—”

“I don’t want to talk to you. I want to go home.”

The woman sighed and looked toward the door. He thought she might get up and leave, but she stayed seated. “Do you know why you’re here, Reese?”

He shook his head. Of course he didn’t. He couldn’t remember anything.

“Did your parents ever discuss their work with you? Did your father mention anything about what he does for a living?”

Reese didn’t know if he should answer. He hadn’t said much so far, and it was getting to the point that he didn’t even know how long he’d been in this room. In fact, there wasn’t much at all about last night that he remembered. He was with his dad, about to watch a movie, and then…

A while later, he had woken up here. But he didn’t know if he had awoken from sleep or if he’d been here all along, just unable to remember. He remembered a few things, like the two men’s faces who’d brought him here and the granola bar and glass of milk he’d been given, but that was about it. He’d been in this room ever since. The walls, bed, and mattress were all a stark white color. The bed—where he found himself when he woke up—was pushed into the corner of the room, situated so that his head was against the far wall, and he could see the single door on the other side. He had only been awake for about two minutes when this door opened, and the red-haired man entered.

The man asked Reese a bunch of questions. Most were about his mom, but also about his dad, what they did for work, and even a few about his pet lizard. Reese had tried to answer them the best he could, and after almost every question he asked about his mom and dad. Most of the time the man just smiled, a huge toothy grin full of perfect teeth, and sometimes he just said, “We’re looking into it.” No matter how many times he asked, though, the man wouldn’t tell him where he was or how he got here.

The woman asked the same question again. “Reese, I need to know. Please give me any information about your father’s work, or your mother’s, for that matter. Anything is helpful to us.”

He looked down at his lap and shook his head.

After a minute, the woman wrote something on her clipboard and left the room.

10

“Anything?”

“Nothing yet, but I’m not even sure he knows anything.” Sylvia Etienne-Gray frowned, then looked up at her boss. “Are you sure this is right? How do we know he has what we’re looking for?” As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she flinched. She knew better.

Graciously, her boss let the question slide. “We know what we’re looking for. That’s all you need to be concerned with at this time.” Sylvia saw his nostrils flare slightly and sniff. He was thinking about something else but kept it to himself.

She thought about asking what it was. Thought about asking if he was okay. She was glad she didn’t.

Jeremiah Austin wasn’t the type of man to show his emotions, nor did he appreciate it in others. Sylvia knew intimately that a legitimate show of emotion from him was extremely rare. His staff had worked with him for years and also knew that when their boss was in the room, it was all business.

Sylvia thought one of the more ironic things about him was that he had what most people would call a “baby face”—soft features, soft complexion, and an overall charismatic look about him that drew people in. It was what initially drew her to him and had a lot to do with her falling in love with him, though she could never tell him that.

She knew he didn’t love her back; he couldn’t. She was okay with that. He didn’t have time for anyone else anyway, so she wasn’t ever afraid that there would be another woman. He lived and breathed his work—was consumed by it—and she was just a tool, a way to de-stress once or twice every week. It wasn’t perfect, she knew, but the frustration of it all seemed to add to the effect.

“He didn’t seem as talkative with me. Maybe you’d like to try once more?” Sylvia asked.

“I will, but not now. There’s no rush—at least not with him. See what else you get out of him, but wait about an hour. I know he’s tired, and there’s no reason to work him up any more than he already is.”

Sylvia nodded and turned to go.

“Grey—”

She loved it when he called her that. She swung around and was annoyed that her breath caught in her throat for a split second. She felt like a schoolgirl. What the hell is wrong with me?

“Be patient; we’re getting close. I know you’re as excited as I am, but we can’t lose sight of the goal.” He stopped for a moment. “Also, stop by my office in a few hours. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you on a more personal note.”

She nodded, trying to stifle the smile creeping onto her face. She knew exactly what he meant and had been waiting for two days to hear it.

* * *

Jeremiah Austin watched her go, admiring her posterior as she trotted down the hall. He let the slightest of smug grins come over his face and briefly thought ahead to their meeting. He was tempted to move it up to right now, but he knew that work was more important.

Much more important.

He ran his hands over his suit, pressing it smooth again as if he were about to walk into a meeting—a habit he’d gleaned from an old mentor many years ago. He forced himself to smile, showing his teeth and all, and stepped back into the room where Reese Adams was being held.

“Hello, Reese. I was hoping we could speak some more about your mother.”

11

0514 Hours

“You can’t be serious. Is that a submarine?” Jen asked Carter as he led the way down the concrete path.

“Indeed it is, Ms. Adams.”

They were standing on an obscure concrete dock behind a U.S. Coast Guard building across from the cruise terminal in Miami. A jet-black submarine rested in front of them, floating ominously, two-thirds of its bulk underwater.

The four of them—Carter, the quieter Saunders, and Jen and Mark Adams—had taken a commercial flight from Boston and landed an hour ago in Miami. They met in the airport with two men Carter had introduced as “his contacts”—Mr. Vertrund and Mr. Durand.

Now, the civilians and the two mercenaries were joined by Carter’s remaining team members, Stuart "Hog" Nelson and Gerald Mason, Jr. Daniel Carter stood in front of the loading ramp and delivered the introductions.

“Good morning. Behind me is the Austere-class submarine the Aura. She was completed earlier this year, based on designs from the previous Astute-class. BAE Systems rigged her up as a much-smaller copy, added the dry-dock access hatch you see protruding from the deck, and replaced most of the weapons outfit with enhanced diving apparatus.

“The sub is capable of diving and maintaining for about two weeks without resurfacing; because we’re going light on crew, we expect to be able to increase this to over four.”

Jen felt her stomach rise to her throat. She squeezed Mark’s hand tightly. When did I start holding it? He asked the question for her.

“Uh, yeah, excuse me, Mr. Carter?” The tall soldier frowned. “Should we, uh, expect to be underwater for that long?”

“Absolutely not. Once we embark, I’ll detail you all on the mission specifics. I highly doubt we’ll be stretching her to the limit. For safety reasons, we’ll dive slowly, reaching our destination by midday.”

Mark and Jen simultaneously breathed a sigh of relief, but there was still a look of confusion on their faces. Why do we need a submarine? she thought. And why would the answer I am supposed to be finding be located underwater?

Before she could ask anything else, Carter ushered his team and Jen and Mark into the awaiting submarine while the two diplomats on the dock waved them along.

Inside the sub, Jen found herself fighting the effects of claustrophobia. The ship was larger than she had initially imagined, but the added struts and thicker walls—designed to allow maneuverability at much greater depths—seemed to press inward. She didn’t necessarily have a distaste for small spaces, but this situation was a bit out of the ordinary for her.

She and Mark were led to their bunk by a short, squat crewman, John Solomon from Iowa, as he’d introduced himself. The “bunk” was little more than a closet-sized hole in the main corridor, with two bunked beds stacked on top of one another. A four-inch deep steel drawer was secured beneath each of the two bunks for their “effects,” as Solomon instructed.

Jen glanced at Mark, but his only response was a quick nod. He jumped to the top bunk and said, “I’ll take this one if that’s okay.”

They hadn’t been given much time to pack, so Jen stuffed their one duffel bag—meant to hold both of their belongings—into the crack of the mattress at the foot of her bed and stood again to face Mark. “Let’s go find Carter. I want to figure out why we’re in a research submarine about to take a vacation.”

They walked up the corridor and found Carter conversing with another crewman. “A word?” she interrupted.

He turned to face the pair, immediately ending his previous conversation. The crewman, obviously a lower-ranking man, swiveled around and left.

“What may I help you with, Ms. Adams?” His words were military—short, punchy, and direct—but his demeanor suggested empathy as if trying to put her at ease.

“I want to know what’s going on. It all seems so quickly put together: this submarine, the crew. How does our son fit into it? Why were you at the university?”

Daniel waited a moment, then answered. “Listen. I know this is confusing and a little nerve-wracking for the two of you. But please hear me when I say that your son is fine. We’re going to find him—”

“How can you say that? How do you know?”

“This mission isn’t something we’ve hacked together overnight. My team has been planning an advance on this organization—the one we believe has taken your son—for well over six months now.

“We expedited things when the situation escalated. Your colleague’s death, your son’s kidnapping—we believe the organization we’ve been tracking is about to make a move. When we found out about the kidnapping and murder of Dr. Storm, we got involved to get more information and to protect you and your family.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that already,” Mark said. “Who are these guys?”

“The group calls themselves Nouvelle Terre, or ‘New Earth,’ but they’re believed to be a loosely-connected group of people who maintain little contact and little interaction with each other. They’ve been difficult, to say the least, to track down, but because of recent events, they’ve left themselves more vulnerable. The group is mostly American ex-patriots, though we don’t know how many. The few we’ve identified are wealthy and heavily invested in the private sector. The common thread between them all, including who we believe to be their leader, is their interest in environmental causes.”

“And what exactly is this cause they’re interested in?”

“We don’t know. The targets we’ve identified have each emptied many of their corporate and personal accounts in the last few weeks, and we’re not exactly sure what they’re planning.”

“But it involves something in the ocean?” Jen asked.

“Yes. A project—” he paused, then looked toward the bridge. “Listen, that’s all I can tell you for now. There will be an official briefing at 0600 when we dive. I suggest you two try to get a few hours of sleep until then. You’ll want to be rested.”

Before either of them had time to respond, Carter turned on his heel and walked toward the bridge.

12

0600 Hours

“Thank you all for being here,” Carter said from the makeshift podium in the sub’s lounge area. Jen caught the satire in his voice. She assumed most, if not all, of the crew were ex-military. She could see Carter’s crew members, Hog, Gary, and Saunders; all gathered together at the doorway to the lounge.

They made an interesting group. Hog was perhaps one of the strangest looking men Jen had ever seen, tall and lanky in a comical way, with rounded eyes that seemed to bulge out of his head. Maybe it’s the pressure.

Saunders, the woman who’d accompanied Carter in her and Mark’s “meeting” back at the university, was standing next to Hog, which only helped to underline the woman’s beauty. Standing almost six feet tall, she was almost equal in height to her commanding officer. Dark-skinned and rock-solid from head to toe, Saunders looked like the domineering muscle of the four-person team.

Next to Saunders was Gary Mason. Mason, as far as Jen could tell, was just along for the ride. His demeanor, posture, and overall disposition were of nonchalance and indifference. When she’d bumped into him in the corridor, he just rambled some incoherent babble in a thick cockney accent. He was shorter than his two teammates and his commander, with a shaved crewcut hairstyle.

“The current orders are as follows.” Carter reached into his pants pocket and withdrew a folded slip of paper. “We are to embark on an exploratory mission in international waters, north of Puerto Rico, in what is known as the Milwaukee Deep. We are expected to locate a submerged research station and provide surveillance and intelligence to the United States and the British Royal Navy.”

He looked around to ensure he still had their attention. Jen’s eyes were riveted on Carter.

“We’ve been underway for about thirty minutes now. That gives us enough time to run through the general operations protocol and to get some rest. Further, we have our first scheduled rendezvous in three hours. Be back here at 0900. I expect all of us to have met with the crew here, received any necessary instruction”— he looked toward the boat’s XO —“and gotten settled in by then.”

“Here’s how it works. Everyone on board has a job to do—my team, myself, and you as well, Jen and Mark. This is not a normal mission. Therefore, we don’t expect you to be thoroughly versed in your particular area. However, I’ve assigned you each to a certain part of the ship and will introduce you to who’s in charge. While we are at sea, you will be under their direct supervision and shall follow their orders. Help out when and where you can and try to become part of the team as much as possible.”

Jen and Mark nodded simultaneously as a crew member stood up and joined Carter at the front of the room. Carter introduced the man as Warren Hynes, Steward of the ship. He had a thick Australian accent, crew-cut blond hair, and huge blue eyes, and Jen understood immediately why this man was perfect for his job. He looked like a man fit for a role in Gilligan’s Island—completely at ease on board a seafaring vessel.

“Good morning, and welcome aboard. As Carter said, I’m Hynes, and I’ll be your steward while you are with us. If anyone needs me, feel free to track me down. My cabin is down the hall, past the first entrance to the galley. Usually, each of us has both ship responsibilities and work duties, but for the time being, our civilian guests won’t have to worry about the latter. As long as everything goes to plan, neither will we.

“Jen, you’ll go with Carl Jenkins, head cook in charge of the mess hall and galley. He’s one man short this time around, so you should be able to jump in right away. Mark, you’re with Miranda Lopez, our logistics officer. Mostly you’ll be handling things on a case-by-case basis, keeping track of supply, helping out wherever you can, that sort of thing.

“That’s pretty much it for now. Anyone have any questions?” He paused for about a second to wait for a response and then called on Jenkins and Miranda Lopez to stand and escort them out of the room.

Jen stood up, followed by Mark. She was now supposed to take on the role of helping out the chef on board a military submarine as if she was just one of the crew. She felt so out of place here, on a military submarine about to sink to the bottom of one of the deepest parts of the ocean, apparently to find information that would lead her back to their son.

Unlikely.

Her skepticism seemed to be matched in Mark’s voice. “Jen, does this make any sense to you?” he asked.

“No, I mean—of course not,” she responded. “Why would it?”

He shook his head. “It’s just that less than twelve hours ago, we were sitting in the apartment trying to figure out what to do next. We get, uh, overtaken at the school, and now we’re here, halfway across the country. It seems so fast, you know?”

She thought about this for a moment. “I don’t think Reese’s kidnapping was the start of this. There’s more going on. I know this mission wasn’t something that was slapped together last minute, and I want to find out what they know.”

They reached the rectangular doorway at the edge of the room, slowing to step deliberately over the tall threshold. Whatever this was, it wasn’t just about her son.

13

0900 Hours

Jen and Mark sat in the same room they’d left three hours earlier. Time had crawled as she’d learned safety procedures, basic military sub lingo, a few crew members’ names, then taken a twenty-minute “nap,” during which she had stared straight up at the bottom of Mark’s bunk.

She knew he had fared no better. The pervasive, unwavering reminder that their son was missing was on his mind as well, and he’d spent the time getting acquainted with the procedural operations of the sub, going through the motions, and nodding his head every few seconds.

Both were exhausted. Jen hoped this “rendezvous” would end quickly, giving her at least a few hours to try and sleep. She wondered if she could shut her eyes here, in the chair, and catch a few seconds of rest—

“At attention, crew,” one of the enlisted crew members called out.

Her eyes snapped open as Daniel Carter entered the room. 0900 on the dot, she noticed.

“At ease. Thanks for being here. Irons, do you have the comm-link?” he asked one of the enlisted men.

“Aye, sir. It’s on three, just hit the—”

Carter already had the television screen powered up and on the right channel before the young man could finish. The monitor blinked, and a fuzzy picture of a decadent office slowly came into focus.

“Good morning,” a man’s voice spoke. The sound came from speakers hidden somewhere in the room. “I do appreciate your willingness to serve today. It’s been an interesting day, as I’m sure you’ll all agree.” The man sat behind the desk in the office. Jen sensed the presence of a few aides or advisors standing close to the desk; human-shaped shadows wriggled over the carpet and curtains.

“My name is Gregory Durand, Assistant to the Head of the National Environmental Terrorism Agency. We are a British intelligence organization tasked with discovering and neutralizing terrorist threats to the nation and world. I know that you do not see any American forces amongst yourselves. I do apologize, but it is for your own security. This matter you will be attending to is one of national security, both for the British and American governments alike—a matter that has escalated in the past few hours to one of the utmost importance. Unfortunately, it also means that if American Special Forces were somehow seen embarking on any sort of mission in the target area, it could prove to be a difficult situation to clean up. The media would be all over it within two hours, and…” the man sighed, clearly exasperated at even the thought.

“I do, however, trust your abilities more than you know. I want you to know that I fully support the mission and wish nothing more than your success and safe return.”

Carter gave the man—his current commanding officer—a single nod, thanking him for the compliment. Durand continued addressing the room. “I understand that Carter has briefed you on the mission. You are to locate and secure the package, a boy named Reese Adams. As I’m sure you know, his parents are Jennifer and Mark Adams, and they will accompany you on the mission.”

A few faces turned to look at Jen and Mark in the center of the room. Durand paused but then answered the question every one of the mercenaries—and Jen and Mark—had on their minds.

“Mr. and Ms. Adams are really with you all, though, because Jen’s presence is crucial to the mission’s success. The group that kidnapped Reese wants something in return, something only Jen has, apparently. We don’t have any intelligence as to what that something might be, but I thought it best that she accompany your team to the station in case there is something there she can use. At that point, if it comes, the military team will provide support and attempt to eliminate whatever threat they find.

“We’ll keep you updated throughout the mission with any information we find. And Ms. Adams, understand that we will find your son. We will get to the bottom of this, and I only ask that you lend us a hand in the meantime.”

She nodded as if the man could see her as well. She had so many questions, though. So many pieces to this puzzle. Hell, she didn’t even know what the puzzle was supposed to look like. Mark squeezed her hand.

“Let’s talk about details. I know Carter told you where you’re heading, but he did not address any specifics. I’ve kept a few things to myself until now, but I also understand that what I’m about to tell you may be completely irrelevant.

“It turns out that the base you’re heading to was a United States government-funded research station built in 1974, redefining the possibilities of modern undersea exploration. It was built on a geothermal hotspot, and that’s how it was powered. A desalinization plant was built next, an engineering marvel that allowed a team of researchers to stay for extended periods on-site. Finally, all of this was encased in a dome made of a synthetic material that pushed against the immense pressure of the waters surrounding the station. Obviously, there’s more to it than that, but I wanted you to understand the basics before arriving.

“You’re going to be docking at the station around 1200 hours, your captain tells me. There won’t be any surface light reaching these depths, so you’ll be taking a slow, careful crawl around the dome’s western and southern fronts—the sides that aren’t jutting up against the cliffs of the Puerto Rico Trench. You’ll then find one of the two docking stations, and at that point, you’ll dock, equalize the pressure in the sub’s holding bay, and then pump out the water from the station.”

Jen’s mind was racing at this point. A government research station located at the bottom of the ocean? One large enough to house people? And the fact that it’s still there…

She wondered if Durand was reading from a prompter screen or if he’d memorized these statistics. Either way, it was impressive, the scope of this project. Both the building of the base in the first place—over forty years ago—and the fact that they were supposed to revisit it today.

Then she remembered one of the first things he’d said—that the station was established to conduct geothermal research. That was her specialty ever since she’d started working with Dr. Storm. Maybe that had something to do with what the kidnappers wanted from her.

He wanted me to lend them a hand in the meantime. That meant that whatever this was about, her son was only a small piece of it.

“Also, we’re not sure how much this group, Nouvelle Terre, knows. We know that one of their members, Jeremiah Austin, at one point in time, was involved with some of the building of the research station. He worked with Dr. Mitchell Storm, the brother of the late Dr. Elias Storm. So far, that’s the only tie we have, but it’s a strong one. It seems like the organization wanted to get to Dr. Storm’s research by way of his brother. When that soured, they most likely went for Jen Adams, the next logical person who would understand what Dr. Storm was working on.”

She let all of this sink in. Dr. Storm’s brother was somehow involved. Someone who worked with this terrorist organization years ago.

And now they want to finish the project.

Her boss, Dr. Elias Storm, didn’t know anything—or at least didn’t talk—and he’d paid the price for it.

They were using her. They took her son, and now she and Mark were on this wild goose chase together.

“I know what you’re probably wondering,” Gregory Durand said. “Why are you heading toward a research station at the bottom of the Atlantic? We believe that Nouvelle Terre is acting out to secure what they want quickly. Since the last we’d heard from them was immediately following the completion of this base, and with the close ties between the research performed there, and what Nouvelle Terre’s all about, we think it might be a good lead. It won’t be the endgame. Reese is no doubt being kept wherever the organization’s headquartered. However—”

The monitor and speakers crackled and died. Carter looked toward the young crewman who had set up the communication link, but the soldier shrugged. The screen turned to fuzz, the connection obviously lost. Carter looked unswayed. He continued delivering the speech, skipping to the end.

“My team will be joined by a few more civilians, all experts in their fields and certainly assets to the mission. If for whatever reason, Jen is unable to aid in locating whatever it is she’s here to find, these three people will jump in to assist. First, there’s Sanjay Pavan, who Jen will most likely recognize as the esteemed marine archeologist.”

Jen did recognize the name. Dr. Pavan wasn’t just a well-respected marine archeologist. He was the marine archeologist, the rare breed of expert who was as comfortable in front of television cameras and media moguls as he was behind a microscope. He was Indian-American, dark-skinned, and very handsome, which no doubt played a role in his fame. Before Sanjay, most people had no idea such a career as marine archeology existed.

How did I not see him?

Jen’s eyes wandered around the room until she found the short man standing against the back wall. His thick, dark eyebrows were curled—his signature look of contemplation—and he bowed his head ever so slightly when their eyes met.

“Also aboard, we have Lindsay Richards, an American geologist and oceanographer, and her understudy, Erik Statnik.”

Jen recognized Lindsay’s name but couldn’t picture her face or recall the university she was from. She found the woman—blond and plump—sitting at a table with the man she assumed was the understudy, Erik Statnik. Statnik’s features were as stark as Lindsay’s were soft. His rectangular, chiseled face and drooping eyes made him look years older than he must have been, and his crooked nose gave him a ghoulish appearance. Still, it was Erik, not Lindsay, who mouthed a “hello” toward Jen.

Another crew member ran into the conference area. “Carter, sir, we’ve got a problem. The navigator’s picking up a signal about 1,000 meters from here.”

Carter frowned. “What kind of signal?”

“Sonar places it just slightly larger than our vessel, sir, and it’s heading directly toward us.”

At that, the crew members and soldiers spread throughout the room immediately leaped to their feet and assumed their stations. A few crew ran back to the bridge.

Panic overcame Jen. Were they being attacked? She’d never been on a submarine before, and she thought the immense blackness of the waters pressing in on them was terrifying enough.

Carter looked at her and her husband. “Stay here for now. Everything’s going to be fine. We have no reason to believe—”

A loud snap followed by a wrenching, twisting sound reached their ears. Shouts arose from the depths of the sub, and Jen felt her stomach drop.

The sub lurched forward, then back, and she almost lost her balance. She grabbed the side of a table nearby to right herself and looked up. Carter had already left the room.

“What the hell’s going on, Captain?” She heard Carter call out from down the hallway.

Mark reached over and grabbed her elbow. “You okay?”

She looked at him to respond but noticed a deep gash across his face and temple. “Oh my God, Mark. Your face!” He reached up and wiped at the seeping blood. His eyes widened as if unaware that he’d been injured.

“It’s okay. I can’t feel it. Must have hit my head on a chair during the—”

Another snapping sound, more shouts. The sub seemed to drop like a rock this time—at least twenty or thirty feet straight down. Jen felt like they were on an airplane going through intense turbulence. She closed her eyes but still almost threw up.

When the sub righted itself again, she opened her eyes and found the cafeteria/meeting room in shambles. Plastic trays, chairs, and cups were strewn about, and two tables had broken and collapsed.

Mark had also recovered, and with one hand on his wound and the other still gripping Jen’s arm, he pulled her out of the room. “Come on. Let’s see if we can figure out what’s going on.”

They ran through the hallway, ducking and jumping through the small rectangular doorways that segmented the sub’s interior. They reached the bridge, but Carter met them at the door before they could enter.

“Stay out here, you two. It’s too crowded in there anyway.”

“We just wanted to see what’s up. Is everything okay?” Mark asked. He spoke fast, breathless.

“No. Well, yes. We’re in no danger of sinking, but the hostile sub did significant damage,” the man responded.

“What do you mean, hostile sub?” Jen said. She tried to remain calm, but the words tumbled out frantic and panicked.

“Well, what we do know is that there’s another sub out there, and they fired something across our bow. It hit but was deflected, thank God. However, the second shot was nearly the same. It hit and was deflected.”

“So… what does that mean?”

“It’s not easy to do. Two boats, both moving—yet glancing a shot just short of devastating? It wasn’t an accident.”

“Why would they want to hit us?” Jen asked.

“No idea. We’re still trying to get a visual so we can see who they are, but the only thing the captain can think of is that they didn’t want to sink us. They wanted to disable us.”

14

“Dive. Dive, damn it!”

She heard a loud, gruff voice—the ship’s commanding officer—yelling to dive. Faster, deeper, all at the same time.

They were still standing just outside the bridge, but Carter had left to see to his team.

Why did someone want to disable them? And who?

Jen had no idea what was going on, but she stood riveted next to Mark, trying to pick up any clues from the crew controlling the ship.

“We are, sir. We’re almost at target depth, but…”

“I know we lost power to the bilge, and we’re taking on water. It doesn’t matter now. We dive, we dock, or we die.”

Jen knew the CO wasn’t trying to sound clever. On the contrary, he sounded terrified, trying to make the best of the situation. She also knew that if the CO was concerned, there was probably a reason for them all to be concerned.

“Did he say we’re taking on water?” Mark asked. “We need to find Carter.”

Jen felt panic rising in her throat. It was a feeling of complete helplessness. She imagined the depths of the ocean pressing in on them, waiting.

They leaned into the door that separated them from the bridge. Jen pushed an ear to the door and tried to hear the rest of the conversation. Without meaning to, her hand brushed against Mark’s. He held it firm in his own.

“Captain, we’re at target depth now. She’s holding fine, but again, we can’t—”

“Yes, I understand. Just find that station.”

“Affirmative.”

At that moment, Carter called out from behind them in the hallway. “Jen, Mark, come here. You should see this.”

They followed Carter toward the front of the sub, farther forward than even the bridge. As they neared the extreme front of the sub, Mark suddenly understood where they were.

“It’s an observation deck,” he said. “They fitted reinforced plexiglass or something to the front of the sub so you can see out the front.”

“The nose of the submarine is glass and silicone, heated and stretched, then shaped, and finally supercooled quickly enough to form a strong bond. A computer-controlled laser array used 3D mapping software to analyze the shape and find any weaknesses, divots, or anomalous surfaces.”

“Sounds expensive.”

“It was, but then again, your country’s space program isn’t funding manned rocket missions these days, so this project was almost fully funded within a year.”

“You mean NASA?” Jen asked.

“Yes. They hope to deploy these viewports on future manned space explorations and unmanned telescope missions. Keeping the main components of a telescope camera indoors rather than in the vacuum of space and away from fast-moving microscopic particles is expected to have a positive effect on the lifespan of the lens and other apparatus.

“Anyway, they wanted an actual prototype that would emulate some of the environmental constraints—pressure, temperature, etcetera. Deep-sea exploration isn’t perfect, but it’s the closest we’ve got.”

Jen was impressed, but she had not forgotten what had just happened to them. They’d been attacked almost five miles underwater, and they had no idea if the enemy sub was coming back.

“Carter, what happened up there —”

“Don’t worry about it. Our CO is a very qualified captain, Jen.”

“But the pressure…”

“I understand you’re concerned.” He began to turn away, then stopped. “Here’s what I was taught. If something happens on an underwater vessel, and you’re alive long enough to know about it, you’re most likely going to be able to do something about it.”

While it wasn’t exactly comforting, it did help calm Jen’s fears about being crushed to death in an underwater tube. Carter waited for them to ask more questions before turning again and walking toward the glass dome.

They entered the tiny chamber, and Jen was confused. “It’s dark. I can’t see anything.”

“Right. The captain will turn on the floodlights when they start searching for that docking station. Our technology is more advanced now than the docking station, and because it’s unmanned, we’ll be able to find it best by simply using our eyes.”

Jen heard a tiny click from outside the chamber, and suddenly the room was lit in an eerie yellow glow. The three of them turned to face the glass bubble at one end of the room and peered out.

What stared back at them was one of the most amazing things Jen had ever seen.

The research station, reflecting the sub’s floodlights, seemed to sparkle and shimmer, and the glistening of small marine objects and debris added to the effect. The station’s semi-translucent outer shell was reinforced with some kind of mesh, but it was impossible to tell just how thick the walls were.

An unimaginable number of small polygons, about two feet in diameter, made up the shell’s outer layer, giving the dome its rounded appearance.

The size was the next thing she noticed. It was massive—absolutely huge. It rose from the depths below them as if out of nowhere, and it continued up above their field of view. It must have been over twelve stories tall. The dome could easily house entire buildings. She wondered if it might have at one point in time.

“Oh wow,” she said. Mark and Carter both stood mesmerized as well, neither having anticipated the sheer scope and magnitude of an engineering marvel like this.

“Wow is right,” Mark said finally. “It’s a shame this has to be top secret. The world wouldn’t believe something like this could exist.”

The sub faced the dome but eased sideways through the water, keeping its nose and the observation room centered on the research station.

“Captain Volstik will do a full turn around the station, locate at least one of the docking stations, and then his crew will maneuver for the docking. We’ll have a great view from here since our docking port is topside, directly above our heads. Once we dock, though, we’ll have quite a while before we can enter.”

“Why is that?” Mark asked.

“Well, we can’t know for sure, but we expect this place to be flooded. It’s been sitting here for over thirty years with no maintenance or upkeep. It would take weeks to completely pump it out with the equipment we brought. We’re hoping, though, that it’s not entirely filled with seawater or that some of the compartmentalizations the builders included are still doing their jobs and keeping part of the base watertight.

“Whatever the case, we’re expecting to pump at least the first and second compartments in—that’ll take around twelve to fifteen hours—and having those levels dry should give us enough space to work and get what we need.”

“Assuming we find what we need,” Jen said.

“Right. And we will. Don’t worry; this will all be resolved soon, and we’ll get Reese back.”

She wasn’t reassured, but at least she understood part of the plan. Enter the station, find whatever clues or pieces of the puzzle they can, deliver that to Nouvelle Terre, and get Reese back.

Easier said than done.

A voice crackled over the intercom, preparing the crew for docking. Jen looked out at the station stretched across the panoramic view, trying to find the docking port.

“There it is,” Carter said. He lifted a hand and pointed toward the far edge of the dome, still not yet in full view.

Jutting from its base was a rectangular port, pushed out like the entrance to a storm shelter outside a farmhouse. They watched it roll toward them, the submarine making minute adjustments in her bearing as they closed in on the bay.

Another message over the intercom crackled, ordering the docking crew to take over. Carter explained that once they got nearer to docking, the docking crew would guide the sub by hand, using sensitive thrusters to correct and control their motions.

Before they reached the station, a looming shape appeared between the sub and the dome.

The dark shadow slipped in front of their ship, obstructing their view.

“It’s the other sub,” Mark whispered. His voice had dropped as if trying to hide from the black sea monster in front of them.

“Damn. It is. They were trying to disable us, to get us to dock. That was the plan all along. They’ll probably dock on the other side now that they’ve got us where they want us.”

“But I don’t get it. Why’d they shoot at the sub?” Jen asked Carter. “If they wanted to kill us, they’d have just sunk us in the first place. Now they just wanted to make sure we docked.”

The captain burst through the doors of the observation chamber, his duties for the time being completed. He’d apparently heard Jen’s question. “Because they wanted to make sure we made it here, but also that there was only one way off the station: their sub.”

“Wait, you mean we’re—”

“Yes. They fired a perfect shot, disabling most of what makes this ship a submarine. We can dive, and we’ll have air and food for weeks, but none of that matters anymore. Our maneuverability’s been blown to hell, and we can’t pump out the water from the rise tanks. We can’t resurface.”

This cold truth settled over Jen and Mark. Carter knew this already, and he still gazed silently out the window.

They were stranded at this research station under five miles of Atlantic ocean, and the only humans around weren’t their friends.

15

“The air isn’t toxic; you should be good to go.”

The young crew member, Johannes, turned to face Carter and Jen. “It seems pretty healthy. It’ll feel thinner like you’re standing on top of a mountain, but it’s completely breathable.”

“Are you surprised?” Carter asked.

“No, I guess not, at least about this. We were prepared for the worst, but without anything to breathe the air down here there would be no way for it to go bad. We did think we’d have to pump the water out, but with the sub’s structure almost compromised, it’s great we don’t need to keep you on board for that long.”

The captain scoffed from inside the sub’s docking hatch. “Well, you can have all the air and dry ground you can find. I’m happy staying right here.”

“That’s the plan, Captain,” Carter said. “Keep working on the sub; try to restore surfacing capability. We’ll see what we can find, and we’ll be ready to go in less than twelve hours.”

Jen saw Mark emerge from the sub’s hatch, stepping around the large captain. “We ready to go?” he asked Jen. He quickly looked at the other three civilians in the room who had recently joined them, Dr. Sanjay Pavan, Lindsay, and her understudy, sizing them up. Pavan looked concerned but otherwise stoic. Lindsay looked a little more distraught but still holding things together.

Erik looked as if he hadn’t registered anything that had happened in the past twenty minutes. His gaze was steady, looking at the skipper, intense but not intimidating, intrigued but not frightened. When Jen met his eyes, he tried to give a confident nod.

“All set,” she said. “I’ve got the papers from Storm’s lab and the toolkit I packed beforehand. Although I still wish we could go without those guns…”

Carter and his team had each outfitted themselves with British-made assault rifles, sidearmed with a pistol and a hunting knife. They were dressed in fatigues, a suit of body armor covering their torsos.

“Don’t worry. This is just a precaution. As I said, we’re out in twelve hours. If the sub’s not ready to go by then, we stay inside until it is.” Carter’s voice was confident as if there was no doubt about what answers lay ahead. She knew he had been a career soldier, gifted in tactical and strategic management, but this mission wasn’t like anything they’d ever done before—he’d said so himself.

When they’d docked at the research station, the preliminary team had disembarked first, checking the small docking chamber’s air for the necessary amounts of nitrogen, oxygen, and trace gases that made up breathable air. They had yet to open the hatch connecting the docking chamber with the rest of the dome, but a specialized imaging camera had determined that there was no wall of water on the other side, waiting to crush them when they opened the door.

As a secondary objective, the small camera was also deployed to seek out any infrared heat images—or, as Carter had explained, other people. The other sub hadn’t been seen docking, but Carter’s team wanted to be as careful as possible before exposing unarmed civilians to a strike team.

The sub’s captain and his twelve crew members would stay back, repairing the ship and getting it ready to leave. There was routine maintenance to see to, as well as the damage that had been dealt by the two torpedoes fired on them. The mechanic on board was optimistic, however, and diagnosed the issues as small setbacks that could be mostly fixed within eight to ten hours.

Mark joined Jen in front of the chamber hatch behind Carter. Carter and his team waited until the sub’s hatch was closed and sealed, and then Saunders and Hog Nelson stepped forward to open the airlock door.

“Ready when you are, boss,” Saunders called out.

“Go for it,” Carter said, as stoic as ever.

The remaining team member, Gary Mason, raised his rifle and pointed it toward the hairline crack between the door and the thick steel-reinforced wall.

Jen heard a pop, followed by a loud hissing sound, and the two marines pulled open the heavy door.

The whooshing sound resided, and Mason pushed forward and through the entrance. He looked left and right, then nodded once. The rest, followed by Carter, the scientists, and finally Jen and Mark, entered the newly-opened research station.

Jen found herself in the middle of a vast hallway that stretched both directions in a curving arch.

“This must be the outer compartment,” Carter said. “They built in failsafes in these airlocks; redundant doors that can close in case of a water breach. This hallway will have reinforced locks at intervals from here to the main entrance chamber, and there will be another just like it from the other docking station.”

“Which way do we go then?”

“Left. A small room on the north side of the base controls the main power grid. We docked at the south station, so—”

Suddenly a deep boom reverberated through the round hallway.

“What the…” one of the mercenaries jostled for position, ready to fire on the approaching enemy. But nothing came toward them around the bend in the hallway.

“Oh, shit—” Mark grabbed Jen’s arm and pushed her out of the doorway. A blast of heat barreled through, spreading and dissipating down the hall. The soldiers dove to the floor, but Carter wheeled around to the wide-open hatch they’d entered from.

“That was an explosion! Help me get this door,” he shouted. Mark jumped up again, helping the man with the thick door. Jen turned to look out just as the door slammed shut. All she saw was fire, followed by—

“Hold on!” Carter yelled. They heard another dull crash as water smashed against the hallway wall. The whole dome seemed to bend as if warping in on itself. The floor shook, and Carter and Mark fell back to the hallway floor.

Jen’s cheek was up against the cool concrete; her eyes squeezed shut. She could almost feel the immense pressure of the sea—five miles of deep-black saltwater—pushing in on her, the only thing separating it from her a twenty-inch thick wall. Without opening her eyes, she reached out to find Mark’s hand—any hand—and waited for the shaking to stop.

* * *

“What happened out there, sir?” Mason was sitting, his back up against the interior hallway wall. “Did you see anything?”

“Yeah. It blew up. It’s gone. The sub, I mean. It’s completely gone.”

Lindsay Richards gasped, and Dr. Pavan sucked in a quick breath of air. The three mercs were seated next to each other, their eyes intense, ready. They held their guns in their laps, but their hands were tightened over the stocks, their fingers near the trigger.

“There was a wall of fire and then a bunch of water. I can’t believe we got the door shut in time,” Mark said.

“But why?” Jen asked. “How?”

“It must have been the other sub—the one that disabled us before,” Carter answered. “There’s no other way. No sub would just explode like that. They must have known we were inside the station and then opened fire…”

Things had gone from terrible to much, much worse. Jen’s mind was reeling, trying to make sense of the events of the past twenty-four hours. Reese, Dr. Storm, now this—

“We need to keep moving; we can’t stay here. That other sub—whoever disabled us and blew up our ride—isn’t going to just head home. We’re too isolated out here. They saw us dock, and they’ll probably be heading to the other docking station now. The airlock behind us won’t open again since it’s been compromised.” Carter’s voice was back to its normal stoicism.

Jen wondered if it was a façade, if he was as frightened as she was.

“We’ll get to the power station at the main entrance and see about getting some lights on. Since we haven’t seen any sign of leaks so far, I’ll assume we can still get power to the main complex. Come on, let’s go.”

He didn’t wait for the group to stand up.

16

The soldiers and civilians jogged in silence around the circumference of the great underwater dome. Mark couldn’t help but marvel at the amazing technology required to create such a monstrosity this far under the ocean’s surface. Even the math seemed too miraculous to be true. There was no way modern technology could effectively build walls thick enough using simple steel or concrete; he knew they must have been some alloy or a combination of materials.

Back on the sub, he had seen a schematic of the research station. The hallway they were in now ran around half the circumference of the upper section of the dome—Level Three, if he remembered correctly—connecting the two docking stations to the main entrance and power grid. The entire structure was split into fourteen levels, numbered from the uppermost level to the lowest, each using the terminology of French colors. He also knew the docking stations—two each, capable of docking two submarines at once—were situated on the trench side of the dome, one toward the southernmost end, the other farther north, connected by this hallway on one side of the circular dome.

The dome around the research station was designed to withstand the immense pressure of five miles of seawater pressing down on it. Between this hallway and the ocean was an open space of about five feet where the air pressure was maintained and controlled. Outside of this, separated by another thick wall, was another open space built for redundancy and added support. Finally, the outermost layer of the dome was a series of hexagon-shaped frames, each with a width of about two feet, that connected and formed the outer structural support.

He tried to imagine what it had been like to build this place. The sheer manpower required must have been staggering. It seemed solid, too. If he hadn’t known better, he wouldn’t have believed they were underwater. It was a real shame this place was kept secret for so long.

Jen was running next to him, her gait steady and light. They were no longer holding hands, and Mark realized they hadn’t held hands or had any physical contact whatsoever since they’d split up over a year ago. While they were still on speaking terms, the relationship was still strained and awkward. They had mostly tried to keep things light around Reese, not talking about the separation or “the situation,” as they called it.

Mark thought back to that fateful night about a year and a half ago. They were both completely absorbed in their work and found themselves sharing time with Reese like a relay team. Jen mostly worked during the day at the university and would come home in the early afternoon to swap out with Mark. She would hang out with Reese while Mark worked, and they’d start the process again each day, their lives dancing around each other without connecting.

His work had been demanding more and more of him. Reese was almost eleven years old and had begun acting out in all new ways, and Jen had started working more closely with Dr. Storm on his research.

Mark didn’t drink—he had never tasted alcohol in his life—but he found himself going out more often with the guys after work. They would grab a few beers and vent for a few hours before heading home, usually well after midnight. It became part of the routine, and Mark knew Jen didn’t care one way or another. She was too caught up in her work to notice, or so he thought.

He pulled up to the house at around 2:30 AM and saw that the kitchen light was on. He entered and saw Jen sitting at the table; she’d waited up for him. They argued, it escalated, and it ended with Mark’s leaving and staying at the office for the night. He considered coming home the next night but instead just e-mailed that he thought it was better if they “took a little time…”

That was the catalyst. Two days later, when Reese was at a friend’s house and Jen was supposed to be gone at a conference, Mark was visited by a female acquaintance who’d approached him at the bar. She had been outgoing, to say the least, and Mark was turned off by her attempts to play the “troubled mysterious” role. When she followed him home that night, he’d considered calling the police. His personality got the best of him, however, and he invited her in to talk.

She was half-naked when Jen walked in on them in the living room. He froze, unsure of how to respond. The silence and hesitation told Jen all she needed to know, and she had just turned around and left; no words were exchanged.

It took three weeks for them to talk again, but only because Jen needed Mark to go pick up their son from camp. He’d kept Reese for the next three days, and they talked again briefly through text message after that. Things continued like that until last night when he’d called her for the first time.

He sighed, wondering why he’d done it. He didn’t even remember the woman’s name he had almost slept with. It was a moment of weakness, but Mark also knew it went deeper than just that. If only she knew…

Mark pushed the thoughts back in his mind as they neared what seemed to be the end of the long hallway. They came to a door that looked like it had been cut out of the concrete, blocking their way forward. Carter reached it first and turned the handle. It was unlocked. He pulled it open, and Saunders and Mason ran inside.

“Clear!” The rest of the group entered, Carter walking in last and closing the door behind him. It was dark, but a flashlight appeared from one of the mercenary’s packs, and Mark could tell immediately where they were.

“It’s the power station,” he said.

“Can we get the lights on?”

“There should be a fusebox somewhere; anyone see it?”

Before they could respond, Dr. Pavan flipped a switch inside a metal wall housing. They heard a hum, and the small power station was quickly bathed in a warm amber light. He waited to see if the fixture would get any brighter, but Jen called their attention to the other side of the room.

“Oh my God,” she said. They huddled around her, and Mark noticed that one wall of the power station was made of glass. The light wasn’t coming from the inside of their room at all; it was coming from beyond this glass wall.

Stretching below them was an immense open space dotted with small buildings set around an interior circle. Inside this circle, there seemed to be some kind of plant set in rows…

“It’s a farm,” Saunders said.

“Come on,” said Hog. “Let’s get down there. You guys see stairs anywhere?”

There was a door on the other side of the small power room they were in, and the team followed Hog out and into the other hallway. About fifteen feet away, a tiny stairwell branched off to the right and down. Hog looked back and got the go-ahead from Carter.

The stairwell ended one level below—Level Four, the same level as the open field—and they started walking toward the central circle of small buildings. Mark saw that one of the larger buildings was a barn, modernized in some ways but still sporting the characteristic arched roof. Next to it, he saw a small silo and what looked like a combine.

“Whoa, check this out,” Mason said. “Look up. The upper floors are open in the center, like the one we just came from.”

Sure enough, Mark looked up and saw more levels above their heads, each a giant circular hallway forming concentric circles stacked on top of one another, like rings that got smaller and smaller. Each level had windows that looked out onto the open area they were in. At the very top of the dome, a semi-transparent bubble hung from the ceiling like a futuristic chandelier. It was bright enough to provide the light currently lighting the dome’s interior. He felt like he was in a massive hotel atrium. The only thing missing were tall glass elevators.

The open space was huge, and it took them five minutes to reach the center. Along the way, Mark took in the massive dome’s interior, open at this level to the ceiling. It was like being inside a glass bowl—a huge glass bowl.

Mark looked across the open expanse and saw a rock wall jutting from the ground opposite their location. The wall extended from the floor of this level to the roof of the sloping bowl, enclosing nearly a quarter of the level behind natural rock. They’d used this wall as an anchoring point, an earth-made foundation for the research station.

“Is that corn?” A question from the team caused Mark to look out over the open field on this level’s floor.

“It is,” Mark said. “And it looks like those stocks have actual corncobs on them!” He ran up to the first row of corn, eyeing it suspiciously. The team walked up behind him and began inspecting the crop for themselves.

“Do you think they’ve been preserved somehow?” Jen asked.

“For thirty years? I doubt it. Maybe it was planted and just kept growing, year after year?” Mason said.

Mark responded. “No, there’s no way. This crop is fresh, and it’s tilled properly. Everything’s still neatly in a row, and besides, without light, nothing can survive…” He squinted up at the source of the bright light above him. “Maybe that light up there’s a UV bulb or something that helps the skin produce Vitamin D. They’d need an alternative source of sunlight to grow anything here.”

Saunders spoke from in front of them. “Right. There could even be some kind of fiber optic cable that transfers UV light from the surface down to the light source.”

She walked along the field of corn and now peered around a corner. “Hey, they’ve got greenhouses here too, it looks like. Three, at least from what I can see.” She was looking back next to the stairs they’d descended. The group joined her, and for the first time, Mark noticed a miniature railroad track extending in both directions under the stairs. He’d been too preoccupied with the immensity of the space to have noticed it before. He followed the track to where Saunders had pointed and saw that the track curved right around the large greenhouses, complete with a small station situated outside the largest glass house.

“Unbelievable,” he whispered.

Jen heard him. “Seriously. This place must have been a full-fledged operation back in the day. I can’t believe all the work that must have gone into it. Greenhouses, corn fields, railroads? It’s insane.”

“It is,” Hog added. “I still can’t believe the corn’s alive, either. My uncle’s a farmer. I’ve seen how much work it takes to keep this stuff alive year after year… and this has survived how many years? Without light?”

Suddenly another voice entered the conversation from somewhere behind them.

“Yes, yes—but you assume… there was no light here.”

Carter and the three others whipped around, their guns drawn. At first, Mark couldn’t see anyone, and then he saw movement next to one of the smaller buildings on the outskirts of the circle. A man stepped out from behind a crate, short and squat. His hair was disheveled as if he’d just woken up from a nap. Strangely, though, he was wearing an oxford shirt and khaki slacks. Aside from his hair, he looked like he had just gotten off work and decided to go for a stroll through the cornfield. He was quirky, awkward, and had a winking twitch every few seconds.

“Stop!” Carter shouted. “Don’t take another step forward. Tell us who you are and what you’re doing here.”

The man frowned a moment, twitched, then answered. “El…Elliot Bingham. Facilities—Facilities Technician—here. Maintenance, other stuff.”

17

Carter didn’t drop his gun, and his team of mercs didn’t either. They stared down the newcomer, the small, odd man who had suddenly appeared behind them. Carter stepped forward toward the man and repeated his last demand.

“What are you doing here, Mr. Bingham?”

Elliot twitched. “J—just walking. Walking. Checking. Fixing? Working.”

Jen scrunched her eyebrows. This man was clearly suffering from some kind of psychological deterioration. Before she could question him to discover more, Lindsay spoke up.

“Mr. Bingham, are you alright? You sound…confused.” Her words were blunt, but they were the words each team member was thinking. Nelson scoffed and breathed in sharply.

Carter cleared his throat. “Yes, Mr. Bingham, are you feeling okay?”

Bingham looked from Carter to Lindsay and back. “Yes. Yes sir. Good. I am good.” He smiled, an odd smear of confusion and squeamishness. Nelson stepped up behind the man and eyed Carter, who gave him a slight nod.

Nelson quickly searched the scientist, finding only an ID badge, some keys, and a small flashlight in the man’s pocket. He held them out for his boss to peruse, but Carter just dismissed them and continued his line of questioning. Saunders and Mason lowered their guns slightly.

“Mr. Bingham, can you tell me why you’re down here? What brought you to Agartha?”

Bingham stared blankly.

“Can you explain to me what Agartha Base—this place—is for? What were you studying here?”

Twitch.

Carter frowned almost imperceptibly but didn’t drop his eyes from the scientist’s face. “Can you at least tell me where we are? We’re on the main level. Level Four: Rue d’Argent, correct?”

Bingham suddenly focused on Carter’s face when he heard the French words. “Yes, yes!” He responded, growing excited. “Rue d’Argent. Main.”

“Ok, wonderful. We’re getting somewhere. And what’s on the other levels, Bingham? Do you know where we can find a map?”

“Map? Map. Map—find a map. Where’s a map?” Bingham’s face contorted again in thought. “A map! Yes! Come, come—a map!”

Carter shook his head but followed the scientist to a small white building directly in the center of the open level, next to the cornfield. The rest of the group followed behind, Jen and Mark walking next to one another, followed by Drs. Sanjay Pavan and Lindsay Richards, her assistant Erik Statnik in tow, and finally, the three soldiers of Daniel Carter’s team: Gary Mason, Rachel Saunders, and Hog Nelson.

They reached the small shack, and Mark could see what it had originally been intended for. The whitewash on the wooden walls was peeling, but it still had an almost whimsical feeling about it. It was designed to look like a 1960’s cottage, complete with a small porch, a front door, and two shuttered windows perched on either side. About a yard in front of the porch stood an informational sign—a large map of the dome’s interior, much like those found in theme parks or museums.

Mark could see that the sign was almost pristine, save for a little fading here or there. Realizing that there was no weather to wear the structures down here, he knew that his original assessment of the light source above them—something emitting UV light—must be accurate.

Carter had stepped up to the sign and was now tracing the outline of some of the areas on the main level with his index finger. Mark saw the cornfield, greenhouses, and railroad drawn on the map and the rock wall at the bottom-right corner.

Further, Mark saw areas of the station they hadn’t even considered. There was a section for geothermal testing that doubled as the station’s main electricity and power supply, but there was also a large section devoted to housing. The governments involved in the station’s construction were interested in long-term research, and live-in quarters and including living necessities might have been cheaper than regular travel back and forth to the surface.

“Look at all of this,” Jen said quietly. She was poring over the map with scrutiny, trying to take it all in and commit it to memory.

Mark knew she was in awe; he could see her scientific brain churning every detail. For her and the other scientists, this place must be a goldmine, he thought. Research station or not, this place was a Library of Alexandria in futuristic, theoretical technology and self-sustained living.

A code some sectors of the modern developed world were desperately trying to crack.

If only this place hadn’t been classified, Mark thought.

“Look—” Carter said. His finger had landed on the rock wall and tunnel that Mark noticed earlier. He glanced up and saw the real-life version looming closer to them now. He explained that the tunnels only had a few entrances and exits in the station, one on this main level and another large on Level Nine: Rue Vert. “This tunnel has an access point on this level, behind the housing district. It’s actually right next to where we docked, but the catwalk we were on took us in the wrong direction. Does it say anywhere exactly where the cave dumps out?”

Dr. Pavan had walked to the other side of the map and answered Carter. “Yep. It does. This side’s a cross-section of the entire base, including the tunnel’s route through the rock.”

The group joined Sanjay on the opposite side of the map as he continued. “Just below that is a level that’s been crossed out for whatever reason. Level Ten: Rue Or.”

Jen frowned at the naming convention. She understood the rudimentary French used, but it didn’t seem completely correct. Rue Or should have been Rue d’Or. She shrugged it off. After all, she was an aspiring volcanologist, not a linguist. And although she had French-American roots, her upbringing in rural Arizona didn’t help much.

Carter spoke up. “Okay, folks. Let’s get a plan together. We need to find whatever these assholes want and get a comm link set up to get another ride down here. These first three levels, starting at the top of the base and moving down, are pretty much just the catwalk we entered on and access to the lighting fixture. Level Four is the main scientific area, and levels five through nine are different research levels.”

He glanced at Elliot Bingham, who seemed preoccupied with the ground but stood idly by the rest of the team members. He read through the descriptions of each level, finishing with the bottom four. “Looks like levels Ten through Fourteen are just maintenance—waste management, energy production, and other operations stuff.”

He stepped back from the map, deep in thought. “Anyone have any bright ideas? Where do we start?” He looked at Jen.

She felt the question was directed toward her, but she had nothing. “I—I don’t know. I guess—” she thought hard, her eyes focusing on a large propane tank at the center of the field next to the small information shack. It was decorated and larger than most she’d seen; shrubs and bushes poked from the dirt around it. She wondered what purpose it was intended to serve and why it needed to be so large and out in the open.

Pull yourself together, Jen thought. She took a breath, looked at the map, and spoke. “We need to get there,” she said, pointing at one of the lower levels. “If they’re looking for something I’m an expert in, it’s going to be down there. The levels of the station dedicated to geothermal research.”

A loud crack sounded from the stairs back at the lighting control room.

“Move!” Carter yelled. Without hesitating, he dove behind the small shack and was followed by his team and the rest of the scientists. Elliot Bingham sprang into action as well, surprisingly spry. He ducked a little and hopped to the cluster of mercenaries and scientists behind the building.

“That was a gunshot,” Saunders said. “Who the—”

Before she could finish the expletive, the air exploded with the sound of automatic rifle fire. The shots rang out from far away, but Mark wasn’t sure he could hear any of them landing—at least not close to them.

“Saunders! Mason! You two are on the opposite wall. Nelson, with me. The shots are coming from the stairs leading down to this level—on three, lay down return fire in that direction. That should give us enough time to get the civs out of here. You guys—” he turned toward Mark, Jen, and the other scientists, “when you hear my team fire, I want you immediately taking off toward those caves. Head straight for the houses over there and try to use them as cover. Got it?”

Before Mark could answer, Carter had stood and was preparing to fire at their attackers. Nelson remained on one knee, ready to turn and fire around the side of the small information building.

“Three!” The four soldiers opened fire simultaneously, and Mark quickly pulled Jen up and pushed her forward.

“Run!” he shouted at her back. Jen seemed to already be halfway across the cornfield as Mark started his pursuit. He didn’t think to look back at the others, hoping they’d follow him.

Their run was cut short as Jen reached the perimeter of the housing district. The backs of whitewashed houses, each one story tall and identical to one another, stretched to her left and right. A picket fence—no doubt a vanity decision to make the inhabitants feel more at home—ran along behind each of the houses. It was here that Jen stopped to wait for Mark.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sucking in air. “I was just trying to—”

“Forget it. Keep going, Jen,” Mark responded as he caught up to her. His lungs were full, and he felt like he could run forever. He wondered what—besides oxygen and nitrogen—was being pumped through the air here. He helped her over the small fence and turned to wait for the others. Dr. Pavan was huffing, but he was doing much better than the pudgy Lindsay, helped along by her taller, fitter assistant, Erik.

The soldiers were still firing potshots, but Mark couldn’t tell if they’d made any progress or not. Their cover—the small white building—was blocking his view of the stairs, and he didn’t care to stay in the open for much longer. He turned back to follow Jen, hopping the fence and turning left around the closest house.

He met Jen at the concrete street that ran between the two rows of houses and stopped to catch his breath. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. Where are the others?” she asked.

“They’re right behind us, but we should keep moving.”

Jen nodded but waited until she saw Dr. Pavan’s thin form emerge from behind the house. Without hesitation, she turned again and ran, leaving Mark to catch up. He heard the sound of gunfire again, but this time both parties were too far away for him to discern which team was shooting. As he began to follow after Jen, he had one final thought. Where’s Elliot Bingham?

The man had simply disappeared after Carter’s instructions. Had he taken off earlier?

Mark didn’t bother to wait for the answer. He followed Jen up the short street and toward the dark opening of the cave.

18

A moment after the civilians left, Carter ceased firing and took stock of the situation. The enemy was still far away, but he could count at least six—probably eight—mercenaries. They were dressed similarly, wearing military fatigues and working in tandem.

Carter was astonished they hadn’t been taken out, or at least suffered a casualty. Their group was half civilian, and they’d all been surprised. The missed first shot meant that whoever was attacking them now was prepared for a close-range mission, not shooting them from half a mile away.

He peered around the corner of the house again to get a better look. They had taken cover under the stairs during the counterattack and were now getting into a covered firing position. Carter looked to his three team members who were still taking turns firing a few rounds toward their opponents.

“Before they get set up again, Saunders and Nelson, get to the houses and cover Mason and me. Mason, keep returning fire with me until they yell for us. We’re far enough away, and I don’t think they’ve got the firepower to get us from there.”

Mason nodded, and Saunders and Nelson retreated.

We don’t have the firepower, Carter thought.

Soon Saunders and Nelson shouted for them to follow. “You’re covered, boss. Let’s go!”

Carter and Mason turned away from the small building and ran toward their team at the line of houses. When they arrived, Carter looked up and down the street, sighed, and stopped. “Are they already in the caves? Either of you see the others?”

“Nope.”

“Nope,” Nelson added.

Carter nodded. “Okay, well, let’s assume they made it. Head out.”

He took the lead, jogging through the street, trying to stay close enough to the houses that their would-be killers couldn’t spot them. He knew the small building would have blocked their retreat, and this housing district would provide ample cover, but he wasn’t about to take any chances.

Carter held up a hand at the mouth of the cave. It had taken them a moment to spot it. He’d expected a large, gaping hole in the stone wall, but he knew they were in the right place when they reached it. The hole was about five feet wide and six feet tall. However, it was literally the only hole they’d come across. The entire face of the wall was smooth, and save for a few pockmarks and indentations here and there; it was almost perfectly flat.

The others stopped behind their leader, and Carter turned on the flashlight mounted to his gun. Peering inside, he could see that the cave went straight for about one hundred yards and then curved slightly up and to the right. He hesitated but then let out a soft whistle.

Nothing.

He took a few steps into the cave opening and whistled again.

Still nothing. This time, he used his voice. “Hey. You guys in here?”

He heard nothing in return but continued walking slowly forward. He motioned for the rest to follow.

Every twenty feet, Carter stopped and softly called out to the other team. He didn’t want to yell, unsure of who might hear, inside the cave or out, but he risked raising his voice a bit more. “Can anyone hear me in there?”

“Carter?” A woman’s voice.

“Jen, is that you?” Carter pointed his gun down the walkway, the flashlight beam illuminating the smooth interior of the cave. Still, he saw nothing but darkness stretching in front of him.

“Yeah. Keep coming; you’re almost in. The path keeps bending up and to the right, but then it drops quickly down and veers back left. We’re just past that, in a sort of—clearing.”

Carter and the three soldiers picked up their pace and got to the bend Jen was referring to. It dropped quickly; if Carter hadn’t known about it, he might have tripped or twisted his ankle. The path turned left, and he let his flashlight beam lead the way.

Turning in the new direction with his gun pointed forward, Carter finally saw the others. They were in a large cavern about twenty feet across and with a ceiling about thirty feet high.

“You guys alright?” Jen asked as he entered the clearing.

The three others came in behind him, and Carter nodded. Realizing that they probably couldn’t see him, he verbalized his response. “We’re fine. I don’t think we hit anyone, but they certainly know we’re armed.”

“And where we are,” Saunders added.

“Maybe,” Carter replied. “They couldn’t see our retreat, just knew that we stopped firing. They’ll take a while to search the main level before they get to these caves, so we’ve got some time.” Then, turning to Jen, Mark, and the rest of the crew, he asked, “Anyone see anything new? Find anything?”

“Nope, not yet,” Mark said. “We just got here too. Had to move slowly without light, but once we got to the bend, we had a little help.”

Carter’s flashlight lit up Mark’s face, so he saw the man’s expression change to concern. “Bingham was already here—must’ve slipped back to the houses shortly after we started getting shot at. He showed up with his tiny flashlight at the bend and told us to follow him here.”

It was only then that Carter noticed the smaller scientist at the edge of his flashlight’s peripherals. “Bingham,” he said. “Good to see you here. Thanks for helping my guys.”

Bingham twitched but didn’t say anything.

“Okay, let’s get to the geothermal level,” Jen said, ending the awkward silence.

Mark stepped in. “Jen, wait. Maybe we should stop and rest; think about this a bit?”

Jen’s expression betrayed her emotions. “No, Mark, we need to—”

“I agree.” Carter’s voice boomed out, taking on the leadership role he was well-suited for. “We should take advantage of the fact that they don’t know our exact location. We can work our way through the caves a bit later, but we all could use some rest.”

With that, Saunders, Nelson, and Mason walked around their commander toward the other side of the cavern. They flipped on their flashlights and propped their guns against the cave wall. Their flashlights created a lantern effect, providing a dim orange glow that lit up the entire room. The three soldiers sat down.

Jen didn’t try to argue; she moved away from Mark and joined Dr. Richards and Dr. Pavan. Carter thought for a moment and delivered instructions. “We’ll stop here for a few hours, then work down the cave system and have a longer rest later. There we’ll do shifts, one hour apiece for my team, and you all can take turns as well if you’d like. Try to get some sleep. You’ll need it.”

“Who shot at us?” Mark asked. He’d taken a place against the side walls and was now sitting on the cave floor as well.

“No idea—looked military, definitely trained. I counted six to eight, but they were moving well.”

“You think they were on the sub that shot ours?”

“Most likely. There’s nothing but a lot of seawater around here. I doubt there are too many other boats floating through the water. They probably wanted to get us here first, then control the situation inside the base. That’s why they disabled the sub, let us dock, then followed us in.”

Mark kept up his line of questioning. “Do you think they were Nouvelle Terre?”

“Doubtful. They probably hired them, but who knows? This is, after all, a government research station—could have been any other government that doesn’t want this place to exist anymore.”

Carter remembered that their team now had a new member, and he walked up to Bingham. The man was sitting cross-legged on the floor; eyes open wide. “Bingham,” Carter said. He tried to calm his voice, soften it a little. “Thanks again for getting everyone here. Can I ask you a few questions?”

Bingham nodded silently.

“Can you tell me more about this station? About the work you did here?”

Bingham didn’t respond.

“Can you talk about the other scientists? Who did you work with?”

Bingham looked up at Carter and whispered. “Who. Who? Who did he work with? What did he work with? How…” The man lolled back and forth but continued. “They left.”

“Who’s they?” Carter tried to keep his voice down, not wanting to excite the scientist. He wasn’t worried about the others. They’d certainly be able to overhear his conversation in the vacuum of the cave, but it was better that way anyway.

“They—they left. The twelve. Gone.”

“Twelve? Twelve who? Scientists?”

“Twelve scientists.”

“And they left. They took that last submarine and left?”

“They left,” Bingham said, nodding. His eyes were closed now, deep in thought. “They left. Gone. Eighties. Nineteen-eighties.”

Jesus, Carter thought. This man’s mind must be mush. There had been more—a skeleton crew—who had left him behind. Bingham must have known something about how to manually open the docking station and launch the sub. They left him here—alone—for something like thirty years.

Or he just drew the short straw.

But it doesn’t make sense, Carter thought. If he had to stay behind, why? Why did one of the scientists need to stay back to keep the base operational?

He looked toward the strange scientist again and knew the truth. The man had been through his own version of hell. He’d been stranded here, a vast, empty space devoid of human life and interaction. He’d kept the place functioning well enough, but Carter knew that most of this work would have been rote chores, almost routine.

He felt sorry for Bingham. No one deserved this.

Carter took up a position facing the tunnel they’d entered to. Saunders was there and had fallen asleep waiting for Carter to take first watch. He ordered the lights to be flicked off, and the eerie darkness descended around the group, seeping into every crack and space in the cavern.

Carter watched the darkness in front of him for some time, listening intently to nothing. The deep quiet of the suboceanic cave was daunting, enveloping. The black swirls of nothingness haunted his vision, but he refused to close his eyes.

He thought more about Bingham and tried to piece things together.

He thought about the team, the scientists and mercenaries he was tasked with protecting. He thought about Jen and Mark, the estranged couple who’d suffered unbelievable psychological pain in the past day. They’d lost a son, and he had no idea if they’d be able to find him. For them, their struggle was just beginning. They were blocking out the pain of loss, replacing it with resolve, vigor, willingness to fight, and a bluntness toward the consequences.

He knew that their psychological torment, while generated and exacerbated by nothing more than chemical reactions in their brains, was a very real torment. Their pain was as excruciating and tortuous as its physical counterpart.

Carter knew the pain all too well.

19

“Craig,” the voice on the other end of the phone said, “that can’t work.”

“I understand where you’re getting held up.”

“No. You don’t, Larson. It’s not feasible. What you’re implying is that we’ve—”

“Implying?” Larson shot back. “I’m not implying anything. I’m asking you. We need this. You asked for my help first, remember?”

There was a brief pause. Larson could hear Malcolm Vertrund’s deep breath. “I know. I did. I called you, but here’s the deal. I’m getting a lot of pressure to wrap this thing up quick—like yesterday, and you’re telling me you don’t even have a lead?”

“I’m not telling you that at all,” Craig Larson said.

“So you’ve got something?”

“I’ve got a little. Probably what you already have. I’ve been doing research. You know, looking into the organization and trying to piece things together. They did a good job tying up their loose ends, covering their tracks.”

“What did you find?” Vertrund asked.

It was Larson’s turn to hesitate. “My assistant found something yesterday. It’s not much, but it at least gives me an idea of what they were trying to do back in the seventies.”

“They were studying the effects of nuclear radiation on biospheres, I thought.”

“They were. Seems like they were at ground zero during the Three Mile Island meltdown; not sure if it’s related…”

Vertrund didn’t react, so Larson continued. “Anyway, they moved—set up shop somewhere else—and we don’t have anything on them after that.”

It was a blatant lie, but Larson needed to hear Vertrund’s response. “Okay, well, just know that I’m trying as hard as I can to get you into the database. It’s a chain-of-command thing, and…”

“And I’m not high enough on it.”

“Listen, Craig; it’s not like that—”

“It is, if that’s the answer. That’s exactly how it is. That’s fine, Vertrund. I charge by the hour, and I’m going to find what I’m looking for.”

“Craig. Stop. Slow down. What I’m telling you—I can’t believe I have to spell this out—what I’m telling you is this: this thing is big. Bigger than both of us. It’s over your head; it’s over mine. I’m getting pressure to wrap this up and move on.”

“You mean you’re getting pressure to wrap this up without finishing it? That’s your government at work, Malcolm.” Larson could almost see the younger man cringe at the detective’s emphasis on your government.

“Fine. Believe what you want. I’m telling you what I know. You’re hitting a brick wall here, and you need to redirect your efforts if you want in. I can’t help you anymore unless you’re going to help me.”

Larson held the phone out away from his ear, thinking. He frowned, then placed the earpiece back on his head. “I understand. Thanks for your time.”

The phone went silent, and Larson sighed. He turned off the phone and placed it on the counter in front of him. Standing, he looked across the counter at Ken Dawson. “I think we’re further behind than we thought.”

Dawson rose from the armchair and joined Larson in the kitchen. “How far behind did you think we were?” he asked, a smirk growing on his face. “Sounds like our friend isn’t going to be much help.”

“He’s not. He wasn’t going to be. But we’ve got what we need.”

As was often the case when Dawson and Larson worked together, the younger man was a step behind. He looked visibly confused, but Larson let the awkwardness sink in before he explained.

“Vertrund and whoever’s giving him orders want us to slow down. You and I both know we’ve got information that can lead to our bringing anyone in who’s even remotely connected to Nouvelle Terre.”

“Right, but—”

“But Vertrund knows that too. That article you found isn’t written in Sanskrit, Ken. We’re playing with something that will be a big deal if it gets out. We know, and we found it after looking for a day. You’d better believe they know about it too.”

He paused to make sure Dawson was following. “But Vertrund didn’t say that. He didn’t even let on that he knew I was lying. He wants us to think we’re the only ones who are a little concerned about what Nouvelle Terre might really be up to.”

20

The darkness chilled her to her core.

Dr. Lindsay Richards was not a fan of dark spaces, creepy halls, haunted houses—pretty much anything dark. She hated Halloween and had a nightlight in each of her rooms at home.

As an adult and academic, she knew this fear was nothing troublesome. It wasn’t a fear that manifested itself often. She was fine in dark theaters, walking at night, and in other normal circumstances. It was the odd time when the darkness itself played a larger role. She liked to think she was most scared when the reason for the darkness was the darkness itself.

She’d grown up wanting to be an astronaut, but when she visited a space museum as a child, her father had taken her into a planetarium. They’d stared at the constellations and dancing stars and comets for an hour, but when the guide plunged the room into pitch black and spoke about black holes, the vastness of the universe, and the sheer nothingness of deep space, she was positively terrified. She’d clutched her father’s arm and began to cry. Logic told her it was just a dark room, but it was revolting.

Now, Lindsay could feel that same fear creeping toward her. It had been enveloping her since they’d stepped into the cave system. She knew better than to speak up, especially now that their lives were in danger. Nonetheless, she knew she’d be getting no sleep.

She tried to force her eyes closed and mouthed the lyrics of an old folk song that she’d been taught as a girl.

She was through three verses, and her nerves were starting to cool down when she heard a voice that was not inside her head.

“Leave, left, leaving. Go, went, going. Stay, stayed, staying…”

It was a whisper, but she jumped anyway.

The voice was right next to her head. She thought it was directed at her. No one else seemed to hear it. She thought about saying something out loud to the group but didn’t want to come across as crazy as—

Bingham.

She recognized the incoherence and could even hear the singsong lilt of the man’s voice. It was so soft—almost impossible to discern.

“Restent, restant, resté…”

The voice continued, right in her ear, in French this time.

“Elliot?” she whispered, as quietly as possible. “Is that you?”

There was a pause. “Going, leaving, staying…”

She rolled to her side and squinted into the darkness. It was hopeless. The darkness was all-consuming; she could see nothing. She whispered again, a bit louder this time.

About twenty feet away, the faintest of lights emanated an orange glow along the cave wall. It was near the exit to their cavern, the side of the path they’d not yet traveled. As she watched, the light danced and flickered a bit brighter, then disappeared. It reappeared again a few yards farther down the path. It was leaving the cavern.

Does no one else see this? she wondered. The guard must have been looking in on the sleeping group—or was also asleep.

Lindsay considered her options. Wake everyone, admit that she was afraid of the dark, and risk pinning herself as crazy, or at least childish? Should she try to make her way to the opposite entrance, where there would be at least one soldier still awake? Carter had said there would be someone on watch throughout their few hours of rest.

Or should she just follow Bingham a bit to see if he was just wandering around aimlessly? He was harmless, she knew. His facial expressions and odd twitch, combined with his roundabout way of talking, made her think that he was merely an unfortunate individual who had suffered the effects of long-term isolation. She was no psychiatrist, but the symptoms were all there. Certainly, this environment, being alone, and the man’s active academic mind would have been the perfect breeding ground for the claustrophobic-like psychological effects that he was experiencing.

Plus, he’d helped them thus far. When they were standing in the middle of the main level wondering what to do next, Bingham appeared and offered—after Carter’s stringent line of questioning—at least a few answers they needed.

Then, when they were shot at and forced into these godawful caves, it was Bingham who showed up with a flashlight and helped them into this spacious cavern where they’d be temporarily safe.

What do I have to lose? she thought. Jen Adams is clearly the lead scientist here, and the others look at me as if I was an afterthought. They probably despise Erik, too, and question his value on this trip.

Lindsay sat up. It was decided. She’d follow Bingham a little farther into the cave just to see if she could gain some insight into his behavior. At the very least, she hoped to explore ahead a few hundred yards. In her business, knowledge was power, and knowing more than the others could help put her ahead.

She stood to her feet, surprised again at how easily she found herself breathing. She wasn’t obese, but she certainly could stand to lose a few pounds. Back home, she would have at least needed to catch her breath after standing up from lying down on the floor, but here her body seemed to perform well.

Two hundred feet, then I stop, she thought, countering her initial decision of a few hundred yards. I walk, I focus on Bingham’s light, and I come back when and if he gets too far away. By thinking herself through the individual steps, Lindsay knew she would be able to stave off the gripping fear of the darkness around her.

She stepped toward the fading light down the path and began reciting the words of her song in her head.

About thirty or forty feet, the tunnel bucked and turned sharply to the right. She followed, arm outstretched against the cold stone wall, as the path began descending.

The light ahead of her flickered and died.

She almost panicked, feeling her heart catch in her throat. Can I get back if there’s no light? Before she needed to explore that option, the light came back on.

It was closer to her now—or was it just an illusion?

She stepped forward slowly, trying to steady herself and calm her nerves.

“Bingham,” she said, her voice clear and strong. “Are you okay? Is that you?”

The light swung around and dissipated a little. As her eyes adjusted again, she saw that it was now illuminating a shadowy silhouette. Bingham was carrying the light in front of his body.

She followed along again, growing anxious as she closed the distance. Bingham’s going slowly, she thought.

Lindsay saw the shape hesitate, then turn sharply left. The light ducked out of sight, and Lindsay picked up her pace again. “Bingham, wait up,” she said. She reached the intersection in the path. She’d have to remember this for when the others arrived. If Bingham went left, the path to the right must be a dead end.

She turned left, stepped forward, and stopped.

Where was the light?

Was she looking at the wall? She reached out but felt nothing. Bingham had gone this way—she saw him turn and head this way. She waited, expecting the light to turn back on as it had done earlier.

Finally. She saw the orange again about a hundred yards away. He must have seriously picked up his pace after he turned in here.

She focused on the light, unsure of whether or not she wanted to continue following.

A second light flicked on to her left, about fifty feet away.

What the—

Lindsay took a step back and saw a third light spark twenty feet in front of her, slightly to her right. Her voice caught in her throat.

More lights came on, and Lindsay could now begin to see the shadowy outlines behind them.

She screamed.

21

Reese’s face haunted her sleep.

Jen rocked silently back and forth on the cave floor, trying in vain to get some rest. She’d drifted in and out of sleep for the past forty minutes, but she could almost feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She wouldn’t be able to sleep until this was over.

Reese was gone.

The thought still chilled her, numbed her. Could it be true? He had been abducted, that horrible, disgusting word that happened to other people’s children.

It wasn’t Mark’s fault. She knew it, but wanted to believe that it was. Needed to.

He was a wonderful parent. Better than she was. Reese liked him more, too. It was strange. Jen’s approach to loving their son had always been to protect, to comfort. She’d gone out of her way to defend him, trying to ensure the boy would never feel pain.

On the one hand, she knew it was frivolous—only a way of vicariously living through her childhood to try to heal scars that her son didn’t share. On the other hand, no parent wanted their child to suffer, so she wasn’t crazy, right?

She knew that she and Reese had started to grow apart when she and Mark split up. It was devastating for him not to have his father there constantly. He came home to an empty house—both Jen and Mark were busy at work—but Mark always seemed to know how to connect with Reese. He always seemed to know exactly what he wanted, and he always had a better work/life switch.

Jen, by contrast, couldn’t ever fully remove herself from work. She’d taken over much of Dr. Storm’s lecture schedule, and she was putting in overtime almost every week in the research labs. She’d always told herself that it was fine. She loved her work.

But now he was gone.

If she—they—couldn’t find him, what then?

Jen’s mind raced through the terrible possibilities, not fully feeling any of them. She’d been trying desperately since they’d left her office to keep her “academia” hat on. She needed to be analytical, calculating. The others didn’t need an emotional mother. They needed a professional scientist.

She felt a hand come to rest on top of hers. She gasped and yanked her hand back.

“Jen. Sorry, it’s me. Mark.” Mark’s voice whispered crisply through the cool cavern air.

“Sorry. I know, it was just—sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. You okay?”

She hated him for asking it but loved him for it all the same. What was that supposed to mean, anyway? Of course not.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“Listen, I wanted to, um, apologize…”

“Mark, please. You don’t have to do this. God knows it was as much my fault, and Reese—” she couldn’t finish the thought.

She didn’t reach for Mark’s hand, but she also didn’t pull hers away when he reached out again. His hands were warm—they always were—but the warmth this time radiated an energy that she needed more than ever.

He was a frustrating man. Unbelievably good-looking, or at least she thought so. Tall, brown-eyed, and fit, he had always been in excellent shape, and never seemed to try. He was soft-spoken, calm, and collected, to the point that a lot of people seemed to think of him as a pushover. And why wouldn’t they, Jen thought, with my personality to go with it? She was as fiery and driven as he was nonchalant.

Before they were married, Mark had expressed his ambitions, hopes, and dreams with her one night over drinks. It was an extremely rare event for Mark—drinks and talking about his career—but it was delightful for Jen, and she knew that he would make a great father and husband.

Those first months were an absolute thrill. Like a fairy-tale romance, Mark wooed her with surprises, dates, and trips, and within a few months they were living together. Reese was born a short while later, and they had a whirlwind first year as they moved, changed jobs, and settled in Massachusetts. She often thought of the simpler times, laughing to herself that a newborn child and young marriage could ever seem simple.

“Jen.” The word was louder than the rest of their whispers had been. Jen looked up to see nothing; the black of the cavern was absolute. She frowned but knew Mark couldn’t see her either.

“What?”

“I know—” he paused. “We’re both in this together, okay? You know me, and I know how stubborn you can be, but we’re going to get through this, okay?”

She nodded again.

“We’re going to figure this out, then we’re going to get Reese. I promise.”

Jen’s nostrils flared out, but she didn’t speak. Was it just calming to hear his voice, as frustrating as he was?

“We’re going to get Reese, and we’re going to go home. Do you believe me?”

She didn’t know what to believe. She wanted to believe it, but she’d always been a realist.

“Yeah. Yes, I believe you.”

“Good. Now do me a favor, and try to get some—”

Mark’s voice was cut short by a piercing scream. The sound reverberated through the cave, echoing around each corner.

Jen shot up into a sitting position. She heard stirring next to her; a sleeping body was jostled by the noise. From somewhere in front of her, she heard a whisper, and then a sharp yell.

“What was that?”

The sound of Carter’s voice. Before she could react, she felt a hand—Mark’s—reach out to hers and pull her up.

“Come on, that was one of us!”

A light exploded on; one of the gun-mounted flashlights the soldiers were carrying. Jen’s eyes screamed in pain, and she squeezed them open and shut to adjust her vision.

Another light came on, and the cavern was bathed in an orange glow. Jen looked up to see the mercs scrambling toward the path, following in the direction of the scream. Dr. Pavan and Erik looked like they’d been woken up from a hangover, their eyes bloodshot and sleep-deprived.

“Come on, Jen. Follow Carter down there.” She felt a slight nudge on her lower back, firm but gentle. “We’re sticking together, and they’ve got the firepower.”

She recognized Mark’s voice, but his attitude was different. It was controlling, confident.

As she stumbled forward to follow Dr. Pavan, she caught a glance at her husband. Mark’s eyes were set straight forward, focused on the path. His expression revealed nothing, no emotion whatsoever.

She’d never seen him like this.

What had changed? Was it because of Reese?

Jen didn’t have time to wonder. Suddenly Mark was in front of her, pulling her behind him. She shook off her delirium and followed the man into the darkness of the tunnel ahead. Orange light from the soldiers in front of them guided their way, but it was all she could do to keep pace.

Carter stopped abruptly.

Jen and the others nearly bumped into the soldier as they all spilled into a large, looming cavern.

The room they were in dwarfed the cave they’d slept in earlier. It was easily twice the size, both walls recessed about thirty feet from the opening they were standing in. The ceiling reached twenty feet over their heads, creating the feeling that they were in a large cellar. Jen approached the backs of the other team members, trying to squeeze her way into a better view.

She was immediately sorry that she did.

In front of them, sprawled out on the cavern floor, was Dr. Richard’s body. It was stretched and splayed out on the stone like it had fallen from the ceiling, and her arms and legs were twisted into an awkward pose.

Jen gasped, and Mark cursed behind her.

“W—what happened here?” she heard herself ask.

No one responded.

Carter stepped farther into the room, trying to get a better view. Jen watched him scrutinize the scene, examining every detail. She couldn’t see Lindsay’s face—it was turned in the other direction—but she could tell she was dead.

“Come here. Check this out,” Carter said.

The others gathered around Lindsay’s body, and Jen could soon see why they were summoned. Lindsay’s clothes were torn in places, the shreds of garment pulled in different directions.

“There are scratches on her skin,” Carter said, “four parallel lines.”

Jen saw what he was talking about. In the places where Lindsay’s clothes had been shredded—her stomach, right shoulder, and left leg, mostly—Jen could see rows of lines running the length of her body. They didn’t seem deep, but there were a lot of them, and there was blood pooling in each track. The scratches were layered on top of one another as if she’d been scratched from many different directions at once from many different sources.

“Ugh. Look at her neck,” Nelson said. They all looked toward Lindsay’s head. It was broken, a telltale bump protruding from just below her skull on the left side of the woman’s neck.

“Hmm. Looks like that’s how she died. These scratches are pretty bad, but she shouldn’t have succumbed to them alone.” It was Carter’s voice again, but this time it was softer. It was still intense, but it seemed somewhat clinical, as if the man was simply theorizing about an excavated corpse, not examining a deceased member of their team.

Jen couldn’t speak. The numbness that had consumed her earlier was back again, and this time it seized her vocal cords as well. She stared at the lifeless body, not feeling anything. She was scared, but her mind wouldn’t let her feel the fear. She wanted answers.

Mark’s hand covered his mouth, but he was also silent. Carter and the other soldiers inspected the body for clues but came up short. “Looks like she was attacked. More than one, I’d suspect, but who knows by what. She must have struggled—probably when she screamed—and then they broke her neck.”

“Or she fell,” Saunders added.

“From what though?” Carter asked.

“No idea. Maybe she tripped?”

They looked again at the body, trying to make sense of things. After a minute, Carter looked up at the team. “You all okay?”

Nods all around. Dr. Pavan, Jen saw, was pale—noticeably so even in the orange light. She turned to Erik, Lindsay’s assistant, and saw that the young man was in shock.

She nodded for Carter’s satisfaction, but made her way to Erik’s side. The man stared down at his boss’ body with an empty, limp gaze. “She was tough but nice,” he said. “Took care of us—the research assistants—but I didn’t know her very well.”

Jen realized it was the first time she’d heard the guy speak. His voice was heavily accented with an Eastern-European lilt. His eyes suddenly looked younger, as if he was Lindsay’s son.

“We need to move. Guns up, quick. No idea what happened here, but we can’t stay.” Carter’s tone was back, strong and in charge. Saunders, Nelson, and Mason each snapped to attention, their guns drawn and ready.

Jen shuddered again as they left the scene. She thought back to the ransom note left in her apartment.

Four days.

It had already been two.

22

“Okay, here’s what we’ve got.” Ken Dawson spread the stacks of papers on the large table in Larson’s study.

Dawson was continually amazed at the living situation of his older counterpart. He’d known the older detective long enough—and was close enough to him—to have visited the apartment in Washington, D.C., numerous times. The place was almost bare: necessary furniture and appliances were found in their proper corners, but the decorations were stark. No pictures hung from the walls, and no curtains covered his windows. What surprised Dawson, however, was what Larson spent on the things he did want in his apartment.

The man’s two prized pieces, a leather armchair and an oversized mahogany table, were the only two things of value in the whole place. They both sat in the man’s study, constantly collecting dust. Their luxurious look and expensive, handcrafted feel was even more out of place due to the lack of care Larson seemed to take in everything else. His carpet, old and worn, ran throughout the entire apartment—even the kitchen and bathroom—and it jutted up against brownish walls that perfectly matched the carpet.

The apartment was a disgusting blob of brown that seemed to consume whoever walked in, though Dawson did like the effect after hours of late-night research. It became almost comforting, floating through the large, empty rooms, whose floors, walls, and ceilings were indiscernible from one another.

“Give me the breakdown. Anything new?” Larson asked. He shuffled through a stack of papers that had slipped out of a manila folder on the edge of the broad table.

“Nope, not yet. I’m still looking over the Three Mile Island meltdown, just in case. I think we’re pretty much at an impasse with this stuff.”

“Okay, fine. Let’s dig through it again. Start at the beginning.”

“Right.” Dawson took a deep breath, reached for one of the stacks of papers and folders, and opened the first. “Nouvelle Terre’s initial project records began with ‘biosphere projections’—general overviews of predictions regarding microcosmic biospheres. They expanded to include sociological programs—” he passed his hand over another stack of folders, “and even dipped into the humanities.”

“They were studying nuclear waste at Three Mile Island?” Larson asked.

“Yes. They had a few test sites set up back when they were ‘above ground.’ But a year later—1980, I think—they wiped everything clean. Up and left.”

“Where’d they go?”

“No idea. It doesn’t say in public records, and most of the documentation seems to imply they disbanded. Whatever the case, they did a great job of staying under the radar. The next time they popped up—ten years later—it wasn’t ‘they,’ but just a key team member here or there, all working on separate, unrelated projects around the world.”

“And Jeremiah Austin? He pop up anywhere?”

Dawson moved to grab another folder from the top of one of the smaller stacks. “Not really. Brief mentions in academic papers, one journal entry from Elias Storm, that’s it.”

Dawson scratched his head. Larson still hadn’t let on why he wanted Dawson to keep repeating the same stuff, over and over again. They’d been through it almost five times in the past two hours. It was getting late, and—

“Elias Storm mentions Austin once, but he doesn’t ever mention his own brother,” Larson said.

“He doesn’t. Not in this journal. Maybe there were others?”

“Maybe. But think about that. If he had contact with Mitchell, he’d probably mention it in his own personal writings. If he didn’t, don’t you think he’d wonder why?”

“And write about it?”

“…And write about it. I think he would have said something to that effect like he was wondering or concerned or something. But he didn’t. Not even so much as an acknowledgment, here, at least, that he had a brother.”

“Because they had a falling out,” Dawson said.

“No. Because Elias knew what his brother and Austin were working on. He knew what was at stake. We don’t, but he did. And Nouvelle Terre figured out that he did, and they killed him for it.”

Larson frowned, then spoke again. “I think our friend Vertrund knows too. I think he’s staying ahead of us on purpose. He needs me to figure something out, but he can’t tell me.”

“This thing isn’t about energy, is it? You said so yourself. Nouvelle Terre was never interested in energy. They’re still not, are they?”

“They are, but only to get what they want. It’s a means, not an end. If Vertrund’s one step ahead of us, Jeremiah Austin is one step ahead of him.”

“How do you know that? We don’t even know where he is. Shit, I don’t even know what the guy looks like!”

Larson shuffled through some old newspaper clippings as he spoke. “Vertrund was playing us, but he was playing us well. He knew I’d understand this better than anyone, but he didn’t want to let on that he did.”

He found what he was looking for and pulled it out of the pile. “Vertrund needed me to know who we’re dealing with, but he couldn’t let on to his superiors that I’m in on it. He couldn’t let them know, without putting himself at risk, that I’m closer to this than they’d like.”

Dawson was thoroughly confused now. He stared at Larson, not sure what to expect. The older man held up the clipping, and Dawson could see that it was starting to yellow on the edges.

“This was taken in 1969,” Larson said as he began unfolding the document. He held it out to him.

Dawson reached for it and had to choke back a laugh. “That’s—that’s the president.” It was, but it was a young president—long before he’d even considered a run for political office. He had to be in his early twenties, judging by the thick crop of dirty blond hair that sat disheveled on his head. His characteristic grin—toppled down on one side, giving him a mischievous and nonchalant look—extended wide across his face. Dawson took in the picture and recognized the man immediately but stopped when he saw the other figure in the picture.

“This is you?” he asked Larson. Again, the image was of a much younger picture, but the features gave the man away—distinct, rigid jawline and a short-cropped military cut above a dark-skinned, fit body.

“It is. I knew him—briefly. It was a summer vacation home my parents took us to each year. The president—Harry, then—lived across the lake. We struck up a friendship fishing and swimming, and going out to town on the weekends. This picture was taken after some movie star rolled through. We went to see them, and there was a newspaper that caught us in the background. The picture wasn’t used for much, just a biography when Harold made it to the White House, and I wasn’t ever named as his sidekick.”

Dawson was appalled. “You know President Mathers?”

“Knew. That’s not the point. I didn’t know him well, anyway. But he had a friend—a cousin, actually—an older boy who’d come down every now and again. A few times that summer. I never met him, but I saw him once. Harold said he was at college but came out there to get away from it all.”

Dawson closed his eyes. “Who was he?”

“A cousin, like I said. Distant—almost not even relevant. But he was smart, and Harold was smart, so I guess they hit it off. Harold really looked up to him. Jeremiah. Jeremiah Austin. Saw him once, then he was gone. But Harold raved about him constantly after that. Said he was ‘going places,’ that he was the ‘smartest kid he knew’ and such.”

Dawson cringed. “You’re telling me the President of the United States and Jeremiah Austin are cousins?”

“Afraid so, Ken. That’s what we’re here for, though. To figure this thing out and stop whatever it is Austin’s trying to do. The president needs it to be done so he can sweep it under the rug and not have a political—and personal—mess on his hands, and Vertrund needs us to do it because if anyone else finds out—”

Dawson understood. He nodded and stood from the table. “It’s late, Craig. Get some sleep. I’ll be back tomorrow after I get done at the office.” He glanced at the two empty highball glasses that had collected condensation rings around their sides. “I’ll bring the fuel.”

23

“We need to head up; get to that geothermal station on the main level,” Carter said.

The group was back in the tunnels, having left the cavern—and Lindsay’s body—behind. Carter knew it was the right decision. It was, after all, the original plan.

They’d been attacked by an overt force and now by an unforeseen one. Was it the same one? Were they being toyed with one team member at a time?

Carter tried to imagine the woman’s final thoughts. He wasn’t much for sentimental reminiscing; he just wanted to gain insight into her untimely death. It was brutal, that was certain. But was it purposeful?

Were they not alone in these caves? Maybe there was something tracking them. Maybe there was something about this place that none of the previous inhabitants or builders even knew about.

He was getting ahead of himself. As a trained military man, he was strategic-minded. When his subordinates thought through current situations, Carter thought three steps ahead. This mission was no different. He’d been thinking strategically since they’d disembarked.

He’d thought of the big questions.

Would they find whatever it was they were looking for?

Would they be able to retrieve Jen’s son?

Would they be able to stop whatever it was Nouvelle Terre was planning?

But he also thought through each of their situations in terms of cause and effect breakdowns. If they did A, would the enemy do B? And what if they didn’t? What were the alternatives? What were the pros and cons of each move?

He thought through these situations with the resolve needed by an officer of his command, but he also knew it made him cold, impersonal rather than charismatic, calculating rather than empathetic.

But he didn’t care.

He wasn’t good at what he did because his units liked him; he was good because he got the job done.

This was no different. It was a job, one that had defined objectives and specific deliverables, and he’d die before he gave up on them. He had nothing else in this life to lose, so he’d do what was required. A sharp stab of pain lanced through his body, but he just as quickly pressed it back down. He’d been told these psychological exertions were precursors to a more chronic form of PTSD, but he wouldn’t let something like that get in the way of his line of duty. He’d been down that road before.

Their current situation was unfortunate but not mission-critical. They’d lost a member of their team, but it was a C-team member, at best. Dr. Richards, he knew, was here as a secondary backup to Dr. Pavan.

A backup to the backup.

If Jen couldn’t figure out what Nouvelle Terre wanted and deliver it, Dr. Sanjay Pavan—by all accounts an equally accomplished scientist—would. They’d move heaven and earth to get the job done because Nouvelle Terre had done their job extremely well.

They’d created an incentive for Jen that was impossible to ignore.

Jen spoke up from behind him as he walked. He’d almost forgotten he’d delivered an instruction.

“Carter,” she said. “I disagree. I think we need to stay here.”

Carter slowed, but he didn’t stop moving.

“We should at least try to figure out what attacked Lindsay, right? I mean, it’s still out here somewhere.”

He paused, trying to formulate a response.

“If we get to the upper levels and this—whatever it is—follows us there, we’ve got two problems.”

Carter finally stopped walking. He turned to Jen and the others. “Yes, but only one of those problems will attack us. We need to get a jump on finding what Nouvelle Terre’s looking for.”

“But—”

Carter saw Jen’s husband frown at her, silently pleading with her to stop arguing. She hesitated, but then resumed her stubborn reasoning.

“Listen, Carter… we’ve got to figure out what attacked Lindsay, and that’s going to be here. This cave system isn’t large, remember? We should be able to—”

“We’re moving.” Carter’s nostrils flared, but he didn’t argue further.

Jen opened her mouth to speak again, but was cut off by Dr. Pavan’s loud shout.

“Hey! Over here—look at these!” The man was standing on the side of the cavern, scrutinizing the cave wall. “Can someone shine their light over here?”

Saunders pointed her flashlight toward Dr. Pavan, illuminating the entire section of wall. She stepped forward, trying to see what the scientist had gotten excited about.

Carter couldn’t see anything either, but he stood his ground.

Erik and Jen both approached the wall as well, and it was Erik who spoke first.

“They’re scratches. Just like the ones on Lindsay.” He swallowed hard at speaking his former boss’ name.

“They’re all over this wall, and some of them are deep,” Jen said.

Carter was intrigued, but only momentarily. “It doesn’t matter. We need to get to that power plant and see what this is all about.”

“No, Carter,” Jen said. “I’m staying. This wall—those scratches on Lindsay—they’re not normal. These marks were caused by something, and we’ve got the evidence right in front of us to figure out what it is.”

“Why don’t we split up?” The group looked toward the speaker—Mark Adams. “We could split into two groups, one staying here, and one heading toward the power plant. There’s also a geothermal station on Level Four that I saw on the map. It’s probably tapped into the same plant, but it will undoubtedly be more hospitable.”

Carter considered this option. He didn’t like it, but it was better than staying in one place. Jen would, of course, stay behind, as well as Dr. Pavan. Aside from examining the level surrounding the power plant, his mission was to find and eliminate the hostile force pursuing them. He’d need as much firepower as possible for that.

“Okay, fine. Mark, Erik, you’re with me. Mason and Saunders, you too.” The group began shuffling around, half of them preparing to leave with Carter.

“The rest—Jen, Dr. Pavan, Hog—you stay back. We’ll head to the main level first and make our way down using the stairs. Anything moves from that direction,” he motioned with his head down the tunnel, “shoot it. Ask questions later.”

He nodded once, checked over the two groups, and turned to leave. He caught Mark’s eyes as he turned—wide and surprised—and knew that the man hadn’t intended this outcome.

Jen, however, seemed fine.

“Great. Dr. Pavan, what do you make of these marks?”

24

“So you’re a computer guy, then?”

“Yep. Been working in computer security for my entire professional life; just moved into management a few years ago,” Mark responded. He focused on the back of the soldier’s head as they moved upward through the cave system.

Mark had been fielding questions the entire half hour they’d been walking, except for when they stopped in the large cavern where Lindsay’s body lay. The civilians wanted to bury her or at least move her body somewhere else out of respect, but Carter knew that wasn’t an option. The ground was solid rock, and they didn’t know these tunnels well enough to know what “out of the way” meant.

Carter approached the sprawled figure, eyeing around it for further evidence, but saw nothing. He peered around the room, looking for any sign of life or activity.

Satisfied, he nodded once, and the team continued their ascent.

Immediately after leaving the large cavern, the line of questioning continued. They asked Mark about his professional and personal life, about Reese, and about Jen. Erik seemed especially interested, but even Carter asked him a few questions. The only seemingly uninterested one of the five was Saunders.

Mark could see her slender figure in front of Mason sliding along at a steady and effortless pace. He wasn’t attracted to her, as she was cold and seemed apathetic about his personal situation, but he noticed that she wasn’t a physically unattractive woman.

Mason asked another question. “So, you work at a government place?”

Mark knew the mercenaries—at least Carter—had been briefed on all of the civilians’ professional and personal lives, so the questions did seem a little forced. Is Mason trying to make friends? Mark thought.

“Uh, well, yeah, I guess you could say that,” Mark responded, caught a little off guard. “We weren’t originally. Most of our contracts were private sector security or IT companies. About three years ago, we pretty much sold out to the government, though. But they don’t have a controlling interest, and we don’t do any contracting outside of their projects anymore. They send us work, sometimes their own, sometimes from companies they work with, but it’s always sourced through them.”

“Hmm.”

Mark wasn’t sure if he was being asked another question—implied in Mason’s silence—or if his answer had satisfied.

He decided to ask one of his own.

“What about you guys? What brings you to the States?”

Mark quickly rephrased his question. “I guess I mean, what brings you here—under five miles of ocean to help a scientist find her kid?”

Carter answered this time. “We were given orders from the top. My team and I usually operate like a special forces unit, and this time around, the orders came from somewhere above my pay grade.”

Mark thought about this answer for a moment. “Were you stationed around here? Or in the US?”

Mason answered. “Nope, we were on leave. Happens all the time, though. ‘Leave’ to us just means, ‘get ready to leave again.’”

He didn’t give more details, so Mark dropped the subject and kept walking. Within minutes, they reached the cave opening on Level Four, and Carter held up his hand.

“Hold up here. Mason, why don’t you see what’s going on out there.” Mason stepped forward and crouched in the cavern entrance. Saunders fell in beside him; her gun pointed outward.

Erik and Mark waited behind the three soldiers until Carter walked out onto the concrete street of the housing district. He moved swiftly toward the first of the white houses on their right. Moving past the first-floor windows facing the cliff, Carter stopped at the end of the house’s wall and looked around the corner.

“I don’t see anyone,” he said softly. He was one hundred yards away, but his voice carried easily through the air. The two other soldiers waited a few seconds, then Saunders told the civilians to move toward Carter.

Mark and Erik jogged side-by-side toward Carter and joined him at the side of the house, finally followed by Mason and Saunders.

“Let’s stay between this row of houses and the cliff until the housing district ends, then we’ll move along the tracks toward those buildings in the distance.” He pointed with his gun at the large, rectangular buildings—four in all—about four hundred yards away. He started running next to the line of houses until he reached the end and crouched next to the track that encircled the entire level.

The others followed, with Mark next to Erik, followed by Saunders at the rear. They reached the buildings, and Mark could see that they were each labeled with a large black number on their sides. “4” was directly in front of them, with “5” next to it. He assumed they were in a section of the base that handled part of the food requirements, as he became suddenly aware of a faint fishy odor in the air.

“Smells like dinner,” Mason said.

“These are all fish hatcheries. It’s a seafood farm,” Carter said, walking toward the first building in the block—“1,” which sat adjacent to “4” in front of them.

“Alright, let’s get to that geothermal station,” Saunders said. It was the first time she’d spoken since they’d left Jen and the others behind, and Mark could tell she wasn’t interested in poking around any longer than they needed.

Carter reached the end of building “1” and stopped to look around. They still hadn’t seen—or heard—anything of their earlier attackers, nor had they found any more evidence of Lindsay’s mysterious killer. Carter wasn’t taking chances, though, and he waited a full thirty seconds before stepping out toward a small building set a few paces away from the fish farms.

Mark immediately noticed why Carter had chosen this target. The building, raised from the floor of the base by cinder blocks, had large pipes shooting outward from the base of the building and into the ground. They were the same type of apparatus that housed his company’s long-distance cabling, meant to help them communicate on a closed network across the entire campus.

It was a communications building—small but most likely home to some sort of station-wide schematics, internal diagrams, or something else that might be useful.

“Mark, come inside with Erik and me. Saunders and Mason, stay behind and keep watch for anything suspicious. I don’t want us to all get caught inside that building. We’ll be sitting ducks.”

Mark and Erik followed closely behind Carter and entered the small shack. It was dusty and dark, but Carter found a working light switch. Dust covered everything, but Mark could see lights blinking on and off below the thick layer of silt, and he could smell the heated electronics. This place is on and working.

He immediately started looking around. Stacks of processors sat along one wall, surprisingly small considering the decade in which the station was built, and rows of computer monitors sat on a waist-high table along another.

“Know what any of this junk is?” asked Erik.

Mark didn’t answer, but began dusting off one of the monitors. He reached below the table, slid out a keyboard, and began to examine the screen. He typed in a string of commands, then another. And another.

“It doesn’t seem to be responding. I’m not sure what it’s waiting for.”

“A password, maybe?” Erik and Carter watched over his shoulder, staring at the blinking cursor on the otherwise blank screen.

“No. At least, I don’t think so. It’s a command prompt screen, like DOS or BASIC, but it’s not responding to the usual commands. Maybe it needs—”

“Hey, check this out,” Erik said from behind Mark. He spun to see the large man flipping through a book on the other side of the small room. “I found a manual or something.”

Mark joined him, and together they looked at the front cover. The first page was faded almost beyond recognition, but they could see the pale outline of some kind of computer company logo.

Erik flipped the page, the flimsy manual almost falling apart in his hands, and Mark gasped.

“Look,” he said, pointing at the bottom of the left-side page. “It’s a copyright page.”

Carter spoke from behind him. “Does that say ‘Copyright 1998’?”

“It does,” Mark said. “All rights reserved.”

“Wait—why does a research station that was built in the seventies have a computer manual from the nineties in it?” Erik asked.

“For the same reason, there would be modern computers down here. Because, Erik, this place wasn’t abandoned in the eighties as we thought. There’ve been visitors since then.”

Carter seemed to be focused on the stacks of binders and manuals resting on the table behind Mark. Mark’s eyes wandered over and noticed the titles on some of them.

“Look at this. ‘Energy Systems, Agartha: Storm.’ You think that’s Mitchell Storm?”

Carter reached for it, dusted off the cover, and flipped it open. “Yes, you’re right. ‘Mitchell Storm, Three Mile Island.’”

Erik spoke from across the room. “I’m sorry, wait. Three Mile Island, the site of the nuclear meltdown?”

“Right. In the ‘70s, in Pennsylvania,” Carter said. “We know Storm was working there at the time of the meltdown, but we have no idea what happened to him after. We assume he went to work for Nouvelle Terre.”

Mark turned a few pages, then read the section heading aloud. “Energy Control Mechanisms and Maintenance - Section I. I think this is a good bet. Mark, want to take a look?”

Mark didn’t know anything about energy systems—certainly not geothermal or nuclear reactors—but he grabbed the binder anyway. He read for a few minutes while Erik and Carter glanced through other binders on the table. “It says the geothermal plant will be a core component of the base, basically stretching from the lowest levels—Ten through Fourteen—to the main level.”

He read on, trying to make sense of the highly technical drawings, graphs, and text. “I think the plant is the main reason the base was built. There’s a quote here: ‘Agartha Base, referencing Alexandre Saint-Yves d'Alveydre’s account of the subterranean world of the same name, will feature an enhanced machinery component larger in size, scope, and energy output than any other modern power facility of similar design.’” Mark paused for emphasis and looked up at his captive audience as he read the next part. “‘Agartha Base will, assuming positive test results, be capable of powering the equivalent of a major metropolitan area without the need for redundant or chained systems.’”

“This base, then, is a prototype?” Erik asked.

“I don’t know. So far, though, it doesn’t seem like it. This place has been running continuously for over thirty years, self-contained, energy independent, and without any major breakdowns. My guess is that this is the real deal.”

“Hold on,” Erik said, flipping back a page in the binder. “This is not right. I mean, this is different than what I have seen.”

Mark didn’t understand what he was talking about, but he let the man finish. The diagram in front of them was a cross-section of what looked like the base; all levels were stacked on top of one another, and with their round circumferences, the cross-section of the base had the appearance of a giant sphere, the top half of which was above ground, and the bottom half built directly into the Earth’s crust. The bottom four levels—like the map from the main atrium—contained a large machine in the center of the sections. The machine here in the book, however, was much larger than the one referenced on the map.

“I have seen a geothermal plant. This is one. See how it continues down below the station? It is built into the crust itself and is therefore more efficient.”

Mark and Carter saw what Erik was talking about. The plant they were looking at was shaped like a cone, upside-down, with the point of it pointing straight downward.

“This is incorrect, though. It is not useful to build one with a point like this. It makes no sense.”

“Well, I’m sure they knew what they were doing,” Mark said.

“They did, but I am not sure that the builders intended this machine to be used explicitly for energy production, at least in the traditional sense. I studied for a semester at a geothermal power plant in Siberia. A traditional plant will essentially have one pipe that carries water or steam up into the plant and another that injects the water back underground.”

“What’s the point?” Mark asked. “Maybe this one’s more powerful?”

“A larger pipe doesn’t necessarily lead to more energy withdrawal. Further, this is a completely different design. It almost looks like a corkscrew. I cannot believe it is simply a larger version of a geothermal power plant.”

“Okay,” Carter interrupted. “Impressive. But what does Nouvelle Terre want with it?”

Erik opened his mouth to offer an answer to Carter’s question, but a man’s voice yelled from outside. “Carter! Move out—we’ve got company!”

25

Dr. Pavan had spent the last five years of his professional life on the lecture circuit. He wasn’t able to pull down the same amount of money as a guru motivational speaker, but in his field—marine archeology—there was enough grant money floating around that enough of it seemed to come his way.

During his tenure at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, he’d taught a total of three classes—graduate Archeological and Geological Oceanography, three semesters back-to-back—and spent the rest of his time traveling for guest lectures.

When he’d discovered a new form of marine plant life, a bacteria that thrived equally well in deepwater vents reaching temperatures of over five hundred degrees Fahrenheit as it did in the chilled waters surrounding them, he chose to write his paper, to the dismay of many of his esteemed peers, in the nonacademic vernacular.

Essentially, the paper was an article fit for the cover story of a Popular Science magazine. Not surprisingly, that magazine approached Dr. Pavan and offered him a hefty sum to write another article, this time “distilling the information to make it accessible to the common hobbyist.”

He complied and soon found himself the author of multiple pieces of popular nonfiction in competing industry magazines, trade publications, and the guest of a few TV talk shows. His fame in the academic oceanography world soon grew, as did his monthly income and celebrity status.

When he was approached by Daniel Carter and his team, he wasn’t sure to what extent he’d be useful to the mission. There was the obvious need for scientific knowledge, but most of the details he’d received were vague or completely unstated. His interest in the mysterious, unknown properties of the deep ocean was what finally tipped the scales. Aside from that, his publisher, who only knew that Dr. Pavan’s leave of absence would possibly end in a commercially-viable book, urged him to take the assignment.

So he was here, under five miles of ocean, walking freely on a patch of dry ocean rock. His initial shock of the locale was quickly replaced by the sheer amount of research he’d be able to do.

His half group—Jen, Nelson, and himself—had been studying the rock outcroppings for almost an hour. Nelson wasn’t much help, and after fifteen minutes, relegated himself to fiddling with his gun at the opposite side of the cavern. He and Jen continued their scientific banter.

“Do you think the scratches here are the same? They seem to have similar properties,” Jen said.

“I do. The substantive evidence we have here—albeit not much—seems to indicate that. What I do not understand, however, is why they are here.”

“Well, we’re assuming they’re here for the same reason they’re all over Lindsay’s body?”

“Yes. But again, why? Why did they end up on this wall if they were attacking Lindsay? And if not, why did they end up on Lindsay?” Dr. Pavan asked.

“Again, let’s consider what we have,” Jen offered. “We know they exist in streaks of four parallel lines, each streak crisscrossing one another in seemingly random ways. Some of the streaks are made up of lines that are about an inch apart, while others are made up of lines that are much closer together.”

“Which would imply what?”

Nelson spoke from the other side of the room. “Seems obvious, don’t it? The lines are from hands, and the difference in the distances are because the hands are from different people.”

Dr. Pavan and Jen exchanged a glance.

“What is that supposed to mean, Mr. Nelson?”

Nelson let out a harumph but answered the question. “Just what I said it did—no more, no less. Lindsay was attacked by more than one attacker. It’s a group, most likely, living in the caves or somewhere else in the station.”

“That much is obvious, Nelson,” Jen said. “Where else would they come from?”

“Where else would anyone come from?” he asked in return. “My guess would be humans, judging by the height of the scratches on the wall, the lack of anything else resembling life we’ve found so far, and the severe amount of understaffing they’ve got here nowadays.”

Dr. Pavan didn’t like what the man was implying, but he had to admit he had a point. Jen’s raised eyebrows suggested she agreed. He sighed. “Okay, I didn’t think about the height of the scratches. They go from about seven feet above the cave floor to no less than two…” he stepped toward the wall and placed his open palm against one of the streaks, “meaning that they could indeed have been caused by a human.”

Jen looked back at Nelson. “What else do you assume about this situation? Anything that might help us out?”

“Yeah. Sure. Seems like we’re in over our heads if you ask me. But hell, I ain’t got a choice in the matter. I’m a loyal member of the team, you know?” He lifted the side of his mouth in a quirky grin. “Besides, I ain’t the brains behind this operation. You two are. I’m here to protect you. Lend a hand, keep you out of trouble, you know.”

“I feel better already,” Jen said.

Dr. Pavan found himself agreeing with the merc. “I don’t know, Jen. He’s got a point. There aren’t any staff members or researchers still here other than Bingham, and we don’t even know where he is. Plus, he’s not exactly sane, if you ask me,” he said.

“You heard him yourself, Doctor. He’s the only remaining member of a team who left years ago. He probably stayed back to manually launch the sub and close the docking station.”

Dr. Pavan frowned. “Right. It all seems odd, though. Why did one member choose to stay behind?”

Nelson answered. “Probably didn’t. Shortest straw, or something.”

“I don’t think so. This doesn’t seem like the type of place where someone would want to be isolated for very long. I cannot imagine wanting to maintain all of the systems here alone.”

“Well,” Jen said, “I know there were labs and all kinds of research buildings on Level Four, not to mention what we might find on the other levels. Maybe we can meet up with Carter up there and figure more out?”

Nelson jumped up. “I’m in. I hate dark places, and this place has been giving me the creeps since we came in.”

Dr. Pavan thought for a moment. There wasn’t anything here they could do, especially since they’d exhausted their evidence. Their understanding so far was based on hypothesis, basic analysis—they had no equipment—and fantastical theories. “Sure. Let’s get to the main level, meet up with them, and—”

A distant noise reverberated through the caves.

“Was that a gunshot?” Jen asked.

“Hard to tell, but with them bogies running around, I’d bet it was,” Nelson said. His gun lay in pieces on the ground, and when Jen swung her light around to Nelson’s body, Dr. Pavan saw the man assemble the rifle in what had to be record time. “Ready,” he said, clicking a magazine into place.

“Let’s get up there and have a look around,” Dr. Pavan said. He tried to stifle the fear that he felt creeping into his voice.

26

Carter dropped the binder he was holding, moved his gun around to the front of his body, and ran out the small door. He turned immediately to the right, stopped, and lifted his gun. “Get down!” The order was directed toward Mason and Saunders. The two soldiers dropped prone to the ground simultaneously, allowing Carter to fire a few shots over their heads. Mason twisted around and did the same.

Mark saw what they were firing at. A group of four black-clad military gunmen had positioned themselves about two hundred yards away, behind one of the fish hatchery buildings. They had yet to fire, but Mark knew that was soon to change.

He ducked behind Carter, but Carter ran to his teammates’ side. Erik stumbled out of the communications shed, dumbstruck, and Mark snapped into action. “Follow him,” he shouted, grabbing Erik’s arm and forcing him forward.

They ran to the others and hid against a long white wall, another in the sprawling fish hatchery compound.

Mark felt helpless as he stood behind the building with Erik and watched the three soldiers hold their position against the opposing force. Carter and Saunders yelled for him and Erik to follow them. Mason stayed to make sure none of the others were following, and together they ran alongside the hatchery building toward a group of round silos in the distance. As Mark saw where they were heading, he shouted forward to Carter.

“Don’t you think they’ll split and try to flank us? There were enough of them.”

Carter didn’t respond until they reached the first of the three silos. There, he turned and answered. “You’re right, but we needed to get somewhere somewhat isolated, so we can see them coming.”

Mark knew he was right. The silos were along the side of the dome, bound on three sides by open fields and on the fourth by the rock wall. This side of the rock wall was not the same side they’d exited from before, but Mark knew from the map layout that there was another entrance into the cave system somewhere around here. He understood immediately the ingenuity of Carter’s decision. They couldn’t return to the cave entrance near the housing district, as the enemy forces had cut them off. If they had to stay and fight, they were at least in a somewhat defensible position now, but they also had the option of retreating to the caves as a last resort.

Carter showed Mark his sidearm, a lightweight Glock, and asked if he knew how to use it.

“I’ve shot before,” Mark responded.

Carter explained to him how to turn the safety on and off, how to hold it, and then handed the gun to him. Saunders did the same with Erik, and then Carter gave them all a brief overview of the plan.

“These guys are most likely going to split up, flanking us from the sides. We still don’t know who they are, but they’re military trained. Probably mercenaries or private. Keep your eyes open and be ready to move.”

As soon as he delivered the order, Mason shouted from the right side. “Boss, I’ve got eyes on. Two o’clock, behind the last hatchery building. They definitely know we’re here.”

“Right. Engage. Saunders, get this left side with me. Let’s see if the other half of them are coming around too.”

Mason waited a moment to get a better shot, then fired off three rounds in succession. A black-clad mercenary on his knees fell forward and lay still on the ground next to the hatchery building. Just as quickly, another soldier took his place and fired back. Mark tried to move next to Mason to help out, but the larger man pushed him back. “You’re in the line of fire. Just stay on my six and don’t let anyone get behind us.”

Mark looked over to Erik and saw that he was having even more trouble being useful. He and Saunders were at the other of the round silo, but Erik wasn’t even looking around the edge of the structure. Instead, he was crouched on the ground, covering his ears. Must be a little skittish, Mark thought.

Saunders wasn’t firing her weapon, so he assumed the only enemy contact they’d had so far was on their side of the silo. Still, he knew they wouldn’t all gather on one side of the building, waiting in line to be shot at.

He looked up and tried to spot Carter. He found him looking toward the caves behind the silos. The man had fallen back even farther, trying to cover an approach from the rear. He considered trying to run over to him but knew he’d be dead weight in the middle of an attack.

Mason yelled beside him. “I’m hit!”

Mark looked over just as the man fell backward on the dirt. His body swiveled around as he landed, his feet falling toward Mark. Mark saw that the bullet had hit Mason’s right arm and reached down to help him. He first grabbed the man’s gun, as Mason had dropped it beside him as he fell.

“Come on, we can get that patched up,” Mark said. Mason’s left hand was covering the wound, and his face was contorted in pain, but both knew the wound was far from fatal.

Saunders shouted over at them. “Mason, get back! They’re moving in!”

Mark looked again and noticed what she was yelling about. Mason’s head was exposed, lying past the edge of the silo. Mark reached down to pull Mason’s legs and pull him out of the way. “Mason, I need to get you back out of the way—”

It was too late. Mark heard one shot of a distant rifle—unique in the din of all the others—before he realized that it had found its mark. Mason’s eyes bulged open, then his entire body got very still. It was a quick death, but to Mark, it was stunning, absolute. He fell back, sitting on the ground now. He punched his fist hard into the dirt.

Out of nowhere, Carter was there. “Let’s go,” he said, his voice short and gruff. Mark stood, briefly locked eyes with Erik, and the two followed Saunders and Carter back to the two other silos.

“Should, uh, shouldn’t we get Mason?” Mark asked when they’d reached the open expanse between the back silo and the rock wall.

“Can’t do anything for him now,” Carter said. Mark took this in, then looked up at the others. Only Saunders was looking—glaring—at him.

“We’re going back to the caves. We can defend our position better from there,” Carter said. “On my count.”

But the count never came. Instead, Mark felt a whoosh next to his head, and he instinctively dropped to the ground just as the bullet’s sound caught up to him. They’re already here. The others hit the ground as well—Erik lying prone, Carter and Saunders crouching on a knee.

“Ok, get to the caves,” Carter said, his voice raised to carry over the rising sound of gunfire. “Move! I’ll cover!”

Saunders and Erik immediately sprang into action; Saunders stood quickly, fired, and then sprinted toward the cavern opening. Erik ran a few steps behind, his speed almost matching Saunders’.

Mark waited to see what Carter needed, but the man was already engaging in return fire. Carter yelled again for him to move, but Mark could barely hear him over the sound of automatic weapons, their explosions reverberating and bouncing through the trio of silos and bouncing back off of the rock wall.

Mark had the pistol and Mason’s rifle, but he wasn’t sure how Carter would react if Mark began firing at the oncoming forces. He decided he’d risk it.

“Hold on, I got your back,” he shouted at Carter as he strode alongside him. Carter was kneeling on the ground, so Mark stood, using the silo’s wall as cover for his left side.

Carter just gave a curt nod as he continued holding the others at bay. Mark’s shots were generally too high to be of any use, but the racket of two men, instead of one, firing back at the enemy seemed to hold them behind the first silo.

It was then that Mark realized they weren’t holding them back. Instead, they were holding only two of the ten or so soldiers behind the silo. As he fired toward them, he realized it was the same two men firing back at him. Further still, their shots were consistently wide, missing both him and Carter. The distance between them was considerable, but it certainly wasn’t enough for trained men to fret over. They’re missing on purpose, Mark thought.

Carter was thinking the same thing. “There are only two behind that silo. Do you see the others?”

Mark was about to respond when Carter’s magazine clicked. He emptied his and reached for another, then turned to get back behind the cover of the building.

Suddenly an explosion rocked them. It was far away, but close enough to shake the ground they were standing on. Mark felt his body pushed forcefully against the silo’s wall from the blast. It subsided quickly, and he turned to look at Carter.

“What is it?” Mark asked, watching Carter out of the corner of his eye. He took a brief moment to glance back and followed Carter’s stare.

There, behind them, was a group of soldiers. All armed, and all staring at Carter and Mark.

Each was dressed in black fatigues, but Mark couldn’t see any insignia on their uniforms. They carried assault rifles, and each wore a black skull cap over their head.

One of them stepped forward and motioned with his gun. Somehow Carter understood the simple command. He dropped the magazine on the ground, set his gun down, and stood. Mark followed suit, raising his hands over his head.

Another mercenary was jogging back to the group. Behind him, Mark could see a large cloud of smoke billowing from the cave opening. The opening Saunders and Erik had entered less than fifteen seconds ago.

27

More shots rang out from somewhere ahead, and the trio ran faster. They exited the caves through the opening that spilled them out onto the housing district’s concrete street, but they took a sharp right and followed the cave wall around. A few hundred feet later, Nelson stopped and held up a hand. Jen and Dr. Pavan halted abruptly behind him.

“Wait. Let’s see if we can’t get a bead on who’s shooting,” he said. He held up his rifle and looked through the scope. “Can’t see anyone, but I definitely hear it coming from those white buildings over there.”

He didn’t point, but Jen and Dr. Pavan followed the direction of his gun and peered around him. Jen couldn’t see anyone either, but Nelson seemed to be right. The shots were sporadic, punctuating the air every few seconds. Not enough to be an outright battle, but certainly someone was trying to keep someone else pinned down to one location.

Nelson started forward again and made it to the last of the houses along the rail track. He moved from the rock wall to the rear of the house for more cover, and again held up his gun.

“Crap, I don’t hear anything now,” he muttered.

“Do you see anything yet?” Dr. Pavan asked.

“Negative. Let’s wait here a second and see what happens.”

Suddenly an explosion farther away shook the ground beneath them. The distant, hollow sound seemed more like thunder than an explosion, but Nelson knew better. “That was a grenade, or some kind of small-arms incendiary device.”

“Was it us or them?” Jen asked.

“Them. We’re not carrying that kind of firepower,” Nelson replied. “Too bad, too. I could’ve used something like that earlier. Bastards.”

He turned to the two civilians, eyed them up and down, and then delivered instructions. “We’re gonna go check it out. Can’t just sit back and wait around, right? Maybe the party ain’t over yet.”

He jogged away as Jen and Dr. Pavan followed. Jen felt adrenaline coursing through her body and tried to will it toward keeping her focused, alert. Pavan stayed next to her, running at an easy pace.

They passed two of the buildings, and Jen noticed the smell of fish in the air. It was old, but not rotten, like what she imagined a fresh fish market smelled like the day after the fish were sold. As they ran past the second building, a lump to Jen’s left caught her eye.

“Hold on, guys. There’s something over here.”

She stopped at the lump. It was a human body, one of the soldiers. Nelson kicked it over with his toe, and the limp body fell flat on its back. The face and body were completely covered in black clothing, face paint, and gloves, and they could now see a bloody wound on the man’s midsection.

Looking closer, Jen noticed that the man’s eyes were dark, almost black. His face was rugged and fit, and his high cheekbones gave him an almost handsome youthfulness. “Looks Russian,” Nelson said. He bent down, shuffled through the man’s pockets, and retrieved a few scraps of paper and a receipt. “Nothing to identify him, but it looks like he bought a coffee before the trip.”

“You think they’re all Russian?” Dr. Pavan asked.

“Most likely. Probably a mercenary squad of some sort. Doubt they’re affiliated with their own government—at least not directly.”

He gave the man a final pat-down but didn’t find anything of worth. The soldier’s comrades had taken his weapon and sidearm, and even his combat knife. A sheath attached to his belt lay empty.

Nelson was about to stand again but stopped short. He frowned, then reached his hand out to the man’s head. The mercenary wore a black skull cap, but his was pulled slightly up, revealing an inch of shaved scalp around his ears.

“What is it?” Jen asked.

Nelson didn’t answer. He reached toward the man’s head, feeling right above the man’s ear. He muttered something inaudible, and Jen and Dr. Pavan knelt down beside him.

“Feel this,” he said.

Jen reached out and felt where Nelson’s fingers were. She couldn’t feel anything at first—just the sandpapery texture of a recently shaved head. She pushed a little harder, and her fingers met resistance. Wiggling around with her index and middle fingers, she felt the outline of a perfect circle. Small, hard, and round, something was just inside the dead soldier’s head.

“Weird,” Nelson said. His tone conveyed nothing. If he was surprised that the soldier had a piece of jewelry embedded in his skull, Jen couldn’t tell. She watched as Nelson unsheathed his own knife—a monstrous KA-BAR military blade—and pointed it down toward the merc’s ear.

“Don’t!” Jen said. She and Dr. Pavan stood up.

“What?” Nelson asked. “Aren’t you a little curious?”

She didn’t say anything, but Dr. Pavan gave a slight nod toward Nelson. Nelson grinned and then poked gently with his knife.

Blood oozed out around the blade, but there was only a little, and it didn’t seem to bother him. He made a few incisions, and then pushed on the skin just below the lump. Wriggling it around for a moment, he eventually freed the object from the soldier’s head and caught it in his bare hand.

Nelson wiped off his hand and the object with a section of the fallen soldier’s shirt, then stood.

Jen and Dr. Pavan instinctively stepped forward, curious as to what the object really was.

It was shiny, made of metal, and a perfectly round disk. It looked just like a miniature hockey puck except for a small glass bubble on one side of the disk. Jen couldn’t see any marks, features, or noteworthy characteristics on it otherwise.

“Well, I’ll be,” Nelson said. “What do you think it is?”

Dr. Pavan scrutinized the object carefully for a few seconds before shrugging. “Beats me,” he said, and looked up at the other two.

Nelson shrugged as well and then placed the small object in one of his vest pockets. “Maybe we’ll hold on to it awhile; see if anything comes of it.”

Jen was about to ask to see it when a high-pitched whine emanated from out of nowhere. She grabbed her ears and spun, trying to locate the source. “What is that noise?” she asked.

Nelson squinted in pain, clearly hearing it as well, though not able to cover his ears with full hands. “No idea, but it ain’t pretty. Let’s keep moving.”

They started walking alongside the buildings, moving slower now in case they came across more bodies. Jen reached the end of the row of fish-smelling buildings first and turned around to wait for the others.

Her eyes widened.

“What?” Nelson asked, still squinting from the painfully high-pitched noise.

She didn’t speak, but she felt her mouth moving to form words. “I—I…”

Nelson and Pavan realized that her eyes weren’t on them, but behind them. They turned to see what had caught her attention.

“Holy mother of—” Nelson muttered under his breath. Dr. Pavan began walking backward, not speaking.

Approaching them from the first of the buildings was a group of people, most wearing white lab coats. They were walking, but not all were standing upright. Their faces were obscured, but Jen could see their heads lolling around, not quite looking at them, but not quite looking away.

“Keep moving, guys,” Nelson said softly. “Let’s get to those three silos out there before we do anything else.”

The group, about ten strong, kept up with them, but Jen continuously looked over her shoulder as they jogged. They reached the silos in another minute and turned to see that the swarm of scientists had, in fact, kept pace with them, the distance between the two groups remaining constant.

Nelson turned to Jen and Pavan. “Should I…should I shoot them?” he asked.

“No!” Jen responded. “We don’t know who they are or if they’re hurt.” She thought for a moment, then called out to them. “Hey! Who are you? Don’t get any closer!”

“Jen,” Dr. Pavan whispered, “maybe we shouldn’t call attention to ourselves?”

“Big deal,” Jen said. “They already know we’re here. What harm could it do?”

The swarm kept coming. The man in the front of the group—in his sixties, with grayish hair, and huge glasses—began walking a bit faster. He reached the opening between the buildings and the silos and started closing the distance. Jen backed away from the clearing as Nelson raised his rifle.

“Just say the word, Jen, and I’ll blow his brains out,” Nelson muttered.

“Stop it. He might be able to help us.”

The man was about fifteen feet away when he broke into a run. He wasn’t fast, nor was he efficient—the “running” was really a combination of stumbling, tripping, and falling forward. But he was going to reach them in a few seconds nonetheless.

“Go!” Nelson shouted, turning and running between the three silos. Jen and Dr. Pavan followed. They rounded the edge of the second silo and stopped again, waiting to see what the newcomer might do.

“Did you hear that?” Jen asked.

She cocked her head toward the noise and soon heard it again—a groan.

A man’s groan. She felt her heart flutter as she stepped out from the silo’s edge and ran toward the third and final silo in the group. On the other side of the silo, she saw him.

On the ground, blood pooling around his head, was Carter.

She called back for help and knelt down beside him.

“Carter. Carter, it’s Jen. Are you okay?”

His eyelids fluttered, then opened slightly. He let out a deep moan.

Jen checked his vitals and tried to see what had caused the bleeding. She found a gash on the side of the man’s head—large, but not deep. He’d been hit with something.

“Carter, can you talk? What happened?”

He looked up at her as the other two in the group arrived. Nelson immediately reached for a small first aid kit on his belt and began rifling through the objects inside. He found a roll of gauze and began to unwrap it.

Dr. Pavan reached for the canteen that was hanging on Carter’s side, tore off a sleeve of his own shirt, and then doused the cloth in some water. “This won’t be completely sanitary, but we might be able to get it clean enough.”

Nelson nodded, now beginning to wrap the gauze bandage around his commanding officer’s head. “What happened to you, boss?” he asked.

Carter looked up at them, breathed in heavily, then spoke. “They—they took…” his voice trailed off, but he kept looking up at them.

“Is he alright?” Jen asked.

“He’s fine. Probably a minor concussion, but if we can keep him awake and functioning, he’ll just walk away with a helluva headache. Here, help me with this.” He lifted Carter’s head a few inches and slid the gauze underneath. Jen grabbed it and finished the wrapping, tucking the end into one of the strands.

“Carter, who are they? And who did they take?” Jen asked. She felt she knew the answer to both questions already, but she needed to get him talking and thinking coherently.

The man tried again. “They took… they took Mark…”

Jen’s heart sank. Hearing the words made it true. But there was a pinprick of hope, a suspicion that if they took him, that meant he was probably still alive.

Nelson and Dr. Pavan lifted Carter to a sitting position. As they did, Jen remembered the prior predicament they were in. She turned around.

The man was standing a foot behind her, just in the shadow of the silo. He’d somehow crept up on all of them silently and had been standing there—how long?

She gasped, startling the three men.

“Holy…” Nelson said, reaching for his gun.

Dr. Pavan used his free hand and placed it on Nelson’s arm. “Jen’s right, Nelson, we don’t know who he is or what he wants. Let’s just keep moving and try to lose them in the caves.”

The caves, Jen thought. She looked up and beyond the three men and saw a large, dark opening in the distance. They’d made it to the other Level Four opening.

She reached down and helped move Carter to his feet, grabbing him by his belt. The other two men carried him under his arms, but after a few shaky moments, they found Carter was capable of mostly holding his own weight.

They walked on, the weird scientist following them.

“Uh, Jen,” Nelson asked as he shifted Carter’s weight to his other arm, “what if these guys don’t actually leave us alone?”

She’d been thinking about the same thing, but she didn’t yet have a satisfactory answer. “We’ll just hope they do. Keep that gun loaded, soldier.”

They made it to the cave opening and stepped inside. It was similarly dark and as cramped as the tunnel they’d entered and exited in the housing district, and they knew from the map that these openings were part of the cave system. The smell of magnesium and a recent explosion filled their nostrils, but there were no fires burning.

But they hadn’t been inside this part of it, and they all wondered if, by entering, they were putting themselves—literally—between a rock and a hard place.

28

“Reese, will you please talk to me?”

The woman had been pleading with him for an hour. He had barely spoken, but she wouldn’t let him be.

Reese was still in the room, still sitting on the bed. He’d realized after almost a day that this was, essentially, a jail cell. But they hadn’t hurt him. The woman—Sylvia, she’d said—just kept coming in every few hours, sometimes giving him food, and always trying to get him to talk more.

“Can you tell me about your dad?”

He didn’t want to talk to her or anyone. He’d cried, and now he felt like he couldn’t cry anymore. He still missed his family, of course, but he was smart enough to realize that they weren’t trying to hurt him. They just needed him for something.

“What does your dad do for a living, Reese?”

She already knew the answer. He was sure of it. That was just it. She was treating him like he was a child. He was twelve.

She obviously had no idea how to talk to kids, and so she took the approach of trying to trick him into thinking she was gentle, on his side.

He wasn’t an idiot.

He’d answered a few questions Sylvia asked him during the three previous visits, but he mainly just stared up at the ceiling until she left him alone.

Something about it all was weird, though. He’d seen some movies and TV shows and knew how people in this role were usually treated. He knew they were kept somewhere no one could find them until the people got what they wanted, and he knew they would quickly lose patience.

Maybe it was because this wasn’t a movie, but Sylvia hadn’t lost her patience yet. She just kept going on and on in that high-pitched annoying voice, and when she finally realized that he didn’t want to talk to her, she’d just sit there for a few minutes and then leave.

It was almost humorous to him. The lady wasn’t very good at this prisoner stuff.

He was getting annoyed with her and her voice and her constant questions. He wanted her to leave. He wanted to see his mom.

“Sylvia,” he said. He glanced over quickly to see the reaction on her face. It was the first time he’d used her name and the first time he’d addressed her directly rather than just answering her question. He thought her eyes were going to fall out of her head. “Why am I here?”

She shifted in the chair but didn’t answer.

“Why did you take me?”

“Now, Reese, I didn’t take—”

“I know. But you haven’t let me leave. So you basically took me,” he said.

“No, I just want to help you.”

“Then let me leave.” He considered getting up and walking to the locked door. What would she do? Did she even know what she’d do?

He decided to wait. “Sylvia, how come you won’t let me leave? Is someone telling you what to do?”

He watched her face. Her expression hardened just barely, then slackened again. “No,” she said. He waited for her to speak again to explain more, but she asked another question instead.

“Reese, I do want to help you, but you need to help me. What does your dad do? Where does he work? Do you know?”

Again, treating him like a child. “Yes, I know. You know too.”

She nodded. “Can you tell me about what he does?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because you won’t tell me why I’m here.”

“Do you remember what happened…when they took you?”

Good. She was talking now, telling him things instead of just asking stupid questions.

“Yes. They came and took me from my dad’s apartment. They broke a lot of stuff, but it was just a show. They didn’t hit me or anything, just told me to get in the car with them.”

He looked again at Sylvia. Did she not know this?

“And then what happened?”

“I—I fell asleep. I guess they gave me drugs or something, but I woke up here. Why?”

“Reese, I just want—“

“To help me,” Reese said, curtly.

“Right. To help you.”

“Okay, help me. I answer your questions, and you help me? Is that how it works?”

“Yes. Exactly, Reese.”

“You’ll let me go then? Will you find my mom and bring her?” He thought for a moment, realizing something. “Where’s my dad? Did they hurt him?”

“Mark, your father is fine. Your mother is as well.”

“So you do know who he is. Where is he?”

Sylvia stood up. I guess the conversation’s over, he thought. So much for that.

“Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“Do you know someone who does know?”

“No.”

He began to feel frustrated. He choked back more tears, knowing that she was lying to him.

“Please, why can’t you tell me anything? I’ve been good. I’ve answered your questions,” he said, his voice getting shaky.

Sylvia walked toward the door. “I’m sorry, Reese. I want to help you; I really do. But I have no control. I don’t make the decisions. I don’t know where your father—”

“Stop lying to me!” his voice came louder than he’d expected. He burst into tears, and he curled up on the bed. He waited, crying, but the door never opened.

Slowly, he turned around and saw Sylvia looking directly at him.

“Reese, if you promise not to tell, I can see where your father is.”

He waited.

“I can tell him you miss him.”

“You don’t know where he is,” Reese said.

She sighed. “I do. I’m sorry.”

Finally, she turned and walked toward the door. She knocked on it, and it opened from the outside. She briskly stepped through, but turned back toward him. “I know where he is because I just saw him. He’s here, Reese, and I’ll tell him you miss him.”

29

They jogged in silence for a few minutes, their way lit by Nelson’s powerful flashlight beam sweeping left to right in a steady rhythm. They passed yard after yard of flat, ocean-formed walls, each step looking exactly like the last.

From the map, Jen remembered that this tunnel system had just three sections—the openings on Level Four in the housing district and behind the silos, and a split that descended and emptied onto a lower level. She couldn’t remember seeing any indication of whether or not the tunnel was just these three main stretches, or if there were other, smaller, dead-end tunnels that split off from the mains. It could be that the map’s creator was trying to simplify things, but since it was meant for use inside a research station full of scientists, she could imagine that everything identified on the map was precise and to scale.

Either way, they hadn’t seen a single fork or offshoot of the tunnel in the few minutes they’d been running. Their path was descending, slowly falling deeper into the crust from which the tunnel was formed. Nelson and Dr. Pavan shared the burden of Carter’s weight between them, though he had all but begun jogging on his own. He had, through short, stuttered speech between breaths, quickly explained what had happened back at the silos. Shortly after Saunders and Erik left them, he and Mark were ambushed by the Russian soldiers.

He was knocked out, but he saw one of the soldiers talking to Mark before he drifted away completely. When he woke up, he was bleeding, his head was throbbing in pain, and Jen was there with Nelson and Dr. Pavan.

Not much to go on, but it was better than nothing. Mark’s not dead, Jen thought again, trying to convince herself. If we can find Saunders and Erik, we can regroup and figure things out from a lower level. If Saunders and Erik are still alive… She remembered the explosion they’d heard from this opening in the cave.

She knew the answers must lie here in the station. Why was there so much mystery surrounding this place, and why was Nouvelle Terre caught up in it? Why were they being hunted? And, of course, the question that started it all: What is Nouvelle Terre looking for, and why do they need me?

The questions burned through her mind, though each was similarly impossible to answer. A lifetime of thinking scientifically forced her to race through hypotheses and not settle for any without further evidence. It all gave her a headache.

The path cut to the left, traveling away from the circular research station, and cut deeper still. They slowed, and Carter spoke from behind her.

“Who were those people behind us?”

They hadn’t talked again about the scientists since they found Carter at the silos, but Nelson responded immediately. “Bunch of crazies, boss. Just following us in that cluster. Probably still are.”

“We are not sure,” Dr. Pavan added. “Most were wearing lab coats, and I guess they fit the stereotype of ‘scientist.’”

“They did seem rather curious,” Nelson said.

“But they didn’t overtake us,” Carter said. “Why?”

“No idea. They wouldn’t get any closer to us than about thirty feet, except for that one guy. They seemed interested but not hostile,” Nelson said.

Yet, Jen thought. She thought it would be a good time as any to let the others know what she was really thinking. “I think they were the group that attacked Dr. Richards,” she said.

She stopped, catching her breath, and turned around. The three men behind her stopped in unison, and each stared blankly at her.

“You saw them, Doctor,” she said to Dr. Pavan, “and you and I both know they weren’t normal individuals. They were a herd, traveling together, but they weren’t communicating. They weren’t hunting us. They were analyzing us.”

“Analyzing us?” Nelson said.

“Trying to figure out who we were. But I think the man coming toward us figured it out. He wasn’t too happy with us, and I’d bet he wanted to do something about it.”

“Like scratch us to death?”

“Like scratch us to death.”

Carter was functioning properly now, standing erect in between the two other men. He eyed Jen curiously, his mind clearly racing through the strategic consequences. “Jen, do you think this can be proven?”

“Not right now. At least not without more observation. But I do know that we’ve got no other leads. Nothing else to go on.”

Dr. Pavan stepped toward Jen. “I agree. There’s not much else in the way of evidence to support an alternative theory. It might be in our best interest to assume, from here forward, that these…people…are predatory.”

“Great,” Nelson said. “Now we’ve got a bunch of Russian mercenaries trying to shoot us and a group of genius serial killers chasing us through caves. Wonderful. Anything else you can think of that’ll make this trip even worse?”

“Yeah. I still don’t even know what we’re doing here. What I’m supposed to be looking for,” Jen said.

Nelson nodded. “You’re right. That did make it worse.”

“It doesn’t matter. The more we explore, the more likely we’ll be able to piece this thing together. Let’s keep moving, get down to the lower levels, and see if there’s anything useful in the geothermal station down there,” Carter said.

Jen liked Carter’s dogged determination; he was always willing to work with what they had, no matter how little they had. He was a man of few words, stoic and solid. He was a realist, another thing Jen appreciated. No hyperbole, no optimism or pessimism. Just straight-up truth, with an acknowledgment of their current situation at all times.

“Hey,” Nelson said, “what happened to Bingham?”

The question hung in the air for a moment.

Jen thought a moment, wondering about the last time she’d seen him. He wasn’t with them when they’d heard the screams from Lindsay, and they hadn’t seen him since.

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” Dr. Pavan said. “I’d assumed he wandered off the night we found Lindsay. Didn’t think much of it, really.”

“Same here,” Nelson said, “I just think it’s a little odd that we haven’t bumped into him again.”

“What do you mean?” Carter asked, trying to get more from his team member.

“Well, I mean, he just came out of nowhere the first time around, you know? He ran up to us out there in the field, and he basically hovered for the rest of the day. Weird guy, but he almost seemed to enjoy the company.”

True, Jen thought. She was struck by a startling revelation. “I wonder if those people following us earlier really were scientists,” she said. “They were wearing lab coats, and a few fit the bill, but Bingham said he was the last of the twelve researchers down here.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Don’t you think Bingham’s mannerisms fit with theirs? Don’t you think they were acting strange, but in the same way Bingham was? What if the original twelve didn’t leave? What if Bingham is just one of them, and they’re all still here?”

“Doing what, exactly?” Dr. Pavan asked. His voice sounded skeptical, but Jen could tell from the man’s look that he had considered this option as well.

“Who knows? There are obviously more questions than answers at this point, but let’s assume they are. Bingham and the others were left here, and that means something major happened. The second submarine didn’t leave with them after all, but it’s clearly no longer here.”

Nelson’s eyebrows arched.

“What if the submarine was destroyed, sabotaged, or even simply launched empty? Those scientists would have been stranded here for decades, completely isolated and alone.”

“Yes,” Dr. Pavan conceded, “but that alone wouldn’t account for their odd behavior. If Bingham was completely alone, however, that indeed could account for the psychosis that we’ve experienced in him.”

Jen knew he was right, but it helped to hear it confirmed. Bingham’s solitude here for decades made sense; twelve scientists and researchers living here—even detached from the outside world—suffering from those same symptoms made much less sense.

“Okay, well, it seems like we’re back at square one,” Carter said, stepping forward. “We can’t figure this out here, so let’s keep moving.” He started walking, and Jen and the others followed closely behind.

“On Level Four, we found a small communications room that seemed to point to the lower levels as housing the geothermal power station itself. Erik seemed to know what he was talking about with it, too, and he thinks there’s a little more to it than just providing power to this station.”

“Let’s head to Level Nine: Rue Verte and work our way down. I think I remember seeing that one of them was labeled recreation, but all five of those lower levels are worth searching.”

They rounded a bend in the cave system, and Jen thought about Carter’s statement. Was there something more to this base than what they’d been told? Who knew the answer to that question? She knew she was in over her head, but there was no going back. Her son’s—and now her husband’s—life depended on it.

Jen still had no leads toward solving the mystery Nouvelle Terre wanted from her to decipher. She didn’t know why she was the one targeted by them or how she could possibly help anyone figure it out.

30

The walk seemed like an eternity. Jen could feel her calves aching; her feet had long ago become numb. They must have been as deep into the cave system as possible, and they still hadn’t come to a branch in the tunnel that would take them down to the lower levels.

She couldn’t imagine that this tunnel was a viable thoroughfare between the upper and lower levels. They’d passed stairs when they first entered Level Four; Jen assumed that must have been the main method of travel between the research station’s levels.

She wondered if Carter was getting tired. He was still leading the way, his flashlight bouncing across the dark path as they descended. They hadn’t stopped for a break, but they were walking slowly enough that Jen thought a break might be the last thing on Carter’s mind. She’d tried to start a conversation with the man about ten minutes ago, but he was equally as quiet as he was determined to persevere through the cave.

Nelson, on the other hand, wouldn’t shut up. The mercenaries had given Jen a complete rundown of his life: born outside Glasgow, raised in London, and educated in Germany. He joined the British Royal Marines as soon as he was of age, and after leaving the service, he’d served with Carter for the past five years.

He had an annoying voice, sharp and unpolished, yet she couldn’t help but like him. He was honest, straightforward, and spoke his mind, and Jen appreciated having someone fill the time with. “Nelson,” she’d asked, “how did you get your nickname?”

“Oh, you mean Hog, yeah?” he said. He took a deep breath. “No idea, actually. Couldn’t be my weight, obviously. They’ve been trying to fatten me up since basic, but nothing ever stuck. I guess it was the unit before. They—”

“It’s his nose,” Carter interjected. “And it was Saunders. She started it.”

“What? No it wasn’t,” Nelson said. “She never…what do you mean my nose?”

Jen laughed. “Don’t worry about it. It’s a nice nose.”

“I don’t get it. Is it odd? I ain’t the only one around with a queer nose…”

They let him continue for a minute until he had worked himself up into a frenzy. He finally stopped talking, grunted, and walked on in silence, frowning.

“Did you hear that?” Dr. Pavan whispered.

Carter had stopped walking, and he nodded, still facing forward. Jen and the other two men caught up and they all paused, listening.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Jen said.

“It was a voice, I swear,” Dr. Pavan said. “From that direction.”

They listened for another minute, but no one heard another sound. As Carter stepped forward, Dr. Pavan reached out and grabbed his arm. “Wait. Give me a second.”

“What is it?” Carter asked.

Dr. Pavan sniffed the air. “Do you smell that? I thought I caught a scent of something in the air.”

Jen immediately noticed it as well when Dr. Pavan mentioned it. “I do,” she said. “It’s—it’s familiar, almost like…”

“Almost like a big pile of sh—”

“Enough, Nelson,” Carter said. “I do smell it. It’s feces. Seems far off, though, but we’re getting closer to it. Come on.”

He started forward and raised his gun, involuntarily checking his ammunition as he walked. They picked up the pace, walking briskly toward the smell. It grew stronger with each passing step, until Jen found herself trying to breathe as little as possible.

“Carter, what are we doing? That smell is awful, and it’s just getting worse. We’re walking right into it.”

“We need to see what it is,” he said. “Plus, it’s the only way forward. I’ll get up around this next bend, and I want Nelson to cover me.”

Nelson clicked something on his weapon and jogged to catch up to Carter. Jen and Dr. Pavan stayed a few steps behind, but their curiosity wouldn’t let either of them stop.

Carter and Nelson reached the corner, and Carter stepped around. He pointed his flashlight down and slightly in front of his feet—an angle that would bounce the light upward enough to see but hopefully not enough to cause any undue excitement on whatever lay ahead.

Nelson followed his lead and did the same. “Bollocks,” he whispered under his breath as he took in the cavern in front of them.

Jen and Dr. Pavan reached the open space a second later, and both of the scientists’ eyes went wide. “Oh my God,” Jen said.

“You got that right.”

In front of them was another large, open cavern, like the one they found Lindsay’s body in earlier. This cavern was smaller, but it was filled almost six feet high along one wall with what looked to be a brown wall of mud. Jen knew intuitively that the “mud” was the cause of the smell, and she only had to look a few feet to the right to find the reason for it.

In the center of the cavern was an undulating mass of bodies—the white-coated scientists who’d followed them on the main level—clustered together and rocking gently back and forth. They didn’t appear to be doing anything but standing in a tight circle, pressing in on each other. It was as if they were a small colony of ants that had found a crumb. Their bodies pushed forward, vying for better positioning toward the group’s center.

“This is disgusting,” Nelson said. Jen realized he was still focused on the six-foot-high wall of human excrement, and he hadn’t yet seen the other inhabitants of the room. When he did, he was speechless.

“I don’t believe it,” Jen said. “It’s like they have a hive mentality. Look how they all move together, almost in unison.” She forced herself to keep her voice down, fearing retaliation from the group. The last thing they needed was to run up through the cave system to the surface, chased by these weird scientists.

“You’re right,” Dr. Pavan added. “They aren’t responding to the light—which, since they were in complete darkness before, is quite substantial—or to our voices.”

“But we don’t want to wake any up, either,” Nelson said. “So I’ll go ahead and keep whispering.”

Carter just stared.

“Their brain function isn’t totally there, although they can clothe themselves and speak,” Dr. Pavan said. “I wonder if we’re observing the effects of relative isolation over an extended period.”

“Not possible,” Jen said. “There are too many of them—enough for the environment’s constraints to disqualify isolation. Plus, they were of mature age when the period began. Effects like this are seen in cases when the onset of isolation is at a very young age.”

“We need to draw one away,” Nelson said.

Carter appeared stunned. “Why? They’re hostile, remember?”

“I know. But we found something on one of those Russian soldiers earlier. A beacon or something.”

“A beacon? Where?”

“Well, uh, it was in his head.”

Carter looked at Jen. She nodded, and Nelson continued. “It was just under the skin, right on his right temple. I saw something there, and then felt something hard and round. I cut this out.” He handed Carter the miniature hockey puck he’d taken from the Russian soldier.

Carter turned the device over in his hands but didn’t speak.

“We can’t just start shooting—the noise would be too much. Plus, we don’t need to hurt them yet, either, before we figure out what’s going on.”

Jen was surprised at Nelson’s intuition. She agreed, then offered a suggestion to Carter. “Maybe we can run across the side; try to get their attention. I’ll get to the other side and keep going through the caves. If they follow me, you can stay back and then grab one of the people lingering behind.”

“And then how will you get them to stop following us?” Dr. Pavan asked.

It was a legitimate question, but Jen was prepared for it. “We’ve got to be close to the split, right? We’ll take the one that descends down to the lower level. If they follow us through that as well, we’ll just get to the level and figure something out there.”

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a plan. Carter seemed to agree. He nodded at Jen. “You heard her, Nelson. You three get along that wall—cover your mouths and noses; no need to breathe that, uh, crap—and then get out of the cavern quickly. If they’re not following you when you find the other side, give them some space and then make some noise. I’ll see if I can grab one of them, feel for that device on their temple, and then I’ll follow you down. Ready?”

As soon as he asked the question, a low growl emanated from the cluster of scientists and station workers. The undulating stopped, and the entire group grew still.

“I think they woke up,” Nelson said.

Two of the members of the group peeled away and turned toward them. Both were wearing t-shirts stained from years of wear and dark blue chinos. Their shoes—work boots—spoke volumes. These men were, at least in another life, part of the maintenance crew of the research station, probably on an original assignment that was only supposed to last a year or two.

One of the two workers looked straight at Jen and spoke. “Why you? Where… where from?”

He staggered forward, followed closely by the other worker. By now, the others in the group had turned and were watching the exchange. Except for the two workmen, neither Carter’s group nor the group in the center of the cavern had moved.

Jen thought for a moment. Should she respond? She found herself struggling internally between the instinct to flee, to protect herself, and the desire to engage these fellow humans. However distraught they were, they were still people.

The curiosity in her won out. She stepped up next to Carter. “Wait,” she said. The two men stopped. Were they listening, or were they simply surprised to hear her voice? “Don’t walk forward. Can you tell me who you are?” She specifically addressed the man closest to her. She could also see him more clearly now—tall, dark, and handsome, except for the hollow eyes and lifeless, hanging face. His t-shirt said Led Zeppelin, either a favorite classic rock band of his or a favorite modern rock band, depending on when the man had been resigned to his fate here at the bottom of the sea.

She asked again. “Who are you? Do you work here?”

“Yes. Work. Yes work. Live.”

It was an odd response, but it was familiar to them. Bingham, she thought. This is how Bingham talks.

She knew at once that Bingham wasn’t telling the truth earlier. He may have been trying, but the scientists he mentioned hadn’t, in fact, left with the last submarine years ago. Those scientists, Bingham included, hadn’t gone anywhere.

She was staring at them.

The man looked around at the others, as if noticing Dr. Pavan, Nelson, and Carter for the first time. Jen also noticed that Carter was holding his gun up, pointed directly at the man. The man’s eyes stopped on the gun, and he frowned, his head cocked to the side.

“You… hunter. You hunter. Hunter.”

He mumbled the words, a small drop of saliva forming on the side of his mouth as he repeated the two words over and over again.

Jen felt a pang of guilt. What happened here? Who did this to them? This reaction wasn’t natural. This behavior wasn’t caused by environmental factors.

“No, no, I’m not,” Carter said, his voice calm and steady. His gun didn’t waver, but he continued to explain to the man. “My name is Daniel Carter. This is my team—Jen Adams, Dr. Sanjay Pavan, and Stuart Nelson. We are inside the base—”

Carter’s last sentence was cut off by a loud scream. The cavern’s rock walls reverberated the noise endlessly through the chamber, causing Jen to hold her ears. The scream was echoed by the rest of the group, who had now all started walking slowly toward them. They screamed—a guttural, rabid noise—at Jen and the rest, not just in response to something Carter said. Except for the first scream, it was a simultaneous reaction; a deafening sound that physically vibrated the cave walls around them.

The hair on Jen’s neck stood up. A terrifying helplessness overcame her, and she felt her lip quiver. Was this how it had ended for Lindsay?

The two workmen froze in place, and their heads both turned to the side slowly. Their eyes didn’t leave Carter’s, and when their necks were bent almost at a right angle, they charged.

Carter was prepared, and he fired off two rounds. The first hit the closest man in the shoulder, but the next one dropped him. The second man kept coming, picking up speed as he ran. Nelson fired over Carter’s shoulder, but the man lurched forward, and the bullet soared by his head.

Jen and Dr. Pavan realized immediately that Nelson was right; the gunshots were loud. She had never felt the pain she now felt in her head—it was as if someone was standing on her skull, crushing it down into her body. Dr. Pavan recoiled and squatted down. Jen fared worse, dropping completely to the cave floor as the shots were fired.

Unfortunately, the scientists were fast. As Nelson’s gun fired, Jen saw the group moving as one, approaching them. She blinked in response to the deafening shot, and when she opened her eyes again, they were there.

Right in front of her.

They were quicker than their smell, which assaulted her nostrils a second later. She thought she’d become accustomed to the smell of the waste, but this was worse. It was the rotten, decaying smell of flesh, of hygiene gone unnoticed not for a few days, but years.

She choked, crab-walking backward into the recesses of the cave pathway. She didn’t get far. She bumped into Dr. Pavan’s body, both collapsing into a heap as Nelson and Carter fought.

It wasn’t much of a fight, though. Jen watched as the action played out, time standing still. In the span of a second, the people—creatures—pounced on the two soldiers. Their fingers scratched at faces, fingernails an inch long digging into skin. They continued to scream, each competing with another, the sounds supplemented by primal grunts and glottal stops.

Jen thought she heard herself scream, but it was hard to tell. She watched in horror as Nelson and Carter were pushed back, finally falling onto the floor. Nelson’s face was contorted in rage as he tried to fight off the attack. Carter was locked in a deadly focus, a will to live that belied the situation he found himself in. They punched, kicked, and pushed, Carter trying to reach for his sidearm. Nelson still held his assault rifle, but he had the wherewithal not to fire it, knowing that an ill-placed shot could be devastating to his own team.

Dr. Pavan found his feet, and he rushed forward and lunged at the nearest attacker, a woman of about thirty years who was at the outskirts of the cluster. He tackled her with a forceful head-butt to her waist, and the pair rolled onto the ground and continued the skirmish. A few seconds of desperate scratching and screaming from the woman went by, and Dr. Pavan finally gained the upper hand. He held her head in both of his hands, lifting it six inches off the cave floor. He slammed it down again and again until the woman no longer moved.

He started to stand but was quickly overtaken by the scientists. Two men in long-sleeve buttoned shirts rushed toward him and smothered him with their bodies, falling on top of him and the body he was sitting on. Another second went by, and Dr. Pavan’s body disappeared in the thriving mass.

Jen willed herself to move, but couldn’t. She was riveted to the floor, watching the scene unfold in horror when she heard a gunshot. It wasn’t from Nelson or Carter but from farther away. There was no immediate reaction, but a second and third shot soon followed.

At once, the scientists and workers began to scatter. They shrieked and screamed but eventually started running in the same direction—up the same path from which Jen and the team had entered. Jen pushed her body against a slight indentation in the tunnel wall, but the running bodies kicked and pushed her anyway. She raised her arms above her head to protect her face, but through them she saw Carter rolling on the ground, also trying to avoid the stampede.

She looked a few feet further and finally saw Dr. Pavan’s body.

It wasn’t moving.

More seconds ticked by, and the last of the scientists cleared the tunnel section. Jen rolled over, laying out on her back in the middle of the floor, then finally came to a sitting position. She lolled her head back and forth and felt for injuries. Satisfied she was relatively unharmed, she stood and approached Carter.

He groaned but seemed unhurt as well. Together they rolled Dr. Pavan onto his back. The man’s eyes were closed, but he was breathing. Jen shook him gently, trying not to hurt him or alarm him.

He slowly opened his eyes, looked up at the two of them, and smiled. “Ouch. I’m going to feel that one for a few days.”

“Are you alright?” Jen asked.

“I am. Very sore, but I don’t think anything’s broken.”

Carter and Jen checked him out a bit more and concluded the same. They sat back and let the man recover.

“I’m fine, too, mates, thanks for asking.” The voice—Nelson’s—came from just beyond the opening to the cavern.

“Hog, that you?” Jen asked.

“Who else would it bloody be, Jen?” He stood up and stretched, his six-foot-plus frame extending to its full height. He cracked his neck, back, and fingers, as if he were a skeleton popping its own bones back into place.

Carter nodded, then stood. He pointed his flashlight into the open cavern. “Hello?”

He lifted his gun in his other hand. It wasn’t an ideal firing position, but now he could point with both the gun and the light. He called again. “Hello? Anyone there?”

Finally, a voice echoed back. “Boss? That you?”

“Saunders?”

“Yeah. Just the two of us. We’re coming over; don’t shoot.”

Jen felt relief wash over her body, then she shuddered as she relived the past minute.

Carter’s light eventually found the two bodies approaching from the opposite side. The orange glow illuminated them until they were within twenty feet. Rachel Saunders appeared, followed by a startled and sleep-deprived Erik Statnik. The man’s hair was disheveled, and his eyes were drooping. He waved, but his face remained expressionless.

“Thanks, Saunders,” Carter said. “We were a little overwhelmed back there, I guess.”

“A little?” she replied. “We couldn’t even see you in that mess. Good thing Erik told me to fire over their heads, or I’d have put bullets into each of you.”

“Good thing. I think we’re a little past the niceties, though. They’re hostile and protective of their… something. Safe to say if we come across them again, we’re neutralizing.”

“Fair enough, boss. Where we headed now?”

Dr. Pavan was standing now, and the four of them entered the cavern together. “Let’s go back that way. We were heading down to the lower levels.”

“Same here, but we weren’t sure which way to take when we got to the fork. It’s about a few hundred yards back, but we decided to follow along this way. We thought we heard something from this direction.”

She turned and walked away, leaving Erik and the rest to follow along. “Wait,” Carter said before she could leave the room.

“You hit one,” he said, pointing his light toward the giant wall of fecal matter. In front of it, sprawled out on the ground, was a petite, brown-haired woman wearing a lab coat and slacks. She was dead, but Carter approached her and squatted down. Saunders followed and knelt next to Carter.

He reached behind the woman’s temple, eventually finding what he was looking for. “Feel this,” he said to Saunders. She did, frowning as she fingered the hard outline of the small device just beneath the skin.

“What is it?” she asked.

“We don’t know, but we found one on a Russian soldier as well. Nelson cut it out of his head.”

“Weird. So the soldiers and the scientists have something in common.”

“Right, though we have no idea what. The Russians didn’t get here until right after us. They were in the sub that attacked ours, most likely. But the scientists and maintenance crew, Bingham included, have been here for decades.”

Erik realized something at that moment and spoke his concern. “For what it’s worth, the Russian mercenaries seem to be completely functional, whereas these people did not. They were effectively brain dead, from what we observed when they attacked you.”

“He’s right,” Jen said. “Whatever this thing does, it’s not the cause of the strange behavior. It might be a simple tracking device, though. Something to keep tabs on the locations of the people inside the base.”

“Who would need that?” Dr. Pavan asked.

“Someone who was in control,” Nelson said without hesitation.

31

This was easily the most challenging experience of his life. As a 39-year-old man, Dr. Sanjay Pavan’s professional life had mostly been filled with research, teaching, writing, and lecturing. His “adventures,” taking place between residencies and teaching semesters, were certainly exotic and worldly enough that his peers described him as “very active” in the field. He’d traveled more than the typical marine scientist, even well-known biologists, who were known for how much they traveled.

But this was different. Never before had he been involved in a criminal investigation, and never before had the stakes been this high.

His wildest assignments prior to this had him exploring an underwater cave, climbing an Antarctic glacier, and hopping around tropical Caribbean islands. Still, all were officially sanctioned by reputable research organizations and staffed by professionals. He was compensated well, often a year’s salary up front and another stipend upon returning with completed objectives. Even the most harrowing experience he’d ever had paled in comparison to this.

He remembered it well. They were examining sea floor vents in a tectonically-active region on the Ring of Fire, somewhere off the coast of Japan. It was an uncharacteristically shallow area, so they were wearing scuba gear for maneuverability. A thermal vent opened suddenly below him, and the lower portion of his left leg was scorched by the boiling water and steam that erupted from the fissure.

Everyone else in the group was fine, and his leg was treated and healed well. When he told the story at conferences and lectures, he would often pull up his pant leg and reveal the burn scars—each time to the delight of the audience.

Dr. Pavan was a humble man, born in Sri Lanka and raised in New York City. He had four younger brothers and a sister, and his parents worked for minimum wage to make ends meet. He graduated from New York University magna cum laude and was accepted into the best marine biology program in the United States, but he soon became interested in archeology, eventually transferring his focus. Somehow, his humble and charismatic personality—no doubt helped by his good looks—won him a distinguished spot on a scientific vessel at age twenty-six, the youngest professional scientist onboard. He traveled the world for two years on the ship, joining in discovering forty new species of marine plant life, thirty-eight new species of saltwater animals, and defining and classifying previously undocumented rock structures in the Mariana Trench.

When he returned, industry publications ran stories on the findings, using his face and name as the poster child for the tour’s massive success. He found himself on Good Morning America, explaining in lay terms what his role was with the scientists, and was even interviewed on The Tonight Show. He continued his reign of popular marine science with a book on marine archeology, which was respected as a scientific exposé on underwater archeological systems and an easy-to-understand introduction to the world of ocean sciences.

His popularity and fame grew, but Dr. Pavan was still an academic. He was constantly reading, writing, and lecturing, and he loved his students as much as he loved the subject matter.

When he was asked by Daniel Carter to be an ambassador to the United Kingdom for a “short, exploratory trip to an ocean research station,” he jumped at the chance. He had no idea what he’d gotten himself into.

As he followed along behind Jen and the others through the cave systems, he almost laughed out loud at their predicament. They were trying to find something—but no one knew what—in a research station built five miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, and were trying to escape a crack team of Russian mercenaries.

Oh, and they had a psychotic group of scientists trying to scratch their eyes out.

If anything qualified as out of his league, this was it.

He thought back to Lindsay Richards. It was truly unfortunate what had happened. The woman was early in her career but no doubt had potential in the field of oceanography. Dr. Pavan had only spoken with her a few times on the submarine ride and found her to be self-centered to the point of being abrasive, but she was nice nonetheless.

But he had no idea what would cause the other scientists to scratch her to death. It didn’t make any sense. The scratches were random and chaotic and obviously deep enough to draw blood. It was like she had been attacked by animals. He pondered the situation more as the path ahead tilted up and began ascending slightly, heading toward the lower station levels.

Scratch.

He heard a noise from behind him. Close, but still far enough away that he couldn’t place what side of the tunnel it had come from.

He turned, shining his flashlight down the tube of rock. Nothing.

He frowned, then turned again and kept following Jen. She’d picked up her pace, most likely trying to catch up to Erik and the soldiers ahead of her. He started to quicken his own step but stopped.

He sniffed.

He thought he could smell something in the air. Faint, but definitely something.

It grew stronger. Was it—

It smelled like the cavern where they found the group of scientists, and he knew immediately what that meant.

Scratch.

He heard the noise again and whipped around. He didn’t speak, but he stepped down a foot or two.

The smell retreated slightly—or was he just growing used to it now? He listened intently for the sound but couldn’t hear a thing.

He waited five seconds, then turned again. He stepped forward, shining his flashlight up the path.

Jen was nowhere to be found. He listened for their footsteps, but couldn’t hear any. The rock must act as a sound dampener, he thought. He started jogging but stopped a hundred feet later when he came to a fork in the tunnel.

Did they go this way? He thought, then pushed the question away. Of course they did. This is the only way they could have gone.

But which path did they follow?

He was about to call out for them and follow when the sound came again.

Scratch.

32

Mark awoke, and his body reacted instinctively. His involuntary mind was now in control; his eyes remained shut, allowing his other four senses to quickly assess any danger. He felt by his sides and sniffed. He was lying on a stiff mattress, the age-old springs pushing into his lower back. The mattress was situated on a cold metal bed frame, and his hands felt the rough edges of the bolts holding it together.

He couldn’t hear anything. Actually, that was the strangest of what his senses picked up. Usually, the human ear could perceive even the slightest of sounds, given that a certain calm and focus was attained. Most civilians had no concept of true silence, given that the vast majority of them were constantly surrounded by and bombarded with the noise of daily life.

But Mark couldn’t hear a thing. He opened his eyes. They burned, immediately startled by the white brightness of the room he was in. He shifted, testing to see if he was restrained in any way.

He wasn’t.

He tried sitting up but found that his mind swirled, slowly reacting to the voluntary demands he placed on it.

He must have been drugged.

Without moving, he looked around. The room was bare, stark even, with just the bed and a chair in the corner. Mark tried fidgeting to work out whatever chemicals remained in his system but found his physical movements sluggish and delayed.

After a minute, he stood. His strength was diminished, but he could maintain an upright pose for a long enough time that he felt comfortable. He continued to analyze his setting.

Assess.

Analyze.

Abstract.

Achieve.

He walked to the corner of the room and looked around. It was perfectly square by his estimate, about fifteen feet on each side, lit by cheap fluorescent lighting in two spots. The ceiling was concrete, and a horizontal metal pipe ran along one wall that intersected with an identical vertical one. The vertical pipe descended along one wall and ended behind a small water fountain. Below that was a small round hole on the floor of the room.

Three of the walls were concrete, matching the low ceiling. The fourth, opposite the bed, was glass; he had to look carefully to see the outline of a door cut into it. He approached it and pushed. It was secured, and he couldn’t get it to budge by using his full weight. A small divot on the opposite side of the door seemed to imply that some particular person could open it using a fingerprint or handprint.

It was a jail cell. Clean, pristine even, but a cell nonetheless.

Assess the situation.

Mark’s mind raced. He was in a holding cell. For what reason? How long had he been here? Would someone come to check on him? He knew they would. Whoever had taken him had wanted him alive.

Analyze your surroundings. He knew every feature of the room. There wasn’t much to see. It didn’t take but a few seconds of looking around to know that the bed—bolted into the floor and adjacent wall—and the water fountain were the only features to be found. And he didn’t need to ponder for long what the hole in the floor was meant for.

But why is there a holding cell in a research station? he wondered. He sat down on the bed again, trying to piece it together. Whoever worked here, Bingham and the others didn’t build this. This must have been planned from the beginning, from long before any of them were hired.

Abstract a plan. He wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do. He needed information, so that implied that he wait it out and see what happened. But he also wasn’t alone. Jen and his son were relying on him to find them and figure this all out.

But he had no idea where they were, and whoever put him here was most likely better acquainted with the locale. For now, he’d stay put.

Achieve the objective. He needed information, and he needed it fast. Escape options were reduced to just about one option—remain here until someone came along, then try to persuade them to let him out. But he didn’t need to wait around.

Mark stood and walked to the door. He tried to peer up and down the hall but couldn’t see far enough.

He shouted. “Hey! Anyone out there?”

The sound reverberated abruptly through the small concrete and glass room. His voice was weak. He had been drugged. He repeated the call and found strength returning to his lungs and body.

He waited. A minute passed, and he yelled a final time. No one came, but he stood in front of the glass wall.

The faint sound of clicking heels reached his ears, and when he looked to the right, he was surprised to see a woman approaching him from only a few yards away. This room must be well soundproofed, he thought.

“Hi, Mr. Adams,” the woman said in a lilting and upbeat tone. “Sorry. This is quite a trek for us, but we heard you yelling through the closed-circuit system.”

Mark was amazed. He hadn’t seen anything that clued him into there being a one- or two-way radio system in the room. But somehow, they’d heard him. He didn’t let her see his confusion.

“It’s okay, Mark—hope you don’t mind if I skip the formalities—that’s a pretty fancy room you’re in. Seems rather unassuming, I admit, but it’s not devoid of its surprises.”

“Who are you?” he asked through the glass.

The woman on the other side heard him perfectly. “I work here. Analyst, actually. Boring stuff, but hey—we don’t get visitors often.”

Mark frowned.

“Right,” she said. “Sorry. We picked you up earlier out by the silos, and my boss wanted to make sure everything was kosher. Couldn’t have you getting all antsy on us, you know?”

Mark couldn’t believe his ears. “What the hell do you want?” he said, crossing his arms.

“It’s okay, Mark, there’s nothing to worry about. We just don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. That’s why you’re in here. I want to ask you some questions.”

The young woman waited, but Mark’s expression remained stoic and constant.

“Okay, well, ah…First, what’s your—sorry. I guess I already know your name.”

Mark stared.

“Right. So, Mark, where do you work?”

“I’m a computer security technician.”

“Technician?”

“Technician,” he said again.

“What exactly does a computer security technician do?”

“Technical stuff. On computers.”

The woman paused, looking back at Mark. “Listen, Mark; I want to help you. I do. But I need something in return.”

“Yeah?” Mark said. “What’s that?” He knew the answer, but he needed to keep the woman talking.

“I need cooperation. I need to get these questions answered. They’re just a formality.”

“If they’re just a formality, why can’t we skip ahead to the good stuff?”

The woman on the other side of the glass flinched, but quickly recovered. “Sorry, these are my orders. Can I count on you?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Great. So what exactly do you do?” she asked.

“I told you. Technical stuff. Computer programming, database stuff. What do you want from me?”

The change of subject didn’t phase the woman. “I see. And how long have you been doing, uh, ‘computer stuff?’”

“Twelve years.” It was a lie, and he could tell the woman knew it. Her eyes flicked—the briefest of moments—down to a small piece of paper she was carrying, but then returned to his.

“Twelve years. I see. And do you have any children?”

Checkmate. The question, otherwise unrelated, was posed specifically because his only child, Reese, was twelve years old. He was dealing with a smart woman.

“I do. One. A boy, also twelve.”

“Right. Thanks, Mark. Also—”

“No. My turn. What am I doing here?” he asked, a little too abruptly.

The woman answered in stride. “We’re holding you,” she said.

“For what?”

“For the time being.”

“Why?”

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you uncomfortable?”

Mark was slightly taken aback by the question. The details of his interrogator suddenly rushed to the forefront of his mind. She’s gorgeous, he found himself thinking. Long, blond hair. Tall and skinny, but not too much. Before he got lost in his train of thought, he answered. “No. I’m perfectly comfortable. I’d like to know what’s going on here, though,” he said.

“I understand. All in good time. First, can you tell me specifically what you were working on—the last thing you worked on—at your job?”

“I can’t.”

“And why is that?” The woman flicked her head to the side, causing her hair to fall gracefully down her shoulders.

“Because, it’s, uh, a private account,” Mark said.

“Did you do any defense contracting in the past year?”

The question startled him. It was unrelated to the last. Had they finally dropped the small talk?

“Listen, I—”

“Sylvia,” she said.

“Right. Sylvia, you know I can’t—”

“Mark, did you do any work for a company called Nouvelle Terre?”

He swallowed. Did she really just out herself that easily? he wondered. What game is she playing?

He answered. “Yes.”

She looked at him, staring through the glass, but didn’t ask a follow-up question.

“Yes, I did. We had a contract with them, but it was terminated. We tried to reinstate, but it was denied.”

She arched her eyebrows.

He wouldn’t give in, so she stared harder through the glass.

“Sylvia, come on. It was just a contract…”

She didn’t move.

He realized this was the end of the negotiations. Silent, he stepped back a few paces and stood in front of the bed. If she’s going to play hardball…

Her eyes pierced his and waited a few seconds, then she turned on her heel and began walking away.

“That’s fine, Mark. If you want to play it this way, I’ll let Reese know.”

“What?!” Mark yelled. “You have Reese?”

She stopped. He yelled again. “Sylvia—stop! Do you have my son?”

He caught the faintest of smiles appearing on the side of her face. She turned, walked back, and stared into the room. “Mark, I need you to be honest with me, understand?”

He nodded his head.

“Deadly honest.”

Again, he nodded his head, a tear forming at the side of his eye.

“What do you know about Nouvelle Terre?”

33

Sylvia Etienne-Grey’s heels clacked down the hall leading to her boss’s office. The whitewashed walls seemed to close around her, and she couldn’t help but shiver. The sterile lights threw brightness into every crack and corner, but her skin crawled as she made her way through the halls.

A right turn into a deserted hallway with nothing but a janitorial closet, then a left, and she was in the so-called executive suite.

She laughed silently. There was a single occupied office in this hallway—Jeremiah Austin’s. The hall itself seemed slightly darker than the others, though she wasn’t sure if it was just an illusion or not. None of the halls had natural light, so a single burnt-out fluorescent bulb could change the brightness level in an almost subconscious way.

Austin’s office was really just a large closet with a desk and a few shelves along the wall. He’d stocked the shelves with the bare essentials: a few textbooks on biology and chemistry, a collection of National Geographic and other magazine editions featuring articles written by Austin, and a record player.

Sylvia knocked once, then entered. They were the only two working at this hour, but she knew her boss appreciated his privacy. She turned the handle, took a deep breath, and stepped inside.

Austin didn’t look up from his MacBook Pro, so she entered and stood just in front of his desk. She glanced around the office again, taking it all in.

The office, while lacking in traditional decor, was covered in plants. Austin had plants ranging from small desktop varieties like the dionaea muscipula—venus flytrap—to larger potted trees and flowering bushes. The plants surrounded her, blocking sound and absorbing the air in the room. It felt stuffy and stifling in the room, and the humidity had risen to an almost unbearable level.

Austin’s hobby bordered on the insane, but Sylvia had to admit that the man was the best botanist she’d ever met. He could recite the Latin names of each variety—and subspecies—of any plant he saw, and he knew their medicinal and common uses as well.

She had always chided herself for letting it become one of the features of Austin she was most attracted to.

“Sylvia,” he said. His voice was barely a whisper, and he still hadn’t looked up from the computer.

“Jeremiah. Hi, um,” she began.

He frowned, and she stopped talking.

Finally, he stood, then glanced up at her with a bored expression. “Are we on track?”

“Yes,” she replied, “We’re getting somewhere.”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he reached down to his computer and clicked around for a moment.

Sylvia heard a pre-recorded audio file begin to play.

“Listen, I—”

“Sylvia.”

“Right. Sylvia, you know I can’t—”

“Mark, did you do any work for a company called Nouvelle Terre?”

“Yes. Yes, I did. We had a contract with them, but it was terminated. We tried to reinstate, but it was denied.”

A brief pause.

“Sylvia, come on. It was just a contract…”

Sylvia’s eyes widened. “You recorded this?”

“Don’t you understand that I’m not a man of chances? I don’t have time for—”

“Yes,” she said, interrupting him. It was a risk, but she was livid. “Yes, I know you’re on a tight schedule, and I can respect that. This project will be completed on time, and I will get that information, Jeremiah.”

He looked her up and down, slowly, examining her figure. A slight lift in his upper lip told Sylvia all she needed to know.

She stepped forward, moving carefully around the desk. “Austin, is everything okay?”

She reached out with her left hand, placing it gently on his bicep. He looked down again and moved the mouse around on his computer’s desktop.

“Can I get you anything?” She looked toward the rolling liquor cart and decanter at the front of the office. She knew there was only cranberry juice inside; Austin didn’t drink.

“No.” He rolled his shoulder, brushing her hand from his arm, and she stepped back around to the front of the desk. “I need to keep moving, and if you can’t deliver…”

Was he threatening her?

“You know I can deliver.”

“Then why is it taking so long?”

She couldn’t answer that.

He paced around the office and stopped at a large purple flower in a ceramic pot on the shelf. “Do you know what this is?”

She didn’t.

“It’s called aconitum napellus, or monkshood. The flowers are beautiful, making them a fine addition to a home garden. But crush the root and eat it, and you’ll be asphyxiated.”

“Really?”

“Without fail. It contains a compound called alkaloid aconite, and it’s been known to cause silent, virtually untraceable deaths.”

He moved to another plant, this time a huge-leafed bush that stood behind a glass enclosure.

“And this. This is called hogweed, heracleum mantegazzianum, and it can grow over twenty feet tall. It’s extremely potent, and just touching it causes lesions, blindness, and eventual death.”

He continued around the room, Sylvia growing more and more terrified by the minute. She knew a few plants but had no idea that each was toxic or poisonous to humans.

Finally, he came to an assuming—actually, quite beautiful—flower in another large pot. She knew this one.

“That’s an angel trumpet, right? South American?”

He looked impressed. “Indeed. The Brugmansia, and yes. It’s found in South American countries, and it produces my favorite effect. It produces scopolamine, which can be turned into a powder, a liquid, or any number of simple-looking materials. Scopolamine is highly reactive but completely unnoticeable to the victim.”

She waited for the final blow as he said victim.

“Scopolamine, once in the bloodstream, and combined with the other toxins found in the trumpet—hyoscyamine and atropine—causes the victim to act in strange ways, though completely unaware of what they’re doing.”

“What does that mean?”

“Experiments range from subjects driving to random locations, acting out violently, and even overeating to the point of death. It depends on the subject, of course, but in some cases, it can be temporarily controlled.”

“Controlled? How?”

“Electrical pulses, usually, but to some extent also with a reverse-engineered cocktail of proteins found in the animals and parasites that use the angel trumpet as food and shelter.”

She recognized this last statement. “That’s what your research was back in Philadelphia, right?”

“Yes, but with different implications. I was able to combine both the electrical pulses and the proteins into an injected compound. The electrical signals need to be activated remotely, but generally, it’s a completely workable solution.”

“Solution to what?”

He reached for a box on his shelf and placed it on his desk. Sylvia watched curiously as he opened the box and withdrew a syringe. He stabbed himself with it, and he must have noticed the shocked expression on Sylvia’s face.

He smiled. “Sylvia, you know exactly what all of this is. The project’s scope is larger than any we’ve tried to accomplish, but you and I both know we can’t accomplish anything else without bringing it all back down to the granular level. You continually refuse to do as I ask, especially when it comes to that boy.”

He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, letting the chemicals take their effect.

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about! But it doesn’t matter. I’ve now got his father and the leader of their crack team ready for surgery, so I’ve been able to sidestep your little games. Compassion is a curse, Sylvia, and the sooner you learn that, the sooner you’ll be able to truly understand all of this.”

He walked over to the computer and pressed a key. “Speaking of ‘little games,’ I thought I might show you one of mine. I can assure you—this whole thing is going to play out my way, whether you like it or not. I hope you understand that.”

Immediately, small vents in the ceiling began emitting gas into the office. Sylvia shrieked and ran for the door, but Austin stepped in front of it. He grabbed her wrists, smiling into her brown eyes. “Sylvia, calm down. You know I wouldn’t hurt you. I just wanted you to share this with me. I want you to understand what we’re working on here.”

His thumbs rubbed the undersides of her wrists, and she faltered a bit. He caught her, and she felt herself going to sleep.

No. Her eyes opened, and she saw Jeremiah’s concerned expression. He had a fiery look in his eyes, though, as his hands dropped hers. She tried to step backward but found her feet locked to the floor.

She willed herself to move but found her body completely unresponsive to her brain’s commands.

After a minute, a feeling of complete relaxation overcame her, and she was stunned to realize what Jeremiah had injected into the room.

Brugmansia.

Angel trumpet.

She couldn’t voluntarily move, but her unconscious mind now had complete control of her movement.

Jeremiah approached her again, this time closing the distance between them to mere inches. He jerked her toward him, his hand pushing against her lower back, and she could feel the warmth of his body.

She screamed—not out loud, but in her own head, but it was useless.

She couldn’t even object.

34

“So, how old are you?” Nelson asked.

Erik answered in clipped English. “Twenty-six.”

Nelson opened his mouth to speak, but Jen spoke from behind them. “Wow, you look, uh…”

“Older. Yes. I know,” Erik said. “I have always appeared older than I am.”

Jen could understand that. Erik’s stark features didn’t match his pleasant and unassuming personality. His head was rectangular, with squared corners around his chin and the facial appearance of Frankenstein.

“And what were you doing for Dr. Richards?” Nelson asked. He was walking behind Saunders and Carter, followed by Erik and Jen directly behind him. They’d walked in silence for thirty minutes but had yet to find the exit that would deposit them on the lower levels.

“I was an assistant. Research and lectures, but I was also her personal assistant.”

“Personal, eh?” Nelson said.

“Not like that. Lin—Dr. Richards—was the only professor who took an interest in my work when I came here. She understands the challenges I faced, or at least accepted them.”

“What kind of challenges?”

“I am interested in a specific sort of oceanography that does not garner much of a following,” he said.

No one asked another question, waiting for Erik to continue.

“My undergraduate work back in Russia was in general oceanographic studies. But my real interest is in more obscure fields. My graduate work with her, when I had time to focus on my own, was in celestial oceanographic geology.”

“Celestial oceano-what?” Nelson asked.

Jen wasn’t sure if the young man was playing with them all or not. “Seriously?” she asked.

“Yes. I understand its effect on the established scientific community, but I cannot deny the truth. Ever since childhood, I have been fascinated with the possibility.”

“What? The possibility of what?” Nelson asked.

Jen responded. “Hog, you know what celestial means, right?”

“Yeah, space and stuff.”

“Right. Well, it means he’s interested in studying ‘space oceans.’”

“Really?” Nelson said. “That’s a thing?”

“Well,” Erik replied, “it is, though admittedly not as popular a field as I would hope. It tends to be a bit, um, less respected than other fields.”

Jen couldn’t see Nelson in front of Erik, but she sensed he was still confused. “Erik, I know what it means to have a passion, but if I may—isn’t that field considered wildly speculative?”

“And improbable. The thought that celestial oceanography could lead to our understanding of our planet’s life cycles is certainly far-fetched, but it is my calling.”

Nelson stopped and turned around. “So, you’re telling me you study space oceans hoping to find…what? Aliens?”

“Well, yes, that is part of it. I believe that there is an extraterrestrial body somewhere out there that can teach us much about our own planet’s formation, development, and possibly the creation of life.”

“Well, to each his own, I guess,” Nelson said, content with the man’s answer.

Jen was impressed with Nelson’s faithful acceptance of Erik’s field of study, but similarly satisfied with the young man’s integrity and determination to follow his own dream. She let the silence fill the space again and followed silently behind.

The group walked another few minutes, and soon they heard the gentle hum of faraway machinery. The sound rose to fill the pathway and eventually began to shake the ground.

“Wow, pretty heavy stuff,” Nelson said. Light trickled now from somewhere up ahead. Jen couldn’t see the opening but sensed they were near.

Within seconds, the orange arch of the tunnel’s end came into view, and she saw Saunders and Carter standing just inside the cave.

Nelson and Erik reached them next, and Jen turned to wait for Dr. Pavan to show up.

There was no one behind her.

“Dr. Pavan?” She called into the darkness. “Sanjay?”

Erik and the others turned as well, and Erik stepped next to her. “When did you last hear him?” he asked.

“I—I don’t know,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. Calm down, she told herself. He’s just a few paces behind.

They waited a full minute, but Dr. Pavan didn’t show.

Jen stepped back into the tunnel, but Carter’s commanding voice stopped her. “Wait,” he said. “You can’t just run back in there.”

She thought for a moment, then stepped forward again, this time taking off into a brisk walk.

“Jen!” Carter shouted. His voice a mix of surprise and annoyance.

Jen broke into a run, fighting back tears. Am I really this emotionally compromised? A part of her screamed to stop; another part of her told her she was personally responsible if something happened to Sanjay.

She heard footsteps behind her. Erik was keeping pace with her, and she thought she heard Nelson grumbling but following as well.

Good, she thought. As irrational as this was, she was still glad the others were with her.

She ran a few minutes, then slowed to a jog, following the bouncing beam of her flashlight. After another two minutes, Erik grabbed her arm.

“What?” she snapped, whipping around to face the younger man. She had made it this far; she wasn’t about to be convinced to give it up.

Erik just pointed with his flashlight. She’d passed it without noticing.

It was a split in the tunnel system, a simple fork in the road. They’d descended via the tunnel on the left, but the right section clearly headed down and away from them.

Nelson caught up and stopped, placing his hands on his knees. He sucked air for a moment, then frowned at Jen. “Really? You just gonna take off like that from now on?”

He was about to continue but then saw what Jen and Erik were looking at. “Aw, hell.”

Carter and Saunders found them, and they quickly agreed to search a few minutes down the right passageway.

“Listen,” Carter said. “Dr. Pavan is here somewhere, and these caves aren’t that big. They’re also completely contained. We know there are only a few ways in and out.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know where those other…things are,” Nelson said.

“And we don’t know if he’ll pop out on Level Four again,” Carter added. “If the Russians are up there, he’ll need to lay low until we can find him. Let’s move in. Stay together, keep a light on in the front and back, and move slow.”

Saunders and Nelson entered the right passageway without hesitation, followed by Erik. Jen walked toward the opening, but Carter pulled her aside. “Listen, Jen,” he started. Jen could tell from his tone that he was trying especially hard to sound serious, in charge. “This is a recovery operation. Ten minutes—fifteen max—and we’re turning around.”

She frowned.

“We don’t have time to exhaustively search these caves, and you and I both know that Dr. Pavan is not critical to the mission—”

“Critical?” Jen said, her voice seething.

“Jen, stop. Your mission is to find out what Nouvelle Terre wants so you can find Reese. And now we need to find Mark, remember?”

The mention of her son’s name made her blood run cold. Of course I remember. “But we can’t just leave him here,” she said.

“We’re not. We search awhile, get back to the lower levels, and continue the primary mission. This is a research station under five miles of seawater, Jen. He’s not going anywhere.”

Jen nodded.

“We’re wasting time. Let’s keep moving.”

He waited for Jen to pass and then flicked on his light and followed close behind her.

Jen’s mind was racing as they descended the path. Where was Mark? Where was Reese, for that matter? And why was Carter so apathetic about it all? It certainly wasn’t just his profession.

She thought about Nelson, and how the man seemed genuinely concerned for Jen’s well-being and that of the rest of the team. He was a good man, but so was Carter.

Right?

She thought about Saunders. The woman was cold, that was certain. But was there more to her? Why hadn’t she spoken since she and Erik found them in the cavern?

Saunders and Nelson stopped just ahead of Jen. She stepped forward, trying to peer around Erik.

“Oh, wow…” Nelson whispered.

For the first time in over an hour, Saunders spoke. “Bloody hell.”

Jen followed their gaze downward and saw what had caused the reaction.

Erik gripped Jen’s arm tightly as he saw what they were looking at.

Jen and the others were standing on the edge of a massive cliff. The flashlight beams, all combined, barely illuminated the cavern floor below. Their path ended in a drop of over three hundred feet, and a single body sprawled at the bottom.

Dr. Pavan’s.

His white shirt was hanging loosely outside of his pressed khaki pants, and he was missing a shoe. It looked like his leg had been bent completely backward, and one of his arms lay underneath the rest of his body.

“Oh my God,” Jen said. I’m sorry, she thought. She heard Carter breathe in sharply beside her.

Erik stepped back and turned away from the cliff.

“He must have had his light off,” Saunders said. “It would have been completely dark, and he was probably trying to find us by our light.”

Carter nodded, but Jen could see Nelson shaking his head ever so slightly. “What?” she asked.

“Huh? Oh, I, uh, was just thinking. That fall would surely kill anyone, but I don’t think he fell.”

“What are you talking about, Hog?” Saunders asked. “Look at the poor devil.”

“No, I mean, look where he is.”

Saunders didn’t respond, but Jen knew immediately what Nelson was implying.

“He’s laying out there, what—fifteen, twenty meters?”

“So?” Saunders said. “He probably rolled a ways before he stopped.”

“No,” Carter said. “You’re right, Nelson. That’s too far.”

“I thought so. It’s unnatural. You fall—even at a run—and you’re pretty much going to go only as far out as a human can jump, within reason. And I don’t think our buddy here was much of a long-jumper.”

“Don’t be crass, Nelson,” Jen said. “We get it.”

She paused, and said a silent prayer for Dr. Pavan. “You think he was pushed off this cliff.”

“Actually, no,” he said. “It’s still too far.”

Jen looked at him.

“I think he was thrown.”

35

Jen was in a rage.

She couldn’t feel much, yet she could feel everything. It was a confused blur of activity in her mind, a whirlwind of splashing colors.

No one said anything as they walked back to the fork in the paths and the lower levels. They didn’t slow down as they approached the opening to Level Nine: Rue Verte.

Again, Jen heard the hum of machinery and felt the gentle shake as they emerged onto the floor of Level Nine. She followed the others from the cave’s exit to a building that sat nearby.

The level was seemingly bare, with only a few buildings sprinkled throughout the surface area, so they assumed that the hum and shaking must be coming from an even lower level. At the center of the level, a large rock formation extended from the floor straight upwards, where it seemed to taper to a point just before meeting the ceiling.

They didn’t stop to look around.

When Jen wondered how they’d get from one level to the next, Nelson pointed across the floor to a lit balcony and two sets of metal stairs. The stairs went down as well as up to adjacent levels.

“Listen up,” Carter said. “We can’t mull over this right now; there’s no time. Mark Adams is somewhere in the station, and there are now two fully hostile groups after us.”

“Carter, what does that mean? That they would throw him off the cliff?” Erik asked.

“I don’t know, but we must assume it means they’re capable of rational thought. It’s unlikely they were provoked—Dr. Pavan wouldn’t have tried anything on his own. But it still means that we’re on a ‘shoot to kill’ basis with all of them.”

“There’s nothing here, boss,” Saunders said. Jen hadn’t even noticed her missing, but the fit woman was returning around the far edge of the building, apparently having scoped out the level.

“Okay, but we need to keep our eyes open as we get across the floor. Saunders, watch our six, and Nelson, keep an eye out for our flanks. I’ll take point.”

They moved quickly, and Jen and Erik had to run to keep up. They made it across the level—the diameter was about half as long as Level Four—in less than a minute and stopped at the stairs.

“Take the stairs down, but go slow.” Their boots clanged on the stairs, and Jen tried to move delicately over the aluminum grating. Their sneaking was worthless, as her ears were soon overwhelmed by the same hum that had entered the caves earlier. It was much louder now and almost deafening.

The hum was a dull roar, and the shake that accompanied it chattered her teeth.

“What is that?” she yelled. She could barely hear the sound of her own voice over the din.

“No idea,” Carter shouted back.

Jen followed them down and came to a set of metal doors that were closed, locked from the inside, and labeled “QUARANTINE.” The red letters, chipped and beginning to fade, had been painted on at an angle, stretching almost completely across the two doors.

Below the painted letters, barely visible, was a small placard fixed to the right-hand door. It was fading, and it looked like the sign’s designation had been scratched out. Erik read the small sign aloud. “Level Ten: Rue Or.”

Jen frowned, remembering the name from the map on the main level. It was French, meaning “Gold Road,” but the sign wasn’t correct. Jen recognized what the sign signified, but wondered why it didn’t read “Level Ten: Rue d’Or,” as proper French would have required. Who made these signs? It was an oddity, but it apparently wasn’t worth pondering. Carter spoke from behind Jen.

“Keep moving. We’re not getting inside these doors. They’ve been sealed shut from the outside.”

Their eyes looked at the edges of the doors, and Jen could see a line of melted and hardened metal between the door and the frame, where a crack should have been. It stretched completely around the doors, floor to ceiling. Someone had welded the doors shut, making them a solid metal wall connected to the surrounding architecture.

They descended the final flight of stairs and exited onto Level Eleven’s main floor. Jen stepped onto the concrete in front of the stairs, looked up, and her jaw dropped.

36

“Level Eleven: Rue Marron” was painted in stenciled letters on the open metal doors. Jen saw it as they passed through. Level Eleven: Brown Road.

Her eyes were drawn quickly to the clustered machines and small buildings huddled around the center of the circular level.

The level’s main floor seemed massive, though it was much smaller than the expansive Level Four and the other upper levels. It had the appearance of an abandoned warehouse, where years of abandoned machinery and equipment lay strewn about and caused ceiling-high clutter. The level was abandoned but clearly still active—the hum they’d heard earlier had escalated to a roar, and the vibration was now almost to earthquake proportions.

The buildings were situated haphazardly along a circular road that ran around the circumference of the level, and all were placed according to their use: “Geothermal Desalination” and “DOW Condensation” and a huge water tank were grouped together to their left, and “Geothermal Intake” and three other buildings right behind it were to the right.

But it was the massive structure the other buildings encircled that caught their attention most.

Situated dead-center in the middle of the level was an inverted cone-shaped machine that dwarfed the buildings around it. It stretched from the ceiling—possibly even through the ceiling—and down into the ground. Jen realized the cone must continue down through the bottom two levels as well, as there was no point where the cone reached the floor, but continued its plunge downwards.

The sides of the machine were made up of a mess of swirling pipes, cables, and computer equipment, and hydraulic lifts and components were rotating, pumping, and churning at different speeds. Steam shot from vents and pipes at random intervals up and down the main shaft.

Erik couldn’t hide his excitement. He ran toward the first building in the water and desalination sector, and Jen and the others couldn’t help but follow.

“Look at this place!” he shouted over the noise. “It’s a self-contained power plant and desalination station. This level must provide power and fresh water to the entire base!”

Jen caught up with him and started in with the scientific discourse. “How do you think it’s operated?”

“I believe it’s a perpetual system, tapping into the deep ocean water for a super chilled condensation catalyst.”

Nelson and the other two soldiers had joined them. Nelson posed the first question and snapped Jen and Erik out of their academic banter. “How’s it work? Deep ocean water, I mean. What’s so special about it?”

“It’s colder—usually only a few tenths of a degree above freezing, and it’s much saltier,” Erik said. “Applications are mainly theoretical for most institutions, but it looks like they’ve figured out how to use it here.”

“And how exactly is it used here?” Saunders asked.

“Well, for starters,” Jen replied, “it’s useful to keep this place air-conditioned. This power plant,” she said as she pointed to the giant metallic stalactite in the center of the room, “generates a lot of heat. The water can help cool it.”

“And don’t forget the condensation,” Erik said.

“Right. By funneling the near-freezing water through pipes into one of these levels, you’re creating a natural condensation engine. The hot air hits the cooling pipes, and condensation forms—pure, fresh water.”

“Wow. So they’ve figured out how to get fresh water from the surrounding ocean,” Nelson said. He spun slowly around, trying to fathom the enormity of the research project surrounding him.

“They’ve also got a building here labeled Electrolysis,” Erik said, “so chances are they were experimenting with more than one method. Still, it’s pretty amazing how each system feeds into and out of one another, with such a low energy waste to production ratio.”

Carter looked at Erik, then Jen. “What’s it all for? What were they trying to do here?”

“What do you mean?” Erik asked. “What more do they need to do?”

Jen looked at Erik as well as he answered Carter’s question. “Look at this place—it’s self-contained, perpetual, and completely isolated from the rest of the world. It’s existed here for God knows how long, completely unknown, and it’s been operated by no more than a skeleton crew.”

“Probably not even that,” Nelson said. “We’ve met that skeleton crew, remember? Didn’t seem like they were doing a whole lot of operating.”

Jen was still suspicious. “Erik, you’ve got more hands-on experience than I do with this, but that machine in the center of the room doesn’t look like a geothermal plant.”

“It is, clearly, but you’re right in that it is of a much more revolutionary design.”

“Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“No, but I have studied a few theoretical models that postulate such an intriguing concept.”

“Why intriguing?” Saunders asked.

“Well, it’s probably able to power much more than a traditionally operated geothermal station. Jen, you know how a geothermal plant usually works.”

Jen nodded. “Usually, there’s an intake that sucks the water from a well up into the plant’s main processing station, and then a tube that injects the water back into the water table.”

“Right,” Erik said, “well, this station could be of similar functionality, but clearly the conical shape plays a role. Perhaps it helps create pressure, or since we’re technically already inside the water source, the intake could be above us, and the injection funnel could be below our feet at a lower level.”

Erik frowned, then nodded as he looked at the looming station. Jen sensed there was more to the man’s explanation, but she let it go. He was probably just as confused about it all as she was.

Carter, on the other hand, wasn’t impressed. “What is it, Statnik?”

Erik’s eyes widened slightly as he realized he’d been called out. He shrunk in stature, his boyish youthfulness replacing his outward mature appearance.

“Come on, Erik,” Carter said, easing up a little. “On Level Four, we found the schematics for this place, and you told us it was a geothermal power plant. Higher production, perhaps, but a power plant nonetheless.”

“No, it—it is; it’s just that I’m not sure why they’d need it.”

“Need it?” Nelson asked, trying in vain to stifle a sarcastic tone. “Living at the bottom of the ocean is a bit more pleasant with some of those luxuries like microwaves and ceiling fans.”

“Yes, I know. That’s not what I mean. I don’t understand why they would build a geothermal plant that’s merely a prototype, especially for such a high-risk location. I also don’t understand why it needs to have such a high production rate. Even if these facilities were fully staffed, the energy requirements would be sufficiently filled with a traditional mid-level plant.”

“Maybe this entire place is a prototype,” Saunders said. “Like there were supposed to be more than one.”

“The Saudis were experimenting with underwater cities, as was China,” Jen said. “They weren’t public, but it’s evident that most of these cities were eventually abandoned. There was a trade-off in depth: the deeper you go, the more expensive it is to build, but it becomes easier—once you tackle pressure, isolation issues, and corrosion—to maintain via self-perpetuating energy sources.”

“This isn’t exactly an underwater paradise,” Nelson said. “Seems like they could have taken a few tips from those Saudi hoteliers, if you ask me.”

“And I don’t think this place was meant to be replicated,” Carter said. “It’s here for a reason, and that reason isn’t to offer an out-of-the-box vacation option or to be a plausible alternative to above-ground living. This station was built for research, and we need to figure out what kind of research that was.”

Again, Jen felt frustrated. Why her? What did Nouvelle Terre want?

“I mentioned earlier that this power plant was too large and too far-fetched to be useful simply as a means for generating electricity,” Erik said.

All eyes turned to him.

“Even with all the tie-ins to electrolysis, condensation-based desalination, and whatever other systems are piggybacking on it, I can’t imagine they’d build it just for these purposes.”

“You said that already,” Carter said. “What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know yet,” he answered, “but I would bet we can find the answers in one of these buildings.”

Without hesitation, Erik walked toward the massive machine in the center of the circle of buildings and turned to the right. They followed as Erik entered one of the “Geothermal”-marked buildings.

A powerful shake erupted from the machine behind her as Jen’s foot stepped over the threshold. She gasped as her left foot missed its mark and she stumbled backward. Nelson caught her, but the shaking grew more intense. He tripped, and both of them tumbled to the ground.

Erik ran out of the building. “What’s going on?” he yelled, slipping off the front step.

“I don’t know,” Jen replied, “but it’s getting worse!”

“Get away from the buildings!” Carter shouted. He and Saunders were on their feet, struggling to balance but moving quickly toward an open section of concrete away from the other buildings.

Jen and Erik, followed by a cursing Nelson, ran to the area as well, and they collapsed onto the ground to catch their breath. The shaking grew to a deafening roar and Jen covered her ears. Erik crawled back to Jen and yelled something.

“What?” she yelled in response.

His mouth moved, but she couldn’t hear anything. She yelled again.

He pointed, and she followed his finger. She turned and saw that he was pointing toward the center of the level.

The machine.

The power plant was still moving as usual, but had now started turning as well. It rotated on its central axis, spinning in slow revolutions. She watched, mesmerized, as the giant cone-shaped machine turned completely around. Another rotation, another thirty seconds, and Jen heard Erik’s voice, yelling into her ear over the noise.

“It is a corkscrew!” he shouted.

That was clear to Jen, but she had no idea what it meant.

“What’s it for?” she yelled back.

He didn’t answer at first, and she looked in his direction. He was silent, with his eyes closed and his hand on the ground.

She started to ask him a question but then felt a shudder. She, too, felt the ground, and suddenly she knew what he was feeling.

We’re moving, she thought. The ground, buildings, and the station itself were shaking from the machine, but there was something else—something different—in this new shudder.

It listed, ever so slightly, and then back. For the briefest of moments, it felt like being on a slowly-capsizing ship, but then it settled again. Erik opened his eyes and stared at Jen.

“Did you feel that?” he shouted. Jen still couldn’t hear him, but she read his lips and nodded.

The entire research station just moved.

37

Mark Adams paced impatiently back and forth in the cell.

Assess.

Again, his training kicked in.

They don’t want me dead—yet. What is it that I have that they want?

Analyze.

There’s no way out of this room, but it isn’t the last place they’ll take me before they’re done. Asking me questions won’t be enough. They need something else.

Abstract.

I need to figure out if there’s a—

Suddenly Mark heard a faint click. He stopped, trying to focus his attention on his ears.

Another click sounded, and this time he could tell where it came from.

The corner of the room.

He looked up, walking toward the location of the sound. He examined the spot closely, but just then, an opaque cloud began falling from the area.

Shit.

He stepped back and heard another click. He looked behind him and noticed that each of the four corners of the ceiling was now emitting a small cloud of clear gas.

Achieve.

He immediately knew what his exit strategy would be. Running to the far side of the room, closest to the glass wall, Mark put his hands over his mouth and nose and took a deep breath. The air closest to the floor wouldn’t yet be affected, but he didn’t want to move too early.

He counted to five, then shot his eyes open wide. He opened and closed his mouth, pretending to be gagging. He dropped to one knee, then fell backward on the floor. He lay still, his arms sprawled out next to him.

Hold it together, Mark. He could feel the air in his lungs failing, but he held on. He waited ten seconds, then heard the clicking of heels approaching down the hallway.

Come on, hurry. He felt his senses fading. Hold. On.

After what seemed like an eternity, he heard an electronic whooshing sound as the door to his cell slid open.

Too late.

He felt hands lifting him off the ground as he fell asleep.

38

She couldn’t believe it. Jen looked at Carter and Saunders, but they were both looking in the opposite direction.

Nelson’s eyes, however, were glued to hers. He mouthed in her direction. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, not wanting to try to explain what she’d felt over the din.

The entire station had moved.

Erik was smiling, no doubt entranced by this bizarre turn of events. Jen thought he was insane. Didn’t he realize what this meant?

She touched his arm. “This place is falling apart!” she shouted.

He immediately shook his head. “No!” he yelled back. “We are okay.”

She waited for him to explain further, but as he opened his mouth, she felt herself being tackled from the side.

“Hey!” she shouted.

Nelson’s linebacker body crushed hers to the ground. She felt the sharp stubble of his 5 o’clock shadow scratching her face and the weight of his entire frame on hers. “What the hell!” she shouted, gasping for breath.

He shifted off of her but pulled her to her feet. Without waiting for her to ask why he pushed her forward and yelled to run.

Erik, Saunders, and Carter were already running. Stumbling over the shaky concrete, they finally reached one of the buildings and ran inside.

Closing the door behind them, Nelson and Jen entered. She punched his chest, still shaken up from his startling tackle. “You want to tell me what that was about?”

The noise from the machine was still deafening, but the sound had subsided substantially now that they were inside a building.

“Sorry. Just making sure you were awake.”

Carter yelled. “Alright, we’ve got bogies coming in from the stairwell; I counted four.”

“They must have split up,” Saunders said.

“Wait. What?” Erik and Jen were still trying to piece together what had just happened.

“The Russians,” Carter explained. “Saunders caught sight of them at the stairs. I don’t think they saw us, but it’s a good thing Nelson got your attention.”

“Yeah,” Nelson said. “Good thing. What were you doing, anyway? Meditating?”

She didn’t answer.

“Okay, let’s figure this out,” Carter said. “I don’t want to deal with them right now, but we might need to. Saunders, Nelson, what do you have left?”

Both the mercenaries checked their ammunition supply. “I should be good, boss,” Nelson said. Saunders just nodded.

“Right. We need to get back to the stairs. Most likely, they’re sweeping each level, starting at the top. That means we’ve got about an hour, maybe two, before they reach fourteen and head back up.”

“What’s the plan?” Nelson asked. He crossed his arms and leaned against a table expectantly.

“Well, I thought we could see where they are through this window here, wait until they’re far enough away, then run like hell.”

“You know, boss, I’m starting to like you more and more,” Nelson said, smiling.

Carter peered through the small window. “Nothing yet, but they should be getting close. My guess is they’re doing a sweep in concentric circles.”

Just as he said that, the door to the small building burst open. Jen shrieked, and Erik fell back against the wall. A Russian soldier entered, saw the group, and raised his gun to fire. He barked into a mouthpiece clamped over his ear, a quick string of clipped Russian words. Before he finished, and before he fired the assault rifle, Saunders smashed his face with the butt of her gun. He fell to his knees, howling in pain, and blood spilled out from his nose.

Nelson strode over and kicked the gun from his hands. He bent down and stripped the man of his sidearm, knife, and communication device. “What’d you do that for?” he asked. He shut the door to the building and looked up at Saunders.

“Really? What would you have done, genius?” she asked.

“It’s way too loud out there. There’s no way they would hear a gunshot.” He winked at her.

She thought for a moment, then fired two shots downward. “Bastard was eyeing me wrong anyway,” she said.

“Eyes up,” Carter said, looking back out the window. “Looks like we’ll need to get back to that first plan.”

Jen looked over his shoulder and saw two soldiers approaching the building from the other side of the circular level. “There’s another one somewhere, right?” she said.

“Should be. And I’d rather go head-to-head with one, not two, so let’s get to those stairs and start heading up.”

“On you, boss,” Saunders said, cracking the door open. He nodded quickly, and Saunders and Nelson ran out of the building.

Erik and Jen exited next, and Nelson directed them to head to the right, back toward the stairs.

As soon as Jen left the building, her ears were once again bombarded by the noise of the giant rotating machine. She strained to even think straight but followed Erik and Nelson as they ran toward the stairs.

There was a short wall running behind the row of buildings, situated between them and the stairs to the upper and lower levels. It was about five feet tall and made out of brick. It appeared to have been part of a foundation for another, larger building, as the wall outlined three sides of a large rectangle.

Jen noticed the wall at about the same time as she noticed the woman who stepped out from behind it. She knew the others in front of her wouldn’t hear, but she yelled anyway. “Nelson! Saunders! Look out!”

The woman, dressed in the same black military fatigues as the man who’d entered their building, stood just as Nelson passed. Saunders was already a few paces ahead, and she kept running, almost to the stairs. Jen could only watch as the woman turned her assault rifle toward the man and fired.

“No!”

The woman’s first shot missed the mark, and Nelson reacted quickly. He dove forward into a roll and twisted his body around at the last moment. Reaching out with his left arm, he grabbed a loose brick that lay next to the unfinished building. He threw it at the woman’s face. It flew wildly out of control and harmlessly over her shoulder.

He rose to his knees, simultaneously lifting his gun. As he tried to aim, an explosion rocked the left side of Jen’s body. She stumbled sideways, trying to understand what had happened. The machine’s vibrations rose to a tremor, and she almost lost her balance completely.

The woman inside the building foundation staggered backward, turning toward Jen. She had a contorted look of pain on her face as she tried to raise her weapon once again. Another explosion hit Jen’s ears, and she screamed. No sound came out.

A red circle appeared on the woman’s chest, and she fell. Jen realized that she, too, was on the ground, kneeling. She tried to shake the ear-splitting pain away as she looked up at Erik. The young man had a nervous grin, but he reached down to offer Jen a hand.

“Wh—what happened?” she said. She couldn’t hear anything, and she wasn’t sure if Erik could either.

She felt Carter’s hand under her other arm, helping her to her feet. He leaned down and spoke into her ear.

“Erik just gave us all a free pass to the stairs, and I suggest we take it.”

She looked down at Erik’s other hand. He was holding a Russian-made assault weapon.

“Grabbed it from that other guy,” he said. “Figured he wouldn’t need it anymore.”

Nelson rose to his feet as well and nodded in Erik’s direction. He mouthed something that looked like “thanks” but the words were lost to the commotion of the rumbling engine behind them.

Together, Jen, Erik, and Carter ran to the stairs behind Nelson. They reached the metal doors just as Saunders burst out. “About time,” she said. “Those other two are on your six.”

Jen chanced a glance behind her as the team fled through the open doors. The remaining two Russian mercs were sprinting toward the doors, and they didn’t look happy.

“Move out. Let’s get up to Level Nine for now. If we need to keep going up, we can,” Carter explained, “but we’ll also have the option of heading back into the cave system.”

Jen watched the Russian men run toward her as she felt the earth below stand to a standstill. She looked at the machine in the center of the level and watched as it came to a slow stop. The roar reduced to a dull noise again, and the gentle shake they’d encountered upon first entering the lower levels once again returned. She didn’t realize that her teeth had been chattering until the wild vibrations ceased and were replaced by the much more docile shake of the power plant.

All over the machine, steam geysers erupted, then fell silent. Clear tubes, previously full of liquid, surged a final time and then depressurized. It was like a giant had been awoken, gone on a rampage, then fallen asleep. The gentle rhythm of the humming and shaking replaced the insane earthquake-level grinding.

39

They reached Level Nine in less than a minute, but the Russian soldiers were on their tail.

And most likely, they’d called their counterparts—wherever they were—to help out.

Jen, Erik, Nelson, Carter, and Saunders spilled out onto the floor of Level Nine, tired, beaten, and emotional.

They ran to the first building they found—again, a large, white, unmarked building.

Saunders checked the door and found it unlocked. She swung it open and quickly checked inside.

“Looks clear. Let’s go,” she said. The others followed her in. Flashlight beams lit up the walls, and Jen could see they were in some sort of workout facility.

Around the room, elliptical machines, treadmills, and stair machines lined the long walls in two rows. In the center of the giant room, an Olympic-sized swimming pool stretched farther than their beams could carry.

They were in a gymnasium.

Jen found a map hanging on a wall below a sign that read “Information,” and she approached and examined it.

“We’re in the station’s gym,” she said, “and it looks like this entire level is dedicated to recreation. There’s a hiking path around the perimeter and a climbing wall in the center.”

“Hey, look!” Nelson said, pointing to another large building adjacent to theirs. “A movie theater and bowling alley!”

Jen thought he was joking, but he stared at the location on the map in silence, a look of regret on his face.

“The Russians are right behind us,” Carter said, “but they’ll have to start from scratch on each level—that should buy us a couple hours, max. We need to get Mark, but we really need to figure out what that machine down there is.”

Jen agreed, though she felt their escapade here was a little shortsighted. She suspected they’d bitten off a little more than they could chew. “That machine isn’t a power plant,” she said.

Erik disagreed. “It is, actually, though it is not just a power plant.”

They all looked in his direction.

“I had a feeling this would be the case when I first came across the plans up on the main level,” he said. “The plant has the usual features—intake, injection pumps, cooled by the surrounding seawater. Further, I believe it alone has been the sole source of power throughout this entire facility.”

“But I have also gotten the impression that the power plant serves another purpose, as well.”

“And what purpose is that?” Carter asked.

“Well, that is why Ms. Adams is here,” Erik responded.

“Who, me?” Jen said. “I have no idea why they wanted me here.”

“Great,” Nelson said. “Sounds like we’re getting somewhere.”

Carter gave the tall man a look that could only have one meaning. Nelson didn’t speak again.

“Jen,” Carter said, “I understand you’ve got a lot more at stake than the rest of us. But we need your help here, okay?”

She nodded.

“What can you tell us about the work you were doing with Dr. Storm?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know anything we were working on that would be useful here. It was mainly research and class preparation. Even when I went to his office, there wasn’t anything there that seemed odd or out of place.”

She thought for a moment. “This machine. Whatever it is, it’s not just a geothermal power plant.” She looked toward Erik for confirmation. “But part of it is.”

He nodded.

“So,” she continued, “we can assume that it’s sitting on top of an active geothermal site, correct? I mean, they wouldn’t bother building one unless there’s some activity in the area.”

“Right,” Erik added. “The vents provide the power, and provide some of the initial pressure needed to run the plant. Without the steam, there is no heat and therefore no power.”

“Exactly,” Jen said. “So we can assume that we’re sitting on top of a thermal vent in the ocean…” Jen’s head snapped up.

“What is it?” Erik asked.

“Erik, I just realized. We’re at the bottom of the ocean.”

“Wait,” Nelson said, “you forgot there were five miles of ocean sitting on us?”

“No, I mean, I remembered, but I didn’t associate that with—”

“The power plant!” Erik shouted. “We are resting on what could be the thinnest section of Earth’s crust!” He looked around the others. “Most of the crust layer beneath continental locations is around twenty miles thick, and beneath the ocean, around three to five miles thick. Obviously, that depends on the location, and it’s an educated guess at best.”

“Sounds great,” Nelson said. “Five miles of ocean pressing down on us, and five miles below us protecting us from the fiery hell of Earth’s core.”

“Actually, the crust sits on the mantle, which is made of superheated rock and magma.”

Carter raised his eyebrows, silently begging Jen to get to the point.

“I didn’t put it together at first,” she continued. “This station, the power plant, the geothermal activity that must be present in the area, and finally…”

“The machine,” Erik said.

“The machine. It’s some kind of gigantic drill.”

Carter nodded slowly, trying to make sense of it all.

“A drill?” Saunders asked.

“It has to be,” Jen said. “It makes so much sense now, really. Think about it: the spinning, the conical shape, the location.”

“And it’s drilling into the mantle,” Erik said.

“Jen, you said the crust here is likely still around three miles thick,” Carter said. “That means there’s no way that drill can reach the mantle.”

“It doesn’t need to,” Erik said. “This station is on a rock shelf protruding from one of the walls on the side of a massive trench, as you will recall from the briefing on the submarine. But we are probably at the bottom of the trench and, therefore, close to where the trench grows upward from the sea floor.”

He made a “V” with his hands, with his fingertips pressed together and pointing straight down. “This drill was not designed to actually tap into the mantle, but merely push the two trench walls far enough apart that a schism is formed.”

Jen nodded along as he explained. “It’s a drill that isn’t meant to dig a hole, but one that’s basically operating like a giant, slow wedge—pushing two plates apart enough to crack the crust that’s underneath.”

She suddenly realized something else.

“It’s working, too. Remember that wild shaking just before the drill finished spinning? I think the research station itself sunk into the shelf. The drill is spinning, but it’s pulling the base down with it.”

Carter moved over the wall opposite the information desk at the gymnasium entrance and sat down on a bench. He wiped his forehead with a hand, then looked up. If Jen thought Carter’s demeanor and expression were usually serious, the look he wore now was ten times more intense.

“Jen, Erik, thank you,” he said. Then he looked at them individually for a brief moment before starting again. “We need to get back down to that machine. Whatever it’s there for, it’s obviously fully operational and currently doing its job. And that means it’s only a matter of time before it finishes its job.”

Jen knew where he was going. “It’s going to break a hole in the Earth’s crust,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

Carter just nodded silently.

From somewhere outside, they heard the squawk of a walkie-talkie and then shouts.

“They’re here,” Saunders said. “Back door. Now!”

They stood and ran through the gym, careful to stay between the lines of machines, away from the pool’s edge. About a quarter of the way to the back of the building, Saunders veered right and examined an emergency exit.

“The sign’s off, and I don’t think there’s an alarm activated,” she said.

Carter spoke. “We don’t have time anyway. Let’s take our chances.”

She pushed it open and ran out, checking both directions before sprinting toward another building—the combined movie theater and bowling alley they’d seen on the map—and the rest followed.

Saunders pulled on the door handle at the back of the building and was surprised to find it unlocked as well. She opened it and started climbing the stairs inside the theater. Jen stayed behind Erik and Nelson, and they followed Saunders to the top of the theater and out to the lobby.

They found an abandoned snack bar, overflowing trash cans, and some empty movie poster frames hanging on the walls. Other than the silence and lack of lighting, the theater seemed like it would be fully functional—out of date but in working order.

Jen stopped and caught her breath from the exertion of sprinting to another building and up a flight of stairs. She looked up and saw Nelson resting with his hands on his knees and Erik breathing gulps of air. Saunders was completely unfazed, and was checking her gun and sidearm. She looked back at Jen and gave her a nod of approval.

Then she frowned.

Jen’s blood froze. “What?” she said.

Saunders clicked a round into the chamber. “Where’s Carter?”

40

Mark awoke to a splitting headache.

How long have I been out?

He kept his eyes closed and listened to his surroundings. A voice mumbled a question somewhere in the room on his left side, but Mark couldn’t hear a response. The gas must have knocked him out, but thankfully he hadn’t inhaled enough of it for it to have lasted long enough.

He slowly tried lifting his arms, but was surprised to find them strapped down.

Am I on a table?

He wriggled his left hand a bit until he felt what was holding it to the table. Thick zip ties wrapped around his wrists, fastened somehow to the metal table he was on. He wondered if the table could move or if it, too, was fastened to the floor.

He listened again as footsteps approached the table. The mumbling continued, but it sounded like incoherent rambling.

Maybe I am in here alone, he thought. The mumbling voice grew closer, and Mark felt someone unbuttoning his shirt sleeve and rolling it up.

He knew the next move. Wait it out, try to figure out more of his surroundings, and then act.

Achieve.

The goal had changed. He needed information now that he had escaped his holding cell.

He needed to get off this table, apprehend whoever was in here mumbling, and figure out what was going on.

Before they tried whatever science experiment they were about to do.

Mark waited another three minutes, the scientist mumbling to himself the entire time. Finally, the mumbling voice turned away, and Mark could hear it walking away from the table.

Now’s as good a time as ever.

He summoned all of his strength and explosively shifted on the table, trying to roll the entire piece of metal furniture onto its side.

It didn’t work.

Instead, he was able to get the right side of the table to lift off the floor, then slam down onto all four legs again. In doing so, his right arm hit the table and bounced back, breaking the zip tie. Finally, he opened his eyes.

He saw a small desk to his right, set up next to him. He reached for a short scalpel that lay on the table and prepared to slice through the binding on his left arm.

Before he could, he caught the scientist looking at him. Wide-eyed, the man stumbled across the room toward a computer terminal.

“Wait!” Mark shouted at the man’s back as the scientist pressed something on the computer keyboard.

Mark heard a soft beeping, and the scientist approached the table. Mark tucked the scalpel under his wrist and waited for the scientist to get close.

Three more steps, he thought as the man neared the table. He willed him to come closer, but instead, he just stared at Mark as if in a trance. He cocked his head to the side.

Just then, another sliding door opened, appearing in the glass wall at the foot of Mark’s table.

Behind it, Mark saw a red-haired man in his early forties, maybe younger, step into the room.

“Mr. Adams,” he said, “good to see you.”

Mark waited.

“We’ve never met. Officially, anyway, but I’ve enjoyed your discourse with my associate, Ms. Etienne-Grey.”

That must be the woman he’d talked to.

“Where’s my son?” Mark blurted out.

“In good time, Mark,” the man said. “My name is Jeremiah Austin, and I believe we’ve gotten off to a poor start.”

“What do you want with my wife?” he said.

Jeremiah frowned slightly, then smiled. “Yes, that’s right. Your ex-wife, I believe?”

Not yet, Mark thought. Technically. But he didn’t respond.

“Where exactly is Ms. Adams?” Austin asked.

Mark’s nostrils flared. If only I knew.

“Mr. Adams,” Austin continued, “I would like to continue my work here without more interference. You and I have similar interests in mind, I believe.”

“Yeah? How’s that?”

Mark slid the scalpel down so that his right hand—which he hadn’t lifted from the table—was now covering it. He gently held it between his pinky and ring finger, slowly sliding it to the inside of his hand.

“My project here is twofold. The first, you’re probably already familiar with.”

He motioned to the scientist at his right, who still peered creepily down at Mark.

“This man, Dr. Dwight Grantham, is… excuse me, was, a world-renowned physicist before he was called to this mission.”

The doctor twitched when he recognized his own name, but didn’t break his stare.

“When I arrived here, he was all but useless—confused, disoriented, and generally a disdainful sight. But I… revitalized him, as well as the rest of the team we found here, and now he’s at least able to serve a proper function in the research station.”

Mark had no idea what he was talking about, but he let the man talk.

“Many of the scientists here at Agartha Base suffered from a severe case of what essentially is isolation-related psychosis. They were completely functional human beings and could even hold a conversation, but couldn’t perform the necessary duties their research called them here for. They stayed alive for over thirty years, often in solitude or in small groups, until we rescued them.”

“Rescued them? How?” Mark looked at the scientist Austin was referring to. The man’s eyes were hollow, dark, and lifeless, and Mark couldn’t imagine how miserable his life had been the past three decades.

“Now, Mr. Adams, they once again serve a purpose. As you can most certainly relate, living an empty life devoid of purpose is no life at all. These men and women have helped us carry out our duties here, asking nothing in return.”

“Asking nothing—how could they? These people are nothing but lifeless shells.”

“Don’t get excited, Mark,” Austin said. “Dr. Grantham here has served his purpose. I suppose unsuccessfully, as you are currently still carrying on a conversation with me.”

He watched as Austin sidled over to the man—Grantham—and placed a hand on his shoulder. Austin reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device that looked like a cell phone. He placed it next to the doctor’s ear and waved it a few times around his temple.

The scientist reacted immediately, wailing in agony and dropping to the floor. He reached to his head, pushing against his skull, but flailed around on the ground for a full minute.

Finally silent, Austin stepped over him and approached the left side of Mark’s table.

“We’ve placed an electronic device inside each of my scientists’ skulls, both for tracking and monitoring, and as a sort of control mechanism. It’s basically a small vial of chemicals that I discovered react strongly to a specific electromagnetic pulse.

“My research back in the states was centered on botany, with a unique focus on naturally occurring chemical compounds found in exotic plant life. Interestingly enough, many of these plants have insanely useful applications to people like me, including the one plaguing our friendly research scientists here at the station.”

Mark tried to put it all together in his mind as Austin continued.

“One protein from here, a few from there, and zap it with an electrical current, and you’ve got a living, breathing machine. Something—someone, excuse me—who can be persuaded to do things that need to be done. Simple tasks, really, but useful nonetheless.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Forcing someone to do something in this way is impossible, but using these particular programs to deny the brain option is not impossible. By temporarily shutting down certain synapses in the human brain, we can remove possible results from the subject’s conscious decision-making process, and thus give the illusion of control. Imagine what this would offer governments, organizations, and even universities. The ability to control subjects; to control the variables enough that your solution is the only one that is enacted. No more arguing, fighting, or insubordination.”

“But this man is dead,” Mark said. “You just killed him.”

“No. On the contrary,” Austin said, “he is now able to truly live. Without the hindrance of humanity’s daily routine and without the annoyance of personal desire. He will wake up in about an hour and carry on as if nothing happened. But his mind, unfortunately, is what we call wasted. No longer useful to scientific endeavors, he is merely a warm body that will attain his natural, instinctual goals—food, shelter, protection of his own, and survival. He is now free.”

Mark decided it was time to act. Austin was lost in his own arrogance, explaining his utopian view of humanity, and drawing ever closer to the table each second.

When Austin was about a foot away, Mark lurched upward, slashing the scalpel toward Austin’s head. Austin’s reaction time was phenomenal, and he ducked out of the way. As the scalpel closed in on his head, it clipped his ear and split an inch-long gash deep into the man’s cheek.

He instinctually reached to his ear to slow the bleeding, but Mark was still moving. He rolled completely over, twisting his left arm, which was still zip-tied to the table, and pulled the table over with him.

He landed on his feet but kept twisting his wrist around until the zip tie snapped off his wrist.

Austin rose, one hand holding the side of his face and the other holding a pistol. He aimed at Mark and fired.

When Mark saw the pistol, he quickly pivoted and slid the table between himself and Austin’s gun, and when the bullet smacked against it, it left a half-inch dent in the underside of the metal. Mark pushed back against the table, knocking into Austin and causing the man to fall backward.

Mark crawled a few feet, then stood and ran out of the room. He heard Austin curse as the man tried to lift the heavy table, but Mark was already running in the opposite direction.

I have to get to Reese. He knew his son was here somewhere—Sylvia had said so.

41

Mark ran for his life; for his son’s life.

After leaving the lab room where he had been held, Mark stumbled down the long hallway as the last of the sedation effects had worn off.

Achieve.

Mark’s training was in full gear now, and he had a new objective. Find Reese.

Reese wasn’t safe anywhere in the station, so there was no point in waiting. They needed to find a way out of this mess and then get back to Jen and the others.

He rounded a corner, reading the plates on the doors as he passed.

L10.23

L10.24

He must be on Level Ten.

He found a short hallway that appeared to not have any doors. There was no sign above it, and he began to run past as he heard a noise.

Shouting?

He stopped.

Turning, he focused his attention on the short hallway.

Another shout.

“Reese!” he yelled.

He ran down the hallway, trying to find a door, anything.

“Dad!” Had he heard that correctly?

Finally, reaching the end, he saw an unmarked door to what looked like a closet. He examined it, seeing a deadbolt fastened haphazardly on the outside of the door. This had to be it.

He unlocked the deadbolt and tried the handle. Finding it also locked, he kicked on the door violently.

It wouldn’t budge.

He yelled again.

The handle turned, and the door opened from the inside. Blistering white fell out into the hall, immediately lighting the area.

“Reese!” his son stared at him from inside the room, eyes wide and frightened. He stood still for a second, unsure, then ran forward and embraced Mark.

“Reese, are you alright?” Mark asked. While holding his son, Mark looked around the room for the first time. Stark white walls, white bedsheets on a white-framed bed, and a white chair in the corner. Clearly, there weren’t a lot of decorating ideas put into this room.

“I—I’m fine. How did you find me?”

“Weren’t you yelling?”

“I was, but that was because I thought I heard a crash or something, through the walls. I thought maybe some people tried to break in to rescue me, but I never thought it would be you! I mean, how did you find this place?”

“Your mother and I were brought here too, to find something. Come on; we don’t have a lot of time.”

Reese was confused, but Mark couldn’t deal with that right now. “Reese, do you know your way around here?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve been locked in this room since they brought me here. I remember… the house… they came in—” he stopped short, tears brimming at the sides of his eyes.

“It’s okay, Reese. We need to find Mom.” He turned away from the room and waited for Reese to follow. “Can you run?”

Reese nodded, and they started jogging down the hall. At the main hallway, Mark turned left and continued reading the numbers on the doors. “Do you know how many people might be here?” he asked.

“No, I’ve only seen the lady and the man.”

Mark knew he was talking about Sylvia and Jeremiah.

They ran more, now in a dimly-lit hallway walled with glass, large offices spaced down each side. He targeted the final door, the one facing them at the very end of the hall.

L10.33.

The room wasn’t lit, but from the lights above bouncing through the glass, he could see plants growing inside, almost covering every inch of the front wall. It looked promising. Further, the door was slightly ajar, and Mark slowed to a walk.

“Reese, I need you to wait outside by the door,” he whispered. “If you hear me yell or anything unusual, run away. Get to the exit of this level and run up the stairs. Okay?”

Reese nodded again.

Mark approached the door and gently pushed it open. The office was empty, but the humidity and smell of vegetation forcefully filled his nostrils. He blinked a few times, trying to adjust.

“It’s okay, Reese. You can come in. Don’t touch anything.”

Reese entered, and his eyes lit up as he saw the venus flytrap on the desk. “Cool!” he said, running toward it.

Mark followed his son, dodging leaves and branches, and rounded the desk. He sat down in the leather chair and opened the MacBook Pro on the desk. He stared at the standard password field for a few seconds, then pressed a key combination on the keyboard. Immediately a black screen appeared, followed by a command prompt of operating system jargon. He scanned the lines, then typed another string of characters.

/sbin/mount -uw /

Another few lines of code and more waiting.

Finally, he sat back in the chair. Reese watched over his shoulder as the computer booted up to the desktop, and Mark started perusing the files. Another screen opened as he clicked into a folder.

“It’s password-protected, and I’m assuming it’s expecting credentials from an admin or higher, but I don’t have time to bypass and hack into it as Austin, so I’m going to try setting back to the default super administrator user.”

He typed some more, opening a terminal shell application, and entered a few strings. A text file popped up onto the screen called init_err.txt, and immediately began to fill with newly-discovered system errors. Mark sat back, looking at the file, then started typing again.

“It’s trying to launch a specific program, one that was in Austin’s encrypted folder.” Finally, he pressed a key and waited as lines of code streamed down the small window on the screen. Mark started mumbling to himself out of habit as he followed the code and read along. He frowned and stopped the code as a message appeared in another terminal window.

/etc/init.d/GLIIdatabase_cron_server

The message disappeared, and Mark froze.

“What is it?”

“Once I got in, it opened a file full of errors that said this other file couldn’t be found. I was trying to find it so I could see what it was, but when I did, it launched automatically.”

He logged off the computer and shut the lid.

Mark reached for the top of three matching drawers on the front of the desk, opened it, and pulled out a three-ring binder.

The binder was labeled like the others he and Erik had found on the main level, but Mark quickly realized it had been updated. The first page was missing, judging by the words “Table of Contents—Pg. 2” scrawled across the top in handwritten text. He flipped through to the next section and started reading.

The book wasn’t what the Table of Contents listed at all. Instead, Mark found redacted communication files, letters sent back and forth between “AB”—Agartha Base, he guessed—and another name that had been blacked out.

“What is it, Dad?” Reese asked, coming alongside him at the desk.

“I don’t know yet,” Mark answered, continuing to read. “It looks like this station was built for one purpose, then changed around for another purpose later. Whoever brought you here is in on it, but I don’t know what they’re trying to do.”

He flipped a page and gasped. The page he was reading was not redacted—it had been added recently—and it was a diagram of the research station, viewed from the side. The majority of the diagram was familiar to Mark, including the domed roof, the multiple levels each with a specific function, and the upside-down conical power plant in the center.

But it was the area around the station on the diagram that caught his eye. He read the captions aloud: “‘Crustal formations indicate weakened pressure points…’ ‘load-zone activation points…’ ‘trench convergence—focal point.’”

He scanned the pages following the diagram, confirming his thoughts. “Reese, my company did some work for the people that brought us here. At the time, it was nonsense—computer stuff, programming and developing, that sort of thing. There was a lot of it, but it all seemed unrelated, and they just needed to find a way to get it done right, quickly.

“But I recognize some of this now. At the time, it was all hidden in computer programs, split up enough that it was impossible to see what the big picture was. But here it is, all of it. The pieces, I mean.

“This—” he pointed out the large conical power plant, “was part of what my team was working on. It was all theoretical, though, at the time, and it was all numbers. We had no idea it was an actual analytical prototype for something of this scale.”

“What was it?” Reese asked.

“The project? It was a probabilistic model to determine the efficacy of centrifugal movement on a pressurized plane.”

He paused, then looked at Reese. “Sorry. It was a computer program that was supposed to determine whether or not this place would hold up after being pressurized under five miles of ocean while rotating.”

“Rotating? Like spinning?”

“Right. Rotating, like a drill.”

42

How could it be real?

Mark remembered the prototype well. It was a computer model that depicted the exact variables he saw rendered in the diagrams. His team—himself and three others—had developed the computer program, performed the tests, and delivered the results. It had been innocent theoretical engineering on a hypothetical set of data.

There was no talk of deep-sea drilling, plate tectonics, or underwater research stations.

How could we have been so blind?

These questions nagged at him as he and Reese hustled down the hallways of Level Ten. He counted up as the office and room numbers slid past until, finally, he passed the room he’d been kept in.

L10.03.

Right near the exit. The room was just as he remembered it—white, empty, and devoid of life. A glass wall and a nearly invisible door separated the room from the hallway they stood in.

They didn’t wait around to explore more. Mark knew Austin had probably made his way back to his office to check into the closed-circuit camera system, and Sylvia was also somewhere in the vicinity. And who knew how many other “scientists” Austin had wandering around down here.

He thought back to the map up on Level Four. Level Eleven was labeled Geothermal: Power and Energy, and he knew Jen was originally wanting to explore there. He had no better ideas, so that was it.

“Let’s go downstairs, Reese.” He walked toward the exit, Reese following close behind.

He stepped to the large metal doors and shoved. They wouldn’t budge.

Reese stepped toward it and reached out with his hand. He placed his small palm open on the crack of the doors, and Mark heard something click inside the mechanism.

“I saw the lady do it when she took me here. I don’t think it’s locked. You just have to know where the handle is.”

Mark was impressed, and he pushed again. This time, the great metal doors swung open, revealing the corrugated metal staircase to the levels above and below them.

And a flash of movement caught Mark’s eye.

“Did you see that?” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

“No. What?”

“Come on, slowly. Try not to make any noise.”

He walked to the ledge and started down the stairs. He had seen something move below them, but it was too small and quick for Mark to be able to discern what it was.

He descended the staircase, carefully stepping with his toes first. They stopped in front of the open doors to the level below, labeled Level Eleven: Rue Marron.

“Reese, wait here. I’m going to see who’s down here. Be ready to run if I yell, okay?” He didn’t wait for a response.

Mark stepped onto the ground of Level Eleven, looking in each direction. A huge conical machine hung from above his head, splitting the ground in front of him and descending into the lower levels. He could feel the hum of the huge machine gently shaking around him.

He didn’t dare call out, but he walked a few more steps toward an outlying building. Smoke rose from a broken window, and spent magazine rounds littered the ground around him.

Something happened here, he knew immediately. Recently.

He could taste the burnt magnesium on his tongue.

He struggled to stay quiet, wanting to yell Jen’s name. He had to know if she was still okay.

Moving toward the center of the level, he looked back. Reese was waiting by the main entrance to the level, gazing back at him. He’d noticed the burning smell as well.

Motioning for him to follow, Mark continued to examine the level’s buildings and grounds. He followed a line of small buildings, heading toward a smaller one near the central machine.

We need to get out of sight, he thought.

The building was situated as the last in a line of small maintenance sheds, next to a tall structure that had a sign on the side of it.

Maintenance Elevator: To Level Four.

He walked through the unlocked door of the first building next to the elevator. The place was absolutely destroyed, with papers and notebooks sprawled about and bullet holes riddling the walls. Reese entered and stood close by Mark’s side.

“Move to that window and look toward the center of the level. There’s the big machine that I told you about upstairs, but I want you to keep your eyes open for movement, okay?”

“Okay.”

Mark walked back to the door and peered around the corner. I know I saw something.

Something moved in the corner of his eye, and Mark reacted instinctively. He moved his forearm up toward the movement, protecting his face, as a massive force bowled over him.

Falling to the side, he looked back to Reese and yelled just as he hit the ground. “Run! Get to that elevator!”

He felt the wind leave his body as the creature crushed him. His eyes had closed in reaction to the unknown force, but he still used his other senses to analyze what it was that had attacked him.

The thing rolled off him—it was shaped like a human, he realized—and lunged again. Mark rolled to a sitting position just in time, and the person landed hard on the ground. Reese was now running out the sole door of the building, right next to Mark and the attacker.

Without hesitation, the man reached out and grabbed Reese with an outstretched arm, causing Mark’s son to gasp in surprise. Reese wriggled around to get free, but he was locked in a vice grip from the man’s dark, muscular arm.

Mark backpedaled, now on his feet, and stood fully upright. He wasn’t as tall as the man, nor was he as large, but he wouldn’t stand still and let his son get taken again.

He took in his opponent, for the first time truly looking at him.

When he saw who it was, his jaw dropped.

“Carter? Carter, is that you?”

The man’s face was similar to Daniel Carter’s but lacked… something. His eyes were hollow, dark, and empty, and his expression was of sheer nonchalance as if Reese was simply a bag of groceries to be carried inside.

“Carter, can you let my son go?” Mark asked, his voice soft and delicate. He had no idea what was going on, but he wasn’t about to take any chances.

Carter just looked at Mark, staring through him. His head cocked slightly to the side, Carter seemed completely unaware of what was happening.

“Dad? What’s—”

Carter ripped his arm sideways, swinging Reese completely around his body and causing the boy to let out a painful yelp. “No,” Carter said. His voice was scratchy, dry, and stressed. He had moved Reese to the opposite side of his large body, away from Mark.

Mark’s eyes narrowed as his emotions took over. He didn’t care about his goal, his calculated logic.

He didn’t care if he killed the man.

Mark lunged, moving fast and ducking low. Reese’s eyes widened as he braced for the impact, but Mark dove to the side at the last minute. He slammed his left hand out, striking upward with a flattened and steady open palm.

The blow took Reese and Carter by surprise. Carter stumbled backward and wrapped both hands around his bruised neck, letting Reese go. Catching his breath, he looked at Mark, startled.

Mark was already bearing down for his next attack. He stretched his other hand out, enticing Carter to reach for it.

Carter took the bait, grabbing for Mark’s wrist. Mark used the hold as leverage, flipping himself up and around the big man’s back, then slashed down with his elbow onto the center of his spine just below his neck.

Carter howled in rage, falling to his knees. Mark continued his barrage, using his right hand to bend Carter’s left arm around him, feeling for pressure. Finally, he held Carter’s shoulder as he pulled upward on the arm, abruptly and forcefully, and he heard an immediate snap.

The mercenary blinked back tears as his body screamed in agony. He dropped to the ground, going limp, as he passed out.

Reese watched the entire incident—no longer than five seconds—play out as his father incapacitated the larger man. He started to respond but was silenced by Mark first.

“Go.”

Reese didn’t argue. He turned and ran toward the elevator, followed closely by Mark.

Entering, Mark wondered if the tired elevator would even work, but he was surprised to see lights dotting the interior. It was a true maintenance elevator, made of sheet metal and large enough to hold a crew of twenty men.

He pressed “4” on the panel, and the elevator immediately lurched upward.

“Dad?” Reese asked. The boy was visibly shaking.

Mark didn’t respond. He continued looking forward as the elevator continued its climb.

“Dad? What—”

“Enough.” Mark’s voice was low but direct. “Not now, I mean. There’s not enough time.”

He gritted his teeth, but Reese didn’t ask about it again.

The elevator’s panel lit up as it passed the individual floor numbers.

9.

8.

7.

The elevator was slow; Mark didn’t like that. It was all happening too fast, and this elevator wasn’t going fast enough.

6.

The elevator stopped.

Mark pushed the “4” button again; again. It didn’t move. They were stuck between level six and level five.

He punched a fist onto the panel, denting the thin metal control unit.

Slowly, the elevator began to rise.

The light for 5 blinked once, then stayed lit. The elevator had stopped, but this time the doors slid open.

Mark stepped in front of Reese as the doors revealed the man standing outside the elevator.

Jeremiah Austin.

“Mr. Adams,” he said. “Good to see you again. I thought I’d lost you down there.” Austin’s ear was bandaged, and he had a strip of gauze wrapping around his head.

Mark felt his knees involuntarily bend. His senses instinctively heightened. He began to slow his breathing, crouching ever so slightly as he prepared to dart out of the elevator and into Austin’s chest.

“I wouldn’t do anything rash, Mr. Adams,” Austin said. He nodded once and was immediately joined by six black-clad Russian soldiers, appearing from each side of the level outside the elevator. They each carried an assault rifle, and each was pointed directly at Mark’s chest.

Except for one.

One of the soldiers—an impossibly-thick, cruel-looking Slavic woman—was pointing her rifle at Reese.

Finally, a blond woman stepped out from the right side of the elevator, smiling at Mark.

Sylvia.

43

The tunnel system seemed darker now and even more constricting. The horrors they had all experienced here were not lost on Jen and the others. Saunders ran in front, taking the lead since Carter had disappeared, and Erik followed closely behind. Jen and Nelson kept pace as they ascended through the tunnel to the main level, Level Four.

The tunnels were a circuitous route, to be sure, but they all felt safer there, having now explored the complete distance between the Level Four and Level Nine entrances. They so far hadn’t intercepted any of the scientists, nor had they experienced any major setbacks.

All was well, and that was what worried Jen.

Where is everyone?

Mark and Carter were now missing, and she had no leads on what the giant drill at the center of the lower levels was intended to be used for. The Russian mercs had killed one of their team members, and two had been murdered by the other hostile force lurking around the station.

Nothing made sense, but Jen pressed on.

Fueled by her fear, adrenaline, and rage toward whoever was behind this, she committed to finding the answer they were looking for at any cost. She had to get Reese, and if it took helping the enemy, she’d comply.

They found the large, foul-smelling chamber and ran through without so much as slowing down. Jen’s feet fell at a rhythmic, steady pace, and she found her mind syncing with the collective music of their shoes on the rocky earth.

“We’re getting to the main level,” Saunders said from up ahead. “Let’s slow down and make sure we’re not walking into a trap.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Nelson said.

Saunders paused at the door, then walked into the clearing between the cave opening and the houses lining the street. Nelson peered around the scope of his rifle, providing cover.

She waved them forward, and Jen and Erik stepped out onto the street. Nelson followed, and they met again at the first house and continued through, weaving between empty, abandoned houses and utility sheds.

Suddenly Saunders stopped. She squinted, then brought her rifle up. Looking through it, she whispered under her breath. “Bollocks. What in the—Nelson, give me a hand!”

She took off at a sprint, clearing the distance to the next house in an impressive three strides. Jen watched as she ran farther away from them. Nelson sprang into action as well, leaving Erik and her to wonder aloud what she’d seen.

As they struggled to catch up, Jen watched as Saunders’ body disappeared behind one of the houses. She stepped to the side, aligning her vision with the new angle. Saunders reappeared at the back of the house, and Jen gasped when she saw the soldier stop next to Carter. She sped up, catching them in another ten seconds.

“Carter?” Rachel asked. “What’s wrong?”

Carter was looking off into the distance, toward the great lighting fixture on the ceiling of the dome above their heads. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, and Nelson and Saunders appeared as confounded with their leader as Jen and Erik were.

“Carter? What’s up?”

Carter’s head swiveled around, and as his upper body rotated, they saw that his right arm was bent and pulled out of its socket. He struggled to remain standing, then toppled forward. Nelson reacted, reaching his arms out to slow the man’s fall. He fell directly onto Nelson, who stumbled but finally caught his balance and held Carter.

“Come on, boss, let’s get you somewhere you can lie down,” he said.

Saunders reached for his other side, and together the three began walking slowly back to one of the houses.

“There is a medical facility down on one of the levels below us,” Erik said.

“We can’t risk moving him that much,” Saunders said. “I need to see if anything’s broken and set his shoulder.

They reached the small porch on the back of the house and set Carter against the rail, leaning his bulk onto it. Saunders began examining him as Nelson started in with more questions.

“Who did this, boss? Carter?”

Carter mumbled something under his breath.

“Say that again, boss. Who did this to you?”

More incoherent ramblings.

Nelson looked at Jen and shook his head. “What do you think?”

Jen was as shocked as they were. “He must not have gone down without a fight, right?”

“And he’s still walking—or standing—around, so he must have done some serious damage to them first,” Nelson said.

“Lev…” Carter whispered. “Level…” his eyes rolled slightly, and his mouth drooped open.

“Level what? Which level, Carter?” Saunders asked. “Damn it!” her voice cracked, and Jen looked up at her. Saunders’ nostrils flared, angry at herself for showing that emotion, then immediately her expression changed back to a firm gaze.

Jen watched the transformation take place in less than a second but didn’t ask questions.

“Saunders, we need to get him down to the infirmary,” Nelson said. “There’s not enough we can do for him up here. And plus, we’re sitting ducks while he’s with us out here.”

She sighed. “We can’t afford to move him, though. The tunnels and the stairs are bad ideas.”

“You know we need to. Let’s go slow; see if we can’t carry him most of the way.”

She paused, then nodded. “Okay, fine. Stairs though. We need the light.”

They lifted Carter off the railing and spread his weight between them, careful to hold his right side without pressing against his arm.

They walked a few steps, and Jen could see they would struggle the entire way. He was too large a man to be carried.

Apparently, Carter agreed. He pushed Nelson off his left side, and Saunders let go. He stumbled forward a few steps, shakily but straight. Another few steps and Jen understood.

“There’s something wrong with him, guys. He’s able to walk, but this is the best we’re going to get. We have to get him downstairs, and then somewhere he can be checked out.

“Look at his eyes,” she continued. “There’s something… something different about them. He’s not all there.” His eyes were empty but somehow still indicative of something deeper.

Fear? Or was it something else?

Carter was still walking, though, so they caught up and stood to either side of him, placing their hands out for support.

Then Carter snapped. He whipped his head around, narrowly missing Saunders’ own. He thrashed, clipping her face with his hand and sending her falling backward.

“Hey! What the bloody hell—” Nelson’s voice was cut off by Carter’s fist. The punch landed squarely on the man’s jaw, and Nelson reacted without hesitation. He punched back at Carter, who did nothing to duck or dodge the blow.

Nelson hit him twice in the stomach, but Carter seemed unfazed. Carter lunged toward Nelson, throwing his weight onto him and toppling both over onto the ground. He swung open-palmed hands at Nelson, scratching his face and neck.

Nelson howled in agony, then rolled Carter off of him. He kicked sideways while on the ground, landing his foot in Carter’s groin, then again behind his knee.

Carter fell, but still, it seemed as though the soldier could feel no pain. He stood, crookedly bent to the side, over Nelson, and fell directly on Nelson’s head.

Jen winced as she saw Carter’s elbow catch Nelson’s chin, directly where he’d been hit earlier. She ran to help, but Erik held her back.

“He’s rabid, Jen. There is nothing you will be able to do. If Nelson cannot fight him off, you will not either.”

Jen knew he was right, but still she hated just watching. “Maybe we can all attack him together?”

Nelson groaned, his face covered by most of Carter’s body, and he shifted quickly, spinning himself around and then up onto his knees. Blood dripped from his nose, and a large welt was already forming above his left eye.

“All right, you bastard. You want to fight?” Nelson stood up and waited for Carter to attack again.

This time, he was prepared. As Carter stumbled forward, Nelson caught him with a massive uppercut to the soft fleshy skin just below his jaw, and Carter’s body literally lifted off the ground from the hit. He somehow landed on his feet and again stumbled toward Nelson.

Nelson leaned back for a kick, but Carter moved swiftly to the side. Using Nelson’s wasted leverage, he slashed out with his open hands at Nelson’s face again, this time tearing his shirt down the sleeve. He scratched again, ripping the shirt more and drawing blood.

Finally, he jumped on Nelson from behind, his weight pushing Nelson to the ground.

Saunders came to six feet away, and she sat up to recover.

Carter’s frame was too much for Nelson, and he was now sitting on his chest, pinning both of Nelson’s arms to the ground with his knees. Carter was looking straight ahead, not even seeming to notice that he’d pinned one of his own team members. He brought his hands down at full force, scratching Nelson’s face and neck each time.

A gunshot sounded, and Carter’s body went rigid. He rolled off Nelson’s chest, and Nelson opened his eyes. He looked up to see who had saved him and found Saunders staring down at him.

She offered him a hand, but he shook his head. “I think I’ll lie here for a snap if you don’t mind,” he said.

Saunders shrugged, sighed, and turned to Jen and Erik. “Get ready. We’re going after these people, and I need you in the fight. No more hiding around or running away. Got it?”

Her voice was steady, but Jen heard the steely truth behind it. She just killed her friend because of them.

Jen didn’t need any encouragement, and she certainly didn’t have it in her to be timid. She grabbed Carter’s rifle and sidearm and threw the smaller gun at Erik. She checked it, just like the man had shown her, and then waited for Nelson to recover. He stood, silent, and started walking.

Jen looked toward Saunders. Their eyes met, and she thought she saw the slightest glint of moisture in the soldier’s eye. She was about to say something, but Nelson grabbed her arm.

“Wait,” he said. “Let her be. She’ll come around.” Jen, Erik, and Nelson started walking toward the stairs at the edge of the level as Saunders held back.

Jen looked at him. “What happened? I mean, before—”

“You mean, were they in love?” Nelson asked. “No. But he was once. Had a wife and a kid, too. Served on a private security detail for a company that got into some shady business, and it all blew up.”

“He was injured?”

“No, and as he would say, unfortunately not. His wife and child were murdered, and the government wouldn’t do anything to help.”

“So why did he join up?” she asked.

“He wanted to fix it, I guess, in his own way. He had a mentor—the same man who trained Saunders. That’s how they met.”

Jen waited for more, but Nelson was done.

Nelson reached the edge of the level first, but before he mounted the stairs, a man appeared on the landing, pointing an assault rifle. Behind him, three Russian mercenaries fanned out and pointed guns in their direction.

44

“Please lower your rifle, soldier. You’re outnumbered and severely outgunned.”

Jen saw Nelson’s shoulders rise as he realized they’d been ambushed. He turned around to face the voice. Jen, Erik, and Saunders did as well.

The man stood about fifty feet behind them, having walked over from behind the house adjacent to the one they’d found Carter standing behind. This man was unarmed, but he, too, was accompanied by a small group of black-clad military men and women. They all stood near the center of the great level’s expansive space, in the fields. Jen could see both the cave system opening and the housing district on one side, as well as the large propane tank in the distance she’d noticed earlier.

“Not bad, actually, for a haphazard group of scientists and Brits,” the man said. He walked toward them, and as he did the group from the stairs came to them and removed their weapons and effects. “It seems like only yesterday that you had, what, twice the members in your little group? Right—it was only yesterday.”

Jen’s face flushed, and she couldn’t hide her emotions any longer.

“What do you want?” she screamed, her words carrying the weight of grief and anger. “Why did you bring us here?”

“I brought you here?” the man asked mockingly. He was wearing black slacks and a red buttoned shirt, tucked in. His shoes had been recently polished and shined, and his hair was slicked back to a small ducktail. “I did no such thing. I may have enticed, but I certainly did not send any invitations.”

“What do you want from me?” Jen asked.

“You are Ms. Jennifer Adams, correct?” he asked, not waiting for a response. “Ms. Adams, I believe you are mistaken. While I’m flattered you’ve made the trip, I don’t understand why.”

“You took my son!” she yelled.

“Reese Adams is safe, I assure you. We’ve been taking good care of the boy, and he’s quite a young man. You’ve done a fantastic job.”

“I want to see him. Is he here?”

Why would this man tell me the truth?

“He is. And you will. I need you all to cooperate, Ms. Adams. Is that too much to ask?”

She shook her head.

“Good. Let’s move somewhere a little more conducive to conversation if you don’t mind. You two—” he pointed at Nelson and Saunders—“feel free to catch up on some sleep while we conduct business.”

Suddenly two Russian soldiers appeared behind Nelson and Saunders and lifted their guns. They swung them forward, catching both at the backs of their skulls. Nelson and Saunders dropped to the ground, groaning in pain.

Erik’s eyes widened, but he didn’t speak.

“No,” Jen said. “Tell me what I’m doing here, and we’ll move. Otherwise, you’re going to need to carry us over there yourself.”

“Ms. Adams,” the man said, his voice growing solemn. “I have no idea why you’re here. Frankly, I’m surprised you came along.” He spoke to one of the soldiers at his side, who then ran behind a wall near the houses. A few seconds later, Jen saw the same soldier emerge with a blond woman and two other people, followed by another two Russians.

“Reese!” she shouted as she identified the smaller person approaching them. She ignored Erik’s protests and ran toward him.

“Mom?” Reese looked confused, but his eyes were filled with tears. He ran forward, and they embraced halfway between the houses and the open area.

“Are you okay?” she asked. He nodded, crying now while he hugged her. She stood after a moment, realizing she’d almost forgotten about the second person she’d recognized.

“Mark,” she said. “Mark, I—” she couldn’t find the words. They kissed but were suddenly torn apart by the mercenaries behind them.

“Wonderful,” the man said. “A family reunion. How delightful.” Jen glared at him as she held Reese’s hand. “As I mentioned, Ms. Adams, I don’t understand why it is you decided to come along.”

He paced a bit, then stopped. “It does seem rather pointless to keep the charade going, I guess. I have received what I wanted, and I have no use for you any longer. Kill them.”

Two soldiers immediately brought their guns up and pointed them at Jen and Reese. Jen was stunned, speechless.

“Wait!” Mark said. “Wait. You don’t have what you need, Austin. You brought me here to find something, right? And I haven’t found anything useful.”

Jen whipped around and stared at her husband. “What…what do you mean?”

He sighed. “Jen, I—I didn’t realize it at first, but I understood as soon as I knew Nouvelle Terre was involved here, I figured it out. It wasn’t you, Jen. They didn’t need you for anything.”

Jen suddenly knew he was right. They didn’t need me, she thought. Everything they would have needed her for—the geological surveying, the power plant—was already finished. They had a fully-operational system here, and there truly was no use for her.

“They needed me.”

Mark hung his head. “I wasn’t honest with you, Jen. Back when we, uh, that night—” he knew she knew what he was referring to. “Anyway, I had been working for Nouvelle Terre back when they were just known as an environmental advocacy group. We were providing some data sets, and…I was set up, Jen. I swear. That woman from the bar—I knew her. I’d seen her before.”

He stopped. There was no way to explain it.

He tried anyway. “They sent her to the bar and then had her follow me to the house. I never understood why they would do it, and that’s why I didn’t tell you. But I get it now. She was sent by the people I worked with on the Nouvelle Terre projects, and they planned to use me to give her information. It was part of my parameters to keep the security files on my computer, and to not ever let them on the mainframe.

“They could have taken them from me at any point, and it would have looked like I leaked them. But I added another layer of security; I never let the access files get on my hard drive. I ran the scripts from a USB drive that I’d encrypted and kept on my keychain. They didn’t expect that to happen, but they sent her—a low-level technician—to figure out where their information was.” He paused, looked at her.

“I love you, Jen.” Tears formed in his eyes as Jen just stood still. “I do, I really do. I never stopped loving you, but I couldn’t talk about it.”

Austin walked toward them. “Jen, I can’t help but pity you right now. I hope you can understand that I am a rational man, and I want you to know that your husband is telling the truth.”

45

Ken Dawson was exhausted.

He was driving back to his house after the third late night in a row at his mentor’s apartment. His wife and son were still out of town, visiting her parents in Virginia. They were due back this weekend, so he’d been living the life of a bachelor once again.

The house was a mess, he’d ordered takeout every night for the past three days, and the laundry was overflowing.

Further, his yard was in desperate need of a trim, the cars needed washing, and there were a few small projects he needed to do around the house.

But he had a good excuse.

This case he and his mentor, Craig Larson, were currently on was easily going to be the biggest of the year for him. He’d started at the agency five years ago, getting paired with Larson during his last two years before retirement.

Dawson had previously been a police officer, moving to the private investigation firm after ten years, and he loved the freedom of the new job. Larson was a veteran attorney, a great teacher, and an amazing detective, and his network in and around the political scene was staggering.

Since he’d begun the new job, Dawson had been trying to prove himself as a detective, and he’d put in his fair share of late hours. The rigor of the job required that he chase a lead before it went cold, regardless of how long it took. In this case, it meant tracking down every known bit of research on the pseudo-secret organization called Nouvelle Terre. He started in the usual places—libraries, web searches, old newspaper clippings—but found nothing.

After that, he started to call in some favors from friends and acquaintances. The Library of Congress, the CIA Headquarters, and even a brief chat with a Smithsonian historian. Again, nothing. Larson would have balked at the brashness of Dawson’s calls and requests. He’d always been a man to move through information more slowly, letting it “come to him,” as he liked to put it. But Dawson needed to move quickly, or they’d be out of luck. It had happened before, and he didn’t want it to happen again.

He pulled up the drive in front of his suburban home. Two stories with a furnished basement, it was well more than they needed, just the three of them, but they’d filled it with three dogs, a cat, and enough junk to last a lifetime.

As his headlights illuminated the garage door, he reached up and pressed the button on the dome of the truck. The garage door jolted, then slowly rose. He checked his phone while waiting for it, and when he looked up again, he noticed the door to the house was open.

He frowned but grabbed his briefcase and got out of the truck. He walked into the garage and entered the house.

“Hello?” he said loudly.

Hearing nothing, he stepped through the laundry room and into the kitchen.

“Amanda?”

No response.

Did I leave the door open?

He knew he didn’t. He remembered leaving out the front door three days ago when he went to Larson’s apartment.

Maybe Amanda and Zach left it open when they left.

Still, can’t hurt to check.

He walked through the downstairs floor first, checking the spare bedroom, restroom, and living areas. He moved upstairs, calling into each room. The upstairs was empty as well, so he went down to the basement.

He walked through the finished living room and den and entered the guest bedroom at the end of the hall.

He heard a clicking sound.

Whipping around, he instinctively reached for his side.

Shit, he thought. I haven’t carried a gun since I was on the force.

“Who’s there?” he said into the dark open room. He flicked a switch on the hallway wall and blinked a few times.

Still nothing.

He heard another click, and he tried to place its location. It sounded like it was coming from this room, but he backed into the guest room first. He turned the light on and reached the closet. Dawson opened the door and pulled out a seven iron from his set of golf clubs, then stepped back into the basement hallway.

Dawson had never been much of a fighter. He was smart, and his career’s trajectory had generally reflected that. However, he was in good shape and was trained in hand-to-hand combat at the academy.

He called out again and stepped into the living room. Still nothing, but a few more steps forward, and he heard two more clicks.

Then another.

What the hell is that? he thought.

His eyes focused on the decorative chest in the corner of the room. It was large—Dawson liked to tease Amanda about that as often as they were down here—and could easily hide a grown man.

He walked toward it, raising the club over his shoulder with one hand while reaching out to grab the clasp of the chest with the other. The handle, a vanity antique to go with the fake vintage chest, wasn’t lockable, and he swung it open. There was nothing inside but a few blankets.

Something stirred next to the chest, and when he closed the lid, he saw a squirrel running along the wall.

His heart skipped a beat, then he grinned. You’ve got to be kidding me.

The squirrel stopped in the corner, then looked at him.

Click.

It was the exact same clicking sound he’d heard before.

He shook his head, laughing inwardly to himself, then walked upstairs to get something to catch the squirrel with.

When he entered the kitchen, he reached for the light switch. He turned it on, and the room exploded. He was thrown backward into the family room, landing on the hardwood floor in front of the flatscreen TV.

A ball of fire had lit the ceiling on fire, and flames now spread wildly through the kitchen.

He groaned, then tried to stand. His right arm ignited in pain, and he fell back to the floor.

Flames now engulfed the wall behind the couch, creeping toward him. He tried to pull himself farther away from it, but he was too slow. He rolled into a crouch, then slowly stood.

Smoke was filling the room, so he started toward the office in the front of the house.

This wasn’t an accident, he thought. Lights don’t explode. He had to get to the front door.

The smoke was thickening, and he had almost reached the front door when the next explosion rocked him sideways.

Upstairs?

The bomb had been triggered remotely, he realized, and it had detonated directly above the kitchen. In my own bedroom.

He stumbled sideways and landed facedown on the carpet in the office. He breathed hard, trying to get as much air as possible. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, and he no longer felt the searing pain shooting up his arm.

He knew immediately what was going on. He’d been targeted, no doubt for his involvement in the case. What is this about?

He needed to get out of the house and get to his truck. He had to tell Larson.

But his arm was useless, and the left side of his house had now collapsed in on itself, blocking his way to the front door.

He lay on the floor, looking at the flames engulfing the family area and front entry. Reaching for his pocket, he took out his phone and dialed a number.

Come on, he thought, as he tried again to stand. Coughing, he checked the connection.

It was still dialing.

Pick up, he willed.

He stumbled through the smoke, dodging a few pieces of furniture that had already been consumed by fire.

He hacked and coughed uncontrollably now and sucked deep breaths of air as he crossed the living room to the back door. He tripped over the armchair and stumbled to the back wall. It was almost entirely covered in flames, but he knew he could easily kick through the single-bolt particle board back door.

Then he realized something. They’ve targeted me and possibly Larson as well. And they’ve done it by planting explosives in my house.

On each floor of my house.

Only two of the bombs had gone off. His eyes widened as a new fury overcame him. He rushed toward the back door, but it was too late.

The bomb planted in his basement detonated the moment he reached the back door. He was in mid-kick, trying to break down the door and escape when the floor gave out beneath him.

He fell right into an overwhelming burst of flames. The hole opened in his basement ceiling directly below him, and he dropped through, landing on the floor of the room he was just in.

He could see the chest he’d opened not five feet away, standing against the wall. He looked up at the open hole above him as excruciating pain roared through his lower body. Something had landed across his legs, but he couldn’t even summon the strength to lift his head to see what it was. He closed his eyes, waiting for end.

Thankfully, it came within thirty seconds.

The roof two floors above him collapsed, bringing structural beams, attic boxes, and everything situated at the back of their house crashing down on him.

He prayed silently but knew there was nothing God—or anyone else—could do.

The orange of the flames filled the space behind his eyelids, and soon it was blackness.

46

“We needed Mark to help with the project, and we needed a scapegoat, someone to pull the trigger on all of this. Mark, would you mind explaining to your family exactly what you do at your company?”

Mark just shrugged. “You know, already. Computers, mainframe stuff.”

“Mark,” Austin said, clearly agitated.

Mark continued. “I’m a hacker. A good one. You know I run a team of computer specialists, but together we’ve been trained to design, build, implement, and infiltrate computer security systems.”

Jen nodded. She knew this already.

“But my work isn’t always possible to do remotely. They train us to get up close, to get in where the systems are actually being used. They make sure I’m—we’re—able to be as efficient as possible in achieving our main objective, regardless of who’s in the way.

“I can fight, shoot, or maneuver my way out of just about anything, Jen. It’s not something I’m exactly proud of, but I want you to know I’ve been forced to hide all of this.”

Austin jumped in. “Mr. Adams has been very efficient, actually. The small team that reports to him singlehandedly built our security control system for the very machine we’re standing on top of, and everything he accomplished for us will be recognized as his own work. He alone, therefore, has acted as the sole perpetrator in what we’re about to release. You’re standing on ground zero, and I’m excited to get this show going.

“Now, let’s cut to the chase. Mark, say goodbye to your family, and let’s get ready to start the final phase of the project.”

Mark eyed Austin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Austin. I had nothing to do with this.”

“Oh? You built the security—”

“I built what I was told to build, and you and I both know that it is completely harmless!”

“…And when you finished the security control system, your company continued to do their research on mine. They discovered secrets that they shouldn’t have been privy to. Secrets we’ve worked hard to cover. Environmental disasters like the BP oil spill and Three Mile Island. We were even involved in Chernobyl.

“But your company couldn’t keep their nose out of it, so we had to take the situation into our own hands. We needed you, someone with a deep knowledge of the program, to come here and activate it. When word gets out that you were involved, your superiors won’t be able to talk about it, because they’ll be instigators as well.”

Mark was appalled. “Austin, you’re mad. I didn’t do anything here. Sure, I broke into your office, but I didn’t do anything there except try to figure out what’s going on. And I’m sure as hell not starting some program while I’m here.”

“Yes, well, you’re half correct. You have already achieved the first of two final steps. By logging into my computer as an administrator and attempting a connection via the encrypted data line, you successfully hacked into a security system that you, or your company, built. We couldn’t manually start the drilling process until you gave us this head start. Before, we had to wait for the station to complete its final turns on its own schedule. Thanks to you, we do not. It’s all for naught, however, since we’re basically just waiting for the final rotations anyway.

Jen thought back to the wild shaking of the gigantic machine in the lower levels. The drill.

“There are two rotations left; the next should be upon us any minute now. When the final rotation is complete, we will have, for the first time, drilled down far enough into the Earth’s crust to cause a major rift. A schism, if you will. One that will tap into the mantle and release much of the pressure being held at the bottom of this trench.”

Erik’s eyes widened as he realized the implications. “It will cause a major tectonic shift,” he said, his voice shaky. “That is a cataclysmic size for a rift, even if it is contained within the geographical area.”

“It will cause multiple tectonic shifts,” Austin replied. “And large ones, at that. We’re standing on a veritable hotbed of geological activity. This type of event will spread in exponential waves around the globe, consuming the sturdy bedrock and decimating the weak areas. It’s beautiful, really—one small spot to dig, and then…”

Erik whispered. “It’s a planetary reaction.”

Austin just stared past them. A merc ran to Austin and whispered something in his ear.

“It appears as though our final support team has arrived,” he said quietly. “Sylvia, would you mind helping our new guests find their way?”

The blond woman left, a small cadre of soldiers following closely behind.

47

This wasn’t an accident.

As Detective Larson pulled up to the curb next to the smoldering lot where his friend’s house previously stood, the thought nagged at the back of his mind. As a career detective, he was trained to push these sorts of ideas back until the hard evidence presented itself.

But he’d also learned in his long career to trust his gut.

And now his gut was screaming at him.

This was no accident.

Ken Dawson was dead, and it was currently being reported as an accidental house fire. He knew that was certainly a possibility, but he’d long stopped taking coincidences at face value. More often than not, there was something going on below the surface, and he was good—very good—at figuring out what it was.

Most of the time, Detective Larson would start with a motive. Who wanted Dawson dead, and why? Why not focus on Larson himself? Dawson was a good detective, but he was less careful and methodical than Larson would have liked. Maybe he sniffed around too much, and somebody noticed.

These thoughts pushed through the wall in his mind as he walked up the sidewalk to the smoke-blackened foundation of the house. He stopped before stepping onto the concrete porch, both to take a mental picture of the scene and for sentimental reasons. He’d been here many times before, even sharing Thanksgiving with their family.

He sighed.

He felt the nagging sensation again and realized that this was somehow different. Before, when he’d get this feeling, it was out of compassion for humanity. Now, however, there was something more.

He wanted this to be more than an accident. He wanted someone to be responsible for it because then he could blame someone. Someone could be at fault for it, and he could forever know that simple fate wasn’t the cause of his friend’s death.

So he stepped over the threshold and entered the smoking remains of the house. The local police had gotten him clearance onto the scene, and as long as he didn’t interfere with any evidence, he could take a look around. He greeted some of the investigators on the scene, nodding once as he passed.

There were a few officers and medical personnel around one area of the basement, so he wandered toward the ladder that had been lowered from the main floor. Descending, he noticed that the basement floor was covered by the fallen remains of the rest of the house. The ladder’s base was set on boards only about four feet below the main level. Another row of boards stretched from the base of the ladder and curved to the left, following a short hallway. The boards were fresh lumber, so Larson assumed the gathered officials had laid out some sort of walkway or platform over the rest of the debris.

“Is there a body?”

Larson’s ears turned toward the sound of the voice. Without looking, he listened to the exchange.

“Yes, the coroner has it now,” a second voice responded.

Larson stole a glance and noticed a young police officer had answered the question. Both men stood near a wall in the basement, apart from the other group that had gathered farther down the small hallway. The man who’d asked the question was tall, lanky, and in his mid-forties. He wore a police uniform, complete with a bulletproof vest over the blue top. The pants, traditional officer attire, were starched and freshly pressed and ended just above black leather oxfords. They were buffed and polished and gave off a slight gleam from the overhead lights that had been staged in the basement.

“Ok, I’ll need the name of the office, please,” the first officer said. He reached to the younger man and patted his shoulder. “Thanks.” The man turned and began walking toward the rest of the group, his heels clicking on the wooden platform.

Detective Larson listened as he continued to stare at the shoes. He had a pair that looked just like it, although they hadn’t been worn in years.

Why the nice shoes, officer?

The shoes were part of what Larson deemed “environmental juxtaposition,” a term he had developed at a training conference he’d spoken for years ago. They were out of place, but in an odd way. While he assumed it must be possible for an officer to put on the wrong shoes in the morning, he doubted they’d put on their nicest pair of shoes, waxed and polished, that were meant to be worn with a suit.

Then there was the odd line of questioning. Surely the police would understand the protocol and know that a body, even one as mangled and charred as a burn victim, would have been the first thing removed from the scene. Larson continued scrutinizing the man, piecing things together.

This man wasn’t a police officer.

So who are you, then? he wondered.

He needed to stay below the radar on this one. If there was, in fact, something more going on than a fatal house fire and his partner had been a target, there was good reason to believe that he himself was one as well.

Whoever wanted Dawson dead had succeeded, and if it was because of his involvement with the Agartha case, he might be next in line. His connections in Washington aside, this case was turning out to be larger than he’d imagined.

The man with the fancy shoes turned and caught Larson’s eyes. The man frowned, then quickly recovered and nodded once. Larson had caught the man by surprise, and he could tell that he’d been recognized.

So there it is, Larson thought. Government. You and I both know what we were working on, and how close we must be to figuring it out.

He turned and made for the ladder. Without bothering to look back to see if he was being followed, he left the house and walked toward his car. Reaching for his keys, he suddenly changed his mind and pulled out his phone instead.

Larson dialed a number and waited.

“Yes, thank you. I need a taxi.” He waited. “As soon as possible.” He gave the address of a neighboring intersection, then hung up and started walking.

48

“I’m all ears, Gregory.”

“I can’t explain the situation. You already know that. I’ve held information from you only because I wasn’t sure who was in on it.”

“You thought I might be?” Larson asked.

“Come on, Craig. You would have done the same thing.” The voice on the other end of the phone paused for a moment. “So you’re in it now. Sorry to hear about Dawson.”

“Me too. Thanks,” Larson said. “What can you tell me?”

“Nothing you haven’t probably already figured out by what’s happened. We think there’s a small cell operating within your government that’s working with Nouvelle Terre.”

“Within the government?” Larson asked incredulously. “I knew this reached pretty high, but I never thought—”

“It doesn’t matter. We’re out of time, Craig.”

Larson considered what his friend had said. The British had been tracking Nouvelle Terre for a few years, trying to keep a finger on the pulse within the small and fractured scientific community they were a part of. Without showing their cards, they’d maneuvered well enough through the political mess to get a small unit of soldiers into the United States, then down into the station.

Malcolm Vertrund, Durand’s boss, thought the organization might be operating out of the research station that had previously been a United States-funded program. When the US government eventually sold it to the British, it had been in disrepair and left unused for over ten years.

“What can we do? There’s no way I’m calling up to the Pentagon.”

“No—no, that’s not going to work.”

“Can you get Vertrund to pull some strings?” Larson asked.

“Probably. What are you thinking?”

“Is there a standing vessel anywhere nearby? If you can get close enough, they might be able to stop anything that goes awry.”

“We’ve already got a team down there, as you know, but the sub they embarked on was lost. It was destroyed when they landed. We lost communications with the team since the sub was going to act as a relay station. Hell, we don’t even know if the team’s still alive.”

“So whatever blew up that sub is still floating around out there?”

“Neither government is acknowledging the attack, obviously, which means it was one of them. Again, probably the US. If it was foreign, it would have been an act of war, and we’d be having a different conversation now. But yeah, I think whatever it was that attacked our sub is patrolling nearby. Whoever’s in that station does not want company.”

“We have to take the chance, Durand.”

“Craig, you’re talking about redirecting a British naval ship. There’s no way—”

“Vertrund can do it. You and I both know that.”

“To do what, though?” Durand said. “Anything we send out there will be intercepted by that other vessel, and then what? We just keep sending ships out there to sink?”

“Listen. You got me in this mess, Gregory, and you wouldn’t have if you didn’t think it stunk like an inside job. Nouvelle Terre can’t be trusted, and we know there’s something bigger going on with at least one of our administrations.”

Neither man spoke for a moment.

“Get me a ship, Durand. Get me something that won’t go quietly, if you know what I mean.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ll be on the boat.”

49

The blond woman left the group behind and climbed the stairs leading to the catwalk. She disappeared behind the wall when Jen and the others heard soft pop and then a hissing sound.

“The docking station,” Saunders said under her breath. “Someone actually is here.”

“I wouldn’t hold your breath on their being friendly,” Nelson responded.

They waited for another minute, both sides frozen in anticipation. The only member of the group who seemed unfazed—uninterested even—was Jeremiah Austin, who’d resorted to chewing on a section of his fingernail.

After a long moment, more pops rang out from somewhere in the distance.

“Is that—”

“Gunshots,” Mark said, before Jen could finish.

The sounds continued, growing louder and more intense, then finally dying away to short bursts every few seconds.

After the gunshots stopped, the blond woman, Sylvia, appeared again on the stairway, followed by the Russians, and finally a tall, slender man in a blue sport coat.

They walked back toward the group at the center of the level, and Jen gasped as she recognized the man.

“That’s… that’s—”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Austin said, enjoying the grandeur of the moment, “may I proudly present to you the President of the United States of America.”

Mark’s eyes widened, but he was otherwise unsure of how to react. He stayed motionless, awestruck.

Sylvia slid up to Austin’s side like a snake, then spoke. “The president has successfully disembarked, and we’ve permanently disabled the second docking station. But there was another sub—probably an escort—that is still nearby.”

Austin took in this new information, thought for a moment, then continued, the knowledge apparently not meriting a change of plans.

“The president and I are old acquaintances, you could say. And when I discovered our shared interests, we began working toward a goal that ultimately has brought us here today. The plan started as I’d mentioned before, beginning with the destruction of modern society, governments, and most of humanity. Bold, yes, but effective as well.

“You see, it’s only through careful engineering of urban areas that we can truly live in a world that’s mutually beneficial with our natural counterparts. Finally, we’ll experience a world that’s not destroying itself, but one that’s improving itself.”

“Because you’re destroying it here, Austin. Everything. Everything will be gone. You understand that, right?” Mark said.

Meanwhile, the president just looked on as if he hadn’t heard anything that had been said.

“Trust me. I—we—fully understand the implications, Adams. But you must admit that society has taken a dreadful turn for the worse. We’ve experienced more human-caused famine, devastation, and plagues in the last century than in the last ten combined.

“We’ve created monstrosities of greed and pillaged what’s left of most of our natural resources. We live in a world that’s completely and utterly unsustainable.”

Jen knew Mark was taking advantage of Austin’s passion, getting him to talk.

Whatever it takes to buy us time, she thought.

“So you’ve decided to wipe it out completely,” Mark said.

“No, that’s just it! We don’t want to wipe it out completely. Just enough to rebuild, on fresh earth, breaking new ground.”

“We?” Mark asked. “The President of the United States is really in on this crap?”

“He was the source of the idea. ‘All it would take is another world war,’ he said. I took it seriously and started working on this project a few years ago. With a little antagonizing, we could get some simple warheads thrown back and forth between countries, starting some panic, and then use the hysteria to send the world spinning.

“And then, for the finale, we’ll use this thing we’re standing on top of now to create fresh land using the mantle’s near-endless supply of volcanic materials to create some islands. As you know, Hawaii, the Philippines, and other island chains were created this way. We’ll of course do it in a much quicker way, destroying the North American continent and putting in its place a pristine landmass that will never be overrun by our pitiful race. We’ll go into a rapid decline, and finally, the world will be able to restore its natural order. I must admit, most of the work was already completed when we arrived five years ago, thanks to the efforts of both the US and British governments.

“We made some alterations, but it’s a sound device, and one that will serve our purposes well. The president wasn’t originally on board with the entire plan, either, but as you can see, he’s now a huge proponent.”

Jen looked at the man she knew as the leader of the free world. His mouth was open slightly, as if in deep thought. When he sensed her looking in his direction, he smiled a cocky grin and nodded. “Yes, yes, of course, yes,” he said.

Then he stared off into the distance again. Jen frowned.

“Anyway, he’s ready to go. Our president ordered missile launches yesterday from ten locations around the globe, all targeting our sworn enemies. Then he left to join us here to investigate the station for himself after Mark revealed its existence. After he was delivered to an aircraft carrier in the mid-Atlantic and then to a submarine close by, we just needed to persuade some of the submarine crew members to sedate him for a while.

“As l said, he wasn’t initially a fan of the full plan. He thought a simple war would be enough. But there is a rather resilient property to the human race, wouldn’t you agree? It would never work by itself. Needless to say, after he awoke from his little ‘nap,’ he was as excited as ever to join us here for the final leg of the mission.”

“What was all the fighting about, then?” Erik asked.

“That? Oh, that was just the president’s entourage. They have always been an uptight bunch, so we couldn’t have them stalking around here while we finished up. They were exceptionally useful in keeping this whole project under wraps, but I’m afraid they were no longer able to assist us.”

Jen was growing more and more horrified as she listened.

The human race was going to be engaged in a world war.

Austin planned to start off a series of events that would have cataclysmic consequences.

And there was no way her family was going to live through it.

Jen realized something at that moment, standing in the open fields of a government research station under the Atlantic Ocean.

I have nothing more to lose.

50

Mark had heard enough.

Austin’s plan was the most insane idea he’d ever been faced with, real or not.

More importantly, it put his family at great risk.

He counted silently the number of hostile armed forces surrounding him.

Assess.

Analyze.

Abstract.

Achieve.

His training once again took over, and he moved from analytical data scientist to a man bent on staying alive.

Nine soldiers, plus Austin, the president, and Sylvia. Austin’s the target, but I need to keep Jen, Reese, and the president alive.

That meant nothing rash, nothing unplanned.

His eyes met Austin’s, and he knew he needed to keep the ruse going.

“Austin, one more thing.” Appeal to the man’s ego, he told himself. “What about this place? How did you get here? And what happened with it?”

“It is an intriguing thought, Adams,” Austin said. “But you know how government projects are—troubled by scope creep and ever-shrinking budgets. They finished the outer shell but never got around to the place’s interior.

“Nouvelle Terre, under the joint direction of my predecessor and Dr. Mitchell Storm, submitted a bid—under the umbrella of a different company, of course—for the construction to continue. We lobbied to have the floor to ourselves for research purposes.

“The proposal was granted, and we started work again about ten years later. The US government took the reins from the other two companies involved and conveniently hid all documentation regarding the base and its completion. It was a perfect situation for Nouvelle Terre, who was already dealing with political pressures from other activist groups.

“Anyway, Mitchell—who tended to be far more brash than I—finished the damn thing. He moved in, lived here, and died here. He actually named one of the levels after us.”

Mark saw Jen’s eyes grow with understanding.

“Nouvelle Terre—‘Level Ten: Rue Or.’ A simple anagram,” Austin said, satisfied. “Today, most of the station is functioning without oversight or human interaction, as you’ve probably guessed. Level Ten is our personal space, with our research labs and offices, but it’s relatively unoccupied, of course.”

As Austin spoke, Mark eyed his opening. He waited for the Russian soldier—standing two people to Mark’s right, and the only one who was still pointing his weapon at Jen, and Reese in the center of the circle—to drop his rifle. Finally, the man let his guard down for a moment, and Mark lunged. He took two steps to gain speed, then forced his body out toward the soldier to his immediate right.

The impact knocked the mercenary off balance and sent both of them crashing into the next soldier in line. Mark found his feet and continued moving, jumping upward and punching at the same time. He caught the man under the chin and knocked him unconscious.

With his free hand, he reached to the man’s side and gripped the KA-BAR knife sheathed there. As the man fell, he held onto the handle of the knife and slipped it away from his body. He turned just as another Russian soldier was running toward him. Mark grabbed the knife in a tactical grip and thrust out quickly, dropping the man before he had a chance to attack.

A few other soldiers around the large circle had a quicker response time, and they lifted their weapons to fire just as Mark had turned toward them. They focused their attention on Mark, leaving Saunders and Nelson unattended.

Saunders had begun moving just as Mark was tackling the first mercenary, and she reached out and crushed the gun-wielding hand of one of the soldiers with her elbow. He howled in pain, but the sound was quickly silenced as she ripped his head backward with all her strength. He crumpled to the ground, and she picked up his weapon. She tossed another toward Erik, who was standing dumbstruck at the edge of the circle. “Move!” she yelled to him. Erik burst into action, fueled by fear, and began to run backward, firing wildly at soldiers left and right. One of his shots hit the mark, and a Russian fell to the ground inches from Mark.

Nelson was engaged in combat as well, though without as much luck as his two counterparts. The person standing next to him was a Russian woman, and she was prepared for his attack. She punched him once in the gut, and he felt his eyes bulge as she landed a forceful blow to his kidney. She was fast, moving around him before he could turn, and she jumped on his back.

He reacted the only way he knew how and jumped up and back, trying to land on top of the woman. She swiveled around quickly and left Nelson to fall onto his back on the hard dirt, the wind leaving his body.

“For Christ’s sake,” he muttered, as he saw through tear-filled eyes the woman preparing to pounce on his exposed chest. She held a knife in one hand, and it was all he could do to roll out of the way at the last minute. She struck the dirt next to him with the knife, the blade stabbing deep into the ground, and she screamed as she realized she’d missed her target.

Nelson was ready for her.

He kicked the blade—and the woman’s hand—as hard as he could, breaking two of her fingers, then he reached out and grabbed her arm. He twisted it, causing the woman to shriek, but she turned the rest of her body to remove the pressure and punched at him with her other arm.

The punch didn’t land, and Nelson used her own momentum to launch her toward a group of three men he saw racing toward Mark.

She bowled into them, causing one of them to fall over, and he reached down to pick up a gun at his feet. He was about to fire when he heard Mark yell over the din.

“Nelson! The president!” Mark was under bombardment from five Russian soldiers. They hadn’t fired at him, for fear that they’d hit one of their own, but it was clear that they were well-versed in self-defense. Mark had been punched, kicked, and elbowed by each of them, it seemed, though none of the hits had been debilitating blows.

He punched one soldier as another kicked at him, forcing him to dodge at the last second and thus lose his power.

The fighting in the main compound grew intense. Mark successfully held them off, using the advantage of being the only real objective they had. He ran for the outskirts of the fields, letting them take potshots as he developed a plan of attack.

None of the rounds hit him, but he knew they’d follow him wherever he went. He needed to get Jen and Reese to safety.

He waited for Nelson to finish his skirmish with one of the female soldiers, then he drew the man’s attention. While Mark fired a few shots toward the Russians, Nelson moved around to the rear of the group. He began to fire, immediately sending the group of soldiers to the ground. Those who weren’t hit squirmed around on the dirt, trying to move toward cover or to an angle that would allow them to return fire.

Meanwhile, Mark corralled Jen and Reese, and together they ran toward the street.

Mark ran backward, ensuring that none of the Russians got off a crack shot in their direction and also that Nelson was safely covered. When Nelson pulled away to pursue the president, Mark turned and made a beeline for the first house on the city block.

51

Nelson spun around, trying to spot the president. He saw him meandering toward a building—the information center they’d first seen upon entering the level when they disembarked—and he raced over to him. “Mr. President,” he said as he reached the shack. “We need to get you inside.” The graying man turned to Nelson as he approached but didn’t say anything.

Nelson grabbed him and shoved him toward the small house. He kicked the door, and the loose hinges fell completely off the frame. It fell back into the house and landed with a loud bang on the concrete floor.

Nelson wrinkled his brow. “I guess that’ll have to do,” he said. He nudged the president inside, then found a chair in the corner. “Wait here. Whatever your story is, sir, I’d sure like to hear it when we’re out of this mess.”

The president nodded.

He didn’t wait for more. He turned and marched out the door, already fumbling with the safety on his rifle. He caught sight of Erik at the edge of one of the houses.

Move, you fool, he whispered to himself. The young man was concealed from one side, but it was the wrong side.

He sprinted toward him, allowing himself to lower the rifle to gain extra speed, and when he neared the house, he shouted out. “Erik! Get in the house!”

Erik turned his head to see Nelson bearing down on him. His eyes were wide, and terror streaked across his face. He stood, dropping his gun to his side. As Nelson approached the porch at the front of the house, he heard a loud crack and dove forward.

His body hit the dirt, and he covered his head with one hand as he used the other to guide the rifle around to find out where the shot had come from.

Crack!

Another round burst nearby, and Nelson caught the brief flash of the shooter’s muzzle. He reacted quickly, firing three rounds toward the black-silhouetted merc. The man fell, and Nelson rose to check on Erik.

The geologist was lying facedown on the dirt, his gun a few feet away.

“Damn,” Nelson said, coming up alongside the boy. He didn’t need to feel for a pulse; two red circles had appeared on his prone back and were growing in size.

Nelson cursed again, then jogged toward the line of houses.

52

With the rifle in hand, Saunders aimed down the sights just in time to see a group of three Russians camped out at the edge of the clearing, crouched next to one of the outlying buildings.

They were already aiming in her direction.

Shit.

She dove sideways, rounds erupting on the hard-packed dirt next to her. They’d missed, but she didn’t stick around to wait for their next shots to find their mark. She rose and began to run, heading in the opposite direction toward the small information shack.

As she ran, she noticed movement to her left. Jeremiah Austin was sprinting away from the action, aiming for the stairs at the edge of the round level.

His second-in-command, the blond woman named Sylvia, was following closely behind. Saunders picked up her pace to catch up to the pair, but just as she was about to overtake Sylvia, the woman turned and began running along the perimeter of the dome.

Saunders considered chasing her—wherever she was now heading—but instead decided to continue to pursue Austin. He was rounding the first set of stairs, and she raised her rifle.

I can make this shot. She knew she’d hit him, but she wasn’t sure if it would be just a crippling blow or one that might prove fatal.

And she couldn’t take the chance.

She ran full-out, holding her gun in one hand, and sprinted toward the top of the stairs. She reached the metal threshold just as Austin had finished descending the second set of stairs, but already she could tell she was faster.

She would catch him.

Austin began taking the stairs two at a time, but Saunders had already begun descending in leaps, jumping from the top of one small set of stairs to the next.

At the third floor below ground, Level Seven, she came close enough to the tiring man to pounce. Saunders breathed in, tensed her upper body, and lunged forward with the force of a small car. She aimed for the small of his back, just above the pelvis, and connected perfectly with her target.

She heard him grunt, then felt his body shudder as it fell forward. Together they toppled down the stairs, landing on the sheet metal floor connecting the two stairways. Before Austin had time to recover, Saunders slammed the base of her rifle hard into the back of his skull. His body gave in, collapsing into a weak pile.

Expecting the man to have been knocked out, Saunders exhaled and slid off his back. She started to stand but was surprised when Austin, still in a prone position on the floor, kicked out with a leg and tripped Saunders. He jumped up, more spry than she’d imagined, and kicked her again in the torso before she hit the ground.

This time it was her turn to grunt. The kick landed directly above her kidney, and the pain coursed through her body with a vengeance. Her eyes narrowed, and her nostrils flared, but she didn’t have time to recover.

Austin grabbed her by the back of her vest with one hand and punched out with his other, knocking her rifle out of her hands. She turned to watch it tumble end over end down the stairs. As she watched, Austin punched again, this time missing the mark and allowing Saunders time to react and gain an advantage.

She didn’t waste it.

With Austin’s center of balance lost from his attack, she tackled him again, this time lifting him completely off his feet and carrying his body along the floor into the hard wall of the dome surrounding them. She crushed him against the wall, trying to squeeze the life out of him. She relented for a moment, then smashed forward again, this time injuring the man.

He yelped, and she heard a bone crack. Where it was on his body, she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t stop there.

Saunders let him down, and he crumpled into a fetal position on the floor. She wouldn’t be duped again, so she made sure her next attack solidified things.

With the side of her hand, she swiped downward toward his neck, slamming the hard part of her wrist on the fleshy portion of skin between his shoulder and neck. She ripped his head back, pulling on his disheveled hair, and elbowed him in the face.

She let go. Austin crumpled to the ground, a welt already appearing above his right eye.

She could see his chest rising and falling, but she didn’t want to take any chances. She pulled him up, struggling with the dead weight of the man. Once standing, she slipped her arm under his and began walking up the stairs.

53

This was the first time he’d seen the inside of one of the houses.

How did these people live? Mark wondered.

Since his company had a small role in completing this research station, his interest was even more piqued. He took in the living room, dining room, and kitchen as they walked through the front door. The living room was sparse, featuring a paisley couch, a rectangular glass coffee table, and a few empty picture frames on the wall. The front entry was floored in faux wood, but the rest of the living room and dining room—a small connected space that felt more like an afterthought than an actual room—was carpeted.

Jen didn’t seem impressed, either. She didn’t say anything, but her eyebrows rose as she and Reese stepped in behind Mark.

“What do we do?” she asked him.

Mark thought for a moment. “We’re not safe here, even without them shooting at us. It’s pretty open out there, and I know at least one of them watched us run in here.”

Reese held his mother’s hand, but he looked up at Mark. “Dad, don’t you think we can each take a window to look out of? At least we’ll know if they’re following us.”

Mark nodded, appreciative of the idea. “Jen, get to the kitchen and check that one. Reese, stay close but look out the window behind the dining room table. I’ll stay in here since this window faces back into the open clearing. If either of you sees anything, yell, then get down. Am I clear?”

He turned to see Jen and Reese nodding. He took his position at the window, wiping away a thick sheet of dust around the sill. They most likely saw us run into the house, he thought. He swept his hand across his brow, wiping away the sweat droplets that had formed there.

But we weren’t looking behind us at all. The realization hit him at the same time as the sound of pounding footsteps on the front porch.

“Reese!” he yelled.

But it was too late. The footsteps reached the open front door—why hadn’t he closed it!—and he saw the shadow of a large man standing just outside. He spun around, staying crouched, as a barrage of rifle shots pounded holes through the thin sheetrock on the walls. Bullet holes quickly riddled the floor and walls, and Mark held his gun ready.

The first Russian mercenary rounded the corner and stepped into the house, his gun firing on full automatic. Mark had just enough time to ensure that Reese had moved from the dining room to the kitchen, away from the direct line of sight. He lifted the stolen gun a bit higher and pulled the trigger. It was set to burst fire, and three rounds quickly sailed from the end of the gun and dropped the man standing in the doorway.

Before he could move to another position, a second mercenary—one of the Russian women he’d seen earlier—stepped in to take the place of the first. She lifted her gun, but Mark was already prepared. He hadn’t moved, so his aim was still true. He fired. She faltered, then fell.

Mark felt the click of the gun’s empty ammunition chamber before he heard it and cursed under his breath. He reached down instinctively, only to remember he’d been traveling as a civilian. There was no more ammo to grab.

A third soldier stepped into view as the woman fell into a heap on the wood floor. He wasn’t as slow as his teammate, and Mark could only watch helplessly as the man lifted his rifle, pointed it at Mark, and pulled the trigger.

The single bullet tore through the air and ripped into Mark’s shoulder. He realized what had happened before he felt any pain, but the searing fire of the torn flesh alerted his brain soon enough.

Mark had never experienced pain like this before. Part of his training at the company had included extended periods of submersion underwater, subjecting himself to mild torture, and other wild forms of “hardening,” as the company liked to put it. But nothing could have prepared him for the unbelievable torment of being shot. He had no body armor, no medication to numb the pain.

The blood came shortly after, seeping down his arm in bursts of warm throbs. But Mark’s mind was focusing on one thing: the man standing in front of him.

The Russian was huge, at least six and a half feet tall, and three hundred pounds. The bulk of the man didn’t belie his strength, either. Mark could see rippling muscles on his neck and arms, the only portions of his skin that were uncovered.

The man glared down at Mark and grinned. He stammered something in Russian, but Mark didn’t budge. Again, the man said something in his foreign tongue, then stepped forward.

This is it, Mark thought. I was brought here to do something, and I succeeded. They have no use for me now.

Mark dropped the useless assault rifle and lifted his chin. He didn’t dare look toward the kitchen, where he knew Reese and his wife were waiting, probably watching.

The man stepped forward again, lifting his gun into the air.

God, this man wants to beat me to death.

Mark eyed the rifle as it began its downward arc. Maybe I can—

Before the rifle landed, and before Mark could finish his thought, a gunshot tore through the silence in the room. The man in front of him staggered, then went limp. He stood for another two seconds before falling heavily on the floor, blood spurting up from his chest.

Mark opened his eyes—he didn’t remember closing them—and looked at the front door.

Nelson was standing in the doorway; his silhouette carved out of the light surrounding his frame.

“Nelson!” Mark said, ecstatic.

“Thought you might need a hand,” the Brit said haphazardly as he entered the house.

Reese ran around the corner and jumped onto Nelson.

“Woah, boy, didn’t see you there!” Nelson said. “Might have put a bullet into that little head if I wasn’t careful.”

Jen gave Nelson a horrified look, but it quickly melted into a smile.

“Let’s get that arm looked at,” Nelson said, moving toward Mark. Mark tried to sit up straighter against the wall but failed miserably. The pain was too much. Nelson bent down next to him and peeled away some of the shirt. “Jen, can you see if there’s anything in the kitchen to sop this up with?”

Jen turned and left for the kitchen while Reese watched Nelson work. He grabbed his knife and cut the remainder of Mark’s shirtsleeve, exposing the wound.

“Looks like it went clear through,” Nelson said. “That’s good news, but it’ll still hurt like high heaven.”

Mark frowned up at the merc.

“Shut up. My mum used to say it all the time.”

Mark chuckled but then turned to more serious banter. “What’s it like out there?”

“Well, quiet, thanks to you. Seems like they all wanted your a—” he hesitated, looking at Reese, then changed course. “Wanted, uh, you. Five of them ran behind you, and I took out two on the way. The others were pretty close behind, but I guess you held them off well enough.”

He looked down at the man and woman lying dead on the floor.

Mark shrugged with one shoulder. “Well enough, I guess.”

“I didn’t get a count of the others we eliminated, but I’d guess there are at least five unaccounted for. Let’s get you taken care of,” Nelson said, reaching for the dish rags Jen had brought from the kitchen. “If Jen won’t mind cleaning you up—”

“No.” Mark’s voice was strong, prepared. He looked up at the British soldier. “No, Nelson. We need to finish this, and I’m not letting you do my work for me.” He reached his good arm up, silently asking for a hand. Nelson hesitated but grabbed Mark’s arm. He pulled him to a kneeling position, then up to his feet.

Mark looked toward Jen. “Jen, I’m sorry. This wasn’t supposed to…” his words trailed off as he realized Jen was smiling.

“You know what? I think I wished for something like this after everything happened.”

Nelson butted in. “You wished we’d get stuck underwater shooting our way out?”

“No, I mean I wished you were right, that it was some elaborate setup from your company and that you weren’t who you said you were. I never thought you could do something like that, Mark.” Her eyes fell, then she looked up at him again. “It wasn’t you. You were angry, of course, but I couldn’t believe you’d take it out on me like that.”

Mark stood silent.

“After I caught you, and you argued with me about it—you’d always been a great arguer—I thought it was weird how little sense it made. Where she came from, who she was, and why.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Whatever happened, it clearly wasn’t you. You were tricked, like you said. And I can’t say I’m not grateful that you’re not just a computer nerd.”

It was Mark’s turn to smile. “Well, you know, I still am a nerd.” He reached out to hug Jen, and she fell into his arms. After a moment, he pulled away and turned toward Nelson.

“Saunders is still out there,” Mark said, “and so is Austin. Not to mention—” Mark stopped. “Wait. What about the president?”

“Oh, that guy,” Nelson said. “He’s fine. Taking a little nap a few houses down.” Nelson said.

“Is he hurt?”

“Well, you saw him. He’s been pretty much turned to mush since he arrived, no? I mean, I’ve never been a fan, but…”

“Got it,” Mark said. “Like the other scientists we’ve come into contact with. But we need to bring him back up, right? We can’t just leave him—”

Mark stopped as a loud buzzer sounded outside the window.

“What’s that?” Jen asked.

No one offered an answer, but the sound continued.

“Let’s get out to the center and see if we can see where it’s coming from,” Mark said. “Think we’ve taken care of all of our Russian friends?”

Nelson nodded and walked out the front door.

54

The field wasn’t completely empty.

As Jen followed Mark, Nelson, and Reese to the open area, she saw a woman struggling toward them, supporting another man’s weight. She was hurt but not badly injured. The man, however, was nearly unconscious, barely moving his feet as they neared the central space.

“What’s that you’ve got there, doll?” Nelson called out as they approached. It was Saunders, holding an incapacitated Jeremiah Austin. Saunders was bleeding from at least two large wounds to her head and arm, and she was bruised around the neck. But Austin had clearly suffered far worse.

“He’s alive, barely,” Saunders said. “Found this on him; otherwise unarmed.” She tossed a small cellphone-shaped device to Mark and dumped Austin’s body casually on the dirt in front of Nelson. Nelson poked him with his foot, looked him over, and shrugged.

“Scrawny little twerp,” he said. “What took so long?”

Saunders ignored him.

“Any idea what that noise is?” she asked. “And where’s Statnik?”

“We thought you could help us with the noise,” Nelson answered. “And, uh, he didn’t make it.”

This was the first time Jen had even thought about anyone else besides her son and Mark. Her initial fear was replaced by a cold callousness. She gritted her teeth as the rest of the group stood in silence for a moment while Mark examined the small electronic device.

He turned it over in his hands, trying to figure out how it worked. It was the same device Austin had waved behind the scientist’s ear, back in the lower levels when Mark had been contained. As simple as it was, Mark still couldn’t see any indication that it was working. The only feature on the object besides the box and antenna was a small, unassuming black button on the side. He pressed it a few times, but nothing happened.

“That woman ran away from us as I was chasing Austin,” Saunders said, “but I have no idea where she ended up. Could be that she made it down to the lower levels and started that machine again.”

As if on cue, the floor beneath them began shaking. It wasn’t as powerful as when they’d experienced it firsthand on the lower levels, but it was still noticeable and, this time, more unnerving.

Jen looked at Mark. “We need to stop it.”

The floor jolted, mildly at first, then more intensely. Reese almost lost his balance, as did Nelson.

“How much longer do we have?” Saunders asked.

“I’m not sure. Last time it started and lasted a solid twenty minutes before it stopped again. I guess that this last rotation won’t need to be as long. It just needs to be deep enough to crack the surrounding plates, remember? But if we can turn it off…”

“There’s no way you’re going down there, Jen,” Mark said. “We must get off this rock and back to the surface.”

Saunders shook her head. “Power’s down. That elevator is still out, and the only lights on the levels below us are emergency lights. Obviously, another treat from that woman, since you would have to manually turn the lights off in a place like this.”

“Give me a flashlight.”

“Jen,” Mark argued, “stop. It’s over. We have to get out.”

She whirled around, her eyes on fire, and looked at her husband. “How? How do you suggest we get out?” She turned to the remainder of the group, eyeing them one at a time. Her mind was racing, both ecstatic that her family was alive and terrified at their predicament. “There’s nowhere to go. We’re under five miles of water! Plus, you heard Austin from before. When the president got here, that submarine left. Remember? The gunshots, too?”

“She’s right,” Saunders realized. “There was at least one explosion up there that I heard; probably a grenade. Whatever’s left of the second docking station after the sub left is permanently sealed behind pressurized doors. Even if we had a sub, we couldn’t get to it.”

Nelson nodded slowly in disbelief. “So, we’re, uh, trapped here?”

“We’ve been trapped here, Nelson,” Jen said. “This was Austin’s plan all along. He needed Mark to get through the communications barricade, but he couldn’t take the chance of letting any of us back out. Hell, even he wasn’t going to make it back out.”

Mark hadn’t spoken yet, but finally he offered a suggestion. “We’re in it, then, Jen. This is the endgame. Are we going to sit back and let things happen, or are we going to use our last minutes trying to stop this thing, even if it’s in vain?”

She nodded.

“Wait.” The voice was hushed, almost a whisper, but it was firm. They searched for its owner and found the man lying on the ground.

“Take me with you. Or kill me. Don’t leave me here.” It was Jeremiah Austin, speaking in a steady, low voice. Blood pooled next to his face, a small amount dripping from his chin.

Saunders walked over to him, but Jen stopped her. “Hold on,” she said. She looked down at Austin. “Why? What are you afraid of?”

Austin’s face and body language conveyed nothing out of the ordinary. But Jen saw it in his eyes.

He was terrified.

Of what?

“We’re all going down together, thanks to you,” she said to him. “Unless I can get the machine turned off.”

He laughed, a mixture of gurgling noises and coughing. “No. No, you can’t. It’s been locked in, set. Sylvia started it because I didn’t make it down to finish the job. But don’t leave me here to die like this. They—” he cut himself off before they could hear the rest of the sentence.

His eyes met Jen’s, defiant. “Kill me.”

Jen stared, thinking. “They. Who’s they, Austin?”

Austin didn’t speak.

“You mean the scientists, don’t you? The ones you created here. Your lab rats.”

“They’re not—”

“They are! You created monsters. They attacked Lindsay, and they attacked Dr. Pavan. And when you turned Carter into one, he attacked us too.”

Austin frowned, surprised. “So Carter found the others? Interesting.”

“Nope,” Nelson said, “Just him. But believe me, he was more than enough to handle.”

Austin was visibly perplexed. He mumbled to himself. “How can that—never mind.” He looked back up at the group. “They only attack as a group, usually. Their motor skills are completely controlled by involuntary reactions to their environment. They’re essentially a physical host for a much lesser, much simpler species. When they find a foreigner, they don’t know how to respond.”

“So they scratch people to death?” Nelson asked. “Come on, Jen, we need to get that machine shut down.” He turned to leave, but Jen stayed.

“Should we take him with us?” she asked. “Without keeping an eye on him?”

Saunders spoke up. “Where’s he going to go? Besides, you heard him. They’ll hopefully get to him first.”

Jen saw the pleading in his eyes, hiding in plain sight behind the battered, torn face of a dying man. She remembered everything he had done. Everything he had put her through.

“Let’s get that machine turned off.”

55

Geothermal conversion.

Pressurized water-control systems.

Ventilation.

That was it, Jen thought, as her feet pulled her body along the rows of descending stairs. As she plummeted into the depths of the research station, she wracked her brain for Dr. Storm’s lessons and her own research on geothermal power plants.

How can you turn one off, she wondered, in a way that is impossible to turn back on?

There was obviously more to it than just flipping a switch, she knew. And they didn’t have any firepower—at least enough to do any significant damage.

And whatever she did to the machine, Sylvia, wherever she was, could undo it.

Unless she sabotaged the ventilation system.

The ventilation system, linked to the cooling apparatus of the machine, would be the core piece of the puzzle that would cause the machine’s operation to backfire on itself. If she could find the control shaft for it, she could create a temporary blockage that would overheat the drill’s engine.

If she timed it well enough, Sylvia wouldn’t be able to get down to move the blockage.

If she timed it really well, Sylvia would arrive on the level just in time to see her project’s magnum opus go up in smoke—and hopefully a Hollywood-worthy explosion.

Two birds with one stone.

But she would need a stone.

She passed the sign marking Level Ten and thought again of how they’d had the wool pulled over their eyes this whole time.

Nouvelle Terre. Level Ten: Rue Or.

It was the perfect ruse. Hidden in plain sight, with enough of a quirk that it was decipherable.

But Jen chided herself. She hadn’t been able to decipher it. Austin had worked on this massive project for decades, and no one had been able to uncover the scale or impact of what he was trying to accomplish.

And now we’re within twenty minutes of seeing what it will do, Jen thought.

She shuddered as she reached the threshold to Level Eleven: Rue Marron. Brown.

Entering the level’s cramped quarters, she saw the behemoth in front of her. The shuddering had reduced to a low roar, but she clearly saw the machine slowly rotating at the center of the level. The pipes, tubes, and computerized levers moved in arbitrary directions, and the telltale steam rising from certain areas told Jen all she needed to know.

Their project was working perfectly.

She raced toward it, finding it harder and harder to run in a straight line. As she approached the outer buildings, her eyes scanned the names.

Water Conservation and Control.

E.435 M.

Electrical.

Damn, she thought. Nothing. And I can’t even guess as to what’s in half of them.

She kept running, encircling the machine’s rotating body. She followed a pipeline that stretched from the ceiling to the wall and then ran down into—

There.

She saw it at the edge of the level, just before the wall. A small unmarked building that was expelling an unnatural amount of steam into the air.

The rest of the group was behind her, moving quickly to keep up. Mark was holding his damaged arm, careful not to upset the bullet wound any more than it already had been. Between Saunders and Nelson, he ran next to Reese. The boy was wide-eyed and scared but otherwise an easy companion to the team.

Through the steam, she could see a huge vented opening in the wall above and behind the building, shimmering and blurry. It was like a mirage in the desert. The pipe’s length stretched across the concrete ceiling, emptying into a larger round silo behind the building, where its contents were corralled and sent upward to someplace behind the vent. Jen guessed that this vent opening was just one of many, one that aided in dispersing the heat and steam created by the machine to the different levels of the complex.

As Jen neared the vent at the level’s outskirts, she wracked her brain for the next steps. I need to block the vent access. But there’s no way I’m reaching that grate on the wall.

Jen knew there had to be a more elegant solution.

“What’s the plan?” Mark asked, sidling up next to her at the wall. He gazed up to the vent, instantly understanding the dilemma.

“We need to reach the vent,” she said, “and somehow take off that grate. It’s riveted to the wall.”

“And even if we get the grate off, how are we going to block the exhaust?”

Jen didn’t have an answer for that. She hadn’t seen anything that wasn’t bolted down to the floor or built into the ground. There were no trash cans lying around, or street benches, and none of the usual trash and detritus found on a generic city block. They were in a research station—an elegantly-designed space intended to serve a specific purpose.

“Let’s assume we find something to throw in there,” Mark said, continuing his line of questioning. “We still can’t get something that big up that high.”

Still, she didn’t respond. There has to be something I’m missing, she thought.

Crimping the pipeline wouldn’t work, since the only external pipe she could see leading to the vents was fifty feet above their heads, bolted to the ceiling.

Suddenly, the machine rocked wildly. Jen stumbled, caught her balance, and reached out to grab Reese. He found his feet just as another jolt shook the room.

“It’s getting close,” Saunders said. “Jen, what’s the holdup?”

Jen followed the pipeline with her eyes one last time. “We can’t reach the vent, and we can’t reach the pipeline on the ceiling. Those are our best options, but we can’t afford to wait around and figure out how to get up there.” The floor shook beneath her. “So we need another plan. Hog, give me a boost.”

Nelson looked surprised but shrugged and followed as Jen ran toward the center of the level. The machine, now visibly shaking, was pouring thick layers of steam into the already humid air. Jen approached the side, near where the pipeline encircled the giant rotating device.

“If I can disconnect the pipe from its source, the heat and exhaust will fill the room. It’ll take longer than we want, but it’ll do the trick. The level’s not large enough for the heat to dissipate in time. We’ll need to seal the door behind us, and then get to the main level.”

Nelson didn’t argue. He placed his hands out, interlocking his fingers. Mark stepped up next to Jen. “Jen, you sure this will work?”

“Have a better idea?”

Jen stepped onto Nelson’s lift, and he shot her straight up as if she was no heavier than a child. “That’s good,” she said. Jen was now at eye-level with the circle of metal piping, and she reached to test the temperature of the steel.

“This is it,” she said under her breath. She couldn’t get her hands close, as they were immediately repelled by the intense heat of the pipeline. Then, calling down to Nelson and the others, “the pipe is most likely a ceramic shell with copper and steel insulation,” she said. “It’s burning hot, so this will definitely work. Mark, can you find something to hit this with?”

“I have a better idea,” Nelson said. Jen felt herself falling, then was caught abruptly as he gently lowered her to the ground. “Go ahead and step back, sweetie.”

Jen just stared at him.

“Seriously, Jen, this isn’t going to be pretty. How attached are you to keeping this machine in working order?”

She just rolled her eyes.

“That’s what I thought. I’ve been saving this baby since I picked it up off a dead Russian,” he said as he reached for a grenade he’d stashed in his pack. “It’s gonna to be messy, but it will definitely do the trick.” He waited a moment. “I’d, uh, recommend standing back if I were you,” he said.

He hurled the grenade toward the machine. Jen wasn’t optimistic about the plan until she saw the accuracy of his throw. The small round object bounced through an opening in the machine’s side, directly below the connection to the main ventilation pipe.

“Come on,” Mark said, grabbing her arm and pulling her away.

She turned just as the grenade exploded. The initial blast wasn’t large enough to cause much damage, but she heard the popping of gaskets and pressurized piping. They ran for the nearest building, trying to put at least a little distance between themselves and the overheating power plant.

Finally, Jen heard the noise she was waiting for. A loud pop sounded throughout the level, and she turned to watch the large pipeline sever itself from the main artery of the plant. It fell away, leaving a billowing gust of steam and smoke from the grenade’s blast. The pipe wriggled free of the machine, leaving it dangling precariously from the ceiling, still connected to the long channel of pipe that stretched from one end of the level to the center.

But it was enough.

Jen knew the damage had been done. Now, it was only a matter of time before the entire level filled with smoke and steam, generating too much heat for the power plant to function properly. She planned to speed up the process as well. Jen stopped. There was one more thing they could try.

“Get to the stairs!” she yelled. Saunders, Nelson, and Reese were already running. Mark waited for her to take the lead and kept pace as they ran for the open metal doors marking the entrance to the level. “Mark, close those doors when we get through. We need to keep the heat and exhaust contained in this level. On Level Four, we can get to the power station and see if there’s a way to route as much energy as possible to this level.” It was a long shot, but it was all they had.

Mark nodded, and as Jen ran over the threshold, he and Nelson swung the heavy doors closed.

Would it be enough?

Jen pushed the thought out of her mind. It didn’t matter anyway. We’re trapped here with a giant drill, waiting for either the entire base to collapse on us, or the machine to tap into the earth’s mantle.

Either option spelled out the same fate.

But overheating the plant would work, she knew. It just needed to work before the drill finished its final rotation.

When she thought about the drill once more, she realized the shaking and rotations had subsided.

It’s almost done.

One more rotation and the drill would be complete. It seemed to be spread over three distinct timeframes, the first alerting the rest of the base, via the loud alarm system, that the first rotation was to begin soon. The second was the rotation that had just finished.

The third would begin within minutes.

It was only a matter of minutes before the drill punched its way through the bedrock, splitting the two adjacent shelves made up of the trench walls, and unleashing a fury of molten lava, earthquakes, and cataclysmic events upon the unsuspecting world.

The thought pushed her exhausted legs harder and faster.

Keep going.

She willed herself to continue.

Level Eight.

Level Seven.

The entrances to the levels flew past as the group made their way upward to Level Four.

56

Sylvia knew the clock was ticking. After reaching Austin’s office and finding the controls for the machine, she unlocked his console and entered the bypass code for the station. As the only other functioning scientist besides Austin remaining at the station, Sylvia had been privy to much more sensitive information than Austin would have liked.

Now, she knew he’d have been proud. When she’d first enlisted into Nouvelle Terre, the organization had branches around the world that were struggling to survive. They were mainly philosophical meeting groups, places where like-minded individuals could gather and discuss ideas. Gone were the days of government funding, massive research grants, and private interest. Gone was the original excitement and energy that existed within the Agartha Base project team. The organization had dwindled to outliers, a fraction of what it was in Austin’s and Storm’s early days.

But Jeremiah Austin wanted more. He’d wanted to bring back the glory days of Nouvelle Terre, and with his connections in the United States government, he did it. He assumed control of the organization, funneled its resources into his own pocket, and orchestrated the takeover of the Agartha Base facilities. Jeremiah had explained its meaning to her once before, telling her it was named for a secret inner-earth city that could only be fully understood “when the anarchy of our world is replaced by synarchy.” Austin loved the symbolism, and now that the original Agartha team was out of the picture, he was free to carry out Nouvelle Terre’s work alone, five miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. He’d brought her along as an assistant, but Sylvia knew she was there to be more of a plaything.

She pressed the last key in a string of commands, and within fifteen seconds, she felt the gentle shudder of the base coming to life. She shut down the computer and looked around the plant-filled office. Jeremiah was a strong leader, unwilling to make compromises. But like all men, he had his vices. Plants were one of them. A strange hobby, she thought, but it had kept him sane in the face of unbelievable stress. Also, like all men, he had a weak spot: taking advantage of the vulnerability of others.

This had been his primary form of abuse toward her as well. Stringing her along on a never-ending emotional roller coaster, dangling the carrot of a long-term relationship, then finally dumping her after a passionate binge. He would then start the process over again, eventually resorting to more scientific pursuits.

She shuddered as she thought again about the night in his office. This office. She gritted her teeth and left the room.

After leaving Level Ten, Sylvia ran for the main level, trying to intercept the remaining members of the ragtag crew that had caused her so much grief. She would never have lured them here, but she knew the situation had played directly into Austin’s own perverted sense of desire. He didn’t just need Mark Adams for his knowledge of the company’s computer systems; he needed to see his family suffer.

It was sickening, but Sylvia also knew it was necessary.

The ends justify the means, he had once told her.

It was true. A “New Earth”—a Nouvelle Terre—meant freedom from government, religion, politics, race, and all of the myriad forces suppressing the human race. The ironic part was that all of these things were created by humans. Only by starting over—by pressing the reset button—could they survive.

Sylvia and Jeremiah wouldn’t be among them, but it was for the best. Through their martyrdom, they would ring in the New Earth for the few who would be. They had almost finished the largest project mankind had ever seen, and they would be hailed as heroes for the next thousand millennia.

They were saviors.

57

“Jen, it’s too late!” Mark yelled. “The final rotation has already started!” He had sprinted ahead of the group, cradling his injured arm with his other. He had reached Level Four and shouted back down the stairs just as Jen rounded the final half of the stairs leading up from Level Five.

She didn’t need to hear the warning. As Mark turned to face her, she saw through the metal doors into Level Four. Beyond the housing district, a section of wall at the opposite side of the wide-open round level crumbled. Water quickly replaced the wall, tumbling in a growing wave toward the opening to Level Four where they stood.

The movement was followed by a massive change in pressure. The wave fell over them, then quickly subdued into a gentler current. But the shock of the cold seawater was soon replaced by something else. Jen felt her ears pop and her eyes closed instinctively. She screamed and fell forward into a crouching position. Reese’s small hand found hers, and she could hear Nelson and Saunders recovering behind her.

“What the bloody hell—” Nelson said. He helped Jen to her feet, and only then did Jen notice the new sound.

It was the sound of rushing water, and when she looked up again, she saw it.

Seawater poured through a hole in the side of the dome surrounding them. It had breached the outer shell of the station and the inner layer, and the water shot unimpeded through the hole, pressed forward to fill the empty space with countless atmospheres of pressure.

The water sprayed in a straight line, only changing course due to gravity as it found the center of the level. The water felled hundreds of rows of corn and obliterated two structures standing immediately in front of the hole.

“Jen!” Mark yelled again. “Come on! It’s falling apart out there. We’re never going to make it to the power station!”

But Jen couldn’t move. She watched as another hole burst in the side of the research station’s reinforced hull, the diamond-shaped frame held in place by a metal alloy and feet-thick glass plates. The structure was truly beautiful, and she hadn’t yet taken the time to realize it. About twenty feet above the ground floor, above the catwalk through which they’d run after disembarking the submarine, the thick concrete walls gave way to the diamond-shaped glass struts and reinforced beams. For the remainder of the dome, up to the apex where the gigantic lighting fixture hung, the ocean’s darkness peered through to her.

The deep black of five miles of water fought in vain with the lighting structure, and Jen wondered what undiscovered forms of sea life awaited her out there.

It will only be a matter of time, she thought. She looked up at Mark, still holding Reese’s hand, and shook her head.

“No,” she whispered.

“What?” Mark stepped down the first stair, coming toward her. “Jen, what’s up?”

“No,” she said again, her voice stronger this time. “No, Mark. It’s—there’s no point.”

“Mom?” Reese looked at her, squeezing her hand.

“Listen. I’m sorry, Mark, but…”

“Bollocks, Jen,” Nelson said. “What do you mean?”

“Look around you!” She shouted. “What’s the point? There’s nothing left here. No submarine, hell—even the docking stations are destroyed. And this station! What’s left is either going to be crushed under five miles of ocean, or we’ll be smashed between these two plates and left to melt in the inferno.”

“Jen!” Mark shouted again. “That’s enough!”

Jen noticed her son’s eyes, startled, gazing upward. “No!” she said. “Stop lying to yourselves! There’s nothing for us here.” Then she spun around to face Nelson and Saunders. “And you two! What’s the plan? What are we going to do, now that we’ve shut down—maybe shut down—that machine downstairs? It’s clearly too late!”

“Jen, I—”

“Stop! Stop it, all of you! I’ve been strong long enough! I’ve been holding myself up as we’ve all been murdered, abandoned, and left for dead. But that’s it. Mark, Reese, come on. Let’s just go somewhere where we can be together, and—”

“No.”

This time the person arguing caused everyone to pause.

“No. Mom, you stop. You came here for me, right? You came here to get me back, and you did. You stayed alive even though that monster tried to kill you all, and you beat him. Now we need to get home together.”

Another pop sounded, followed by another brief change in pressure. Water began trickling down the stairs they were standing on.

“Reese, I—”

“No, Mom. Listen. That submarine, out in the center of the field. It’s old, but it might be able to hold up under the pressure.”

Jen’s mind raced. The submarine? In the field?

She couldn’t imagine what Reese was talking about, but she looked in that direction. Past the houses, past the small white building, sat the large propane tank.

What she had thought was the propane tank.

She knew in a moment her son was correct. It wasn’t a propane tank—it was an old submarine. A research vessel, small but reliable. It had been stripped of anything recognizable, or it had been designed that way. There was no paint job, just brushed metal casing and nuts and bolts. It was a long shot, but it was all they had.

“I saw it when they brought me in. That man seemed proud of it; he seemed proud of this place. I hate him. The woman was nicer.” He stopped for a moment, then looked up at his parents. “It might work though, you know. It’s worth a shot.”

“Ha! That sub’s probably older than all of us,” Nelson said. “And besides, I’m not much of a brainiac, but that pressure all at once will crush that thing like a tin can.”

“The pressure won’t hit all at once,” Mark said, starting to walk toward the sub. The others followed behind. “Besides—” he turned to Nelson and grinned. “At least you’ll be in the tin can. Imagine what it would do to you outside of it.”

Nelson’s eyes rolled upward as he considered it. He nodded. “Well, lead the way, Adams. Let’s get inside our casket, then.”

“Easier said than done,” Saunders said as she reached the antique vessel. “This is a research vessel, not a military sub. It almost reminds me of NR-1, except much smaller and much more simplified. The US Navy built it in the sixties and used it as a retrieval sub and for deepwater exploration. Had a crew of ten, but I’d bet we couldn’t get more than five in this one.”

“You mean couldn’t get more than five comfortably,” Nelson said, clearly asking a question. Jen knew he was concerned about his height. She had to admit the vessel didn’t seem to be large enough for their entire group.

“No,” Saunders said. “No one’s ‘comfortable’ in these things. I did some training in one not too long ago—a mid-sized version used by the Royal Navy for digging up cabling and pipelines—and there wasn’t even enough room to stand up in it.”

Saunders approached the submarine and ran a hand down its side. “I’m not even sure it’s operable, and certainly not by me.” She ran around the front of the submarine to the other side.

Another loud pop sounded, and another burst of water shot through a weak point in the research station’s outer shell. The water had risen to Jen’s ankles, and she could feel a distinct current now as the water searched for lower ground. Soon the lower levels would be completely flooded, and the water would begin to rise in the main level.

“Plus, I don’t even know how to get this thing open.” Saunders was on the roof of the sub now, searching for a way to get inside.

Nelson jumped up on the sub and kicked at a large metal box that was welded onto the center of the roof. He kicked again, and the thin metal was dislodged. “This was added after,” he said, kicking again. “Apparently it looked better than just leaving the original entrance open.”

He kicked another time, and the box of sheet metal broke away completely. He tore the box from the top of the sub, revealing a rounded protrusion jutting upward about two feet. A wheel lay on top of the protrusion, and Nelson placed his hands on either side of it.

“Give me a hand, Saunders. It’s rusted shut.”

“Sure.” She jumped up next to Nelson to help. Together they turned the wheel a half-turn around and then stopped when they heard a loud click. “That should do it,” she said.

Nelson pulled upward on the wheel, and the top of the tube opened. He looked down into the submarine and whistled.

“Hope you’re not claustrophobic,” he said.

Three more diamond-shaped retaining windows popped out and Jen could feel the water rising higher every second. It was at knee-level now, and she felt Reese’s hand grip hers a bit tighter.

Nelson stepped into the ship, and Jen watched his buzzed head sink into the submarine’s interior. She nudged Reese forward and helped him scramble over the slippery side of the metal tube. Nelson’s head reappeared, and he extended a hand to the young boy.

Satisfied, Jen stepped back and looked for Mark. He was standing to the side; his head cocked slightly sideways.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The president. Nelson said he left him in one of the buildings around here, and I just can’t imagine leaving him behind.”

“Mark, he’s… he’s not one of us. I mean, he was working with Jeremiah Austin the whole time.”

“I know, but still…”

Before Jen could object, Mark turned and started running toward the information center. It lay about two hundred yards from the center of the level and was now beginning to flood from the rising water level.

“Mark!”

Mark ignored her and tried the handle on the small shack’s side door. It was unlocked, and he entered. Moments later, he emerged, the president leaning on him for support but still walking. They stumbled toward the submarine, and finally Jen gave in. She ran to meet the two men, and Mark gratefully split the load with her.

Together they carried the president toward the submarine, where Saunders helped pull him over the side of the sub.

A large section of reinforced frame burst, sending a high-pressure water jet mere feet from the back of the submarine.

The president groaned. “Aus— Austin.”

“He’s not here, Mr. President,” Jen responded, heaving his legs up and onto the sub’s roof. Saunders guided his body feet-first into the sub.

He continued to groan and mutter Austin’s name, and Jen knew he’d been drugged.

“What did they give him?” she asked.

“Probably some hallucinative cocktail,” Mark said, “that will probably wear off soon enough. But he’s clearly in on this whole thing. You saw the way he was looking at Austin when he first got here.”

“He recognized him?”

“He didn’t just recognize him,” Mark said. “He seemed happy—proud, even—to see him. Austin expected every moment of his grand entrance, too. And it’s the president, Jen. It’s not like he just took his private sub down here. He had a personal escort from the Navy, and surely his peers back in Washington knew he was coming.

“He had this thing planned out as well, just like Austin.”

Jen’s blood ran cold. This was bigger than she could possibly have imagined.

They took Reese to get to Mark.

“Huh,” Mark said, frowning as he helped Saunders get the president’s upper body into the narrow shaft.

“What is it?”

Jen was soaked from her feet to her chest from wading and pushing against the current. She swore the water was starting to rise on this level, but she couldn’t tell for sure. The station was falling apart, groaning under the immense pressure of the sea, and she thought she could even feel a slight shaking and swaying motion.

“Mark,” she said again, “what is it? We need to get inside—this place is about to fall apart.”

“Yeah, I feel it too. It’s just this—” he placed his right finger along the president’s temple. “I felt it a second ago. He’s been implanted by Austin as well. One of those little transmitter things.”

“Really?” Nelson’s voice called up from somewhere within the submarine. “So he’s one of Austin’s robots as well?”

“Afraid so,” Mark said. “He said they’re basically just a one-way radio, capable of emitting a small electromagnetic force into the host’s brain. It’s undetectable and doesn’t cause any damage, but it lets Austin control basic instincts if he wants to.”

“So you mean this guy could have been wearing one for a while?”

“Maybe. Or they could have knocked him and surgically implanted it only a few days ago, before their trip down here,” Mark said.

“It doesn’t matter now,” Saunders said. “This bastard’s done his job. Austin used him, like he used all of us. Even if we get out of here, that machine’s finishing its final rotation now, and there’s nothing else Austin needs.”

“Let’s just get him inside, and we’ll figure out what to do,” Mark said. He lifted Jen to the opening on top of the sub, his hands firmly gripping her sides. For a brief moment, Jen was taken away from it all; away from the horror of their situation, back to a simpler time when it was just her and Mark.

He looked at her, his eyes finding hers. “You okay, babe?” he asked.

Her lips flicked upward slightly before she could stop it. “Yeah, I’m good. Let’s get inside.”

Jen stepped over the open hatch and placed her foot on the top rung of the ladder. Nelson was directly below her and offered a hand as she descended.

Mark was next, and the last person to enter the small space. Jen spun around, taking in the new setting. The sub was indeed small, though smaller than even Saunders had described. The ceiling was too low, and Jen had to crouch to prevent hitting her head.

Toward the front was a cockpit of sorts. There was room for two people to sit and control the sub’s movement. She stood in the space directly behind that. The rear of the sub was also only about five feet from the hatch they’d climbed down and was mostly filled with two large tanks, a few control boxes, and a small metal chair welded into the wall. The president had been placed on this chair, and he was slumped over, still groaning.

“Wow,” Saunders said as they all crouched together in the middle section. “Definitely smaller than I would have preferred.”

“You think?” Nelson asked. He started pushing his way through the center of the ship and ended up in one of the navigation seats at the front. “I’ll be up here if anyone needs me. Someone’s gotta figure out how to drive this thing.”

Reese ran forward and sat in the chair next to Nelson. Nelson extended his hand to the boy and introduced himself. “Call me Hog,” he said. “And I guess I can call you ‘copilot?’”

Saunders closed the hatch on the roof of the sub and spoke. “No one’s going to cry about leaving that other one behind, no?”

Jen didn’t know who she was talking about at first.

Sylvia.

No one answered.

Just then, a knocking noise reverberated through the walls of the sub.

“She was running toward us, trying to fight the current,” Saunders said, “but I made the executive decision that this ship was already at full capacity.”

Knock, knock, knock.

Sylvia was beating on the side of the sub.

“Let me in! Please!”

Jen was shocked to hear a voice outside the sub—the woman’s. She didn’t dare speak but instead turned to Mark.

He shrugged, and the ground beneath their feet shook harder.

“She thought it would be cute to start that machine again,” Nelson said. “Pretty sure this is exactly what she was trying to do. I say she stays out there until it’s over.”

No one argued, even as the knocking continued. Jen looked up to the cockpit and caught Reese’s attention.

“She was nice to me, but I think she was pretending the whole time,” he said.

Knock.

“Help me! Let me in!”

The voice was softer, as if it understood already that it was condemned.

Jen heard a loud creak as the station lilted sideways and came to rest. The sub was still shaking, and she heard two more pops from outside the sub.

“Hold on to something,” Nelson said. Everyone grabbed at the nearest handle, pipe, or protrusion on the sub’s interior as a massive force hit them from the side.

“It collapsed!” Saunders yelled. The water had overcome the station, the bubble no longer able to withstand the pressure with numerous holes in its frame. Outside, the sub was bombarded from all sides, and Mark, Saunders, and Jen fell to the floor.

Jen reached out for something and felt a hand. She grabbed at it, gripping it with her life. Nuts and gaskets popped from their decades-long home and shot through the sub, narrowly missing its occupants’ heads, but the sub held fast.

A dent appeared in the wall above Jen’s head, and she closed her eyes. She could hear the pressure condensing around the metal tube, putting years of engineering to the ultimate test.

The barrage continued for another minute, causing two more dents to the sub, each larger than the first. Finally the noise stopped, and a deathly silence filled the cabin.

“Is that it?” Nelson asked. “You know, I almost expected worse.”

“That was it,” Saunders said, “but that’s not a good thing.”

“What do you mean?” Jen asked. “The submarine withstood the pressure. That’s what the question was, right?”

“Part of it.” Saunders was busy flicking switches behind Nelson’s seat but stopped for a moment. “I can’t get this thing to turn on.”

“It doesn’t need to be on, right?” Mark asked. “I mean, we just need to rise. Can’t we just release the ballasts, or whatever it’s called?”

Saunders nodded but didn’t respond. She continued flicking switches. A dim light appeared in the entrance hatch, but nothing else she did had any effect. “It’s got to be here—”

She stopped after another few seconds. “There’s… there’s nothing…” She lowered herself to the floor. “No,” she whispered.

“Saunders,” Nelson asked. “What is it?”

“I tried everything,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to turn the thing on; I was just trying to get us to rise.”

“And you can’t?” Mark asked. “Is it broken?”

“No, that’s just it,” she said. “It’s fine. The ship’s responding well enough. It won’t navigate, or turn, but the tanks should be working fine. They’re registering control, but we’re not going anywhere.”

“Why not?”

She turned to Mark and Jen and looked up at them. “We’re not going anywhere because this thing’s bolted to the ground.”

58

They remained in the old submarine for over nine hours. Their bodies were each now stretched out as much as their quarters would allow them. Mark, Jen, and Reese all sat against one of the curving walls.

No one spoke. Each had considered the finality of death, but none had voiced it.

There was no food or water in the small space to keep them alive, but it would be the increasing level of CO2 in the air that would finally take their lives.

Saunders was still sitting on the floor of the sub, defeated. Nelson stirred, having slept with his head against a metal frame. He rubbed at the back of his head and sat up, still trying to find a way out, a loophole. He started fumbling with the switches at the top of the control panel, turning each one on and waiting for a reaction.

“There’s gotta be something—”

“Nelson.” Saunders’ voice stopped him cold. “There’s not. I told you. Those are the external lights, and this one’s the internal switch.” She pointed at some of the switches hanging above her head in the cramped space of the research submarine. “The ballast tanks are responding fine, but nothing’s happening. We’re dead in the water.”

“You got that right,” Nelson said. “So what do we do?”

Jen had to give him credit. She’d given up long ago, and he was still fighting, still trying to find a way out. His stubbornness had gotten them this far, and she assumed he wouldn’t let up until the ocean finally found its way into the sub.

No one answered him. For minutes, they all just sat, calmly silent. Jen wished she could pace around, but the tight quarters prevented anything but rocking gently back and forth in the claustrophobic space.

“Turn the lights on,” Nelson said.

“What?”

“Turn on the lights, Saunders.”

“Hog—come on, man,” she said. “I told you: we’ve got the single bulb in here. The others are burnt—”

“No, the exterior lights. Turn on the panel lights; get that spot going.”

Saunders didn’t respond, and Nelson didn’t wait. He rose from the chair and stepped toward her. “Which one is it?” he asked.

He started flicking the switches, frantically searching the control panel. Saunders finally pointed toward one. “There,” she said. She dropped her hand but continued to watch Nelson.

“Ah, right.” He flipped the small tab protruding from the circular button and immediately the small porthole at the front of the sub was illuminated in a yellow glow. Reese returned to the copilot chair and hunched forward on the seat, peering through the thick pane of glass at the distorted world beyond, Level Four, now filled with water.

Nelson looked back at Saunders, then at Mark and Jen. “You said the president was escorted here, right?”

Mark nodded.

“Then they’re waiting for him. You know they wouldn’t just let him vanish.”

Jen frowned. “Waiting? How? In another sub?”

“At least another sub, right?” Nelson said. “You heard Austin. They brought him down here, watched the sub dock, then stood by as the president came aboard, the docking station exploded, and the research station collapsed.”

Mark stood quickly, crouching and bending his neck to prevent his head from colliding with the ceiling. “No.” He said. “When the president docked, Austin killed the rest of his Secret Service and military team, remember? After that, wouldn’t he also have made sure their submarine was destroyed?”

“Maybe,” Saunders said. “If Austin’s plan was for everyone, including the president, to die, then yes. But if he needed a leader in this ‘new world’ idea of his, it wouldn’t have been smart to get rid of that guy’s only ride home.”

They all considered the options and realized they only had one.

“We have to wait it out either way,” Nelson said. “If the sub’s out there—or anyone’s out there, they might see our light once the debris clears and the currents settle again. That machine underneath us may have been stopped by the water pressure just in time, but the vibrations probably caused more than a few radio operators up there to pee their pants.”

“If we can wait it out, the light will be plenty bright enough to alert them,” Saunders said, excited. She had regained her usual confidence and was now standing as well.

Just then, Jen felt a slight rumble. “Was that the machine?” Panic set in as she realized the power plant may have, in fact, finished the final rotation, and the two trench walls around them were finally breached.

“I don’t think so,” Saunders said. “It’s regular, more like an engine.”

They were all standing now, with the exception of the president, who remained hunched in his chair.

“They’re coming! That has to be it!”

Minutes passed, and Jen waited for another sound. Nothing.

The ocean around seemed to grow quieter every second, until finally, the loudest thing she’d ever heard resonated from directly behind her head.

Whump.

The noise was dull but powerful, immediately close and yet unrecognizable.

Whump.

Another sound, this time from the opposite side of the sub.

“They’re pulling us off the concrete block!”

59

It had taken over four hours to spot the tiny submarine, but one of the radio crew finally found it. Someone on board had decided to turn on the exterior lights, shining a green-cast light outward and letting the advanced sighting technology on board the ship do its job.

Immediately, a submarine crew was in the water. They were lifted off the deck of the ship; a borrowed research vessel christened The Emory Strait. A number of Royal Marines and US Navy seamen guided the submersible, fitted with extended arms and a pulley-crane operation, over the edge and watched it sink into the water.

The two-man sub quickly descended, finally having a charted course directly below the ship. Sonar and communications systems, as well as the advanced targeting sights and construction arms of the sub, were quickly tested. Everything in working order, the sub continued its descent until it was lying just above the older, larger submarine mounted on the floor of the Atlantic.

The arms reached out and placed both of its telescoping drill heads near the two large bolts holding the submarine to the concrete base. It began to drill from both sides at once, taking advantage of the massive pressure of the deep ocean. The bolt left the base of the concrete with a soft pop, its head sheared from its shaft, and the small research sub moved around to the other side of its target.

It repeated the process two more times, shearing off three of the four bolts from the concrete. On the fourth bolt, it stopped, placing one of its movable arms on top of the sub. It applied pressure, trying to prevent the almost-free sub from rising too quickly once the final bolt was severed.

The second arm drilled again, this time moving more slowly on its own. The final bolt broke free and shot away from the two submarines, and the now-free vessel began to push upwards. The two-man sub guided the other with the two arms, both allowing it to rise through the deep water but using its own ballast systems—both the main and redundant system now working in tandem at twice the power—to keep the submarines from shooting upwards like a cork.

The ascension process took all of two and –a half hours, each man in the sub taking careful note of the surrounding pressure, the status of the onboard systems, and the placement of the two arms on the neighboring sub’s back. They checked in regularly via radio, giving the surface team an accurate prediction of the surfacing time.

When the two submarines popped out of the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, deck crews cheered and began hoisting the ship’s crane and pulley to the starboard side of the ship, where a diving crew had already swam up next to the old submarine. They hitched the crane’s lift supports and struts to the underside of the sub and signaled for the operator to begin moving the vessel from the ocean to the deck of the research ship. Within another half hour, the submarine was ready to be opened.

Detective Craig Larson stood by, watching the entire process. He smiled with the cheering crewmen and women, and approached the submarine when it was finally on deck. A mercenary nearby nodded, and he stepped forward. Two young men, Rogers and Cabrera, he believed, began working on opening the top hatch of the sub. They succeeded, and Larson walked up the platform surrounding the small vessel.

60

They rose through the water for another few hours. Mark lost track of how long it had been, but he knew most of the group had long since fallen asleep. He stayed awake, watching Jen and Reese at the side of the sub.

He couldn’t tell if they were rising, falling, or staying in place, but the sensation of movement was there. It was an odd feeling, moving around as a completely weightless object without a sense of actual direction. After another fifteen minutes passed, Mark felt another sensation: were they stopping?

Saunders opened her eyes, followed soon after by Nelson.

“We home yet?” he asked.

Mark shrugged, but a popping sound resonated through the sub as the wheel at the top of the hatch began to open. In a moment, Nelson was at the hatch, looking upward. He shielded his eyes as a blinding light pierced the dark interior.

Sunlight.

Mark had never felt so elated in his entire life. The light filled every space in the sub; no corner was left untouched. He felt its warmth wash over his face and arms, and he turned to look at Jen.

“We’re home,” she mouthed, not making a sound. He nodded.

Someone shouted down from the open hatch, and Nelson responded. He reached up to the ladder and lifted himself upward. Reese followed, Jen close behind, and Mark waited for Saunders to climb out.

Mark walked to the exit of the sub and looked up. A man’s face greeted him.

“I have something here I’ll need a hand with,” Mark said. He retreated toward the back of the sub and waited until he heard footsteps descending the ladder. The young merc dropped to the metal floor and looked at Mark. His eyes grew wide, and he instantly jumped for the ladder again.

“I need some help over here!” he yelled. “I’ve got the president down here, alive,” he added.

Within seconds, three more sailors had gathered around the hatch, and Mark moved around and began to lift the president from the chair. Before he walked toward the exit, he looked down and shook him gently, waiting for the man’s eyes to open. He had been fast asleep, still affected by the drugs.

The president’s eyes met Mark’s and widened. Mark smiled, reached into his pocket, and retrieved the small device he’d pocketed earlier. He pressed the small button on the side and waved it near the president’s temple.

“This is for my family, Mr. President.” Mark waved it again, and the president’s eyes glazed over. He felt for a pulse.

Good.

The first sailor had reached them and pulled the president away from Mark.

“Rogers! Get down here and help me out!” He threw the president’s arm over his shoulder and turned to exit. “I’ve got one more civ down here, too. Give me a hand!”

The man turned and nodded. Mark smiled at the young man. “He’s hurt, I think. Shaken up, but I think there’s something more to it than that. He’s been acting strange since he got hit down there. Must have hit his head pretty badly.”

The soldier thanked him and lifted the president’s arms to the waiting hands of the crewman standing around the hatch. Mark followed him out and was immediately escorted to a waiting inflatable craft moored next to their sub.

He was ushered next to Jen and Reese, and he sat down in the middle of the boat, facing Saunders and Nelson.

Mark slid his arm around his wife’s shoulders, pulling her close. Reese moved to sit between Mark and Jen and rested his head on his shoulder.

“You okay?” he asked as she turned to him.

She nodded, moved her hand to his face, and kissed him.

EPILOGUE

Harold Mathers sat motionless, watching the small television mounted on the wall.

“Reports indicate some sort of brain damage caused by anaphylactic shock…”

The newscaster was standing in front of a green-screened image of the White House front gate, reading from a prepared statement from his Chief of Staff’s office.

“…Initial estimates predict that the damage will be limited to an area no larger than five hundred square miles in the mid-Atlantic, and recovery crews from FEMA have already been dispatched…”

Mathers reached up to wipe a drop of saliva from his lip. He felt his chin. It was covered in whiskers.

When was the last time I shaved?

He felt the skin on his cheek flare up as his hand grazed a spot he’d apparently nicked with his razor.

“President Frank McKinney, recently returned from his trip abroad, has been working with the former First Lady Mathers on a worldwide press tour to explain and apologize for the unbelievable events of the past month…”

His tongue rolled slightly out over his bottom lip. He focused his attention on pulling it back into his mouth. The drop of saliva grew, now rolling over his whiskered chin and resting on the divot on his lower lip.

“Starting with Canada and England, the duo visited thirty-five countries in two months and presented to audiences of almost one billion people across television and radio networks. The speech has been translated to almost twenty languages and outlines the terrible computer malfunctions that led to twelve ballistic missiles being simultaneously fired…”

Mathers reached up again to wipe it away just as a woman’s voice giggled from behind him. He was immediately distracted and his tongue dropped slightly out of his mouth once more.

“The efforts of Detective Craig Larson and his late partner Ken Dawson have led to the arrest of eighteen individuals believed to be involved in the Nouvelle Terre organization. Detective Dawson sadly perished in a house fire outside Washington…”

The giggling continued, and he shifted his eyes to the left as the woman entered his field of vision.

“Mr. Pres—Mr. Mathers,” she said, correcting herself, “how silly of you!” She reached to his lip and wiped away the growing blob of saliva with her sleeve. “You must be hungry. Come here; let’s get you to the cafeteria.”

Mathers tried to look at her, tried to raise his voice to argue. His voice stuttered, a gravelly hollowed-out skeleton of his soothing baritone that had won him his presidency, and he gasped for air.

His head lolled sideways against his own will. Dammit. Stop and think.

He drew a few short breaths, steadying his hands. They gripped the sides of his wheelchair tightly, trying to force his body to calm down.

The nurse continued patronizing him, but he was no longer listening.

Tell her you’re okay, man. He struggled to build the sentence in his mind, and even as he started to open his mouth to speak, he knew, like always, that it wouldn’t work.

“For have to— neb… I ca—hold un…” What the hell was that? He wondered as he heard the disgusting voice—his own—string together another incoherent set of syllables.

“Mr. Mathers, it’s okay. Let’s get you downstairs.” She reached down to his shoulder, her other hand finding the handle on the back of his wheelchair. She squeezed his shoulder to calm him and guided the wheelchair out of the white room.

Another drop of drool appeared at the side of his mouth.

AFTERWORD

If you liked this book (or even if you hated it…) write a review or rate it. You might not think it makes a difference, but it does.

Besides actual currency (money), the currency of today’s writing world is reviews. Reviews, good or bad, tell other people that an author is worth reading.

As an “indie” author, I need all the help I can get. I’m hoping that since you made it this far into my book, you have some sort of opinion on it.

Would you mind sharing that opinion? It only takes a second.

Nick Thacker

Colorado Springs, CO

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Wow. Book two. I never really thought the day would come! It’s been quite a journey, and it’s been a heck of a ride! Since publishing The Golden Crystal, we’ve lived in three different cities, two different states, and taken and left multiple jobs. Our family has grown to include two dogs and a tortoise, and my experience as a writer has increased to include “struggling self-published author.”

Through it all, God has been great and life has been good. My business (Turtleshell Press) has expanded and I’m now loving my time spent helping other writers get their work into print almost as much as I’m loving the time I spend writing.

There have been people who have been there for me through it all, and I am greatly indebted to you. In no particular order: Mom, Dad, and Brett, Grandpa Mac, Ron and Beth, and of course their daughter (my loving wife) Emily. A special thanks to Michelle for her amazing job editing through The Depths and urging me forward with promises that the book won’t be as bad as I thought. For The Golden Crystal, my editor Mike and all of the beta readers, and of course the countless people who have struggled through that first published effort of mine. To the readers of my blog and website, thank you just won’t cut it. Without you there would be no book; there would be no desire to work! The good folks at Amazon.com (Kindle) and the printers I’ve worked with to get a high-quality product created.

To everyone I’ve missed, though there’s not enough space to write the names, know that you were a part of this. Thank you, and enjoy The Depths!

BOOKS BY NICK THACKER

Jack Barr Thrillers

The Caribbean Affair (Book 1)

The Peruvian Exchange (Book 2)

* * *

Six Assassins Thrillers

Primary Target (Book 1)

Subtle Target (Book 2)

Unstable Target (Book 3)

Captive Target (Book 4)

Vendetta Target (Book 5)

Final Target (Book 6)

* * *

Mason Dixon Thrillers

Mark for Blood (Book 1)

Death Mark (Book 2)

Mark My Words (Book 3)

* * *

Harvey Bennett Mysteries

The Enigma Strain (Book 1)

The Amazon Code (Book 2)

The Ice Chasm (Book 3)

The Jefferson Legacy (Book 4)

The Paradise Key (Book 5)

The Atlantis Artifact (Book 6)

The Book of Bones (Book 7)

The Cain Conspiracy (Book 8)

The Mendel Paradox (Book 9)

The Minoan Manifest (Book 10)

The Napoleon Job (Book 11)

The Embers of Siwa (Book 12)

The Epsilon Event (Book 13)

Harvey Bennett Mysteries - Books 1-3

Harvey Bennett Mysteries - Books 4-6

Harvey Bennett Mysteries - Books 7-9

* * *

Jake Parker Thrillers

Containment (Book 1)

The Patriot (Book 2)

False Allegiance (Book 3)

* * *

Standalone Thrillers

The Atlantis Stone

The Depths

Relics: A Post-Apocalyptic Technothriller

Killer Thrillers (3-Book Box Set)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nick Thacker is a thriller author from Texas who lives in Hawaii and Colorado. In his free time, he enjoys reading in a hammock on the beach, skiing, drinking whiskey, and hanging out with his beautiful wife, two dogs, and two daughters.

For more information and a list of Nick’s other work, visit Nick online:

www.nickthacker.com

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