Mara grimaced. “Punishing them for the sin of inaction.”
“So get on board now,” Carly said, “or be doomed forever.”
Jason slowly nodded. “That’s the moral of this story. And, unfortunately, now that you’ve learned this you’ll have no excuse in the future for why you didn’t help this godlike AI from coming into being. You can’t claim ignorance any longer.”
“And so, you’ve doomed us,” Carly said.
Jason shrugged. “I did warn you.”
Mara frowned. “Surely you can’t take this seriously.”
Another shrug. “After this thought experiment appeared on his website, Yudkowsky removed the original Basilisk post. In addition, any further discussion on the site is still being mysteriously scrubbed.”
“So as not to doom more people?” Mara asked.
“Or at least, not mess with their heads.” But Jason wasn’t done. “In the last couple years, a major tech player started a new church, the Way of the Future, even obtaining tax-exempt status. The filing stated the purpose of the church is for the realization, acceptance, and worship of a godhead based on artificial intelligence. So clearly someone is hedging their bet, making sure they’re on the good side of this future godlike AI.”
“That’s got to be a joke,” Carly said.
Jason shook his head. “The creator of this church is dead serious. And maybe we should be, too.” He stared harder at Mara. “So, you see, maybe it’s best you did create Eve. If nothing else, you’re already doing this future god’s good work.”
“Then I’d best get back to it,” Mara said.
But before she could return to the computer, a commotion in the outer room drew all their attentions. While they had been talking, someone new had arrived. Commander Pierce had the newcomer locked in a bear hug. The man was dressed in a khaki jumpsuit under a flight jacket. His face was flushed, all the way to his shaved scalp.
“Who’s that?” Mara asked.
Jason headed toward the next room. “Hopefully, the cavalry.”
10:32 P.M.
“About time you got here,” Gray said.
He gave Monk a final squeeze before releasing him, trying his best to communicate how relieved he was to have his friend at his side—and how sorry he was for Monk’s loss.
“I heard about Kat,” Gray said.
Kowalski patted a huge mitt on Monk’s shoulder. “It’s fucked up.”
Monk shook his head, looking at his toes. “She would want me here.” When he glanced back up, there were no tears in his eyes, only a steely determination. “I intend to bring my girls home. For Kat’s sake and my own.”
“We’ll make sure that happens,” Gray said. “Until then, Seichan will look after them. She’ll keep them safe.”
“I know she will.” Monk reached and squeezed his upper arm. “We’ll get them all home. No matter what.”
“Agreed.”
Gray absorbed the unwavering confidence of his best friend, letting it seep into his bones and dispel the residual misgiving and apprehension that clung to him.
“What now?” Monk asked. His gaze swept the room, noting Jason’s approach from the computer lab.
Gray filled Monk in on all that had transpired, introducing him to Father Bailey and Sister Beatrice. “They’re with the Thomas Church.”
Monk’s grim attitude lightened slightly. “Like Vigor?”
Bailey shook Monk’s hand. “He was a great man. I only hope I can do him justice.”
“Me, too. Those are some mighty big shoes to fill.”
“I’ll do my best.”
The older nun simply bowed her head, acknowledging the same.
“What about you?” Gray asked. “Anything new to report?”
“No.” He gave the room a final look, turning his back slightly to Gray. “Nothing at all. Let’s just find those bastards who stole that tech.”
17
December 25, 11:18 P.M. CET
Paris, France
Deep in the catacombs, Todor Y?igo bided his time—but his patience was wearing thin. He checked his watch. The Inquisitor General had been firm with him on the details of the cyberattack upon the city above his head. Paris had been chosen because of its decadence and self-indulgent pageantry. It was the perfect city to make an example of.
Even the timing was chosen for its significance.
No later than midnight.
The start of the fall of Paris must happen today.
On Christmas Day.
Still on his knees, he stared up, picturing the spectacle far above his head, where the day of Christ’s birth had been debased into a hedonistic spectacle of lights, consumerism, and overindulgence. As preparations had been finalized, he had spent the past two hours here in solemn prayer, his cell in the catacombs lit only by a single candle. He whispered in Latin his thanks for God’s gift of His only son, while contemplating the ruin about to start.
All in Your Glorious name.
They had chosen this subterranean location to carry out their op eration because it was both auspicious and practical. The catacombs of Paris—its city of the dead—was a centuries-old warren of crypts and tunnels, a dark world beneath the bright City of Lights, a shadow it tried to hide. While preparing the groundwork for this operation, he had learned everything he could about the site.
The catacombs were once ancient quarries—called les carrières de Paris—on the outskirts of town. They burrowed ten stories underground, carving out massive chambers and expanding outward into two hundred miles of tunnels. Then, over time, Paris spread like a cancer, growing outward, blanketing the top of the old labyrinth, until now half of the metropolis sat atop the old mines.
Then, in the eighteenth century, overflowing cemeteries in the center of Paris were dug up. Millions of skeletons—some going back a thousand years—were unceremoniously dumped into the quarries’ tunnels, where they were broken down and stacked like cordwood. According to the Inquisitor General, some of France’s most famous historical figures were interred below, their bodies lost forever: from Merovingian kings to characters from the French Revolution, like Robespierre and Marie Antoinette.
But in less than an hour, the City of Light would burn and crumble to ruin, becoming indistinguishable from its city of the dead.
To ensure this was accomplished, Todor climbed to his feet. He placed a palm against the wall of his cell. The limestone sweated, dripping with water, as if already mourning the deaths to come. He patted the wall and headed out.
To either side of the passageway, deep niches had been packed solidly with old human bones, darkened and yellowed to the color of ancient parchment. The skeletons had been disarticulated and separated into component parts, as if inventoried by some morbid accountant. One niche held a stack of arms, delicately draped one atop the other; another was full of rib cages. The last two niches—one on either side of the passage—were the most macabre. Two walls of skulls stared into the tunnel, daring anyone to trespass between their vacant gazes.
Todor hurried past those dead sentinels, but not without a shiver of dread.
The tunnel finally ended at a flat-roofed chamber, only a little taller than the passageway. Several pillars—made up of piles of stone blocks—held up the ceiling. Several of the columns looked crooked and ready to fall.
Careful not to bump them, he crossed to the far side, where his team’s technical expert labored over what had been stolen out of Lisbon. Mendoza hunched in front of a laptop wired to the radiant Xénese sphere. On the screen, a mist-shrouded garden shimmered in sunlight, a blue sky beckoned. A darker shadow moved through the bower, the defiled incarnation of Eve.
“How far along are you with the transfer?” Todor asked, wanting to make sure everything remained on schedule.
Mendoza straightened, rubbing a kink in his back. “Almost finished, Familiares.”
Todor stepped around him to inspect a second sphere, identical to the first. Only this one had been secured inside the skeletal frame of a steel crate, all wired into a lone server. Like the device stolen from the hotel, this new one’s hexagonal glass windows shone with blue fire, near blinding in the dim lights down here.
For the past two years, the Crucible had been keeping track of the Basque witch’s research and design plans. In secret, teams of engineers—working on component parts in labs across Europe, oblivious of each other—had replicated her work. Once they were done, those disparate parts were brought together here and assembled. Afterward, the engineers all met untimely ends: car crashes, ski accidents, overdoses.
All to bring this to fruition.
To produce an exact duplicate of the original Xénese device.
With one distinct exception.
“I should be finished in another eight minutes,” Mendoza reported from his station. “I don’t want to make any mistakes, or I’ll have to start all over.”
Todor pictured this second unit filling up with a copy of Eve, her body flowing through the cables into its new home, its new prison.
“Are you sure this will hold the demon?” Todor asked. “Allow us to bend it to our will?”
“It should,” Mendoza mumbled, concentrating on his work.