Gray frowned. Even in the firelit darkness, the wall seemed to go on forever. “Where’s the entrance?”
Simon took another five steps and stopped. He looked around, as if getting his bearings, and nodded. “Right here.”
“Here?” Monk asked, huffing loudly.
He pointed to the fence. “Oui. We hop over here.”
“Maybe you do.” Kowalski scowled. “I didn’t bring a ladder.”
“It’s not hard. Follow me.”
Simon parted some of the winter-dried vines and climbed the sheer wall as nimbly as a cat up a tree. He hooked a leg over the slate-edged top and waited, straightening his neon-yellow eyeglasses. “Tres facile,” he declared.
Gray doubted it was very easy, but he crossed and ran his fingers along the surface, discovering finger and toe holds carved into the limestone.
“Work of cataphiles,” Simon explained. “Known only to those of us.”
Gray reached to the wall, dug in his fingers, and clambered up to join Simon. As he waited at the top for Monk and Kowalski, he took in the breadth of the sprawling cemetery. It looked like a true city of the dead, with a grid of streets and alleys dividing neighborhoods of tombs, crypts, and mausoleums. It even contained a handful of tiny green parks, groves of trees, patches of flowers, and was dotted everywhere with bronze statuary.
The closest and most prominent was a towering bronze figure of a winged angel. Limned against the conflagration on the far side, it looked sculpted of molten fire, shining defiantly against the smoke rolling through the lower park.
“Génie du Sommeil Eternel,” Simon said, noting his attention. “The Angel of Eternal Sleep.”
Gray nodded and waved Simon down. He appreciated this guardian of Montparnasse Cemetery, but it was not this city of the dead they needed to explore.
Gray leaped down. Monk and Kowalski dropped heavily behind him. They set off after Simon, who hurried over to a squat mausoleum surmounted by a broken limestone cross. Their guide tugged at a rusted door, which squealed open.
“This way.” Simon ducked through.
The space was little larger than a broom closet. Still, they crowded in. The back half of the floor had long ago fallen away or been broken through. Makeshift steps led down into the darkness.
Simon waved with a tired flourish. “C’est ici l’empire de la Mort,” he intoned. “Here lies the empire of the dead.”
Gray stared down at the entrance to the catacombs, one of many such secret entrances, according to Simon. Knowing the darkness that waited below and the need for stealth from here, he faced the others and passed out the team’s night-vision gear, instructing Simon on their use.
As Simon settled the goggles over his eyes, Gray asked, “What can we expect down there?”
Simon sighed heavily. “It’s a dark maze. The catacombs run for three hundred kilometers. A third of which burrow under the streets of Paris. Two kilometers are open to the public, part of a museum, where you can see incroyable sculptures and long arcades built from the bones of the dead.”
“And the rest?” Monk asked.
“Off-limits, crumbling, tres dangéreux. Many sections are only known to cataphiles.”
Gray took out his satellite phone and rechecked the location pinpointed by Mara. He tapped the red dot on the map near the heart of the cemetery. “And you’re sure you can find this spot?”
“I’ll do my best.”
Gray nodded. “Then let’s go.”
Simon took the lead. “Mind your head.”
Gray waved for his partners to follow.
Monk passed by, his face clouded and dark.
Kowalski was less reticent as he struggled with his night-vision goggles and cast daggers at Gray. He grumbled under his breath. “It’s always fucking underground with you . . .”
Gray gave him a shove and prepared to follow, but he looked one last time toward the mausoleum door. He listened to the roar of the fire, wondering what would be left of Paris when he came back up. He also pictured Mara and the others, hoping they had retreated somewhere safe by now.
But most of all, he knew he had to secure what was stolen.
Eve had to be stopped before she wreaked more havoc.
But that wasn’t the only reason.
As he descended into the dark, he pictured Seichan, tipped up on her toes, an arm reaching to gently hang a glass ornament on a bough of the Christmas tree, her other hand cradling her belly. And Monk’s two girls. Harriet hunched over an iPad, her tiny face knotted with concentration, working on a puzzle as if the fate of the world depended on the solution, while Penny danced across the living room, her strawberry-blond pigtails twirling.
To have any chance of saving them, his team had to secure the stolen tech.
It was their only bargaining chip.
Gray read the tension in Monk’s back as his friend descended the steps into the catacombs. It was an easy read, matching the worry aching in Gray’s chest.
Are we already too late?
12:45 A.M.
“You’re out of time,” Jason announced.
Mara ignored him and concentrated on the monitor. He grabbed the back of her chair and tried to roll her away from her station. She simply stood up and let him drag the empty chair to the side. She bent closer to the screen.
No, no, no . . .
She had to be sure.
Carly coughed into a fist, then cleared her throat. “Mara . . . Jason’s right. You’ve got less than a minute of battery power left.”
Mara knew that wasn’t the only time pressure. Smoke obscured the view to the south. A thickening pall hung over the roof of the lab. Gusts through the shattered windows carried in more smoke, along with hot ash.
Out in the other room, Father Bailey paced with a flashlight he’d found. He still clutched his borrowed phone to his ear. Every thirty seconds, the priest would stalk over and urge them to leave or silently communicate the same with an adamant expression.
Mara had ignored him, too.
This was too important. Once they abandoned this station, they would lose any chance of discovering why Eve had been freed again.
“Look,” Mara said.
She ran a finger down the tangle of crimson lines marking the path of Eve’s digital fingerprint. It wove a winding path to the city’s limit—then crossed outward. In order to follow it, Mara had to hack into other telecom networks. With the city in crisis and systems overloaded, it had taken far too long.
And she still wasn’t certain where Eve was headed.
But maybe . . .
Mara’s finger traveled across Paris’s suburbs and outlying villages: Pontault-Combault, Chaumes-en-Brie, Provins. As Eve’s route coiled and wormed across the map, it extended thin branches that died away, indicating someone had placed restrictions on where the program could travel.
Mara pictured Eve’s path lined by no-trespassing signs.
Still, the general trajectory was clear.
“She’s heading in a southeasterly direction,” Mara explained. “While I haven’t been able discover her end goal—at least, not for sure—I can make a guess.”
She shifted her fingertip farther to the southeast, extrapolating Eve’s path. She tapped at the French commune of Nogent-sur-Seine. It lay some hundred kilometers away, sitting on the right bank of the river that flowed into Paris.
“I think she’s headed here.”
“Why there?” Carly said.
Mara swallowed and manipulated the mouse to zoom into a road map of the township. “Eve was dispatched to knock out Paris’s power grid, to take control of its gas lines, even its water supply. If she’s being sent out again, the target this time must be something even larger, something that could destroy Paris forever.”
She pointed just as the screen blinked off, sinking them all into darkness.
Still, Jason gasped behind her. He clearly had spotted the possible target before the computer’s battery backup died.
So had Carly. “You have to call Commander Pierce,” her friend said. “Now.”
Jason had already pulled out his satellite phone. Its screen flared brightly in the smoky dark. In its glow, the anxiety in his face tightened.
Mara held her breath.
Jason finally shook his head. “No answer,” he reported with a grimace, turning toward the burning city. “He must’ve already entered the catacombs.”
“Then we have to get over there,” Mara said. “Warn him.”
They rushed out onto the main floor.
Father Bailey stood with his flashlight near the stairwell—but he wasn’t alone.
Sister Beatrice breathed heavily next to him, her face waxy and ashen. The nun leaned hard on her cane. Mara was confused. She remembered that the nun had been headed downstairs, to await them by the car on the street.
Father Bailey turned, his expression both worried and apologetic. “The sixth floor, maybe more levels, are on fire.” He pointed his flashlight beam into a billow of smoke rolling out of the stairwell. “We can’t get down.”
Mara clutched a hand to her throat, glancing back to the computer lab and the dark monitor. She knew there was only one person who had a chance of keeping her program in check, of blocking what was about to happen.
And I’m trapped here.
No one could stop Eve now.
* * *
Sub (Crux_2) / NOGENT OP