Simon pointed up the sheer, featureless walls of this limestone well. “Back in 1870, the Montparnasse Cemetery was overcrowded, overflowing with bodies. To make room, caretakers—at the order of the king—dumped old skeletons down into the ancient quarries where we’re standing.”
As proof, he pointed to a scatter of bones as they headed off again—a mix of femurs, ribs, and broken skulls. They stepped carefully through the clutter.
“You’ll not find the public museum’s macabre displays in this area. No one bothered with such things way over here.”
Kowalski pointed to a side tunnel, trying his best to whisper. “Then who put that together?”
At the passage’s end, a throne had been cobbled together of yellowing bone, with a seat made out of rib cages, the chairback strutted with femurs, and skulls used as armrests.
“Hopefully it was constructed by human hands.” Simon shrugged. “But you hear stories of all sorts, of bones moving on their own . . .”
Kowalski shuddered and scowled over at Gray. “This is the last time you play tour guide.”
Gray waved everyone onward, but with a warning. “We should be getting close to the spot Mara pinpointed. No more talking.”
While he was wary of the strange acoustics down here, he’d felt relatively safe up until now. So far, with his ears constantly piqued, he had heard no telltale signs—no echoes or voices—of anyone else down here.
If I can’t hear them, they likely can’t hear us.
But that could change at any moment.
Still, a worry nagged him. What if the enemy had already cleared out? With Paris burning, the Crucible would not stick around for long.
Knowing that, Gray set a harder pace. After another few minutes of silent trudging, Simon stopped abruptly. Gray came close to knocking into their guide.
The tunnel ahead of him narrowed, but that wasn’t the problem. A calf-deep blanket of old bones covered the floor, stretching thirty yards.
But even that wasn’t what had stopped Simon.
Their guide pointed toward the far end, to where a smaller side tunnel opened to the left. A white light shone out into the main passage from there, bright enough to flare in the goggles.
Gray took off his night-vision gear and stowed it. Monk and Kowalski followed his example, firming grips on their respective weapons. Monk carried another SIG. In Kowalski’s huge hands, his stubby bullpup rifle looked like a child’s toy.
As planned, only Simon kept his night-vision goggles in place.
Gray pointed back down the tunnel. Simon had completed his duty. The young man had no experience with weapons, and Gray wanted this civilian out of harm’s way.
Simon didn’t have to be told twice. He retreated into the darkness, vanishing within steps.
Once he was gone, Gray returned his attention to the bone-laden tunnel ahead. Occasional murmurs echoed back, faint and indistinct. Still, without question, it had to be the Crucible.
Gray eyed the stretch of skulls, shattered rib cages, and broken femurs. He wondered if this macabre spread was happenstance or purposeful. Either way, it served as a crude early warning system for the enemy. One wrong step, one sharp snap of bone, and Gray’s team would lose any advantage of surprise.
Holding his breath, Gray reached with a leg, nosed the tip of his boot to shift the bones until he touched the floor, then settled his heel.
He sighed.
One step down . . .
He stared across the length of the tunnel, sensing time constricting. But he fought against that pressure and set out slowly, carefully, picking his way along.
His only consolation: Paris burned above his head.
What more damage could the enemy hope to do?
1:24 A.M.
Todor studied the topographic map on his e-tablet. It depicted the watershed of the Seine basin, showing the many tributaries and valleys that formed the river that passed through Paris on its way to the English Channel.
Designed by Steven Prey (All rights reserved. Used by permission of Steve Prey)
He noted the French commune of Nogent-sur-Seine to the southeast. The small village’s nuclear plant lay close to the same river. Once the core melted down and exploded, winds would spread the radioactive cloud far and wide. Plus, the runoff from the plant would contaminate the neighboring waterway, transforming the river into a perfect vessel to carry that poisonous load straight into the heart of Paris.
Mendoza straightened by the laptop. “It is done, Familiares Todor.”
Todor set his tablet down and crossed closer.
“The last firewall has been breached,” Mendoza reported. “She’s inside their systems, proceeding with the plan.”
He checked his watch. “How long until she’s done?”
“I’ll know in a moment. Unfortunately, the nuclear plant proved to be a greater challenge than Paris’s systems. So it was just as well we attacked the city first—not only as a distraction, but as a test run.”
“What do you mean?”
“Paris was a simple exercise. The Inquisitor Generalis believed it was better to put Eve through her paces here first. He thought it best to challenge her with the city’s more antiquated and less-protected systems.”
“Before sending her south.”
Mendoza nodded. “And it worked. She’s learning rapidly.”
Todor felt a stab of irritation. Mendoza had never met the Inquisitor General, yet the Crucible’s leader had shared this detail of the plan with an underling, someone who had not yet earned the title of familiares. Todor knew the Inquisitor had consulted with a nuclear engineer, someone familiar with the control systems at the Nogent power plant. A multipronged attack had been devised. Employing the versatility and speed of the AI, the many layers of the plant’s safety measures would be countermanded, disabled, or circumvented.
The plan was to simultaneously trigger two failures: a loss of coolant and a spike in pressure. Without enough coolant, the reactor would overheat, causing a steam bubble to form in the core. With the pressure-control system sabotaged, the giant bubble would expand rapidly, leading to a hydrogen gas explosion, a blast strong enough to shatter the steel-reinforced containment building.
A loud chime sounded from the laptop, drawing both their attentions. The cluster of overlapping windows—which had been running with code only Mendoza could interpret—vanished. A dark Eden again glowed on the screen.
“She’s done,” Mendoza announced. “From here, there’s no stopping the cascade of failures that will result in a complete meltdown.”
Todor checked his watch, mentally setting a timer. He knew from here they had less than ninety minutes before the plant blew. He returned to his abandoned e-tablet and signaled for the helicopter to rendezvous for their evacuation from the city.
A gasp rose behind him.
He turned to see Mendoza bend closer to the laptop.
On the screen, a figure had reappeared in the garden, struggling in fiery chains. The image of Eve flickered, her outline blurring and reforming, looking like a writhing wrath of fire and shadows, a flaming angel of death.
“She’s fighting her return,” Mendoza whispered, a measure of awe in his voice.
He didn’t care. “Shut everything down,” he ordered. “We want to be airborne in—”
A sharp snap sounded behind him, echoing from the depths of the catacombs. It was as loud as a gunshot in the sepulchral stillness. Todor turned. He had four other men positioned around their location. They all knew to remain silent. He had been warned that the catacombs were occasionally traveled by the foolhardy—or by police seeking to flush the same out of the depths of the catacombs.
But they seldom came this deep.
Someone else is here.
With his heart hammering in warning, Todor set his e-tablet down and retrieved his assault rifle: a compact British L85 paired to a Heckler & Koch grenade launcher. He pointed his other arm at the Xénese device housing their creation. It had served its purpose, but he could not risk losing this prize, especially knowing what was planned next.
“Unhook it now,” he ordered. “Get it ready to move.”
“But—”
Another crack from the tunnels silenced him.
This time, it didn’t sound like a gunshot.
It was a gunshot.
1:30 A.M.
Gray cursed Kowalski’s giant clodhoppers. They had made it halfway down the tunnel when his partner lost his footing at the rear and snapped a yellowed femur under his heel.
Everyone froze, holding their breath.
Had they been heard?
The answer was a stir of shadows amid the glare of lights flowing from the side tunnel. Gray dropped low, balancing on his toes amid the bones, trying his best not to be sighted in the back half of the dark tunnel.
No luck.
A gunshot blasted—followed by the whine of a round past his ear.
Gray heard a pained oof from Monk.
A glance back revealed his friend flattening against a wall and slumping lower. Beyond Monk, Kowalski simply stood in the center of the tunnel, his weapon high.
Oh, sh—
Gray dove headlong into the bone pile on the floor. The bullpup rifle blazed in the darkness, roaring angrily. Kowalski strafed the opening to the side tunnel, careful of Monk pressed to the wall and Gray on the floor. Rounds sparked and ricocheted off the limestone.