Protocol 7

ELEVATOR ONE

Blackburn stood in the express elevator and calculated the time it would take him to reach the Nest. Twenty-four minutes, thirty-two seconds, he decided. Then he would put an end to this, once and for all.

The five-man security team that surrounded him did not move or speak. Their faces were invisible behind flat black helmets; the polished obsidian edges glistening in the overheads. Blackburn felt the weight of his body shift upward, almost lifting him off his feet as they plunged down the endless shaft toward the Nest. He suddenly felt aware of the immeasurable tons of ice all around him, pressing in from all sides…and still he felt immensely strong, in control.

It’d been too long since he’d seen Oliver Fitzpatrick face-to-face. It was time to see him again. And he had never actually seen the discovery itself—in person, just photographs, flat-screen images, and extrapolated holographs. The scientists he had debriefed said what they had discovered was very different when experienced in person, but even in the imagery, they looked ominous and powerful. Up close, he was told, machinery malfunctioned and light itself seemed to twist and buckle…

They certainly have changed Oliver, he thought.

“Is Dr. Fitzpatrick prepared?”

“And waiting,” his second said.

“Good. And no further news on the intruders?”

“No, sir.”

“The Black Ops?”

“No, sir.”

He allowed himself a small frown. Silence was not what he wanted.

Twelve minutes and thirty-one seconds more.

He could feel it: an ending, of a sort, was on its way.

He was ready.





SPECTOR VI

“I don’t remember it being this far,” Hayden grumbled as they climbed the slow, steady incline toward the Spector. He felt as if they had been walking for days.

Lucas was close behind him, his breath labored but steady. “The MagCycles are fast,” he said. “You lose your sense of space down here.”

“You’re not kidding,” Andrew said and slipped on the ice for a moment before regaining his footing.

It was cold, so cold the word itself had lost meaning. It reached into each of them with claws as sharp as broken glass.

“There she is,” Andrew said. He lifted a weary arm and pointed, and they all saw it: the magnificent curve and sweep of the Spector, surrounded by the glowing halo of its emergency lights.

“Stay back for a minute,” Lucas said, sounding strangely tense. “We’ll check it out.”

Hayden was more than happy to oblige. He stopped to rest, and his three colleagues stopped with him while Lucas and his two friends stumped across the frozen ground for the last two hundred yards, their bodies little more than silhouettes against the light from their helmets now reflecting on the Spector.

The scientists circled the vehicle, checked the feeder tunnels, and looked into the distance. Everything seemed quiet, undisturbed. It seemed suspicious that the CS23s had simply vanished—abandoned the Spector, disappeared. He knew something was wrong, but they had little time, and Lucas simply didn’t care. He turned to face Hayden and the others, and waved an arm: come on.

Ryan and Andrew didn’t hesitate. They rushed forward, focused on what they needed to do. Hayden and Samantha followed close behind, moving as quickly as they could. Everyone knew they didn’t have much time.

It was all about battery life, Hayden had explained on the trip back to the submersible. When they had shut down the dying Spector, a series of batteries automatically kicked in to keep any of the liquid or temperature-sensitive components from freezing or breaking down. It was just a little power, barely a trickle, but he was gambling it was enough to keep the twenty-below temperatures from killing the Spector forever. But the batteries, even at their lowest setting, wouldn’t last indefinitely. Now the job was to get the amphibious vehicle repaired as quickly as possible and get the central power plant up and running.

Hayden was through the hatch and inside the Spector within minutes. The bridge was exactly as they had left it—half-ruined and chaotic—and now it was dark and bitterly cold as well.

Ryan and Andrew crowded in close behind him and wasted no time; they began pulling off the few maintenance panels that weren’t already detached and hooking battery-powered diagnostic units into the circuitry. The urgency of their movements spoke the same message over and over: no time, no time.

Samantha stood outside near the hatch and looked into the darkness of the utility caves behind them. She wondered what had become of those huge Spider robots, the ones that had been chasing them. Why would they leave? She thought. If they knew we were gone, why didn’t they destroy the Spector?

Hayden turned his escape plan over and over in his head. The Spector was designed for extreme situations just like this. It was built to dig itself out of almost any situation, but he had to admit it: melting through fifty feet of ancient, compressed ice had never been part of the plan.

Suddenly Lucas and his two cohorts were crowding into the bridge, getting in the way.

“You know,” Hayden said, losing what little patience he had, “There’s an economy section in the back for tourists.”

“What?”

“Can you move your guys to the ready room? There’s not a lot of space up here.”

Lucas stared at him for a moment…then broke away with a shrug, and motioned his men to move back into the other cabin. Lucas didn’t follow them. He simply retreated to the far corner of the bridge and stood quietly, clutching his rifle more firmly than ever as he watched Hayden and his team bring the Spector back to life.

Andrew was surprised at how easy it was. He had thought the bullets had done far more damage—the outer shields certainly looked like hell, and the entire structure had lurched slightly to the left where the ice beneath the treads had cracked and fallen a foot or two, but still…they had the boosters back on line in less than five minutes, and the external shields cycling up three minutes after that.

Samantha wanted to start looking for the inhaler the moment she entered the vessel, but she took a moment to resume her old chair at the science station as the consoles started to blink back to life, one after another. She quickly ran through the environmental protocols. “Life support is solid,” she said. “We still have oxygen; the recyclers are green, amazingly enough.”

Hayden himself was at the Ops station. Two of the AIs had been badly fried, but their processing load was easily assumed by the remaining units. Most of the external sensors came back online with full power as well; all they really lost was one of the external cameras for the forward-facing screens. It had been shattered by one of the scientist’s bullets.

Andrew pulled himself out of the maintenance corridor under the bridge. “Treads look five-by-five,” he said. “I don’t think any of the bullets got down there at all.”

Samantha stood up and left the science station, still looking for the inhaler or the med pack. Andrew had insisted Nastasia had put the nebulizer inside the pack, which didn’t make any sense at all. She had already checked every cabinet in the ready room, under the oddly watchful eyes of Lucas’ scientists.

“Nav’s up,” Ryan said from the co-pilot’s seat. Then he checked a second, different indicator. “Another three minutes, and power will be at one hundred.”

Suddenly Hayden pulled himself to his feet, still staring at the Ops console. “Okay!” he said. “I overrode the security and safety protocols, set up instructions to channel the entire power output to the shields. All we have to do is give it the command from this little tab here,” he held up a dedicated transmitter, no larger than a key chain fob, “and she’ll heat up and start melting ice ‘til we tell her to stop.”

Andrew touched one last glowing panel and stood up as well. “Ready,” he said.

Ryan was already on his feet and packing his tools. “Ready here,” he said.

“There you are!” Samantha said.

The little black insulated med pack was wedged in a tiny space by the security console—the one nobody used. She leaned forward, twisted her torso, and curled her fingers around the edge, right as Lucas said, “Good,” and raised his rifle.

There was something in his voice. Hayden turned to him and suddenly stopped moving. Samantha straightened very slowly, black bag in hand.

Hayden was gaping at the rifle. It was aimed squarely at Ryan’s chest. “Lucas,” he said, “Are you out of your mind? What the hell are you thinking?”

One of Lucas’ other men was filling the door to the ready room, blocking escape. The third was standing directly in front of the exit hatch.

“Shut up and get out of the vessel before I blow his brains out,” Lucas said.

“Lucas,” Hayden shouted, “Whatever the hell your problem is, once we’re out—”

“No,” Lucas said, “There’s no we, Hayden. There never was. You’ve been in hell for hours—a day at most. I—my men—we’ve been here for months. For years. I’m not staying a minute longer.”

“But—”

“Shut up! Get out!”

The third man who was not blocking the exit grabbed Samantha by the arm and shoved her toward the hatch. She snatched her arm away as the man pulled the small black case from her hand and pushed her out of the vessel. Ryan followed close behind her.

Still inside the Spector, Andrew wouldn’t cooperate. “Lucas,” he said. “You are f*cking crazy. You can’t pilot this thing. You don’t even know how to turn it on. And if you think any one of us is going to help you steal it and—”

Lucas hit him on the side of the head—one sweeping, vicious blow—and Andrew fell unconscious before he hit the floor of the cabin. Then he too was thrown from the vessel like a rag doll, hitting the icy floor right outside the exit hatch. Samantha rushed toward Andrew.

“He’ll die there,” Samantha screamed.

Lucas ignored her scream outside the Spector. Still pointing the gun directly at Hayden, he said, “You’re next. Get the f*ck out before I kill you.”

Hayden simply refused, “Without me the Spector won’t go anywhere,” he said.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Lucas snapped.

Hayden held up the tiny command unit. “It’s keyed to my thumbprint, Lucas. Only I can trigger the melt.”

Lucas just shook his head. “God damn it, Hayden,” he said, sounding almost sad. He lashed out again, this time with the butt of his rifle, and put Hayden down with a single blow.

The Hatch was still open, and Samantha could sense what was about to happen next. She screamed as Lucas bent over and stripped the glove from Hayden’s right hand.

“Lucas please!” Samantha begged. But it was too late.

Ryan seized her shoulder. “Sam! We’ve got to get them out of here! We’re too close to the Spector!”

Holding Andrew’s unconscious body, she couldn’t look away from what was happening inside the vessel.

Lucas had the command tab in his hand. He was wedging it between Hayden’s limp, unmoving fingers.

“If they trigger the melt from this close, we’ll all die,” Ryan said.

Hayden’s body was thrown out of the vessel as the Spector’s outer hatch closed shut with Raymond and his two men inside. The massive vessel’s treads retracted within its body as the entire submersible lowered itself, now sitting on the icy floor completely watertight. Its surface began to heat up less than five feet from Andrew and Hayden’s body.

Ryan rushed forward and dragged Hayden’s body back as Samantha struggled with Andrew.

The outer shields of the Spector exploded in a bright flash of light. The heat followed an instant later, searing Samantha and Ryan’s face, driving them back.

Now less than twenty feet from the burning Spector, Ryan continued to pull Hayden’s body away from the burning heat. He struggled to shield his face from the inferno. Samantha screamed, “Andrew! No!” She turned back, into the impossible heat, threw herself toward Andrew’s body, and grabbed onto the shoulders of his suit. She dug in and pulled back.

He was so heavy, and the floor of ice was already starting to soften, to melt.

Struggling with the weight of Hayden’s body, Ryan had reached an alcove fifty feet from the Spector—a spot that afforded the protection of a crack in the large ice wall and hid them from the worst of the heat. He had managed to drag Hayden, still unconscious, to the shelter with him. They were as safe as they could possibly be.

But Samantha wouldn’t leave Andrew. She faintly heard Ryan’s voice over the sizzling roar of the burning shields as her face burned from the heat. “Sam! Leave him!”

“No!” The ice under Andrew’s body had already fallen away by at least a foot, leaving him in a deepening pool of steaming water.

Everything was melting.

Samantha braced her feet against the slush and pulled at him as hard as she could.

“Sam, you can’t do it!” Ryan called. “Get out of there!”

No, she thought. Not this time. She hauled at him with all her strength, and he moved six inches closer to her, but no more than that.

The ice beneath her boots gave way. She fell, losing her grip on his suit. She looked up at the Spector, barely ten feet away, and watched in horrified fascination as it started to sink into the tunnel floor. It created an eerie glow in the surrounding pool of water—the pool that, as she watched, grew wider and deeper, swallowing Andrew’s body completely.

“SAM!”

The heat drove her back. She tried to push herself forward again, groped in the water to find Andrew’s shoulder or hand, anything to grab onto, but he was fully underwater now. She had to struggle to keep from sliding forward through the slush, where she knew she would sink into the melted water herself.

Moments later, the Spector disappeared into a vertical pool it had created. Soon after, the melted ice it had left behind with the heat of its passing started to re-freeze.

Sam saw what was going to happen an instant before it did.

“Wait!” she screamed and lunged forward. “Wait!” The brilliant light from the shaft began to fade to a ghostly glow as the Spector fell deeper and deeper. Samantha pushed even deeper into the freezing pool where Andrew had disappeared, searching.

Ice was already forming on its surface, impossibly fast.

She jerked her hands free, struggled to her feet, and kicked out a boot at the skin of ice as it formed. It cracked with the sound of a gunshot, and she threw herself forward, trying to thrust her hands into it again.

She was hysterical. Andrew’s down there, she told herself. I can do this; I can pull him out.

She felt the ice form around her wrists. It was happening so fast.

She felt Ryan’s hands on her shoulders, his arm around her waist. She felt her hands fly free of the confining ice as he pulled her back, hard, and they fell sprawling on the ground.

But that was all she felt. She could think of nothing more.

“Andrew,” she said turning around, crawling onto her knees. “Andrew.”

The ice turned solid as rock as she knelt there weeping.

He was gone.





DRAGGER STATION

The pilot’s flesh wound burned like fire as the DITV made its last turn and paused at the entrance to the Dragger Station Bridge. They were less than five hundred yards from the edge, and Simon was still holding the pistol firmly against the pilot’s neck. He didn’t seem to care that the Vector5 solider was bleeding heavily.

For the first time, Simon was aware that Nastasia was standing close behind him.

The sensor array on the console showed them the image of what lay ahead: the chasm, and then three chambers on the far side. Beyond that was a network of tunnels even more complex and ominous than the labyrinth they had just navigated. In the center of the dome, there appeared to be three vertical shafts—huge elevators that went even lower, deeper into the ice, toward the depth of the icy underworld.

“Where the hell is this leading us?” Max asked in a strangely hushed voice.

The pilot was getting woozy, but he tried to answer anyway. “The tunnels to…Central…you can only get to them through those vertical shafts. Watch…”

The DITV rolled across the bridge very quickly. On the far side, they were abruptly thrown into complete darkness as the shadow of the structure fell across them. The only light that survived was the glow from the digital displays.

The pilot activated the forward headlamps with one shaking finger. The three elevator doors were just a hundred feet ahead of them; each elevator was large enough to accommodate a vessel the size of the DITV.

The indicators above two of the doors read 000. The indicator above the third, the one to the right, read +480…and grew smaller as they watched: +470…+460…

The soldier slouched forward, losing the last of his strength. Max moved quickly in trying to grab the man as he fell, but he was a beat too late. The DITV started rolling slowly forward, toward the door of the elevator that was about to arrive.

“Stop him!” Simon said.

“Too late! Brace yourself!” The DITV moved relentlessly forward; nothing could stop it. In less than twenty feet, they would crash directly into the gargantuan doors.

Simon reached past Max and slapped the pilot, hard as he could. It shocked the man half-awake, if only for an instant.

“Look!” Simon shouted straight into his face. “LOOK!”

The pilot’s eyes widened. He saw the metal doors of the elevator surging toward him.

“NO!” he said. His hands darted out, found the controls, and pulled.

The vehicle skidded to a halt, three feet from the elevator doors.

Still the one elevator descended: +280…+270…

The pilot fell back in his seat, his mouth working as he tried to speak.

“Doesn’t matter,” he gasped. “We’re all dead now.”

“What’s down there?” Simon said. “What’s happening?”

The pilot’s eyes fluttered. He closed his eyes. His head fell to the side as he lost consciousness entirely, slumping over in the chair.

+230…+210…

“Shit,” Max said. He hesitated for an instant, then jumped forward, and ripped the unmoving pilot’s uniform from his body.

Nastasia blanched. “What are you doing?”

With sudden ferocity he grabbed her by the collar of her exo-suit and dragged her to him, putting his mouth close to her ear, speaking in a very fast, nearly-silent whisper.

“The AI hasn’t noticed us coercing him. Which means there’s no voice recognition—she doesn’t pay attention after the first security check. So I have to try this. Help me.”

It was a thirty-second struggle to get the suit off the dying pilot and on to Max. The instant it was in place, he threw himself into the pilot’s seat and scowled at the freight elevator’s indicator:

+120.

He looked frantically around the console, trying to understand the complex array of gadgets. Where was the starter? Where was the f*cking weaponry? Whatever was coming down that shaft was not going to be friendly; he had to be ready for it.

+50…

They began to feel the vibration of the massive elevator as it approached. Only then did Max decide what to do.

He put his hands on the control and pulled back, just a little. The DITV obeyed and moved back.

“Lazarus-9905,” he said. “Open central shaft.”

The door to the left of the approaching elevator obediently, swiftly, opened wide.

Simon lifted the rifle that he was holding, well aware that it would be useless to stop any real threat.

+20…+15…

Bright light poured from the elevator door as it cracked open. Max had made sure the DITV’s sensors showed the space inside was empty, so he didn’t hesitate. He moved his wrist forward, and the DITV responded instantly, trundling into the massive elevator. To their surprise, before the treads had engaged the edge of the door, a voice command prompted permission.

“You are clear, 9905, for your coordinates at 2,435 meters. Please confirm depth.”

“Affirmative,” said Max. He had no idea if that was the correct response.

He had guessed right. The doors slid shut and the lights blinked off, plunging them into total darkness yet again.

Their stomachs sank as the descent to Central Command began.

Two seconds later at Dragger Station, the elevator to their right opened wide, and Blackburn emerged.

“Report?” he demanded.

No one said a thing.

“Report!”

* * *

Below him, falling away, Nastasia felt her world closing in.

She didn’t belong here. She knew that. But fate had chosen her, and it was time to do what had to be done.

* * *

Blackburn clenched his teeth as the freight elevator reached the level of Dragger Pass, and continued downward. He had no idea that Simon, Max, and Nastasia were literally a few feet away from him, descending to the Nest in the adjacent shaft at a speed only slightly slower than his own. The padded interior cast an eerie effect from the dim blue lights mounted along its interior edges.

His detachment of soldiers was absolutely silent behind him; he knew they were the only men in the entire Vector5 organization with the clearance—and the courage—to enter the Nest…and he wasn’t sure if he was glad of that or concerned. This was his operation—his goal. He didn’t want to share it, not even with his own men.

The holo-display made the depth reading float in the open air, each numeral as large as the palm of his hand. As he watched, it slowly reached the magic number -2,153 meters, the base level of Central Command—and continued to fall. The calm, slightly amused voice of the AI that controlled the lift said it out loud, “Two thousand, one hundred and fifty-three meters,” it said. “Continuing…”

This final trip was only beginning. They had another one thousand meters to travel.

Blackburn was thinking about the man who was waiting for him at the bottom of the shaft. He knew that Oliver was very ill, perhaps terminally. I wonder how long he’ll live, he asked himself. That is, assuming he decides to cooperate.

The AI’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Two thousand, six hun—”

“Shut up for a second,” Blackburn said. Another voice—a human one, one he recognized—was buzzing in his ear, coming from the earpiece in his helmet. He tapped his shoulder to receive the incoming message.

“Go ahead,” he growled. “I’m listening.” The men around him didn’t flinch; they knew the drill. Blackburn was the chief commander in charge of the Vector5 mission; he was always connected to everything that was happening below and above the ice. It was true, sometimes he confused the men around him when he responded to some unheard comment or question, but that wasn’t important. All they thought about—all they could think about—was the mission. That was all that mattered.

“Sir,” said the voice of his exec, “we’ve identified an anomaly at 842 meters south-southwest of Dragger Pass, four degrees of ascension above the Gorge.”

“What type of anomaly?” Blackburn growled, controlling his temper with some difficulty. This wasn’t what he expected, and it certainly wasn’t what he wanted. I’ve had enough, he told himself. He hated surprises.

“It’s a thermal event, sir. Infrared data indicates a highly condensed source, very localized, and currently descending at ninety degrees from the horizon.”

“What the f*ck are you talking about!?” Blackburn shouted, sending a chill through the already cold freight elevator. The number in front of his face read -2,483 meters. The AI voice, prudently, remained silent. “It’s super-hot and moving down a tunnel?”

“No, sir,” his exec said. “Straight down. Through the ice.”

“Shit,” Blackburn muttered. “At that depth, at that temperature, I’m sure the satellites picked it up.”

“Sir, we’ve been monitoring and scrambling the information with the surface droids, but you’re right. I’m afraid this amount of energy might be impossible to hide.”

“What is it?” he demanded. Exposure didn’t matter at the moment. “What the hell is out there?”

“Sir our AIs at central command are suggesting it’s the same submersible that entered Fissure 9. We have also confirmed human activity about one mile from the incident. Acoustic and pressure wave data confirm: a small group moving around and not being quiet about it in one of the maintenance shafts we thought was sealed off.”

I knew it, he told himself. I knew Lucas and those traitors were tapping into the old air shaft system. “Send the fissure drones through the main airshafts,” he commanded. “Send them up to Tunnel 3, and when you find them, gas the f*ckers out of their little mouse holes.”

“But…sir,” the exec said in his ear. Blackburn could hear his terror, even in the scratchy little thread of the audio feed.

“But what?” Blackburn snapped. “‘But sir, additional activity in the same area as the thermal event will certainly be noticed by satellites.” It was a deadly accurate parody of his exec officer’s careful, diplomatic tone. “I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t care. Whatever happened has probably already been reported. We’ll have to deal with that later. But this shit needs to stop NOW!”

“Copy that, sir,” the exec said quickly, obviously eager to end the communication. There was the tiniest of snicks as he broke the connection to follow order.

Blackburn slapped the padded door of the freight elevator in completely frustration. “Can’t this piece of junk move any faster?” he blurted out. But he already knew the answer: nothing moved fast enough to appease his impatience.

None of the men around him spoke. They knew the drill. It was safer to just lay low and not to respond at times like this.

The AI unit had more courage, or perhaps less common sense, than the humans. After Blackburn stopped speaking for thirty seconds, it spoke up:

“Reaching depth of 10,022 feet in 133 meters. Prepare to exit.”

“Shut up,” Blackburn muttered.

* * *

Samantha and Ryan knelt beside Hayden’s motionless body, too drained and overwhelmed to speak. Sam was numb, beyond feeling or thought, as she strained to see the scientist clearly in the failing light. The only source of illumination was the guttering fire from the icy shaft where the Spector had disappeared.

Hayden was breathing heavily; she knew that much. But she couldn’t seem to make herself care. It was just too dark to see, until Ryan turned on the guide lights in his ice suit, and the air was filled with a directionless, blue light that seemed almost acidic, somehow.

The blood draining from Hayden’s ruined hand was black in the odd light.

“God,” Samantha said. Then louder, fuller, “God, NO!” Even the ice around him was saturated with freezing blood.

Years of training surged to the forefront. Her hands reached out almost on their own and tried to explore the wound. She gasped in spite of herself when she saw it clearly: half the skin and part of the flesh had been removed from his right thumb—half-sliced, half-torn away. Lucas wanted his thumbprint, she realized. He thought he might need it in the Spector. He would have taken the whole digit if he’d had the time.

She pushed the horror of it away and got to work, tearing off a section of his ice suit and tying it around his bleeding thumb as tight as she could.

“I have to stop this before he dies,” she told Ryan. “He’s going to go into shock any second, maybe lose his hand, or worse.” Or die, she screamed inside her head. Or DIE.

She pushed it away again, even harder, and reached into a small pouch sewn on into the hip of her own suit. She thanked god she had packed a full med-kit into her clothes before they had left the scientists’ encampment; she was shocked that it became useful so quickly.

The pocket contained a small, foil-sealed pre-moistened cloth infused with ammonia. It was suitable for cleaning, for sterile bandaging…or for what she was about to do.

Sam pulled his mask aside and held the tiny fabric against his nose. Hayden’s body jerked instantly from the intense smell, and his clean, uninjured hand suddenly came up, trying to pull the cloth away—then clutching at his forehead as if to contain a whole new agony.

It took him a long moment to locate the pain. Slowly, slowly he lifted his wounded hand as if it were a dead thing lashed to the end of his wrist. He stared at it with naked horror as a new line of already freezing blood trickled into his palm.

“Oh god,” he said, choking on his own words. “My thumb, my god, my hand!”

“Stay still,” Samantha said, and produced a one-shot syringe from another pocket of her suit. He was weak; it wasn’t hard to hold him down while she injected a strong painkiller at the base of his neck. “It’ll take a few minutes, just be patient.”

As his struggles abated, as his breath slowed, she loosened her grip and looked at Ryan standing above them. There was horror in his eyes.

“How the hell are we going to tell him about Andrew?” he said. Samantha wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or himself. Either way, she knew, he sounded absolutely desolate. How the hell are we going to explain this, she thought.

Samantha stroked the older man’s cheek, tried to bring him back to a semi-conscious state. She knew it was possible; it was why she had chosen to give him that particular medication. “Hayden,” she said gently. “Hayden, can you walk?”

“I think so,” he said, groggy and uncoordinated. He tried to stand and found himself falling again; Sam bent forward to support him. Ryan offered a hand and pulled him up, steadied him.

“C’mon,” Ryan said, sounding uncharacteristically gruff. “You’ve got to move or you’ll freeze.” He glanced at Sam as Hayden swayed in place, fighting to stabilize. “We’ve got to get back to the others.”

Hayden could barely hold his body upright. He had only the vaguest idea of what had happened just minutes before. And they had walked less than ten feet when he pulled up short and turned back, searching the ice, looking for something. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Where’s the Spector? Are you—”

“It’s all right, Hayden,” Sam soothed, trying to keep her voice steady. She knew what he was going to ask next, and she didn’t want to deal with it. “We have to go. Let’s go.”

“Where is Andrew?” Hayden asked weakly, still disoriented. “Is he with them, the ones who, who took the, the…?” He couldn’t seem to find the words, but there was fear and confusion in his eyes.

“No,” Ryan said. “He’s not with the others.”

“No? Then what—what are you saying?” An ounce of the old impatience had leaked back into his tone.

“He’s dead,” Ryan said somberly.

It took a few seconds before the words registered in Hayden’s brain. “What?” he said. “What? What are you saying?” He couldn’t believe his ears. “He’s dead?”

He pushed Ryan’s hand away with a violent sweep of his good arm, then spun around and staggered past Samantha, back toward where the Spector had disappeared. He had taken less than ten steps when his hands went to his head. Samantha and Ryan watched in solemn despair as Hayden fell to the ground.

He touched the icy floor beneath his feet and then pounded the ice with his fist, feeling a shocking pain that seemed all too insignificant. “Why, why?”

Ryan went to him and tried to help him to his feet. “Please, Hayden,” he pleaded. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here. We’ve got to get the others in the encampment and decide what to do next.” He paused for a moment to make sure he wasn’t out of line. “There’s nothing you can do for him now,” he whispered.

Hayden simply shook his head. Then he pulled himself to his feet without help. “I know,” he said gruffly. “I understand.” He turned back one last time to look at the slight depression in the icy floor that had engulfed his life’s work and his student.

“Let’s go,” he said.

* * *

Two miles below Dragger Pass, the eight fissure drones dispatched by Central Command swarmed up the wall of the crevasse, clanking as they armed their canisters of lethal gas and their array of projectile weapons. They moved swiftly up one of the main air shafts toward Tunnel 3. It was a climb of almost four thousand feet, but that was no issue: the drones, each the size of a football, could navigate almost any terrain. They were capable of climbing walls by embedding themselves into the ice. And they were fast, able to achieve the equivalent of twenty miles an hour for extended periods of time.

The drones were controlled by a specialized team at Central Command. They were like tentacles for Vector5, able to reach virtually any obscure location throughout the continent.

Their target was simple and—now that they had located it—painfully obvious. They were coming for the five remaining scientists still left at the encampment, where they had packed their gear believing they were finally about to escape.

* * *

Simon found himself staring at the back of Nastasia’s neck. They were descending at an alarming speed, moving toward a destination he couldn’t even imagine. And still, he was haunted by the symbol he had glimpsed etched into her skin, hidden by the fall of her obsidian hair.

I need to see the insignia again, he told himself.

The AI voice—the same as in the other elevator, though they couldn’t know that—recited the depth to him in a dry, emotionless recitation. Max listened with only half an ear, clenching the ray gun in his left hand and toying with the virtual console in front of him with the other, fingers hovering, almost twitching. He had the awful feeling that they were going to have to get out of the DITV, leave it behind, if they hoped to live through this last adventure. And he knew it was going to happen fast.

Simon forced himself out of his trance, but he couldn’t help looking at Nastasia one more time. He wondered if he should just snatch the thermal mask from her face and pull her hair back so he could see the tattoo again. It would only take a moment—

“We have to be ready to move the minute we hit the bottom,” Max said. “No hesitation.”

Simon was jerked back to the reality of the situation. “Why?” he asked, confused.

“I don’t want to be a sitting duck,” Max said. “I would rather leave the vehicle inside.”

Simon nodded. “I agree. I don’t want to be trapped inside this thing either, not knowing what’s going to be on the other side.”

“Look around for any weapons and possibly one of these special Ops suits,” Max said keeping his focus on the depth gauge that registered how close they were to reaching the base.

Simon didn’t hesitate. He started searching all the storage containers inside the vehicle. Nastasia helped as they opened each possible hatch that had a latch or handle.

“Found one,” Simon said, unfolding it and visually measuring it for size.

“Hurry up,” Max commanded.

Nastasia continued searching the interior of the DITV frantically, looking for weapons or armor, but there was nothing—nothing. Reality set in, and she felt a chill. Any soldier, any guard could take her instantly; her mission could be jeopardized. But there was nothing she could do about it now.

“I’m suited up,” said Simon. “Even the damn boots fit.”

“Come on,” Max said as he shut down the DITV for the last time. They left the vehicle together, exiting the rear hatch to the base of the elevator. There was little room to maneuver around the massive DITV, but out was better than in—it would provide for some cover as soon as the elevator doors opened.

Moments later, the elevator slowed. The AI voice said, “Approaching 10,022 feet,” as the entire shaft started to vibrate. All three could clearly feel the motion on the perforated floor beneath them.

Simon pulled down the mask of the Vector5 Black Ops suit that he’d taken from the dead pilot. Max did the same as the elevator slowed to a halt. “Hatch doors opening, please prepare to exit,” said the AI unit. Simon looked over at the display one more time, remembering the exact coordinates that Leon had written on that piece of paper in Malta, so long ago. Nastasia stood behind them in terror of being discovered.

The massive hatch doors hissed open and blew a draft of freezing air into the elevator chamber. The space beyond the elevator doors was pitch black. Simon’s eyes focused straight through the lenses of the Vector5 mask, peering into the dark tunnel ahead. The voice of the AI module startled them as it spoke: “You have reached your destination at ground zero. Please exit.”

It was time to go. Max gestured with his head and they cautiously stepped out into the blackness. The embedded lights in the Vector5 suits automatically activated, creating an eerie glow that was nearly swallowed in the void; Simon sensed an astringent mineral odor in the dense frozen air.

They had reached the deepest point of the network where the density of the ice was equivalent to glass. Max took the lead; Simon followed. Nastasia took up the rear, a few yards behind.

We are standing in ice that hardened thousands of years ago, Max thought. He could feel all ten thousand feet of compressed ice above them.

Dad, Simon told himself. Dad. If you’re down here, I’m coming for you.

Simon saw Max put a finger to his mouth, motioning them to be careful and absolutely silent. The tunnel had narrowed; it wasn’t smooth and finished like the walls a thousand feet above them, but unfinished and roughly hewn. There were mounds of wire scattered along the ground, snaking along the sides of the tunnel, and small crevices in the tunnel walls themselves.

Simon realized he was squeezing the rifle so hard his knuckles were throbbing. His body was tense, ready to react on a second’s notice. They crept forward, still blind, Simon’s attention fixed on Max’s silhouette, where it moved in and out of sight like a shadow cast by a candle. It was difficult to breathe. The air was thin and filled with a strange mineral odor—an odor that seemed to intensify the farther they moved into the dark cavern.

They had not moved more than a hundred yards before Max held up his left hand, pointing the rifle upward close to his shoulder. Without hesitation, Simon repeated the gesture for Nastasia, telling her to slow behind him. Seconds later, Simon realized why Max had stopped.

The tunnel had started to vibrate ever so slightly.

Max turned instantly to Simon and saw the intensity in his eyes. He made a quick downward motion. The elevator, Simon realized. He motioned Max with his head, indicating a narrow opening in the tunnel, darker than pitch. As Max began to move, he turned back to engage Nastasia.

She was gone.

He froze for an instant; dread shot through him like cold lightning. Something has happened, he told himself. They got her. He turned back to Max, who had already noticed that she was gone.

“Leave her,” said Max.

“But—”

“Leave her Simon,” Max repeated through clenched teeth.

Simon shook his head and grabbed at Max’s shoulder as he tried to slide into the alcove. Max snapped back to him. “I said leave her, Simon. I don’t f*cking care.”

The massive elevator doors that were next to their own suddenly chunked and shuddered. Instantly, Max doused the lights on his suit and plunged them into total darkness.

Subtle, shifting sounds escaped from the opening doors, and years of training helped Max analyze the voices and footsteps inside. He brought up five fingers and held them inches away from Simon’s face, then closed his fist and held up one more.

Six, Simon realized instantly.

They both heard footsteps approaching—louder and louder, coming toward them. It sounded like the men who had left the elevator were in a hurry. They shuffled and panted as they approached. Max and Simon stood like stones, pistols in hand, pressing against the icy wall.

Where the f*ck did Nastasia go? Simon caught himself thinking. He pushed the thought away and brought himself back as the first of the men passed by less than ten feet away, backs to them, moving even deeper into the darkness. They were dressed in black military gear and moving quickly. Only seconds passed before they disappeared into the tunnel to their left.

Max made a serpentine gesture with his hand. Follow in the shadows, Simon knew. He had seen the gesture before when they played hide and seek as kids.

Simon hesitated, if only for a split second. It was all the indication Max needed. He turned back to Simon and shook his head. Let it go, he was saying. Let it go.

Simon nodded. Oliver was more important than anything else, but Nastasia’s sudden disappearance, before the other elevator even opened was strange. Very strange. He was both concerned for her safety and baffled. But his own safety and that of Max’s was just as important now, and he needed to stay focused.

Max turned away, moving like a ghost, following the men in the shadows of the tunnel. Simon followed, but he couldn’t forget her.

* * *

Nika couldn’t stand the sound of her alias—not anymore. She had hated it from the moment she had chosen to call herself “Nastasia,” on the day she had arranged for the note to be left in Simon’s passport back in Malta.

She didn’t need it any longer. Now she was finally close to realizing her destiny, and Simon had been pivotal for her mission.

She was close—very close.

She was grateful in an odd way. Without the Spector and the assistance of the team, she would have never been able to reach Antarctica, much less to the Nest itself.

And she knew that was where she was; she could smell the minerals.

“Pathetic,” she whispered, only to herself.

There was no way to stop them. She knew she was at the right place. Now it was only a matter of time, and very little of it, before she would change history once more. No one could stop what the universe had destined for mankind—not even Oliver Fitzpatrick.

She looked at her wristwatch: 19:33. She closed her eyes for an instant, remembering the team inside the Spector.

She was not a cold-blooded killer. She cared for those people. But she also knew, in her heart, that it was better for them to die in the explosion than face what was to come.

She slipped into the shadows, like a vampire instinctively guided to its victim.

* * *

“Can’t walk anymore,” Hayden said. His legs were like boiled noodles; he couldn’t take another step.

It didn’t matter. His life’s work had disappeared. His close friend and student was dead.

There was no hope.

“Please, Hayden,” Samantha said for the thousandth time. “We need to reach the encampment before we freeze to death.” Samantha had to pull every ounce of strength she had to push her exhausted body toward the camp. She was mentally and physically drained, but she knew that it was moments like this that tested a human’s will to survive. She remembered the many expeditions she’d been part of in the past; she thought about how many times she had faced death. I have to be their strength, she told herself. Simon needs me.

She trailed fifteen yards behind Ryan, who trudged forward, head slouched, focusing on every step. She could visibly notice the exhaustion and desperation in his walk. He had started to slow his forward steps as the sheer magnitude of their reality consumed him.

“Guys, we’ve got to keep moving,” she said. “We need each other. Simon needs us…” I am their strength now, she told herself again.

“Please,” Hayden begged, barely able to speak. “Tell me how much longer.” He forced the words out through uneven gasps of oxygen.

“Fifteen minutes,” Ryan said, though he knew that felt like eternity to Hayden. As he focused on the icy floor, he remembered how they had escaped to the encampment with the MC-7s, just hours ago.

The tunnel seemed much, much longer on foot.

* * *

Lucas and the rest of the scientists hunched inside the burning Spector as it sank down a shaft of its own making, falling toward the Gorge, melting the surrounding ice. They could not feel the vertical drop. It was too slow—slower, in fact, than Lucas would have liked. At any moment, he knew the hydrogen fuel that heated the vessels exterior could deplete itself. The exterior would cool and they could be stuck permanently in ice forever. I can’t think about that, he reminded himself. He sat impatiently at the virtual command console, but none of the monitor screens were activated—they would show nothing but endless walls of ice. He felt as if he was in a capsule dropping endlessly into the depths of an infinite white ocean. Outside, the ice turned into liquid as the burning Spector cut into the frozen water toward the network of tunnels now barely 250 feet under the submersible.

“How much longer?” Lucas asked.

“Twelve minutes or so,” said Rolfe. He had been sweating like a condemned man since they had entered the Sphere, suddenly struggling with a case of claustrophobia for the first time in his life.

“I know. I’m concerned if the fuel will last as well,” he said to Lucas looking for words of encouragement.

None could be given. With each passing moment, Lucas found himself deeper and deeper in a state of panic. “Twelve f*cking minutes is a lifetime in this vessel,” he thought.

“What’s going to happen if we don’t make it?” asked one of the scientists in the co-pilot seat.

“I have no f*cking clue,” Lucas responded. He did not want to imagine the alternative.

* * *

Nastasia’s black med-pack sat comfortably on one of the bunk beds. Stuffed inside were the lethal gas and the explosive. It was waiting patiently for the proper springing of the timing mechanism to trigger its activation. The tiny digital clock wrapped in a series of anti-detection materials changed its numeric sequence seconds at a time in reverse order.

17:27, 17:26, 17:25…

* * *

Simon choked at the mineral smell that filled the frozen tunnel. He readjusted the Black Ops mask and tried to breathe past it, ignore it, as he followed close behind Max, pressing tight against the icy wall of the dark tunnel. The dim shadows of the men from the elevator were a hundred yards ahead of them, illuminated only by their own suit lights.

They were moving deeper into the labyrinth.

Once again, Max noticed just how different these tunnels were. Here there were cables twisting along the floors and walls, dangling in lazy arcs from the craggy ceiling. Piles of random machinery, rimmed in ice, lay along the walls like the discarded toys of giant children. Some looked damaged; some simply looked abandoned. What is all this for? he asked himself as he bobbed and turned to stay in the shadows, moving closer and closer to the six men and their leader.

He stopped abruptly and motioned Simon to do the same. One of the men ahead of them had turned around. He was walking back toward them.

Max stood flat against one side of the wall, Simon against the other. Simon’s heart pounded in his chest as he buried himself in shadow.

He was past the point of fear. Nothing mattered but finding his father, and if that meant taking lives, then so be it. It was all about life and death now. Everything under the ice was life and death. And he was sure of one thing above all others: I will not be taken captive, he told himself. I am no one’s captive.

The footsteps grew louder as the point lights on the man’s suit approached them. They could hear his mumbled conversation but couldn’t see him until the man stepped out of the darkness barely ten feet away.

He still hadn’t seen them; they were completely hidden by the darkness. His head was down, gazing blindly at the pulverized ice as he concentrated on the voice that was whispering in his helmet.

“What the f*ck are you talking about?” he said quietly, as if he did not want to be heard by the others deeper in the tunnel. “How can the NAV-beacon on the SO team be at Dragger Pass when the Griffin is down here at the Nest? No one but Drago has a NAV-beacon,” he continued in a frustrated tone, “he would never leave his team.”

Simon and Max exchanged looks, but didn’t dare move as the man listened more to the voice in his ear.

“Because I saw it, you idiot! I just walked past it!”

The voice interrupted him and he shook his head. “Hold on,” he said and started walking again, even closer to them, retracing his steps to the elevator. “How am I supposed to explain this?” he grunted.

Simon saw Max’s shadow detach itself from the tunnel wall to stay close behind the man. Then things happened very quickly.

Somehow the man detected something as Max moved—a subtle sound, a grinding footstep, a shift in the air. He turned suddenly, just as Max lunged forward and drove the butt of his rifle into the man’s rib cage. In the same instant Max seized the man’s neck and broke it. The soldier’s head spun under Max’s hands, and Simon heard a faint sound, like wet wood snapping. The man collapsed in an instant, dead before he hit the ice, and Max fell with him. His rifle whacked against the ice, producing a sound that was louder and sharper than the falling bodies.

What the hell? Simon thought, but he knew Max too well. He knew what he was capable of. And he knew the worst was yet to come.

One of the men farther down the tunnel shouted to the dead soldier, “Colin! What the hell is going on back there?”

It was as if time stood still. Simon felt every millisecond as if it were tangible. He heard more than one pair of footsteps running toward them. For an instant he turned to them, trying to gauge the distance. Then he turned back, Max and the soldier’s body were gone.

Where the f*ck did he go? He thought, panic rising in his throat. What—

A shadow appeared out of the dense blackness.

Simon saw a Vector5 assault suit. He saw the flat black helmet. He started to raise his weapon, ready to fire—when the figure raised a gloved finger to his mouth.

Max, he realized. It’s Max. He was hiding the body where they wouldn’t find it. That’s all.

They stepped back into the shadows just as two more soldiers emerged from the darkness and scrambled past them, moving quickly toward the transport elevator. Their helmets moved left and right, right and left, searching for their missing comrade.

As they passed, Simon made a quick motion with his head. Let’s go farther down the tunnel, he indicated, in the direction the men had just come from.

Max nodded. As the two soldiers melted into the darkness, the two friends moved silently in the other direction in pursuit of the men moving deeper in the tunnel.

* * *

One mile left to the encampment.

Keep going, you can do it, Hayden told himself. One foot in front of the other. Almost there. Just. Keep…

It was too much. Hayden finally, without further strength to push forward, let himself stop. His feet had been dragging, his body swaying for the last half mile. He just couldn’t go any farther.

Thirty yards ahead of him, Samantha and Ryan trudged on, concentrating on the last two thousand yards, determined to make it back. Hayden watched them go, getting smaller and smaller in the distance, but he didn’t call out to them.

I just need to rest, he thought and tucked his injured hand even more deeply into his torn ice suit. I’ll catch up somehow…

Samantha and Ryan pushed on without noticing that their friend was unable to follow any longer.

Hayden looked around for a brief moment and found a little uneven undulation in the wall. He hobbled over and saw it was more like a small alcove. “Perfect,” he said and sat down heavily. He leaned back against the icy wall and tried to get a deep breath through the mask. The lights from his helmet drifted as his head nodded. Just close my eyes for a second, he thought.

Chilled tears leaked from beneath his lids. You bastard, he thought, remembering the cheerful face of Andrew. He had met the boy just eight years ago, in the messy confines of his Oxford robotics lab. And now he was gone. Gone.

“You f*cking bastard,” he said. He could feel his tears scalding him under the heated mask.

* * *

Back at the encampment, the scientists had worked for hours, packing rations, extra clothing, equipment and instruments—anything worth salvaging—into the storage bins of the MagCycles. That was done now. All they could do was sit, huddled together over a tiny makeshift heater assembled from back-up batteries and an ancient coil. As they watched, the sad little device sputtered, struggling to draw the last remaining ounce of energy from its source, and finally sent out a tiny spurt of gray smoke and died.

It was already cold—impossibly cold. Now it would get even colder.

There was a sudden call from the edge of the camp. “Hey!”

Ryan’s tired form pushed into the encampment, his head slouched. He didn’t say a word. Samantha’s figure was behind him. Her head was bowed as well, as if she could barely muster enough energy to make it inside the encampment. The scientists struggled to their feet at the sight of Ryan and Samantha and stumbled through the encampment toward them.

“We made it,” Sam said, breathless. “All three…”

It was only then that she realized it: Hayden wasn’t with them. Something was wrong.

Samantha looked around immediately. She blinked. Then she turned around and looked back the way she came.

Hayden was nowhere to be seen.

I didn’t notice, she told herself. I was so tired, I didn’t…

Panic ripped through her immediately. She caught a glimpse of Ryan, who was just as stunned as she was, but before he could say a word, she was scrambling to one of the encampments nearby tents and digging frantically through the debris.

There it is, she thought. She seized the small bag of rations and threw a life-support pack over her shoulder. There was a rack of rifles and ammunition in the corner. She took a weapon and stuffed her pockets with shells before she bolted out of the tent, fully loaded.

Thirty seconds later, without a word to anyone, she was back up the trail—going back to find Hayden.

* * *

The first of the eight drones dispatched to annihilate the scientists in the encampment had nearly reached its goal. It was using the most direct route its internal AI had located: an airshaft adjacent to Tunnel 3, exactly twenty-four inches in diameter. That was barely wide enough for a single human, and a small one at that, but it was more than enough for the compact little killing machine, even at an upward angle of thirty degrees.

The airshaft was one of many abandoned tunnels that had been closed after initial excavation. Some of these larger ones actually led directly down to Central Command itself, more than three thousand feet below.

The end-point of the shaft was sealed with a plug of ice thirty inches thick. It actually caused a small shelf and depression where it emerged—a nice little bench cut into the ice wall.

It was exactly the spot where Hayden’s half-conscious, painful body sat and dozed, the last of his heat draining away.

Samantha ran toward him as if her life depended on it. The ration pack on her back was as heavy as lead. The rifle was digging into her shoulder like a steel band.

“Please, Hayden,” she panted, breathless and exhausted. “I hope you’re all right.”

And the droid finally reached the small cap of ice at the end of the tunnel.

* * *

Almost two hundred feet below Hayden and one mile farther down the tunnel; the Spector burned and pulverized the ice around its white-hot hull. Any second now, Lucas reminded himself, but Rolfe was clearly sweating from fear and anticipation. He secretly wondered if he had miscalculated the shaft below. Even the tiniest change in energy output, angle of descent, ice density…as if to convince himself, he decided to share. “We’re almost there,” he said.

“Just tell me when,” Lucas said, his hand hovering over the virtual control panel, gripping the small controller, ready to thrust the Spector forward upon Rolfe’s command. At least he thought he was ready. He had been able to learn almost nothing before the original crew had betrayed him and driven him away. They were set to break through the ceiling of their escape tunnel at exactly 243 feet. And the various instruments told him the depth was right. They had only a few more feet to go. Twenty feet…ten feet…

The AI was the first to notice. “Recalculating route. Destination arrival requires forward thrust of 225hpps at thirty-five degrees below the horizon,” it said calmly.

“What?” Lucas said, his head snapping up. “What?”

“We’re off-target,” Rolfe said simply. “We’re just a few feet from our target depth of 243 feet below the tunnel, but the tunnel’s not there. It’s down and in front of us.” Rolfe’s fingers blurred as he recalculated. If his calculations were correct, Lucas would need to engage the threads and burn through the ice diagonally to hit the escape tunnel…and he had to start burning that direction in less than three vertical feet. This was their one chance—one chance—to rendezvous with an adjacent tunnel that could take them out of Antarctica forever.

“Can you steer this thing?” he asked Lucas. “You need to apply thrust, move us forward as well as down, or we’re going to miss the tunnel!”

Lucas stared at him for a moment, appalled and terrified. Then he nodded his head. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I can. When? Now?”

Rolfe’s body was visibly shaking. In less than three minutes—theoretically—they could be out of the ice and into the tunnel.

“NOW!” he screamed.

Lucas responded immediately, moving his fingers across a small icon that represented forward motion. The entire group heard the screech of the burning treads below them as the Spector inched forward as it fell, cutting a diagonal patch through the ice, swimming in its own melted water and crawling at the same time.

Moving ahead, toward Tunnel 5 and freedom.

* * *

Simon and Max pushed forward in pursuit of the men less than 150 yards ahead of them. They both noticed a glow developing at the far end of the tunnel as the space around them started to widen. A few moments later, they entered a larger chamber than any they had seen at this level-one that was better constructed and better lit. Max paused in the grayness at the edge of the larger room and pointed silently at the ceiling. Simon understood immediately the lights were going to pose a problem. He saw Max pat the air with his gloved hands. Take it easy. Move nice and slow.

The room seemed to be some kind of a makeshift emergency headquarters. Twelve Vector5 operatives in standard cold-weather gear—not the sleek and sinister black uniforms of the Black Ops team—were arranged around the room, working busily at half a dozen projects of their own. They scarcely noticed the arrival of two more soldiers—at least not at first.

Where did our boys go? Simon wondered. His attention was drawn to a large opening in the far wall—one that seemed to lead to an even larger room, farther ahead. What he could glimpse of the room beyond made it look like a military installation of some kind.

Simon followed five steps behind Max, his heart beating in absolute fear. He knew Max was better at situations like this; he’d spent a lifetime putting himself in danger. And it wasn’t that Simon was afraid of dying; he was past that. His only real fear was not rescuing his father, and if he were killed he would fail. He did not want to fail—he couldn’t.

As they moved toward the larger room, a group of five Vector5 soldiers noticed their arrival. Max immediately understood why they were aware of them at all: the Black Ops gear that they were wearing made them stand out.

The entire cavernous room seemed to grow tense as they traversed the long span of the opening. Then to Simon’s utter shock, Max suddenly turned a sharp right and stalked directly toward the five soldiers who were standing close together, muttering and staring at them. Max moved with an easy arrogance, as if he absolutely belonged there.

Simon followed closely behind and tried to contain the pure adrenaline that filled his body. Can they feel my anxiety? he wondered. He noticed how they had stiffened a bit as Max grew near.

Max was counting the steps to the confrontation. Ten. Five. Three. You can do this, Max, he told himself. He had been sent on many missions in the past, some just as bizarre as this. And he knew how to act like Black Ops—the best of the best, the elite who were always treated well. He would take advantage of that now…

He spoke imperiously, impatiently, even before they came to a stop in front of the five men.

“We’re here for Fitzpatrick,” he snapped. “Direct orders from Central.” He said it without a single stutter or hesitation, as if the entire matter bored him.

The ranking soldier—the one with two chevrons on his tunic—responded with a cold and quiet tone of his own. “You must be with Blackburn’s team,” he said.

Max nodded.

The soldier gestured toward the far wall and the large opening they had spotted earlier.

“Got it,” Max said and turned toward the direction of the opening. Simon turned with him, bringing up the rear, but he had barely taken four steps before the soldier in command called out.

“Hold on a second!” he said.

F*ck, Simon thought. This is it.

Max tightened his grip on the rifle as he carefully turned to address the soldier. “Did you say something?” he said coolly, slightly offended at being disturbed.

The man blinked and paled at Max’s tone. “What…ah, what’s your clearance?” he said.

Zero time, Simon thought.

“We are not at liberty to divulge that,” Max responded, dismissing the man with a casual gesture. He started to turn away again, but the man wouldn’t give up.

“That’s fine,” he said. “But…”

Max stopped and turned. He took three long strides until he was almost nose-to-nose with the commanding officer. “But what?” he said, barely above a whisper.

“…but I’ve been given orders for strict clearance down here,” he said. He lifted his hand to engage the audio device embedded in the shoulder of his tunic. “Just—”

Max was on him, moving as swift as a striking snake. His gloved hand shot out and grabbed the soldier’s hand—held it. Stopped it.

“No one knows about this operation,” Max hissed. “No one is supposed to know. And believe me, soldier, you do not want to be the one that breaks radio silence.” His voice was an evil hiss, filtered through the mask’s audio system.

The soldier glared at him for a long moment, then snatched his hand away from Max’s offensive grip. His eyes slid to the side for an instant, and Simon knew what he was thinking. He was angry and humiliated for being challenged in front of his men.

But he didn’t touch his communications patch again.

Without another word, Max turned toward the opening in the far wall and stalked away. Simon followed with a single backward glance, his hand still gripping his rifle as if his life depended on it.

He could feel the men staring as they reached the entrance. He could see inside more clearly now that the next room seemed to be a sophisticated series of bays designed to house large vehicles. As they both moved farther inside, Simon saw that they were all empty—except for one. The largest platform had a vehicle the size of a bus—a strangely beautiful machine that looked like an insect carved out of steel, ready to attack its prey. It sat on two large ski-like protrusions, each one approximately fourteen feet long. The main cockpit was elevated by a complex set of hydraulic legs. In the dim light, the extreme vehicle looked like a downhill racer, squatting and ready to fly.

Simon couldn’t help but stare in utter fascination. He noticed the writing on the back of the vehicle: Ice Raptor.

They looked at the Raptor from every angle as they passed. Beyond it was a series of smaller tunnels; only one of them was fully lit.

Max turned to walk directly toward it, as if he knew where he was going. Simon followed, his heart pounding.

He could feel it: Oliver was close by.

* * *

Hayden started to feel cold. Not the endless, penetrating cold of the ice, but something more—a cold he thought he would never escape, the coldness of life draining from him.

His lack of movement had forced the damaged suit to shift into its emergency back-up mode. It reduced the suit’s temperature grade by ten degrees, and the decreased temperature was already having an effect.

Hayden felt dizzy, but he didn’t know why. Still seated in the alcove, his back still against the glassy ice-wall, he noticed an odd vibration coming from the ice itself.

He had no idea that a drone was pushing its way toward him from Tunnel 3. Only a few feet of ice still separated them.

Farther down the tunnel, Samantha was running. It was harder than she had ever imagined. Her legs burned with exhaustion, the equipment she carried was heavier than cement. Keep going, she told herself. It was a dull, desperate mantra. Keep going, keep going. Her breathing became heavier and heavier under the thermal mask. She couldn’t take it off; it was the only source of light and heat that she had. Without those tiny lights mounted on the right and left side of her mask, without the air that flowed into her lungs being heated to a breathable temperature, she knew she would surely die in the dark.

But this is too much, she told herself. Too much. The rifle she was carrying felt heavier than she had remembered, especially with the ammo-pack that was magnetically attached to its side.

“Hayden!” she screamed through her mask. She pawed at the controls and turned the external volume up as high as it would go. “HAYDEN!”

She saw nothing. She heard nothing. The tunnel felt longer and more unrelenting than ever, a dark and cold path through an endless dungeon, leading to infinite blackness.

Almost a mile ahead, Hayden thought he heard something—faint sounds, distorted by distance and the ice. A voice? he wondered. Samantha’s voice?

He pressed his hands to his knees and pushed his heavy body to its feet. The faint voice was there—he was sure of it—but he couldn’t pinpoint the direction, or how near she was. Time to pull yourself together, he thought. Time to—

The pain from his thumb shot through his arm like a hot stiletto blade. He gasped in a breath and pushed away from the wall, commanding himself to move, move. He would not accept the fact that he had lost orientation. He knew it was important, vital, to get back to the encampment, back to heaters and food and medicine. But which way was it? How had he gotten there?

He couldn’t remember.

Get moving, he ordered himself. He turned to the left and put one foot in front of the other, and then another, and then another. After what seemed a very long time, the tiny alcove where he had waited disappeared into the frigid darkness.

He had no idea that he was headed away from the camp.

Three quarters of a mile behind him, Samantha stopped for a moment, resting her hands against her knees. She was too tired and breathless to continue running. I’ll walk for a little while—I’m destined to get there sooner or later, she told herself.

The camp was almost exactly two miles behind her when she passed the tiny alcove where Hayden had rested for so long. Had he stayed there, they would have found each other, but he was gone now, farther into the maze of ice.

And worse, Hayden had decided it was time to pick up his pace. He was walking farther from Samantha and farther down the tunnel that would take him back to the chamber where the Spector had melted into the ice.

Less than five minutes after Samantha passed the alcove, when she was barely twenty yards past, the first little drone—still under Central Command’s control—cut through the last thin wall of ice that separated it from the open path. It used an industrial laser guided by its small but very clever AI, dropping a twenty-four-inch square two inches thick into Tunnel 3.

The drone climbed over the cut ice effortlessly. It paused for a moment, assessing its orientation, comparing it to the complex of digital maps it kept in it memory…and then turned right toward the encampment where Ryan and the rest of the scientists waited.

Samantha and Hayden were half a mile away in the opposite direction. The drone’s sensors didn’t even register their presences.

And Hayden was still alone, moving mindlessly, his thoughts driving, going back and forth between memories of Andrew and his own fear and exhaustion.

Samantha was almost a mile behind him, and moving only slightly faster than the injured scientist. She kept wondering how far she had. She could feel panic rising in her, threatening to steal her control. She fought it off for the moment.

Neither Hayden nor Samantha had any idea that they would never see the scientists or their encampment again.

* * *

Almost 250 feet directly below Samantha, the Spector struggled forward, burning the ice as hard and beautiful as glass, melting a path with its steaming, massive body. The tunnel that lay ahead was just three feet in front and eight feet below them.

“Almost there,” said Rolfe.

Lucas could taste the freedom at last. “All we need to do now is to climb two hundred kilometers of Gorge,” he said, more to himself than to his terrified men. “Even if the Spector can’t do it, we can go on foot.”

He felt no remorse for what he had just done. The frozen hell that had kept them captive had changed Lucas. He had not seen daylight in over ten years; his body was weak and his mind was tortured.

His hands slid over the virtual console that controlled the Spector VI. He held his arms so tightly he could feel them shaking. He was ready—ready for freedom from his captives.

He felt the sudden vibration below his feet as the Spector’s nose burned through the last few inches of ice and entered Tunnel 5. They were directly connecting to the gigantic Gorge that would lead them home.

They braced themselves as the Spector dropped nose-down, into a sixty-two degree angle that pointed into the icy void below. It was still burning the ice as it accelerated downhill.

“Stop the heat!” screamed Rolfe, barely keeping himself in his seat.

Lucas had no clue how to stop the outer skin from heating up. He frantically analyzed the console but had forgotten exactly how Andrew had circumvented the entire system to heat the outer skin.

“I can’t!” he said, his hands wavering uncertainly over the controls. “I can’t!” he said.

“Then turn the whole vessel off!” Rolfe screamed.

Lucas realized it was their only chance. He instantly touched the power icon on the console. Seconds later, the vessel’s lights went dark.

The submersible started screeching and sliding against the icy floor, flinging itself toward the Gorge below. As the treads under the Spector started to cool, the vessel eventually slowed down, friction carving into the icy terrain. Finally it stopped, pointing downward at almost a forty-degree angle, stuck in the massive fissure called the Gorge, absolutely motionless. It ticked and steamed there, exhausted from its impossible journey.

Lucas sighed in relief. He could barely contain himself. “Freedom at last!” he shouted.

The others took a deep breath, all together, and shouted in unison, still holding onto their chairs in the pitch-black vessel.

All the while, Nastasia’s inconspicuous nutrition pack, still sitting in the rear cabin, ticked away, the numbers counting down with each passing second.

2:53…2:52…2:51…

* * *

Max and Simon passed the vehicle bays and entered the next space. What they saw shocked them.

Over thirty soldiers, all solidly built, were moving about the vast room, tending urgently to various tasks. The magnificent cavernous space they had walked into looked almost octagonal, adequately lit with a ceiling that extended over fifty feet. Beyond them, large doors led to what seemed to be quadrants, each one in turn leading into other tunnels and spaces. Each area was numbered, but soon Simon noticed that only one was brightly lit. He had spotted some activity inside it, from the corner of his eye far in the distance.

The entire structure reminded Max of a security facility. He had seen this type of arrangement before. It was the perfect design: a central core and cells leading off in multiple directions to house prisoners. Radiation icons and danger symbols surrounded the structure.

A gigantic hole, the size of a small building, was cut right into the center. The cavity seemed to drop even further down, and a massive crane, unlike anything they had ever seen, was situated over it. A platform was suspended from the crane. Hundreds of wires several inches thick dropped into the massive cavity, tentacles connected to large oxygen canisters that sat immediately to the left of where Simon and Max now stood.

It looks like some kind of a lit tunnel; wonder what the hell is down there? Simon thought.

“Simon,” Max said quietly through his teeth. “Come on.”

He climbed a catwalk that led into the strangely lit tunnel. It took a sharp turn just inside the entrance, then a series of steps moved down, even deeper into the complex.

“Max!” Simon whispered out of the side of his mouth. “This isn’t the way—”

He stopped dead at what he saw in front of him. Max had pulled up short just three paces ahead.

They were on the edge of a vertical shaft that appeared to go down forever, and suspended in the middle of it was what seemed like a semi-transparent needle-like object without any visible means of support, its tapered point aiming straight down to the center of the planet, its surface covered with…shapes…or letters…or symbols. Simon couldn’t figure it out. He couldn’t even see it clearly; it hurt his eyes—hurt his mind—to even look at it.

The sound it made was something like a groan, something like a seductive song. The light was impossibly broad—ultraviolet and infrared, blue and black and purple at the same time, throbbing behind his eyes.

This is not human, he said. We did not build this; we couldn’t have.

Max suddenly whirled around and shoved him, square in the chest.

“Go back,” he said brutally, forcing the words out of his mouth. His eyes were huge and haunted. There was blood leaking from the corner of his mouth.

When Simon didn’t respond fast enough, he seized him by the shoulders and spun him around, facing away from the massive spike that hung in the air, turning away from the hideous light. “Go back,” he said again and shoved him even harder.

Simon stumbled and moved. He knew that Max was right. He wondered how his friend had even managed to look away at all, to resist the sinister radiation that flowed from that…from that…

They stumbled out of the tunnel entrance, back into the room they had come from. For a moment they stood there, blinking and swaying, trying to remember what it was they had just seen.

“My god,” Max said. “What…?”

For that one moment, they had forgotten where they were. As they stood there, unsteadily recovering, they nearly forgot that they were surrounded by soldiers.

But the soldiers had not forgotten them. Max snapped back to attention as a coterie of Vector5 men approached; he looked off into the distance toward the same opening that Simon had spotted earlier and started moving, stalking straight toward the lit corridor, crossing the thousand-foot space at a swift but businesslike pace, like someone who knew where he was and who he was and was eager to finish an unpleasant job—like a powerful bureaucrat.

Their senses were on high alert; both of them gripped their rifles, ready for a shootout.

As they moved, the coterie of soldiers faded back, distracted by other duties, except for two who kept coming straight for them even as Simon and Max approached the opening.

Max continued to look preoccupied. Simon counted the distance between them and tried not to look out of place. It was the longest thousand feet he had crossed in his life.

Any second now, Max thought. They accelerated their pace; as they approached, the opening revealed itself. It was approximately eight feet high and six feet wide. Perforated floors sat above the ice with cables and focused lighting in the ceiling. They entered.

The corridor was lit adequately and seemed endlessly long. Simon could feel the soldier’s eyes, following them.

Ten feet into the tunnel, off to the left, Max noticed a locking mechanism. I wonder if this is to the exterior door, he thought. Looks like it can be controlled remotely.

He had been trained his entire life to study his surroundings with photographic detail; that training had saved his life many times. This time would be no different.

Twenty steps into the tunnel, the audio enhancement unit in Simon’s headgear twittered to life, picking up a fragment of conversation from somewhere down the corridor. He heard it clearly and without mistake.

It chilled his spine and almost stopped him in his tracks.

“So, Oliver,” said the deep, authoritative voice. “It’s been too long.”

The words were both horrific and hopeful to Simon’s ears. Max heard them as well and turned instantly, realizing that his best friend would not have the patience to calculate their next move alone.

If he acts on impulse, Max thought, he’ll get us killed.

Simon had been holding onto the rifle with both hands. Max turned to him, drew his attention, and held up two fingers close together. Then he separated them into a “V.”

Simon recognized the signal instantly. It was one they had used in their childhood games.

Why split up? he asked himself. Then he looked down the corridor, as Max already had. Thirty feet ahead, the passageway forked off—continuing straight on and offering a ninety-degree turn to the right. Even before they reached the adjacent passage, they could already sense the ambient light that flowed into their path, coming from that next hallway. They slowed down and carefully looked to their right.

Off in the distance, they spotted an open door. They heard the voices coming from inside, and they saw a huge soldier standing at the opening looking straight inside, not noticing them.

They both took a few steps back, reacting to the situation.

Max knew what his next move would be. He looked up at the hanging ceiling embedded in the ice. It carried an intricate web of cables and equipment mounted below and above the ceiling, a dark open grid.

Both men were in sync. Max immediately pressed his rifle into the side of his suit and jumped upward. He grabbed the steel ceiling and pulled himself into the grid like a spider trying to escape. Simon followed, but before he had pulled his entire body through the network of cables, he felt something detach from his suit. He craned his neck and looked down, just in time to see his rifle fall to the floor with a deafening clatter.

F*ck, he cursed silently, clenching his jaw in anger. We’re discovered. It’s over.

For one long moment, both of them looked down through the ceiling grid at the rifle lying directly in the middle of the hallway, clearly visible on the perforated floor. And they both heard a new and impatient voice from further down the hallway.

“What’s going on back there?” one of the men in Blackburn’s team called out.

They heard footsteps; he was coming in their direction. Max knew they needed to move fast. The tight shaft of the ceiling was barely wide enough for one man to crawl through, much less two. And Simon noticed Max’s hand gesture once again, signaling them to split up, to separate.

Simon wasted no time. He crawled through the adjacent hallway ceiling and in less than twenty seconds, three feet below him, he noticed the soldier’s body pass in the opposite direction.

Max had already disappeared deeper into the main hallway ceiling, now trying carefully and quietly to open one of the airshafts. Simon had passed three feet into the side hallway that led to the open door when he heard the voice again.

“What the f*ck is this?”

He noticed it, he thought. The man had spotted the rifle.

But I have to keep going.

It was almost as if he felt no fear, no anxiety. He didn’t care. He knew he was less than thirty yards from the door they had spotted.

“What’s up?” said one of the men in the room, shouting back at the man in the hallway.

“You’ve got to take a look at this,” the other voice said.

Seconds later, Simon stiffened as another man passed below him. For a brief moment, he wondered where Max was—if he could see what was happening. But then, just then, the amplified authoritative sound of the man speaking in the room resonated through the hallway and buzzed directly into his ears through his helmet.

“You’ve been more stubborn than anyone we’ve had down here since the beginning of the operation,” the man said. The voice cut through him like a knife.

“Lucky for you, your f*cking ‘society’ knows more about what’s going on down here than I do. Otherwise you would have been utterly useless to us a long time ago.”

Holding his body absolutely still, using all his strength, Simon did nothing but listen—more intently, with more concentration than he ever had in his life. He wanted to push himself twenty more yards into the tight shaft, but he didn’t move. He froze. He waited. He listened.

“Look at this!” the man said. “Look at this gun above your head!”

Simon’s body went cold. He had to move. Adrenaline and fear of what would happen next moved his body forward as Blackburn continued.

“Don’t you see it, you pompous son of a bitch? Don’t you know I have no remorse for you, no compassion, not even concern? My men are coming up the shaft with third degree burns and toxic poisoning, as if they were working in a f*cking nuclear power plant. Why should I care about you? Now look into the gun! Look! I won’t repeat myself.”

Simon was moving forward—slowly, slowly. Less than two feet, he told himself. Less than two feet before I can see inside. His body trembled from the vicious anger that threatened to take control of him. It was a rage he never thought he possessed. And still, he listened as he inched forward.

“These are your last moments Oliver,” Blackburn said. “This is your last chance. I can leave you to rot in your own hell, or I can put you out of your own f*cking misery with a single bullet. Look at me! You have less than ten seconds. Tell me how to turn off these godforsaken devices. Tell me who I need to find, tell me who gave this knowledge to your pathetic society.”

Simon listened both horrified and confused. Twelve more inches.

“Who put them here?” Blackburn said. “What are they for you, you son of a bitch?”

Simon crawled the last few inches. His head turned toward the room, and he saw the ominous figure of the tall man holding a rifle against the head of a person lying in a hospital bed. He watched as the tall man pressed the rifle into the burned flesh of the sick old man’s head, and the old man closed his eyes, ready to accept the bullet that would enter his skull and take his life.

Simon’s world collapsed. His heart sank as if they had put a hundred knives into his chest. Blackburn’s large image moved to the left, pressing the pistol so hard into Oliver’s head that it made a fleshy crater.

At that very instant Simon saw his father. He saw Oliver’s face through the ceiling grates, and he recognized the expression on his face.

He’s thinking of me, Simon thought. He was sure of it: he’s thinking of me.

Simon’s body froze instantly. He felt completely hollow, as if life itself had been stolen from him.

For a split second, emotion swelled and took over every inch of his body. Simon could not move; he didn’t understand why. He desperately wanted to have a weapon, any weapon. He knew if he jumped down now, unarmed, the tall man would kill them both. Nothing would be accomplished.

He froze once more as Blackburn’s voice spoke again.

“Ten seconds before I pull the f*cking trigger!” Blackburn said. “Ten seconds and your hell is over.”

He counted like a vicious killer with no regard for human life. “Nine…eight…seven…six…five…”

* * *