She stepped inside—and stared.
Cork covered the walls, and pictures, articles, and scribbled notes were tacked everywhere. Peyton recognized some of the names: Rapture Therapeutics, Phaethon Genetics, Rook Quantum Sciences, Rendition Games. There were pictures of Desmond and Conner. She scanned the scribbled notes:
Invisible Sun — person, organization, or project?
What requires that much energy?
Third world used as a testing ground?
Some of the newspaper clippings went back as far as the eighties.
Whoever had lived here was obviously investigating the Citium. Had been for a long time. And they had only recently left. In the kitchen, dishes with food particles lay in the sink. On the kitchen island, a laptop sat closed.
“The place has power,” Desmond said, turning on a small space heater. Peyton was glad for the warmth. “There’s a solar array behind the house and likely on the back side of the roof. It’s completely off-grid though.”
Three filing cabinets lined one wall. Peyton was about to open the first when Desmond called out, “Over here.”
He stood in the living room, tapping his foot on a floorboard. “You hear that?”
Peyton shook her head. What’s he doing?
He grabbed a fire poker that hung beside the stone hearth, jammed it into the floor, and pried the board loose. A safe lay underneath, with a dial lock. Desmond worked faster, ripping the adjacent boards free until it was completely uncovered. He gripped the dial and began spinning it.
Peyton crouched beside him. “You know the combination?”
“Maybe,” he mumbled.
He tried the handle, but it didn’t budge.
“What did you try?”
“The combination to Orville’s safe.”
Peyton instantly realized his theory: He thinks he created all this—that it’s his research.
He glanced at her. “Ideas?”
When they had found the box in the woods, Peyton had wondered why someone would have hidden GPS coordinates there—why they were given two locations instead of just being directed straight here to the cottage. “The first location. It has to serve a purpose.”
Desmond nodded. “Yes. Maybe it was to ensure the right people found this place—and that they had the key to finding whatever’s hidden here.”
He spun the dial again, using the GPS coordinates of the first location. The handle clicked this time, and he pulled the metal door open. A stack of pages lay inside.
The top sheet had a single line of text, handwritten, in large block letters.
How the Citium Lost Its Way
Desmond flipped the page over, revealing a handwritten note below. He and Peyton read it together.
If you’re reading this, the worst has occurred. The world will soon change. The enemy we face is more capable than any government or army the world has ever seen.
I believe, however, that they can be stopped. To do so, you must understand their origins, their history, and their true intentions. The pages included here reveal those things. It is the greatest and perhaps only weapon I can offer you.
First, you should know that the Order of Citium began with good intentions. They were a noble organization. A group of faith. They had rituals and beliefs, though they recognized no deities. They worshiped at the altar of science, and in science they believed they would find answers to our deepest questions—including one in particular that they called the great question: Why do we exist?
They went to great lengths to pursue that answer. But they lost their way. In a desert in New Mexico, on a July morning in 1945, an event occurred that changed the Citium forever. I know of that transformation because my father witnessed it; I have enclosed his story, which I have rewritten based on what he told me. The remainder of the pages contain my own story. I hope it will lead you to the key to stopping the Citium. Hurry.
- William
“William,” Peyton said. “There’s no last name. Do you remember him?”
“No.” Desmond studied the pages under the letter, scanning them. “But I take it he was one of my allies. Maybe an informant.”
“Makes sense. What do you want to do? Should we call Avery?”
“No,” he said quickly. “Let’s see what we’ve got here, read this, then search the rest of the house.”
Peyton agreed, and they sat down on the worn couch in the living room. It was in the low forties outside, and it felt even colder inside. The small heater wasn’t enough. She glanced at the fireplace, but decided the smoke it would generate would be too much of a risk. She opted instead to drape the thick quilt from the couch over her, and she slid closer to Desmond and spread it across him as well. The warmth of their body heat slowly filled the small space under the quilt.
He studied her face. She knew what he was thinking: this was just like Palo Alto, that small house they had shared fifteen years ago. She felt it too, them slipping back into that place they had been in together. But there was too much going on for her to even think about that. She lifted the pages and began to read.
Chapter 77
My father’s name was Robert Moore. He was a scientist at perhaps the most important time and place for scientists—a moment when science ended a war. And changed the world.
On that day, in July 1945, he slept only one hour, dressed in his best suit, and drove through the desert to the test site. At the gate, security made him step out of his car, which they searched extensively.
The mood across the base was tense. Inside the control station, the project director was bordering on a breakdown. Several times, General Leslie Groves had to guide the man outside, where they walked in the darkness, through the rain, talking, the general assuring him all would go as planned.