Echo

By

Michael C. Grumley

Copyright © 2021 Michael C. Grumley

All rights reserved.

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CONTENTS

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EPILOGUE

I

II

III

THE BREAKTHROUGH SERIES

BREAKTHROUGH

LEAP

CATALYST

RIPPLE

MOSAIC

ECHO

1

Hello Alison.

Alison smiled behind her glass face mask and reached out to run her bare hand along Sally’s body as the dolphin glided past.

“Good morning, Sally.”

How you today?

“Good, thank you.”

It was fascinating.  Sally had continued picking up on subtle human cues, integrating small bits into her own greetings.  It made Alison grin every time she heard it.

It amazed her how quickly the dolphins had adapted to them, leading Alison to wonder if it was something their IMIS translation system was doing as it grew smarter.  But, if it were IMIS, it would be doing the same with all of the dolphins, not just Sally.

But it wasn’t.

Female dolphins appeared to have a keener ability when it came to communication.  A certain unspoken relatability.  Not entirely different from humans, and something she was now beginning to think might be universal.

While the males, just as with humans, developed other skills faster.  Particularly around tactile or physical functions.  Things such as tracking objects, agility, and response times and physical endurance.

“How are you today, Sally?”

Me happy Alison.  Sally replied, and after a short pause, added, You happy.

It wasn’t a statement.  Questions always sounded flat going through IMIS for translation, and Alison had grown increasingly adept at spotting them.

“Yes.  I am happy.”

She studied Sally, now in the final stage of her pregnancy, larger in size due to the folding of her tail fluke and dorsal to accommodate an enlarged uterus.  This gave Sally a larger overall girth rather than a ‘bump’ as it did in humans and humorously provided the only time in which Alison could recall Sally “out-eating” Dirk.

It was an exciting time, leaving Alison feeling almost like a midwife as Sally progressed through her stages of pregnancy.  Even more exciting was the thought of the outcome, not just witnessing a live birth in the wild but an opportunity to study Sally as she nursed her newborn son.  Both physically and verbally.  Using IMIS to observe real-time communication between mother and calf in an entirely different species would be unprecedented.

She stroked Sally’s rubber-like skin affectionately and moved around so her camera could capture her entire length.  “Shall we go for a swim?”

Yes.  Sally like.  A simple reply that moments later IMIS repeated and corrected to, I like.

Alison faded back to gently wrap a hand around Sally’s main dorsal fin.

You man here.

She grinned, this time with a slight blush, before nodding.  Then looked down into the depths below to see several tiny dots of light moving around.  The men.  Scouring the bottom for remains of the Spanish Galleon shipwreck they had found.

It was a discovery that would make even the most seasoned treasure hunters green with envy.  A Spanish treasure ship from the 1700s which not only had been lost but was never supposed to have existed in the first place. At least not according to official records.  Because The King’s Ghost had been carrying something far more valuable than even its loads of gold and silver.

They still hadn’t surmised what caused the ship to sink, but they had located the priceless item which had brought them looking for it in the first place.

A piece of a larger alien ship.

Located at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea.  Intentionally disassembled and hidden for thousands of years.  More than just a piece—it was the alien ship’s navigation system.

Now the men were sifting through what remained of the wreckage laden with its trove of wealth from the Americas.  Tens of thousands of gold and silver pieces, a giant golden cross adorned with precious jewels, hundreds of pounds of large emeralds, and a variety of important artifacts from the ship itself—the anchor, parts of the vessel’s wheel and wheelhouse, dishes, riggings, and what appeared to be a chest of personal items belonging to the ship’s captain, containing what may have been the ship’s final log if it had not disintegrated long ago within the waterlogged box.

The whole endeavor fascinated Alison.  Like many shipwrecks, there was no indication of why the Ghost had perished. Still, each new haul of recovered items served as pieces to help reconstruct her majesty’s story—providing glimpses into the ship as it once was—both during its voyage and the final moments of the ship and her crew’s tragic end.

Alison relaxed and floated for a moment, staring down into the darkness, wondering which of the tiny moving dive lights was John Clay.  Her man as Sally called him.

We swim, Alison.

She nodded and raised her head, this time wrapping both hands around the dolphin’s dorsal.  “Yes,” she replied, “let’s swim.”

2

Twenty minutes later, Alison’s head broke the surface, and she reached up to move a mat of wet hair away from her facemask. She spotted the large stern of the USNS Pathfinder rolling heavily in the gentle swells.  Its magnificent white hull stretched hundreds of feet past her before tapering and disappearing near the bow.

An incredible ship both visually and operationally, she was one of the Navy’s finest science vessels, commanded by Captain Rudolph Emerson, whom Alison briefly spotted near the ship’s bridge before disappearing down a ladder.

She blinked the water out of her eyes and turned her attention back to the ship’s lower stern, smiling when she spotted two people sitting near the edge.

Neely Lawton, one of the ship’s science officers, stood up, followed by Li Na, a short and slight Chinese teenager.  Together, they bent down to retrieve Alison’s fins, mask, and finally her weight belt, allowing her to reach the ladder and pull herself up.

“Good morning,” she said cheerfully.

“Have a nice swim?”

“I did.”

“How’s our mother-to-be?”

“Great,” Alison said, removing her BCD vest and dropping it onto the deck before reaching up to squeeze out her ponytail.  “I think we’re getting close to the big day.”  She smiled at Li Na, who was quietly listening.  “How are you, Li Na?”

“Good morning, Ms. Shaw.  I am well, thank you.”

She nodded, amused, convinced the girl would never call her by her first name.  But it didn’t matter.  Li Na had been through more than enough already.

“You two waiting for Edwin?”

Neely and Li Na shook their heads.  “He was already here.  You just missed him.”

Edwin was the human name they had given to a very special dolphin in the pod whose actual name, at least as translated by IMIS, was Vize, from a Sanskrit word meaning special, though Lee had since manually programmed the human name Edwin into the system for easier translation, named after an extraordinary boy in the cancer ward at St. Jude’s.

As far as dolphins went, Edwin was more than just particular.  He was a truly rare occurrence within the entire infraorder of the Cetacea species, similar to what humans would call a savant.  Edwin elicited extremely rare abilities never before seen in the species, not the least of which was an oddly unique connection to Li Na.

“Anything new?” asked Alison.

“I can’t hear words the way your computer can,” the teenager said, shaking her head.  “Still just feelings.  And every day the same.  They want to know.”

Alison made a long face.

“They want to know more,” Li Na clarified.  “About what’s happening with us.”

Sally’s soft dark eyes peered intently at the female humans aboard the floating metal from the water, watching as they spoke to one another.

She observed with some degree of amusement how humans preferred to communicate with so many words and signals.  This was likely the reason they chose to communicate with the dolphins in the same manner, using the tiny metal on Alison’s torso despite how limited it was.

Bobbing effortlessly in the water, Sally blinked and continued studying the three women.  Alison said they were experiencing a great sickness but could not explain what it was or why it began.  Or when it would be over.

Questions the elders wanted to know more about.  And whether it could reach them as well.

***

Alone in her lab, Neely stared idly through a small window over the glimmering water reflecting brilliantly from the sun’s rays as it stretched forever until touching the distant, hazy horizon.

The isolation was getting to her.

It was getting to all of them.

Like most people, she enjoyed a certain amount of solitude when it was convenient.  And elective.  But forced isolation had a very different feel and emotional effect even when it was for the greater good.

The global pandemic was finally beginning to wane.  Slowly, but steadily.  And they could not have been in a better location to weather the storm—on the Pathfinder in the middle of the Caribbean, surrounded by a highly efficient crew and enough supplies to last several more months.

And that was the problem.  At least for Neely.

That they had been fortunate enough to be on the Pathfinder when the pandemic swept the globe left her with a palpable feeling of shame, along with regret—both in her luck of circumstances and in her inability to do anything about it.

“You okay?”

Neely whirled around to find Alison studying her from the entryway.

“Hey.”

“Are you all right?” repeated Alison.

Neely managed a grin and nodded.

“Still feeling guilty?”

“A little.”

Alison moved forward and pulled a chair away from one of the metal tables.  “It’s not your fault.”

“I know.”

She raised an eyebrow.  “Do you?”

“Yes,” Neely frowned.  “I do.”

Alison glanced past her to another table holding a small lab refrigerator.  The front door was made of clear glass and the fridge was nearly empty inside, except for a few flat Petri dishes.  “You said yourself—it’s too dangerous.”

“It is.”

“But…?”

“But,” Neely hesitated, “I still feel...”

“Guilty.”

“Yes.”

“Biology is not easy.  Or fast.  Even I know that.”

Neely sighed and twisted her chair to stare at the same small refrigerator and the samples inside, the last remaining samples of what they had retrieved from the plants near the alien ship.  Samples the Russians had attacked the Pathfinder over the previous year, forcing Neely to abruptly hide them in the only place she could think of, and where she hoped the Russians would not look—just above their heads, behind the grating to the lab’s air-conditioning duct.

Besides the refrigerator, it was the only place cold enough to keep the bacteria in a suspended state.

These samples contained traces of the mysterious green liquid from the alien ship after being leached through the marine plants’ root systems.  A liquid able to repair not only plant cells but human cells.  Dolphin cells.  Damn near anything, biological or mechanical, just as it was now trying to do to Li Na, injected by a father desperate to save his dying child.

“Look on the bright side,” Alison finally said with a sigh.  “You found a way to keep this from killing her.”

Neely frowned.  “Only temporarily.  Her body is still changing and absorbs any animal DNA she consumes with violent consequences.  Why it happens with meat and not dairy, I don’t know.  But it’s only a bandage for now.  Each reaction is worse than the last, so it can still kill her, eventually.”

“You know I’m trying to keep the glass half full, right?”

A hint of amusement crept across Neely’s face.  “Sorry.  You’re right.”  She glanced back at the fridge.  “It’s just that this pandemic has killed a lot of people.  If only we’d had enough time to find a way–”

“There wasn’t enough time,” Alison said, cutting her off.  “It happened too fast.  And like you said, all these changes in Li Na are just as dangerous, if not more so.  We’re not talking about a vaccine.  We’re talking about changes to a person’s DNA itself.  Unpredictable changes.”

Neely nodded.

“Changes that could be different in every single person.”

“I know.”

“Li Na is young, and you’re still afraid her next episode could be fatal.  Can you imagine if the rest of the population had to go through what she has?”

Neely stared at Alison.

“You did the right thing, Neely.  Whatever this compound is, it’s just too dangerous.”

“And now the CIA has a version of it.”

Alison shrugged.  “Maybe they do, maybe they don’t.”

“Believe me—they have it.”

Alison’s grin faded and peered through the same narrow window at the endless expanse of blue ocean.  “Then what do you want to do now?”

3

Returning to the bridge, Captain Emerson peered pensively out and over the very same stretch of ocean, wearing a look of skepticism.  His steely gray eyes searched the endless horizon for problems.  And contemplating—first on weather and ocean conditions, and then around the security involved.

Almost the entire world had gone into shutdown and was only now fully emerging from it, in fits, to a state of resumed aviation traffic, both civilian and military. What they were about to attempt would have been impossible during the depths of the pandemic.

Which also made their endeavor much riskier.

And of all times to have perfect weather.

In these conditions, anyone watching from a satellite would see it when it happened.  It was something that could not be hidden, not entirely, even at night.  And it could, at the very least, raise questions from those who might be watching.

Because the day after their arrival, Emerson would not be able to hide what would be sitting in plain view upon the Pathfinder’s large and completely unobstructed deck.

4

Located in the northwestern corner of Washington, DC, Spring Valley was a small but upscale neighborhood, home to many of the nation’s governing elites.  Well-known men and women from the highest public service levels, assuming politics could still be considered such.

Streets were lined with expensive homes and lush, perfectly manicured yards, radiating, even in complete darkness, a sense of power and prestige.

A late-night stillness was interrupted by the sound of a single car engine approaching and turning onto Warren Street NW, eventually slowing when it reached the end of a broad cul-de-sac.

Now, with noise only from its tires, the silver Mercedes turned and eased up a long driveway, where the wide door of a detached garage silently rose to accept it.  Smoothly, the automobile continued forward until it slipped noiselessly into the garage, illuminated only by the car’s headlights, and eased to a complete stop.

A slight creak of metal followed as the large garage door rolled back down, section by section, shuddering when it once again touched the cool concrete floor.

Defense Secretary Merl Miller placed the car into park and glanced momentarily through the window at the wall in front of him lined with cabinets, a workbench, and dozens of tools all neatly arranged in the intense glare of the vehicle’s headlights.

An exhausted Miller sighed, grasped a small white paper sack from the passenger’s seat and opened the car door.  He climbed out and carefully used the still illuminated headlights to navigate around the hood of his car.  Reaching the garage’s side door, he wrapped a hand around the metal knob before suddenly jumping violently at something nearby.

It was a dark silhouette.

Someone else was in the garage with him, standing quietly in the far corner watching him.

A jolt of shock caused Miller to jump back.  His eyes fought to peer through the glare at a figure who appeared oddly difficult to see.

“WHO ARE YOU?!  GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”

The figure, dressed in dark clothing, did not respond.  Or move.  Instead, it remained motionless, staring at Miller.

“I SAID GET THE HELL OUT!”  Miller yelled and retreated, searched for something he could use as a weapon.  But there was nothing.  Miller tried to rush back to the workbench, but the figure quickly moved closer.  “Don’t.”

A defiant secretary whipped back around, squinting through the light.  “LEAVE!  NOW!  AND I WON’T CALL THE POLICE.”

He was on the edge of panic.  Adrenaline coursed through his aging veins, and his heart felt as though it was going to jump from his chest.  It was all he could think to say, desperate in his hope that the person was some common thief.  A thug looking to swipe something of value but caught in the act while rifling through Miller’s garage.

But the calmness in the stranger’s voice told Miller he was not that lucky.

The person’s demeanor and complete lack of nervousness told him just the opposite—that whoever it was…had been waiting for him.

“What do you want?!”

Again, there was no answer.

It was then that Miller realized the overhead garage door light was not on, unnoticed above the wash of bright light from his car’s headlights.

“I said what the hell do you want?!”

Silence.

Finally, the figure began to draw near, smoothly and without any sound until Miller could make out a face.

It was painted black, but oddly, the more Miller stared, the harder the man was to see.  Even his clothing appeared indistinguishable from the shadow in which he was standing.  Not in color, but for lack of detail.  “Do you have any idea who I am?!” yelled Miller.

Any hope of intimidation evaporated when the outline of the man’s face appeared to smile.  “Yes, I do.”

“Then get the hell away from me!  Do you understand?!  Take what you want and get out!”

There was another long pause as the man looked around.

“I don’t want anything.”

“Then get the hell out of my garage!”

This time the man’s voice hinted at amusement.  “Or what?”

“Or I call the police!”

“And what will you do,” asked the man, “in the time it takes them to arrive?”

Squinting, Miller searched the garage for anyone else.  When his eyes returned, the man in the dark had moved closer.

Miller’s hand fumbled with his key ring.

“Looking for your car alarm?”

The secretary fought to regain his composure.  “Tell me what you want.”

The man moved forward again.  His face was still not clear.  “I don’t want anything,” he repeated.  “Except to remember the look on your face.”

Miller suddenly felt as if his heart had stopped.  “I’m…not afraid of you.”

“I think you are.”

Miller shook his head.  “No.”

“Then you know why I’m here.  And now you’re beginning to wonder who.”

“No.  I’m not.”

“Not even curious?”

Miller stared at the man for a long time before surprising him by exhaling.  A strange expression now glittered from Miller’s eyes.  “Son, I’ve been in this world a long time.  I’ve made a lot of friends and a lot of enemies.”

“That you have.”

The figure moved closer to the light, leaving Miller surprised to see the man held no weapons.  He then spoke as if reading the secretary’s mind.  “I don’t need one.”

Miller glanced solemnly through the pane of glass in the garage door to one of the house’s lighted windows upstairs before turning to face the man.  Even at his age, he was far from feeble.  But something about the man was strange.  Very strange.

“Last words?”

“I’m not going to beg, if that’s what you’re asking,” Miller said.

The man grinned.  “Maybe you should.”

Miller took a deep breath.  “It’s not how you go out that matters, boy.  It’s who you are when you leave.”

The secretary had barely finished the sentence when his car’s lights suddenly and automatically blinked off.

5

John Clay stepped through the entrance and into the Pathfinder's air-conditioned bridge, followed by Steve Caesare, where they found Captain Emerson waiting for both.  The captain wore his usual pressed short-sleeve dress shirt and a stoic expression and was joined by Executive Officer Harris standing to his left.

Clay momentarily looked between the men and raised his eyebrows.  “Sir?”

The captain said nothing.  Instead, he merely raised a satellite phone and handed it to Clay, who took it and pressed it to his ear.

“This is Clay.”

On the other end, the weary voice was unmistakable.  “Clay, it’s Langford.”

“Admiral.”

“I’m afraid I have some bad news.  Secretary Merl Miller has died.”

John froze.

“He was killed last night at his home returning from an errand.”

It took several seconds for Clay to reply.  “I’m sorry, sir.”

“That makes two of us.”

“What happened?”

“Not sure yet.  A forensics team is onsite now while we work through protocol here at the Pentagon.  We’re going to provide an official statement shortly, explaining that he passed due to complications from the virus.”

Clay looked toward Caesare.  “How fast was it?”

“Probably not very.  Indications are that he put up a fight before succumbing to strangulation.”

“What can we do?”

“At this point, nothing.  Given your team’s secrecy, I need you to stay as low as you can for the time being until I sort things out.”

“Yes, sir.”

Secretary Miller and Admiral Langford were the only two in the Pentagon who knew about their group, at least in detail—what they were doing and everything they had found thus far.  Moreover, Clay knew Miller and Langford had their secret protocol regarding Clay’s team should something happen to either of them.  Or worse, both.  Protective measures Clay knew may call for disbanding the group and deleting everything.  Every byte of information linking the team and their findings together.  Which now could also mean dissolving Captain Emerson’s entire crew.

“We’ll stay put until we hear from you, Admiral.”

“Good.  There’s one hell of a shitstorm swirling around this.”

“I understand.”

“I’ll be in touch.  Anything you share with your team stays strictly with them.  Is that understood?”

Clay nodded.  “Perfectly.  And sir?”

“Yes?”

After another long pause, Clay asked, “What was the errand?”

“What?”

“The errand from which Secretary Miller was returning?”

On the other end, Langford gave a troubled sigh.  “Picking up medicine for his wife.”

6

The lab was silent.  Everyone in the room appeared like stone, utterly stunned by the news.  Unmoving and unflinching.  The only sound was an occasional creak from the gently rolling ship.

“I can’t believe it,” Alison finally stammered.  “They don’t know who?”

Clay shook his head.

“Could be damned near anyone,” breathed Caesare.

“How’s his wife?”

“I’m not sure.”

It was a devastating blow.  The plans Captain Emerson and most of the crew had been making were for Secretary Miller's arrival with his wife Elizabeth, sneaking her by helicopter out to the Pathfinder in an attempt to use the water around the alien ship to help stave off her advancing cancer.  It was something that had appeared to work for a young girl in Puerto Rico, but they could not do so during the pandemic without tipping off people who may have been watching.  Not just exposing Miller and his wife, but everything.  The alien ship, the plants, perhaps even the vaults.  Secrets that could all be revealed by one lone military chopper making an oddly conspicuous trip to the Caribbean carrying the Secretary of Defense and his wife.

So instead, they were forced to wait until the lockdowns had lifted or at least relaxed.  Until military bases were reactivated, allowing them to fly under the radar along with the resuming burst of military air traffic as an entire nation attempted to regain their bearings.

They were only two days away.  And now Secretary Miller was dead.

“Do you think someone knew?”

“It’s possible.”

“Or just a coincidence,” said Caesare as he leaned back and folded his arms, peering at Clay.  “If only I believed in coincidences.”

“So, what do we do now?”

“We wait to hear back from the admiral.”

Caesare shook his head.  “No…until then.”

Clay’s gray-blue eyes stared back at him quietly.

“They’ve got to have a massive team crawling all over the scene,” Caesare said.  “Which means a lot of cooks in the kitchen.  How long do you think it’ll take to get any decent intel?”

Clay remained silent, contemplating.

“I say we take the bull by the horns.”

Neely frowned.  “What does that mean?”

“We find the bastard.”

“And how do we do that?”

Caesare shrugged.  “We found a teenager on the run in the middle of China.  With a population of what, a billion people?”

“One point three,” murmured Clay.

“One point three billion people,” said Caesare.  “And we did it before anyone else.  We even found her before the Chinese could.”

“That doesn’t guarantee we can do it again,” said Alison.  She and Neely then turned to Clay, who was still quietly thinking.  The simmer on his face was faint, but it was there.

***

Borger answered the phone immediately.  “Hey, Clay.  Been expecting you.”

“I take it you’ve heard.”

“About Secretary Miller?  Yeah.  I’m sorry, man.  Really sorry.”

“We all are.”

“He was a damned good man.”

“Which is why I’m calling.”

“You realize you never call just to see how our day is going.”

Clay managed a slight smirk on the other end.  “How is your day going, Will?”

“Don’t ask,” replied Borger, glancing at Kenwood sitting in a nearby chair staring back at him.  “So, what’s the plan?”

“For the time being, we’ve been ordered to stay put while the admiral sorts things out.”

“Okay.”

“Of course, staying put doesn’t mean idle.”

Borger’s lips spread into a grin.  “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”

“I was hoping you would say something like that.”

7

The death of Secretary Miller was almost beyond comprehension, both personally and politically.  The cover story would be nearly impossible to maintain if a single reporter made it within a quarter mile of Miller’s residence and saw the mass of people surrounding it.  Investigators from the FBI, DOJ, Homeland Security, city and state police, even the Secret Service appeared like a massive cloud of law enforcement descending upon the property.

Along each side of the street, crowds of nearby residents were being ushered back by police officers, trying to get them to disperse and return to their homes—a difficult task for those who’d been sheltered in their homes for months on end.

As expected, word was already quickly spreading and making the official story harder to maintain by the minute.  And it would grow ever more so the moment someone leaked a picture, leaving the White House with little choice but to fall back to Plan B—obfuscation and confusion.  Provide enough conflicting information during the investigation to leave the public unsure of what had happened.  A tactic to buy enough time for their public relations strategy to take root—one upon which the heads of each security department were currently being briefed.

President Jonathan Carr sat quietly and stoically, surrounded by the rest of his security council.  Commanding attention from the head of the table with his six-foot-four-inch frame, he wore a white dress shirt with the collar unbuttoned and opened beneath a head of slightly tousled hair.

It was disastrous.

Preliminary evidence had disproved the notion, the hope, that Merl Miller’s death was the result of something more innocuous, such as an ordinary burglary.  Someone caught in the act while merely looking for valuables to steal.

No.  The circumstances appeared much worse, like a targeted hit.

“Jesus,” Carr groaned, leaning back against his chair.

There was no sound to be heard until his new Chief of Staff Donna Backshall softly broke the silence.  “Mr. President, we need to manage this investigation.”

Carr lifted his eyes and peered at the woman.  Attractive, with shoulder-length black hair and intense hazel eyes.  People close to her often described Backshall as part Mexican, part Irish, part German, and ALL fire.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning,” she said, “that we’ve contained the scene.  Now we have to contain the investigation.”

“You mean shrink it.”

“Yes.  Before it’s too late.”

Stan Griffith, Carr’s National Security Advisor, nodded in agreement.  “The leaks will start soon.”

“If they haven’t already,” Carr mumbled, staring forward before shaking his head.  “God, we don’t need this right now.”

It was a rhetorical statement.  Everyone in the room was acutely aware of the carnage the nation had already endured.  That the entire world had endured.

“Who would do this?” he asked.  “Who would do this now?  When every nation on the planet is reeling.  Struggling to get back on their feet.  Who has the time to even think about this?”

No one spoke.

“Merl was a hell of a good man.  He didn’t deserve this, and neither do we.”  The president looked down the right side of the table and found Admiral Langford staring at the dark cherry wood table in front of him.  “Jim?”

“Yes?”

“Any ideas?”

Langford stared at the president for a long moment before blinking and shaking his head.

“Maybe the Chinese,” Douglas Bartman offered, clearing his throat.  “Or the Russians.”

Carr studied his secretary of state.  “Why is that?”

“They have ample reason.”

“We all have ample reason to make any case we wanted.  Any story.  Just like everyone else.”

Bartman fell silent.

“If this is an act of war,” Carr exhaled, “then so be it.  But let’s assume not yet.  Frankly, none of us are in any position to fight a war.  China, Russia, or us.”

The president pushed himself up from the giant table and moved to the window, staring through a set of vertical blinds out over the vast green lawn before the White House.

And just when he’d thought they were finally turning a corner.

***

Will Borger’s eyes widened when he saw the number of people in the satellite images.  “Look at that!”

Kenwood let out a low whistle.  “That’s a lot of police officers.”

“They’re not all police,” said Borger, who slowly zoomed in.  “Very few probably are.  These guys are feds.”

“From which department?”

“My guess is all of them.”

“Are you sure we can break into their systems?”

Borger began typing.  “Not all, but a couple if we’re lucky.  And hopefully, that’s enough.  A lot of forensic evidence these days is digital, and if I were a betting man, I’d say most of those people are taking pictures and measurements of the same things.”  He stopped and carefully double-checked the Linux syntax he’d just typed.  “If I can locate where the evidence is being uploaded, we can find out what they know so far.”

“And you and Mr. Clay think we can figure something out before them?”

“That’s the hope.”

Kenwood nodded, studying Borger’s screen over the older man’s shoulder.  “What can I do to help?”

“You can start by reading through everything with me.  Soon, I should have a point-by-point map of every place Secretary Miller went over the last several months.  We’re looking for anything that stands out.”

“You got it.  We’re going to run this through The Machine too, right?”

“Absolutely.”

The Machine was another computer system, enormously powerful and nearly a hundredfold faster in overall processing speed than IMIS.  It was the same system they had used to find and tie pieces of forgotten data to find the Spanish Galleon Clay and the others were still salvaging.  Or at least they had been until a few hours ago.

The system was designed to use deep learning algorithms to connect and relate disparate pieces of data that may not at first glance appear relevant or related, even over hundreds of years.

Of course, they wouldn’t have to go that far back to use The Machine for this.  But they would have to stop what they were currently using the system for, which was unfortunate given what it had just discovered.

8

It was over twenty-four hours before Borger rang Clay back, requesting to speak with both he and Caesare, along with M0ngol, also known as Yong Yang, their Chinese hacker and latest U.S. citizen, who was still aboard the Pathfinder.

It took several minutes before Clay stepped back from the tiny desk in the ship’s cramped communications room and into view of the video camera.  Steve Caesare’s broad frame, topped by a head of dark, windblown hair, filled most of the narrow doorway behind him. At the same time, Yong Yang peered around the side of his left shoulder.  All three stared at the same monitor.

“Okay, Will.  We’re all here.”

“Can you see my screen?”

“Yes.”

“Good.  This is footage of Secretary Miller’s residence from the Argus satellite as of two hours ago.”

“Wow,” mumbled Caesare.

“Yeah,” Borger’s voice continued, “looks like a circus if you ask me.  Anyway, here are some pictures of the scene we pulled from one of the FBI’s evidence servers.”

The screen in front of them switched to still frames of Secretary Miller’s garage.  It was well-organized in the background but with several items scattered on the floor in the foreground.  A few tools lay alongside three overturned boxes, all tagged and numbered with brightly colored tabs.

“Looks like a scuffle.”

“Yes,” Borger acknowledged.  “That’s their assessment as well.”

“When did they find him?”

“About 3 a.m., when Secretary Miller’s wife woke and realized he hadn’t returned and then called the police.”

Another picture appeared on the screen in front of them.  The same garage from a different angle.  Then another and another.

“They believe it all happened in the garage.  Probably over the course of just a few minutes.”

“His wife didn’t hear anything?”

“Apparently not.”

Caesare frowned beneath his dark mustache.  “Anything else?”

“You could say that,” replied Borger.  “We’re feeding bits into The Machine as it comes available on their servers, but that’s going to take time.  The reason for this call, though, is about something else.  Something Yong found.”

Both men turned to look at M0ngol, who stared back sheepishly.

“I’m sure the investigators will find this soon too,” Borger said, “but Yong was the first to think of it.”

“And what’s that?”

“Doorbells.”

Caesare raised his eyebrow.  “Doorbells?”

“Doorbells.  As in ‘the front door.’”

“Something happened at the front door?”

“Not at Secretary Miller’s front door.”

Caesare turned to Clay.  “He does this on purpose.”

Clay grinned.  “Go ahead, Will.”

“The doorbell I’m referring to is from one of Miller’s neighbors located across the street who installed one of those video doorbells with an integrated camera that records everyone who approaches the front door.  For instance, when dropping off a package.  And the cameras are high definition.”

“You’re saying a neighbor’s video doorbell caught something?”

“Yep.  And these little cameras are connected to Wi-Fi, which allows them to record and send a live video back to a central website or server, where customers can then view what the motion detectors saw.”

“So, what did this catch?”

“Several things, including Secretary Miller’s car returning at 10:08 p.m. the night before.”

Inside the tiny room, both Navy men turned and looked at M0ngol again.  “Nice work, kid.”

“What do we have?”

“I hope you guys are sitting down.”

They looked around the tight space in an air of irony.  “Wishful thinking.”

The monitor changed again.  “Here is a partial video of Miller’s car entering his driveway.  Part of the image is blocked by a corner of the neighbor’s house, but in the distance, you can see the secretary’s Mercedes driving up and into his garage.”

All three stared at the screen as Borger explained, watching Miller’s car enter the frame in slow motion and ease up the driveway on the other side of the street, headlights glaring forward as the garage door opened.  All was still visible from the doorbell camera’s fixed angle.

The front of Miller’s car disappeared inside, leaving part of the garage brightly illuminated, followed by a set of glowing taillights before the garage door finally lowered again behind it.

“Go back,” said Clay.

The video paused and reversed, replaying from where the car turned into the driveway.  Headlights lit up the garage again when Clay suddenly said, “Stop.”

Frozen onscreen was a picture of the inside of Miller’s garage.

Both Clay and Caesare leaned closer and studied the pixelated image.  They were silent for almost a full minute before Clay turned to M0ngol.  “Have you seen this?”

He nodded.

Clay turned back to the screen.  “You spot anything in there, Will?”

“You mean like…someone?”

“Right.”

“No.  Nothing.  The picture isn’t great at zooming in so far, even with high definition.  We can’t see anything unusual.  However…” said Borger, “there is something else we did notice.”

“Such as?”

The image zoomed in further, causing a small increase in pixelation.  “Do you see that object on the ceiling of the garage?”

“Looks like the garage door opener.”

“That’s right.  Notice how dark it is.”

“Hmm.”

“Like the light is burnt out,” said Caesare.

“It does.  Except, it’s not.”  Borger replaced the image with another, appearing similar.  “This is an image from the doorbell camera a few days ago, earlier in the evening but still after dark.  Look at the garage now.  The car’s headlights are lighting it up, but the garage door opener overhead is also on.”

“Something tells me we have another image coming.”

“We do.  This one was after 3 a.m. this morning.  When the FBI arrived on the scene, when they opened the garage door, the opener light is on again.”

Caesare folded his arms.  “Someone turned it off.  But that’s not surprising.  A lot of burglars have learned that little trick.”

“Yeah,” Borger replied.  “They have.  But very few of them turn it back on afterward.”

The room grew silent.

“And this is still not the biggest thing we found.  This next part,” said Borger, “is kind of weird.”

Another video clip replaced the image on the computer.  It was much darker and lit only by what appeared to be the ambient glow of a nearby streetlamp.

“This was at 10:27 p.m., several minutes after Secretary Miller was most likely killed.”

Onscreen, the video clip was running, displaying nothing but a block of the darkened street outside.  Then they saw it.

A glimmer.

Then a shape.

“What’s that?”

Borger backed it up and played it again, a faint image of what appeared to be a figure moving quickly from left to right before disappearing from the doorbell’s frame of view.

Borger played it one more time and stopped the image in midframe.

It was clearly human.  But it was harder to see than anything else in the picture.

“Can you clean that up, Will?  We can barely see it.”

“Unfortunately, we can’t.  This is as good a picture as we have.”

“Looks like a shadow of something.”

“Or something that happens when an image is overlaid on another,” agreed Borger.  “Or superimposed.  But this is a digital camera, so that’s not possible.”

“Could it be some kind of visual anomaly emanating from the camera?”

“We don’t think so.  We’ve gone over this about a hundred times.  It doesn’t seem like a camera issue.”

Clay tilted his head.  “It definitely looks human.  Strange, but human.”

“Agreed.  But even breaking it down pixel by pixel, we can’t get anything more, leaving us with two possibilities, the first of which is some kind of distortion or mechanical issues with the camera—which we’ve largely ruled out.”

“And the second?”

“The second possibility is perhaps some kind of advanced camouflage.”

9

Admiral Langford quietly studied the house from the street, following long branches from an old red maple tree as they spread out like giant outstretched arms with thousands of orange-red leaves flitting in the warm breeze.  All were hovering just above the white Tudor-style house with its asymmetrical façade and adjoining walkway leading to a wide decorative front door and matching window.  The entrance was filled with half a dozen family members, meandering in and out of the house and conversing with each other in hushed tones.

“You okay?”

Langford glanced at his wife next to him.  She was shorter by several inches with fair skin and light brown hair.  He noted briefly but affectionately the soft wrinkles around her comforting brown eyes and nodded.  Together they stepped forward and strode up the pathway toward the front of the house.  His wife’s hand wrapped lovingly around the inside of his arm.

Reaching the porch, they smiled at the others and were greeted by one of Miller’s daughters who was emerging.  Her eyes smiled upon seeing them and she immediately hugged Andrea and then Jim.

Andrea Langford placed both hands upon the girl’s arms.  “How are you, Darby?”

Miller’s daughter maintained a smile and shrugged.  “Trying to hold it together.”  She turned and motioned them inside.  “Come on.  Mom will be happy to see you.”

Inside, the front room was filled with more extended family, none of which Langford or his wife recognized.  But they smiled graciously and continued through to the living room, which was brightly lit and adorned with tasteful furniture and several paintings on the walls, surrounding a large black rock fireplace serving as the cornerstone of the room.  The mantle above it contained dozens of family photographs.

Near the right side of the room, surrounded by yet more family, rested Elizabeth Miller, whose small, frail frame at first glance resembled a child sitting in an oversized chair.

She spotted them and immediately beamed as they approached, raising a hand just before Andrea took it and knelt.

“How are you?”

“Tired.” Elizabeth smiled graciously.  “But okay.”

“We’re so very sorry.”

“Thank you.”  She patted Andrea’s hand and raised her eyes to Jim Langford, who was towering over her chair.

“Hello, beautiful,” he said with a grin.

Her lips parted into a wide smile.  “You’ve always been a good liar, James.”

Her attention turned back when Andrea softly rubbed her hand.  “What can we do?”

Elizabeth’s response took several long seconds as she inhaled and looked around the room at her family.  “Nothing.  I’m being well taken care of at the moment.”

Andrea briefly glanced back over her shoulder.  “Looks like the whole clan is here.”

“Almost,” she grinned.  “They’ve all been wonderful.”

The widow’s eyes moved again to Langford while she spoke to Andrea.  “Actually, there is something you can do for me.”

“Anything.”

“Lend me your husband.”

Andrea peered up at her husband, who was staring back at her.

“James,” Elizabeth said, “I think I’d like you to take me for a walk.”

The word walk was figurative.

Instead, they rolled, with Elizabeth’s steps replaced by the large turning wheels of a wheelchair.  They went out of the house, then down a temporary wooden ramp built for her by her husband.

They continued slowly down the driveway until reaching the sidewalk, where they turned right, and after another thirty feet were stopped by a man sporting short, neat hair and dressed in a dark suit.  Langford noticed the tiny discreet wire wrapped over his left ear.

The young man peered at the two but was cut off before he could speak.

“We’re going for a walk,” Elizabeth stated flatly.

The Secret Service agent glanced at Langford, who nodded, and after a short pause the man stepped back onto the grass with apprehension, raising a small microphone on his cuff and speaking into it.

“Mrs. Miller and Admiral Langford are going for a walk.”

“Are they following?”

Langford glanced over his shoulder while still moving forward. He nodded.  “Yes.”  His answer prompting Elizabeth to giggle.

“I never have gotten used to security details.”

“You’re not far away from a national treasure,” Langford teased.

“Oh stop.”

She looked up and studied the trees overhead, all seemingly connected as a lush green canopy, planted years before and now protecting them from the hot afternoon sun.  She smiled and inhaled deeply through her nose.

“How I love the smell of trees.”

Behind her, Langford nodded.

“Merl and I walked down this street thousands of times over the years.  Maybe tens of thousands.  Usually in the evenings after dinner.”

“Andrea and I do the same thing.”

She inhaled again, this time for longer, remaining quiet for some time.

“I hope you know how much he admired you, James,” she finally said.  “He always told me you were one of the few men in government who were worth anything.”

“It’s a low bar.”

Elizabeth laughed.  “I’m sure Merl would agree with that.”

When they reached the corner, she directed him to the right.  “There’s a park up ahead.”

Langford complied without a word, pushing her another block before a small community park appeared.  It was well-manicured and nearly empty, save for a lone mother and child playing on the swing set.

Elizabeth directed him to a path that meandered around the park, eventually reaching an empty metal bench looking out over the rest of the vibrant green grass.

She motioned for Langford to sit down and noted not far away two Secret Service agents stepping silently into the shade of a sizeable Kwanzan cherry tree dotted with pink blossoms.  Its flowers and dark leaves moving gently under the warm breeze.

Elizabeth eyed Langford as he sat in what used to be Merl’s spot before she turned and peered back out over the grass.

“It may sound strange, but I don’t think Merl was surprised.  At the end.  With the attack.”

“Did he know something?”

“No.” She shook her head softly. “Nothing like that.  He was just always very aware of his position.  Of the power.  And the risks.”

“Elizabeth–”

She raised her hand and cut him off.  “I’m tired.  Let me talk.”

Langford acquiesced.

“Like I said, he admired you, James.  A great deal.  He trusted you.  More than anything, he would want you to know that.  That he believed in you.”  She smiled at the sight of the child, a small boy, excitedly learning to swing with his mother hovering behind him.  “He told me some of what you two were involved in.  Not everything.  Most of it he couldn’t.  But he said it was dangerous.  Something that a lot of people would kill over.  And he worried about doing the right thing.”

Langford nodded.  “The right thing can be complicated.”

“Yes.  It can.”  She turned back to face him.  “I know he loved me.  Of that, there was never any doubt.  Ever.  From either one of us.  We were as much in love when he died as when we first met fifty years ago.  So, I have no regrets.  No final words left unspoken.  And no feelings left unshared.”  She stopped and mused to herself.  “You could say we were like peas and carrots.”

Langford grinned and followed as she stared up again at the trees.  “And we always knew someday it would come to an end, as everything does.  Even if somewhere, deep down, we hoped it wouldn’t.  Just as everyone does.”  She looked back at him.  “We had a good life, James.  A really good life.”

“It…doesn’t have to be over.  Not yet.  Not for you.”

She smiled at that.  “Did Merl ever tell you how we met?”

“No.”

“He was best friends with my brother in high school.  I met him one day when I came home from school, and they were working together on my brother’s car.  A Pontiac something or other.  Anyway, they were apparently trying to tune the carburetor—while the engine was running.  But not only that, while the car was moving!  My brother was driving his car down our street with the hood open and Merl holding on, perched over the engine.”

Langford suddenly laughed.  “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”  Elizabeth chuckled, then fell silent for a moment, as if contemplating.  “Virtually every memory I have is with Merl.  A lifetime of life…and love, with a wonderful man, a wonderful father and wonderful husband who loved me until the day he died.  And with children who are now grown and healthy and who are parents themselves.”

“There can still be more.  More time to spend with them.”

“There’s always more,” she nodded.  “But it’s not the same when half of you is gone.  Especially when you were already struggling every day just to remain here.”

“Elizabeth, we can still get you out to the ship and into the water.”

She turned to watch the little boy again.  “And how much more time will that give me?”

Langford shook his head.  “I don’t know.”

“A few years?”

“Maybe more.”

“Maybe.  And then what?”

Langford didn’t answer.

She turned and reached out a hand, placing it on his.  “I’ve already stopped my chemo, James.”

“What?”

“Let me paint another picture for you.  Merl and I are both public figures.  Sure, he was the Secretary of Defense, but plenty of people also know who I am.  So, what do you think would happen if someone found out I secretly disappeared to another country during all this?  How long do you think it would take someone to connect my absence with my disease?”

Langford didn’t answer.

“It wouldn’t matter if it was a cure or not.  What do you think the world would do?  What conclusions would they jump to?  Especially just emerging from a global pandemic.”  She stared at him with eyes deep and sincere.  “I already told you, I have no regrets.  And I think I’d rather go out on a high note with my Merl waiting for me than take the chance of causing a public hysteria.”

“But–”

Again, she cut him off.  “You won’t change my mind.  You should know that.  But there is something I want to tell you, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you privately.”

Langford was listening.

“I’m going to follow my husband, James.  I have no doubt he is waiting for me.  My children know this, and they will stay with me for as long as I have left.  But I want you to do something for me.  Something important.

“Anything.”

“I want you to find out who did this to Merl—and kill them.  I want you to do it for me.”

Langford’s expression froze.

“And I want them to know why.  Because no one who does something like that to a man like Merl deserves to stay on this planet.”

Langford stared at her, unmoving.

“Surprised?”

He slowly nodded.

“Don’t be,” she said as her eyes suddenly hardened.  “I’m a humanitarian, not a pacifist.”

10

As a dazed Langford gazed out over the brightly colored grass, Alison Shaw was gazing over an endless sea of bright blue water, sitting on the edge of the Pathfinder’s stern, with her legs hanging freely over the side.  The tropical sun was high overhead in the azure sky, accompanied by the Caribbean Sea’s usual tepid humidity.

A long, contemplative stare finally interrupted by a synthesized voice from the computer vest wrapped around her midsection.

Alison.

She turned her head and found Sally’s gray-spotted head bobbing above the gentle waves nearby, joined a moment later by Dirk’s.

“Yes, Sally?”

You come now.

Sitting next to her, Neely Lawton watched as Alison blinked thoughtfully before replying.  “Not today, Sally.”

Why no swim Alison?

Alison tried to think of how to clarify without her explanation resulting in a thousand more questions.  “It’s a bad day.”

Why bad?

“We got some bad news.”

She was half expecting to hear the familiar buzz of IMIS unable to translate the sentence and was surprised when it never came.  She momentarily wondered what combination IMIS had chosen for the word news.

Sally’s eyes studied her, dark and unblinking.  Heads want more talk.

“I’m sure they do,” Alison murmured.

The elders wanted to talk constantly now, to understand more about humans and their civilization and the expanse of it all.  The breadth and density, as well as the size of their geography.  This was something Alison struggled to describe with IMIS’s limited vocabulary.  But even more than that, they wanted to know more about the ordeal with which the humans were coping.  They understood that humans were sick—many of them. And they seemed to innately understand the severity of the problem and the risk to human society.

But what they lacked in their understanding of sheer magnitude they made up for in a genuine if not innocent desire to help.

They understood sickness.  All creatures were prone to it, even dolphins.  Diseases and parasites, even viruses.  Although human researchers far from understood transmission amongst water-born creatures, the fact was, dolphins understood the concept.  And they could relate—at least to a point.

What differed in dolphins was their inborn ability to heal themselves—individually, which made something like a pandemic seem very unlikely, at least outwardly.

Because when they got sick, the dolphins came home to their birthing grounds, the same grounds surrounded not only by extraordinary levels of vegetation but the water itself.  The water was laced with compounds emanating from an alien ship buried nearby in the form of a mysterious green liquid.

The liquid had not only appeared to affect the dolphin’s evolution for hundreds or thousands of years but had created a home for them like no other on the planet, attracting vast pods of dolphins by the tens of thousands returning home every year in what could only be described as a Cetacea-level pilgrimage.  Which, according to the elders, they also appeared to do in the event of serious illness.

Leaving a lingering question Neely was still pondering: Did the liquid in the water truly heal them from sickness?

The question may sound silly on the surface but was not, because genetics was complicated.

They knew the green liquid could heal what it came into contact with—plants, animals, mammals, even the alien ship itself—stemming from the ship’s miraculous design to repair itself automatically when traveling long distances through space by having the green liquid infused within the very walls of the spaceship at what appeared to be a molecular level.

Profound, to say the least.  Especially to Neely, because there appeared to be a difference between the ship healing itself and its effect on its surroundings versus what it was doing to their teenager Li Na.

Li Na had been injected with a bacterial form of the alien liquid, which the Chinese had sourced from a discovery in South America using a transducer, pulling the DNA sequencing from affected plants and transferring them into a single-celled human bacterium called Bacillus coagulans.

This meant that what was inside Li Na and was causing the changes to her body was three steps removed, three organisms removed, from the original liquid floating in the water, making the effects on Li Na anything but predictable.

Yet the liquid itself was another story.

They already knew how astonishingly powerful it was—acting as both a nutrient and an energy source.  And while the dolphins DNA profiles had not shown markers for genetic changes due to the liquid, specific properties of it floating freely in the water had been absorbed into the dolphins’ blubber stores.

All these thoughts left Neely Lawton sitting quietly next to Alison, pondering the dolphins from afar, examining their gray rubbery skin covered by dozens of scrapes and scars from small injuries sustained in the wild, something common with all dolphins.

When the exchange with Sally fell silent, Alison turned back to Neely.

“So?”

“I’m not sure.”

“About…”

Neely finally pulled her attention from Sally and Dirk and breathed in.  “Everything we know at this point indicates that the alien liquid operates at a molecular level on an object’s fundamental framework, whether it’s the metal molecules used to make the alien ship or the plant’s genetic framework it has infiltrated, including Li Na, where it can be observed changing her actual genome.  But with her, it’s more complicated.”

“Okay.”

“My point is that what it changes or improves seems to be still limited to an object’s original design.  We saw it heal the young girl Sofia in Puerto Rico who had cancer.”

“So, the liquid can heal.”

Neely peered pensively at the water.  “The question is not can it heal—the question is what can it heal?”

She turned to Alison.  “Cancer, at its root, is cells within our bodies that go bad—mutating for whatever reason into cells which then divide and replicate relentlessly forming tumors.  But,” Neely said, “they are also cells that come from our DNA.  Our own genetic framework.”

“So, it can heal the existing design of something?”

“Correct.”

“And the problem is…”

“The problem,” she answered, “is that it’s one thing to heal an object from its original blueprints.  But a virus is different.  A virus has its own DNA or RNA.  And while it can’t replicate on its own, it can invade a susceptible cell and cause the cell’s internal machinery to make more, infecting another and causing it to make even more, and so on.  My point is that the virus is its own organism with its own genetic code and framework.  And if this alien liquid can repair or enhance an object’s original DNA design…what would it do if it came into contact with a virus?!”

“I see the problem.”

“Right.  What if someone with a virus came in contact with the liquid?  We have this liquid with almost miraculous qualities that can heal most anything.  This thing is so powerful that if we were able to harness it on a biological level, we might be able to ensure a global pandemic like this never happens again.  But the risk is…what if it simultaneously makes the virus stronger?  Or even unkillable?”

At that, Alison frowned.  “That’s not good.”

“Not at all.”

Alison looked at Neely and shook her head.  “There’s no free lunch.”

“No free lunch,” she repeated.  “Including for Li Na.”

A few minutes later, a shadow appeared over both women, causing them to look up at the silhouetted image standing above them blocking the sun.

It was the broad, unmistakable outline of Steve Caesare, who glanced briefly out over the water at dozens of frolicking dolphins swimming back and forth past the Pathfinder’s stern.

“Am I interrupting?”

Neely held a hand over her brow as a temporary visor.  “Nothing important.  What’s up?”

The tone in his voice was solemn.  “We think we have a DNA sample for Secretary Miller’s killer.”

11

They entered the lab to find John Clay alone, speaking with Will Borger over video conference.   Clay cut himself off and promptly pushed his chair back, allowing the women a closer view of the monitor—Neely in front.

“You wanted to see me?”

Clay nodded and motioned to Will, who spoke through the screen.  “Hey, Neely.  Yeah.  We have something we need your help with.”

“What is it?”

“It appears investigators have lifted what they believe are DNA samples of Mr. Miller’s murderer.  They’ve just finished sequencing them and uploaded the results onto the server as evidence.”

“Do we have a copy of it?”

“We do,” Borger nodded.  “I just sent it over.”

Neely reached for another chair and eased herself down, searching for and opening a program called a genome browser to display the DNA sequence and annotation data.  A progress bar appeared as the information was imported before displaying the data in a multitude of dark blue lines and bar graphs.  Each line and each bar included small arrows for dragging back and forth along the range of data.

“Did they run it through CODIS?”

“Yes.  And there was no match in either CODIS or the DoD’s database.”

CODIS stood for Combined DNA Index System, a nationwide database used by the country’s law enforcement agencies to cross-check profiles based on DNA evidence lifted from crime scenes, looking for genetic hits on criminals whose sequences had previously been collected and saved.  The system had become increasingly helpful at identifying culprits and accelerating investigations, often from days and weeks to hours.

The Department of Defense had a similar system, cataloging genetic samples of military personnel to identify remains of soldiers killed in combat.

“What about the genealogy companies?”

“They’re working on it.”

Neely nodded.  Genealogy databases were a stickier matter.  Some private companies freely shared their data with law enforcement while others did not.  It required a search warrant and often produced lackluster results.  After all, most individuals with criminal tendencies were rarely naïve enough to voluntarily mail in a DNA sample just to find out where their relatives were from.

“Wait a minute.”  Something occurred to her, and she glanced back at Will’s video window.  “If they found DNA, did they find anything else?”

“You mean like fingerprints?”

“For starters.”

Will nodded onscreen.  “They did.  But there was no match.”

“None at all?”

“Nope.

“How many prints were lifted?”

Borger’s eyes shifted in the video, causing Neely to turn and look over her shoulder at Clay and Caesare.

“They found a lot,” Will replied.  “A few dozen.”

“And were they the same?”

“Many of them were.”

She turned back to Clay and Caesare again.  “Zero matches?”

Both men shook their heads.  “Isn’t everyone pretty much fingerprinted these days at one time or another?”

Caesare grinned beneath his mustache.  “That’s what I said.”

Then it finally hit Neely. She whirled herself back around.  “You’re not suggesting…”

“It’s a possibility.”

Caesare finished the sentence.  “Either the person was never fingerprinted…or…their records have been deleted.”

“Which is why the investigators are now focusing on the DNA samples,” added Will.

It was a surprise that left Neely studying her screen in silence. At the same time, her eyes scanned the dozens of graphs before using her mouse to slide some of the tiny arrows back and forth through chunks of DNA data.

One by one, she moved through the genetic values, occasionally stopping on common segments, before continuing and quietly thinking, until she finally stopped and leaned back.

“Thoughts?”

Seemingly unaware of the question, she leaned forward again, brought up a new program and began typing.  She imported the data file and then selected one of her preprogrammed jobs.

“Neely?”

This time she heard and looked up at Alison.

“Do you have something?”

“Not really.  But there are common markings we can look for to see if it reveals anything out of the ordinary.”

She finished typing and selected a script of commands to run, then clicked a green button, launching a process and filling the screen with scrolling data.

“What this does,” Neely said, “is run through the data looking for common annotations that can–”

She paused when the scrolling data suddenly froze.

“Hmm.”

“What is it?”

“A PCR.”

“What’s a PCR?”

Neely blinked before turning away from the screen.  “PCR stands for Polymerase Chain Reaction.  It’s an anomaly in the sequencing that indicates an edit.”

“An edit?”

She nodded.  “A gene edit.”

“You mean…”

“A manmade edit,” she replied. “Engineered.”

The three standing behind her all glanced at each other while Neely picked up a pen and noted the sequence location.  Without a word, she resumed the program.

Several seconds later, it stopped again.

“Another PCR?”

This time Neely didn’t answer.  Instead, she peered at the screen with even more curiosity, once again noting the location on her paper before continuing.

It took several minutes for the program to freeze again.  But when it did, Neely's expression changed to concern.

“Is this normal?”

Neely shook her head.  She went back to her saved commands with her mouse and ran another shorter script—this one completed after less than a minute, displaying a full page of results.

“This is another, shorter job to verify this is a human sample.”

“And?”

She nodded.  “It’s definitely human.”

Will Borger spoke.  “So, listen, I hate to ruin the suspense here, but I can’t see what you’re doing.”

Neely crossed her arms and leaned back again, this time with a frown.  “I’m running the DNA sample through some tests.”

“I gathered that,” said Borger.  “But something doesn’t sound very good.”

Neely continued staring at the screen.  “Gene editing is the manual process of changing a genome sequence by adding or removing genetic material through things like CRISPR using an enzyme like a pair of scissors.  It’s something primarily used on smaller organisms, not humans.”

“But this human sample has edits?”

“Yes, which is very unusual.”  Still frowning, Neely turned and looked directly up at John Clay.  “We’ve only found three so far, but I’m willing to bet there’s a lot more.”

12

The next step was simply astounding.

Created by Parabon NanoLabs out of Reston, Virginia, DNA phenotyping could only be described as a giant leap forward in next-generation forensics.

Leveraging genetic patterns of common physical characteristics, Parabon’s system was designed to rely on those same characteristics to reverse engineer a human being.  Or, more specifically, the image of a human being, by using advanced machine learning algorithms.

Launched only a few years before and heavily funded by the U.S. Government, Parabon NanoLabs was designed to fill a crucial investigative gap—providing new leads from genetic samples of individuals not already in the CODIS or DoD’s systems by compiling over a decade of previous genetic research.  Combining DNA information from thousands of different individuals, common sequences could now be directly matched to common physical attributes.  For example, estimating a person’s eye color, hair color, ancestry, even the dimensions and shape of a human face.

Over three hours later, all four were back in Neely’s lab, watching the screen intently.

“Does this really work?”

Neely nodded.  “It’s been used to solve dozens of crimes.  It’s not perfect, but in some cases it provides enough semblance of what the person might look like to generate new leads.”

“Like a sketch artist.”

“Exactly.  Except, in this case, the witness is the person’s own DNA.”

Unfortunately, the process was slow, requiring almost twenty-five minutes to see the first pass—a vague, barely humanoid outline appearing against a white background.  Then twenty-five minutes later, the second pass estimating the person’s skin color, facial dimensions and skin definition.  Then finally came the third revealing eye shape, skin contours and color.

As it appeared on the screen, the ‘estimated’ face looked distinctly computerized, like a character from a video game.  But what it lacked in human touch the image made up for in authenticity.

Enough for John Clay to recognize something within the composite.  Something that instantly jumped out as soon as Neely began to rotate the image in three dimensions.

Clay immediately felt his adrenaline surge.  Moments before, Neely herself had gasped.  She, too, had seen something.  Something indefinable in the composite but no less familiar.

Clay’s surprise was followed by two other emotions—dread and fear.

For Neely, it was only fear.

13

In reality, Neely’s composite was not all that close.  Not nearly accurate enough to spot the man in public, especially by his lower face and chin.  Even his skin tone was at least two full shades darker.  But the eyes.  The composite’s eyes were closer than anything else.

The same eyes and eyebrows that John Clay and Neely Lawton both recognized.

Dark and unreadable.  Eyes that were now open and unblinking, reflecting no light as they peered out from the shadows, hidden in a mass of dense vegetation comprised of green, spade-shaped aspen tree leaves, a wall of thick forest just thirty miles outside Charlotte, North Carolina.

The pair of dark eyes finally blinked briefly, remaining focused on a singular target moving slowly in the distance.  It was well outside a human’s normal range of vision, but the recognition was clear to him.

Colonel Gregory Thornberry moved smoothly across his deck to its edge, where he stopped at the wooden guard railing and peered out—studying the forest of dark green trees surrounding his house.

After a long gaze, Thornberry raised a coffee cup to his lips and drank before lowering it onto the railing. He studied one of the beams running the large redwood deck’s entire length, then down to the planks, noting the dozens of warped and discolored boards—a sight that did not bother him in the least.

It was something he was looking forward to.

His first post-retirement project.  Prioritized by his wife to be sanded and refinished before the party next week when it would be filled with dozens of fellow officers and members drinking heavily and wishing him well.

A highly decorated career in the U.S. Army would not be easy to put behind him, as Thornberry was anything but idle.  His morning cup of coffee had been the only relaxing and undisturbed part of his day for the last twenty-three years.

He sipped again and took in the forest before him with a deep breath.  Even Germany’s most remarkable forests, Jasmund or Spreewald, could not hold a candle to America’s Great Smoky Mountains.   Neither could their coffee.

The eyes concealed deep within the trees continued staring and blinking slowly, watching in the distance as Thornberry finished his coffee and examined his deck again with a satisfied nod before turning and briskly walking back through the door to the house.

It was him.

The same face.  The same demeanor.  Posture erect and robust, moving firmly and smoothly with every step.  His stride was balanced and ready at all times.

Thornberry remained a soldier through and through.  Aged perhaps, now in his early fifties, but still deadly.  Extremely deadly.  Which would make things more difficult.

***

To the observer’s surprise, Thornberry emerged again late that night through the side garage door downstairs in a manner even more surprising than the unexpected hour.

The retired commando moved out in a slightly crouched position without making a sound, his knees bent and each foot carefully rolling heel-to-toe to smoothly distribute the weight of his six-foot-one, two-hundred-pound frame.  The only sound was an imperceptible crunch as his left foot moved across a patch of small gravel into position behind a large pillar supporting the giant deck above him.

Thornberry had spent the last decade as Special Forces liaison to AFRICOM, the United States Africa Command, headquartered out of Stuttgart, Germany.  He’d served directly as point man between AFRICOM’s top brass and a multitude of special forces covert missions throughout the African continent.

But reporting to Generals at Africa Command meant Thornberry’s boots had never truly left the ground.  On the contrary, he remained close to the same Airborne units in which he’d begun his military career, both in planning and executing dozens of missions to facilitate and directly support various U.S. policy objectives.

And while Thornberry was not as chiseled as his early years in the Berets, he was not far from it either.  What little he had lost, he more than made up for in hardened experience, with an instinct honed over the years in which his own body would not let him sleep when it detected something wrong.

Something, or someone, was outside.

Instead of sleep, his body filled itself with pure adrenaline and a taste in his mouth for blood.

The observer watched from within the dense vegetation as Thornberry remained motionless, peering carefully into the darkness.

Not far from where the commander studied a black patch of forest, the stranger’s lips curled into a faint grin.

Thornberry had always been a tough son of a bitch.  Cool, calculating and utterly ruthless once the fight commenced.  But even more was that sixth sense of his.  A knack, or instinct, for knowing when things were about to go wrong.

It was instinct that was speaking to Thornberry now.

Thornberry’s older gray eyes slowly scanned the darkness, careful not to focus too closely on any one thing, but instead using his wider field of peripheral vision to register any unusual movement.

But there was nothing.

No changes or shifting of any kind.

Thornberry slowed his breathing and stopped his scan of the forest, instead closing his eyes and listening, allowing his ears to search through the field of chirping crickets for anything else.  Anything moving or even breathing too loudly.

Something was out there.

Thornberry’s eyes opened again and he focused on a dense patch of blackness perhaps ten yards from the exact location the other man stood waiting.

Ensconced in darkness, the stranger’s lips widened in a slight grin when he realized the commander was unaware of just how close he was, quietly poised at the very edge of the dense foliage only steps from the passing gravel driveway.

Even under an obscured moon, he could see the exposed portion of Thornberry’s face with perfect clarity.  He carefully watched as Thornberry’s eyes panned across the dark expanse before him.  Searching.  The stranger slowed his breathing when Thornberry peered directly at him and moved on.

Seeing nothing, Thornberry panned back again to where he’d begun, he lifted a small night scope in his left hand and squinted with one eye, scanning yet again.  Slower this time.

Almost imperceptible in the darkness, the stranger’s eyes widened upon seeing the scope. He fought to remain still, studying the commander’s body position, angled slightly to one side.

He couldn’t see Thornberry’s right hand. It was positioned just behind the man’s hip, angled purposefully—a weapon.

It was a realization that would have given the stranger pause in any other circumstances.  But not now.

Because Thornberry had just made a mistake.

The commander was aware of the compromise he had made, if only momentarily.

Using the scope had cut off his peripheral vision, but only briefly.   He could still see enough with his naked eye to know nothing in the darkness could reach him that quickly.

It would be a reliable assumption at any other time.  But tonight, it was about to be Thornberry’s undoing.  No one, not even he, could have imagined just how quickly the person hiding in the darkness could cover that distance.

It took only seconds after the other man spotted the scope to seize his moment, leaping like a leopard from his position and bounding over a hundred feet in a fraction of the time it would have taken anyone else.  He required only half the number of steps.

It all happened in a blur, so fast that when Thornberry’s ears heard the disturbance, it provided him only enough time to glance away from the scope.  Not enough to avoid being hit by what felt like a freight train, driving him through the thick wooden pillar and up from his crouched position, smashing into the hard cinderblock wall directly behind him, instantly breaking bones as he hit.

But Thornberry’s reflexes were almost as fast.  With no thought involved, only instinct, he hit, found the ground, and quickly scrambled onto a knee.   His left hand snatched the gun from his dangling, broken right side, adjusting the grip midmotion and firing three rounds from the barrel.

Three bullets feebly disappeared into empty air just before Thornberry’s powerful arm was seized and smashed down over a knee, breaking with a sickening crack above the elbow.

The commander howled in pain and flung himself at the shadow.  Barely functioning arms wrapped around the figure in a desperate attempt to drive him to the ground under his own body weight.  But he wasn’t fast enough.  In a blur, the figure moved again, twisting out and away as the two fell, crashing to the ground alongside each other, only for the stranger to bound back onto his feet, leaving the older commando grappling empty air.

In mere seconds, Thornberry’s brain changed from fight to flight and then to panic as his flailing limbs found nothing, leaving only his legs, upturned and now kicking wildly into the air in an attempt to keep his attacker at bay until somewhere in the darkness, something seized his right leg and smashed it.

Thornberry howled again and spun, now desperate and trying to flee by pushing himself away with his good leg, but his body was too heavy to move with only a single heel.  Instead, he merely kicked gravel away with his left boot, showering the wall next to him with a smattering of small pebbles with each helpless kick.

He tried to roll, but this time was stopped by a heavy stomp on his chest, forcing him flat against the ground where a boot remained on top of him.  Chest heaving and broken arms screaming, he continued to try to free himself.

Out of the shadow appeared an object that Thornberry immediately recognized and caused him to freeze.  It was the outline of his own Smith & Wesson .40 caliber sidearm descending to within a foot of his face and pointed directly at his left eye.

Next, his assailant appeared from behind the gun as the stranger lowered himself through a ray of thin, glowing moonlight.

Recognition came swiftly.  Shock covered Thornberry’s face, while his attacker smiled above him through dark, unblinking eyes.

“Long time no see.”

14

The deep thundering blades accelerated into a blur, tearing at the night sky and raising the giant Sea King helicopter slowly into the air before rotating away to expose the metal beast’s flashing aft navigation strobe light.

Below, behind the Pathfinder’s main deck railing, Alison Shaw watched the aircraft’s shadowy silhouette slowly turn and then dip forward to accelerate, all beneath a waning crescent moon high overhead cloaked in a dark sky.

With one hand, she pulled several strands of dark hair from her face, finally turning away when the chopper’s strobe light became little more than a distant flash.

Alison spotted a figure above her on the ship’s bridge deck, also stoically watching the aircraft with both hands resting on the cool railing in front of him.

Even in the darkness, she could easily make out Captain Emerson’s outline.

Emerson blinked thoughtfully, still watching the aircraft’s tiny silhouette over the shimmering water, a hundred thoughts running through his mind.  A hundred things that needed to be done.  All of which, related or not, kept coming back to the helicopter that had now blinked out of sight.

Nothing was as it seemed.  He experienced the feeling as though every facet of the world, every truism or axiom, had somehow been turned on its head, leaving the world hanging in the very balance of madness.

Emerson turned from the railing and looked at his Officer of the Deck.  The OOD, a man named Dougard, stood waiting at the entrance to the bridge, his short black hair visible beneath a gray-blue baseball hat, keeping the white metal door propped open behind him.

“Secure from flight ops.  Come to course zero three five.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”  Dougard nodded and immediately disappeared inside, followed moments later by a much louder announcement over the ship’s PA system, otherwise known as 1MC.

“SECURE FROM FLIGHT OPERATIONS.  REPEAT, SECURE FROM FLIGHT OPERATIONS.  SMOKING LAMP IS LIT ON ALL WEATHER DECKS.”

Emerson turned back around and leaned into the railing as the giant ship began its turn.  He shook his head in annoyance.

What a mess.

***

Alison entered the ship’s sickbay and squinted beneath the room’s brightly illuminated examination lights, finding Li Na calmly sitting on one of two wall-mounted folding operating tables with Neely Lawton standing next to her, studying a computer tablet.

“You wanted to see me?”

Neely nodded without glancing up before placing the tablet down and turning to face Alison.   “We both did.”

Alison raised an eyebrow and watched her friend turn toward the teenager.

“There is something Li Na wants to share with you.”

It took the girl a moment to speak.  When she did, her words carried a hint of nervousness as she searched for the right words.

“It is the dolphin.  He keeps speaking to me.”

“You mean Vize?” Alison corrected herself.  “Or rather, Edwin.”

“Yes.  I can feel him trying to talk to me.”  Li Na frowned as if disappointed with her choice of words.  “Not talk.  But…”

“Communicate?”

“Yes,” she said, glancing at Neely.  “Communicate.  I do not hear words.  I feel them.”

Neely studied her.  “You said before it felt like a vibration or a rhythm.  Like music without the sound.”

“I feel it from him deep down, over and over.  But what I didn’t tell you is that it’s faster now.  More often.”

“More frequent?”

Li Na nodded.  “And it feels as if he’s pulling me.”

“Pulling?”

Again, she nodded.  “Like asking questions without words.  All the time.”

Curious, Alison crossed her arms.  “He’s trying to learn from you?”

“Maybe.  But it does not always feel like learning.  Sometimes it feels like…searching.”

“You mean like probing?”

“Perhaps.”

Alison looked at Neely, who was already staring at her.

“Probing for what?”

“I don’t know.”

“Her DNA is still changing,” Neely said.  “Whatever is happening between them, it seems she’s becoming more sensitive to it.”

Alison mulled Neely’s words before turning back to Li Na.  “How often is this happening now?”

“A lot.”

“How much is a lot?”

“Many times a day.”

The room grew silent before Neely spoke.  “Speaking of changes,” she said, “watch this.”  With that, she gently took Li Na’s left hand and placed it in the girl’s own lap.  Then she picked up a small, silver-colored neurologic hammer and, with her free hand, pressed a thumb into the crook of Li Na’s bent elbow.  Using the hammer, she tapped the top of her own thumb, causing Li Na’s forearm to jerk in response.

Neely glanced at Alison.  “Did you see that?”

“See what, her reflexes?”

“Watch it again.”

Neely repeated the test, tapping before looking back at Alison.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for.”

“It was instant,” Neely replied.  “There’s no delay at all.  A reflex test is a nerve test.  Nerves, synaptic connections, the spinal cord and the overall speed of the motor pathways.”

“And?”

“And,” said Neely, “our electrical signals take time to travel up and down our neural pathways.  It’s fast, but it’s measurable.”

Alison blinked before looking at Li Na, then finally back to her arm where Neely repeated the test.

“No delay whatsoever.”

“What does that mean?”

Without answering, Neely stepped away from Li Na and toward Alison, passing her and moving toward the door.  With her back to both, she casually withdrew a pen from her shirt pocket, then turned and immediately threw it past Li Na’s right shoulder.

Alison never saw the pen but jumped when Li Na’s arm and hand moved together in a blur—instinctively grabbing the pen in midair.

With wide eyes, she stared at the teenager in amazement.  “Wow.”

Neely grinned.  “That’s what I mean.”

After several moments, Neely shrugged and smiled at the girl, placing a hand on her back.  “That’s enough for today, Li Na.  Why don’t you relax?  We can talk more about Edwin tomorrow.”

Li Na nodded, happily jumping down from the table.  “Goodnight,” she said and, without any more prompting, stepped out through the narrow door.

When the door closed with a loud click, Alison turned back to Neely.  “Wow!”

“That’s not all.  Her hearing is also growing more sensitive.  She’s picking up frequencies outside of our normal human range.”

“Incredible.”

“Yes.  It is.  But I’m much more interested in what she’s experiencing with Edwin.  Do you remember when you told me about some of Sally’s early translations? About how it had been a long time since we’d talked?”

“I do.”

“You and Chris had a theory that the dolphins were using some sort of non-verbal communication with each other.  Something that humans also potentially had at some point in time.  In our past.”

“That’s right.”

“And I agreed at the time, given how remarkably similar our brains are to one another, that it was conceivable that some common form of communication had once been possible.  Something that perhaps we humans had evolved out of.”

“I remember.”

“Which is why perhaps neither you nor I were exactly shocked when something started happening between Li Na and Edwin, given her changing DNA from the alien-infused bacteria.  Some segments of her genome appear to be getting turned off, while other, older pieces are potentially being reactivated.”

“You think this communication between them is real.”

“Yes, I do.  Of that, I’m sure.  What I was not sure about was whether it was truly a form of communication or something else.  Perhaps something more instinctual or involuntary.”

“But now you think it’s voluntary.”

She curled a lip and nodded.  Alison had a knack for reading her.  “Yes.”

“I do, too.  And I’ll tell you why,” she said, staring at Neely.  “I have not been in the water much lately.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“But you don’t know why.”  Alison took a deep breath, causing Neely to grow curious.  “It’s not just because of everything that’s been going on.  The depressing mood we’ve all been struggling with.”  She shook her head.  “It’s because of them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean because of their elders.  The dolphins’.  Dirk and Sally are the ones I communicate with the easiest through IMIS.  They know that.  And their elders know that.”

“So?”

“So, lately, Dirk and Sally have been asking me a lot of questions.  As in pumping me.”

“Pumping you?”

“For information.”

“Information about what?”

“Everything,” she said.  “And not just about us—here, on the Pathfinder.  But about all humans.  In increasing levels of detail.  How many there really are.  How we communicate.  Who’s in charge?  How we work together?  Do we get along?”

Neely frowned.  “Do we get along?!”

“Yes.  Things like that.  Things Dirk and Sally never asked before.  But they’re asking now.  Repeatedly.  And I don’t think it’s their doing.”

“You think the elders are behind it.”

“I do.  I think their elders want to know everything they can about us.”

“For what reason?”

Alison shrugged.  “I’m not sure.  But something tells me they’re doing the same thing with Li Na through Edwin.  Those two have a much deeper level of connection.  A more powerful connection.  And I’m beginning to think the elders are simultaneously trying to get information from her like they are from me, only   through a much deeper means.”

15

Alison awoke from her sleep following several loud knocks on her door—or what sounded more like a soft pounding from the side of someone’s fist against the other side of the thick metal.

She opened her eyes and stared at the door to make sure it wasn’t a dream, abruptly sitting up when they sounded again.

She scrambled to her feet and into a pair of shorts, pulling a T-shirt over her head before stumbling to the door.

When opened, she frowned at the face of Chris Ramirez on the other side.

“My God, Chris, what time is it?”

“Uh, like nine-thirty.”

“What?  Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.  Well, maybe not a heart attack.  Maybe a bad rash.”

She gazed at him sarcastically and turned to grab her watch.  “How did I sleep so long?”

“Hot date last night?”

“Yeah.  With Neely.”

“Ooooh.”

Alison rolled her eyes.  “Shut up.  We were up late talking.”

“What about?”

She reached up and pulled back her dark shoulder-length hair, wrapping a small band around a short ponytail.  “Kind of a long story.  I’ll tell you over breakfast.”

“I’ve already eaten.”

“Fine.  I’ll tell you while you watch me eat.”

“Yay.”  Chris stepped back giving Alison room to slip her shoes on.  “First, I have something to show you.”

“What’s that?”

“It typically means something you need to see.”

Alison rolled her eyes again.  “It’s way too early for sarcasm.”

“Fine.  Just come with me, then.”

She closed her door with a loud clunk and, with a shake of her head, followed Chris out and into the open air and sunshine, where he turned left and led her approximately eighty feet down a metal catwalk.  A soft echo sounded with each step from their sneakers.  At the end, he turned left again and led her through an athwartships tunnel snaking beneath a walkway from the deck above, along with dozens of metal pipes and conduits, to the starboard side of the ship.

The ship was no longer making way, having arrived back at their previous location anchored above the alien ship and swaying gently from side to side from the ocean swells.  The burnt skeleton of the old Valant oil rig protruded high above the water.  Black and mangled, it leaned precariously to one side after the fires had long been extinguished.

But what surprised Alison was not the rig or the ship, but what she saw in the water nearly forty feet below the Pathfinder’s main deck.

In a giant arc surrounding the ship on its starboard side were hundreds of dolphin heads bobbing above the water.  Not playing as they normally did, but rather still, simply bobbing and watching the ship.

“What in the world?”

Chris turned to her.  “They’ve been like that since this morning.”  Alison slowly shook her head in bewilderment.

“What in the world…are they up to?”

16

“Are you sure about this?”

It was a rhetorical question, asked while Alison fervently hoisted the rebreather tank up and onto her back, a struggle that prompted Chris to step forward and assist her.

Alison nodded at Neely’s question without looking up.  Instead, she clipped the nylon straps across her Neoprene-covered chest.  “Something is going on.  And I’m going to find out what.”

Neely glanced over Alison’s shoulder at Chris.  “Well, this should be interesting.”

“Yeah. Ali, listen.  You seem a little, uh–”

“Mad?”

He shrugged.  “How about perturbed?”

Alison inhaled and turned toward him.  “Remember what we were saying about Mother Nature, Chris?  She’s not wasteful.  If dolphins have larger, more folded brains and more neural capacity as a result, then where is it?”

He opened his mouth but was cut off.

“They don’t have our dexterity—no fingers, no hands.  No physical outlet to serve their large brains.  They can’t create or build.  So, what is all that neural capacity being used for?”

“Well, we already found their echolocation is much more advanced than we originally thought.”

“Yes, we did.  But that’s not enough.  Mother Nature would not simply waste trillions of remaining brain cells.”

He started to reply and was again cut off.

“You want to know what I think?” said Alison.

“Uh, okay.”

“I think they’re smarter and have more abilities than we know.  And I think their heads, or elders, may just be the smartest out of all of them.”

Chris’s expression turned inquisitive.  Contemplating.  “Interesting.”

“You think they’re purposefully holding more back?” asked Neely.

“That’s exactly what I think.”

Alison.

Sally’s words echoed through the small plugs in Alison’s ears almost immediately upon plunging into the warm, swirling water.

“Hello, Sally.”

You back.

“Yes.  I am.  To talk.”

Good Alison.  We like talk.

“What would you like to talk about?”

Sally’s reply was not immediate.  Instead, she stared at Alison for a moment.

Alison.  You not happy.

“I am happy.  Just tired.  What would you like to talk about?  Or would your heads rather do the talking?”

The resulting translation through her IMIS vest was long and ended with a buzz signaling a translation issue.  But it didn’t matter.  Alison could see Sally understood, made evident by the dolphin’s second and much longer pause.

Yes.  Heads like talk.

“Then let’s go.”

Alison had no idea whether dolphins could detect frustration in humans.  But if they could, she suspected it was precisely what she was seeing in Sally.  A slight but perceptible drop in enthusiasm as the dolphin twisted to allow Alison to grip her large dorsal fin, along with a brief hesitation as she accelerated, passing dozens of other dolphins’ tails slowly moving back and forth to keep their heads above water.

“Can you hear me, Ali?”

“Yes, Chris.  I can hear you.”

“So, uh, listen.  Let’s see if we can avoid…”

“What?”

“You know…pissing them off.  The elders, I mean.”

She reached a hand down to depress a button on her vest, silencing the vest’s external speaker.

“Relax.  I’m not going to confront them or anything.”

“Really?  Because it kind of feels like–”

“I said don’t worry,” she repeated.  “After all, we want information, too.”

The dive was slow and gradual, descending perhaps twenty feet in depth but several hundred in length, confirming the dolphin’s elders were not far away.  Unsurprisingly, they were accompanied by Vize, or Edwin.  Alison had felt him long before she saw him by the strange buzzing throughout her body.

The three older dolphins, along with Vize, were floating calmly in open water with no other dolphins around them.

“Seems as if they’re picking up on IMIS’s translation problems when too many of them are around,” said Chris.

“Evidently.”

As she and Sally neared, Alison let go of her fin and allowed the drag of the water to slow her to a stop.  She then added several kicks of her fins to close the gap.

All four dolphins watched her intently through dark gray eyes, unspeaking until Vize said something first—something IMIS did not understand.

Next, one of the elders spoke.

Alison.

“Hello,” she said with a polite nod through her mask.

Thank you to talk.

“You’re welcome.”

We like learn to humans.

A moment later, the phrase repeated in her ears, with IMIS changing the last word to ‘of.’

“And we enjoy learning about you.”

IMIS could and now often simplified translations such as ‘enjoy’ into more elementary equivalents such as ‘like,’ allowing Alison to use more of her standard wording.  And while the number of words IMIS actually understood was still limited, Alison and her team had gradually become better at working around them.  Which required, of course, when it came to context, an extra dose of good old-fashion human deduction.

“What would you like to talk about?”

The elder speaking to her blinked its eyes and peered downward.  Metal.

Metal was the generic word for most human-made items.  But in some cases, IMIS was able to determine enough context to refine the reference to something such as ‘ship’ or ‘device.’

“Metal?  Which metal?”

The elder repeated the word and dipped its large gray head again.

“I…don’t understand.”  Alison pointed to her computer vest.  “Device?”

Metal.  It repeated.  Down.

“I don’t–” she began again and then paused, watching the elder once again dip its head.

“What’s it doing?” asked Chris.

Alison silenced the speaker again.  “I don’t know.  Some sort of gesture, I think.”

“Kind of looks like a bow.  Maybe a formality of some kind?”

“Maybe.  But if so, I haven’t noticed the others using it.  Perhaps speaking directly with the elders is like…”

Standing behind Chris in the Comms Room, Neely squinted and stared closely at the screen’s video feed  being broadcast from Alison’s vest.  The frame was zoomed in on the elder’s head.  “Can you pull back a bit?”

Chris complied.

When the elder dolphin did it again, Neely smirked.  “I don’t think it’s formality.  It looks to me like a gesture.  Literally.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think he, or she, is motioning downward.”

“Downward?”

“I think they’re trying to draw Alison’s attention down.”

“To what?”

Neely shrugged.  “I don’t know.  If ‘metal’ means human-made, then what below them is human-made.”

Blinking behind her face mask, Alison thought for a moment and then suddenly looked down.  “The alien ship?”

“But that’s not man-made.”

“Maybe ‘metal’ doesn’t mean human-made in this case, just non-dolphin.”

Beneath them, Alison took the cue and pointed downward.  “No human metal?”

After a pause, the elder replied.  No human.  Followed by How more.

“How more?”

How more?

“How more what?”

“Are they asking how many?”

“Or how much more.  How much more we want to see?”

“Of what, the ship?”

Alison frowned, her face softly illuminated beneath the light inside her mask.  “I have no idea.  Why would they want to know how much more we want to see of the ship?”

“Beats me,” said Chris.  “I’m guessing, just like you are.”

She repeated the question.  “How more…how more.  That’s got to mean how much more.  Right?”

Chris shrugged and glanced up at Neely.  “Uh…sure.”

“Or maybe how many more?”

“Could be either.”

Alison kept her speaker off while she deliberated.  “How many more…ships?  How many more…trips down are we going to make?”  She finally sighed.  So much for being able to work around IMIS’s limited vocabulary.

How much humans? The elder suddenly said.

Now Alison nodded.  “How many humans?”

How more humans?

“Ah, how many more humans!” she said victoriously.  Then stopped.  “Wait…are coming to the ship?”

There was no reply from any of the elders.  Instead, they asked something else.

How human learn?

“How humans learn?  Uh.  We learn the way you do, I guess.”

How human learn then?

“How humans learn then.  I don’t…”

IMIS suddenly changed and repeated the translation.

How did humans learn?

At this, Alison grew quiet and studied the elder in front of her, wearing its perpetual placid, unreadable expression.

“How did humans learn what?”

Again, another question.

How humans did do?

This time Alison didn’t try to decipher.  Instead, she waited to see if IMIS would again self-correct.  Which it did, repeating the sentence.

How did humans do it?

Now Alison’s expression began to grow dour.  “How did we do what?”

Who girl?

“What girl?”

Young girl.  Human.

“Which human girl?”

Young.  Talk to Vize.

This time, Alison’s expression froze.

She very calmly reached down to mute the speaker.

“Did you guys hear that?”

“We sure did,” answered Chris with a hint of unease.  “It sounds as if they’re asking about Li Na.”

17

“Well, they clearly know about her now.”

“Clearly,” Chris nodded.

A hundred feet below them, Alison nodded in unison.  “And why wouldn’t they, given the connection Vize has with her?”  She studied the elders through her mask, then the smaller dolphin with its oversized melon.  “They’re waiting for an answer.”

“Something tells me deception would not be good.”

Alison nodded again.  “Agreed.”

The problem, however, was the name ‘Li Na’ was not something IMIS could translate.  It would have to be manually programmed into IMIS’s vocabulary by Lee, like the rest of their names.

“Girl is friend.”

What she name.

“Her name is hard to say.”

She Vize.

Alison nodded, remembering that Vize was not a name in the dolphin’s language.  It was a description.

“Yes.  She is like Vize.”

Behind her, Sally spoke.  Alison.  You come back.

Alison studied her, confused.  “Yes, I am back.”  She waited for a reply from Sally but received nothing.

You Vize swim.

She turned back to the elder, unsure whether it was a statement or a question.

The elder repeated.  You Vize swim.

Alison grinned politely and casually moved her hand up to mute the vest’s speaker again.  “Does that strike anyone else as weird?”

Chris replied sarcastically, “You’re kidding, right?”

“Unless I’m mistaken,” Alison said, cautiously, “they want Li Na to get in the water.”

The statement left them all quiet, particularly Neely, who slowly raised herself back into a standing position behind Chris, staring at the screen and placing her hands on her hips.  “Huh.”

“Why would they want Li Na in the water?” asked Alison.

“Beats us.  But you may need to come back to ask them.  It looks like your oxygen is beginning to run low.”

Alison checked the rectangular dive computer on her wrist.  He was right.

“Okay.  I’m coming up.”

As Alison kicked toward the surface, she thought about the conversation, which had surprised her on multiple levels.  It was much more than she’d been expecting from the elders, leaving her with the distinct impression this was merely the tip of the iceberg in what they wanted to know.

And yet, what left her even more perplexed was that the dolphins were not the least bit surprised when she apologized and informed them that she had to return to the ship.

As though they were actually expecting it.

18

Several hours later, the heavens darkened from the sinking sun and filled the expanse of sky with an extraordinary display of pink and blue hues, as though painted in wide brush strokes across nature’s unending canvas and creating an equally impressive mirrored image upon the ocean’s twinkling waters. It was truly breathtaking.

Neely paused to take it in just as she stepped in next to Alison along the ship’s outer railing near the bow.

Alison was transfixed.  “I’ve never seen as many astonishingly beautiful sunsets as I have on the open ocean.”

Neely nodded. After a short silence, she said, “When we were on the Bowditch, my father and I would occasionally enjoy sunsets like this together, usually while talking about work. But sometimes we would see something like this and wouldn’t talk at all.  We’d just take it in.”

Alison smiled and then gently reached out and put a hand on Neely’s.

The two remained staring, side by side, saying nothing, just breathing in the majesty nature was offering them until the brilliant pink gradually transformed into a softer glow of orange. At last, the sun continued its final descent toward the horizon.

“What are you thinking about?” Neely finally asked.

Alison breathed out thoughtfully.  “Everything, really.  The world.  Our place in it.  Everyone’s place in it.  What it all means…”

“Any conclusions?”

Alison shook her head without looking away from the horizon.  “I don’t know what any of it means.  I think…” she said, pausing, “we just need to appreciate the time we’re here.  Because no one knows how long it will last.”

Alison’s smile spread to Neely, who nodded in agreement.  “That sounds like something John would say.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

“Am I interrupting something?”

Alison and Neely both turned to find Chris Ramirez standing just a few feet away.

“Nope.  I’ve been expecting you.  You’re late.”

“Not my fault,” he said, shrugging helplessly.  “It took them longer than expected to clean it up and amplify.”  Chris held up a small device in his hand.  It was a digital sound recorder.  “Lieutenant Tay is expecting this back.”

Alison grabbed it and winked at Neely.

“What’s going on?”

“There’s something else,” she said.

Neely looked back and forth between them.  When neither answered, she studied Alison’s face.  “I see something.”

“What do you see?”

“I’m not sure.  Happiness?”  After a few more moments, Neely shook her head.  “No, not happiness.  More like satisfaction, or smugness.”

Now Alison laughed.

“Are you two going to spill it?”

Alison inhaled and glanced at Chris.  “We know why.”

“Why what?”

“Why the dolphins want Li Na in the water.  It took a while, but I think we’ve figured it out.”

“Really?” said a surprised Neely.  “How did you do that?”

“Li Na told us.”

“She did?”

Alison nodded and looked at Chris, who pressed the recorder’s play button, releasing a loud cacophony of sounds.

Neely listened and eventually frowned.  “What is that?”

“You mean who is it.”  Alison took the device from Chris and listened intently before pausing it.  “This is the rhythm Li Na was talking about.”

Neely’s frown grew dubious.

“Listen carefully and you can hear the rhythm.  Or more specifically, the waves.”

She listened again.  “Those are dolphin clicks.”

“That’s right.  Amplified many times.”

“You recorded their echolocation?”

“Not theirs.  His.  Remember what Li Na said.  The rhythm she was feeling from Edwin was happening over and over.  Like a wave.  Which is what dolphins do with echolocation.  They make audible clicks which travel out in a wave, bouncing against things and allowing them to hear and decipher from the sound waves that return.”

Neely now grew more curious.

“And yet Edwin seems to be connecting with her at an even deeper level.  Maybe even beyond the waves.  But that’s all we can pick up.  What you’re listening to is Lieutenant Tay and his team isolating and filtering Edwin’s clicking.”  She held up the recorder and played it again.  “Listen carefully, and you can hear the waves in the background.  Rapid and successive.  Which is exactly what I sense when I’m underwater and can feel their echolocation,” said Alison.  “Most humans can feel it when close enough to a dolphin.  But Edwin’s is much stronger, and you can feel it all over your body like a blanket of rapidly succeeding waves.”

Neely mulled it over.  “Are you suggesting that Li Na can feel his echolocation without being in the water?”

“I do.  Water amplifies sound dramatically.  Much more than the same sound traveling through air.  But given how sensitive Li Na is becoming to sounds around her, I think she may now be sensitive enough to not only hear but actually feel Edwin’s waves of echolocation in the air itself.”

The look on Neely’s face was of genuine surprise.  Not just at the concept, but in large part because it was something she would have never considered.

Before she could speak, Alison continued, holding up the small recorder.  “I think this is exactly what I feel underwater, and it is what Li Na is feeling above water.”

“But echolocation…in humans?”

“It’s not as odd as you might think,” said Chris.  “Other animals use echolocation, too.”

“I know that, but humans aren’t bats.”

“Not just bats,” he said.  “There are several animals and mammals that echolocate.  Whales and dolphins, obviously.  Bats.  And some small birds.  Hedgehogs also use it.  But believe it or not, some humans have developed the ability too.  Blind humans.”

“Is that right?”

“Yep.  Some humans–”

“Especially those blind since birth,” interjected Alison.

“Right,” Chris nodded.  “Some humans who have been blind for many years have actually developed the ability to use echolocation to see their surroundings.  I say ‘see’ because research shows that even though it’s an auditory skill, it eventually begins stimulating the brain’s visual cortex, as well.”

Neely shook her head in fascination.  “I had no idea.”

“And if I had not been in the water today,” Alison said, “feeling the sound waves from Edwin’s super echolocation, I may not have put it together with what Li Na had said before.”  She finally handed the recorder back to Chris.  “But the most intriguing part is this—remember that it’s the characteristics of the returning sound waves that provide information to the echolocating animals.  Waves paint the picture of what the animal is ‘seeing.’  So, the big question is…if Li Na can indeed feel the sound waves of Edwin’s echolocation through the air, what might Edwin be receiving in return from Li Na?”

19

Three thousand miles away, the same night sky could not have looked more different, with the last of the sun’s rays radiating both over and through a thin layer of clouds stretching out over a vast horizon of low-lying barren desert hills.  Distant, lifeless hills gradually grew darker against the last remnants of the fading sun, resulting in shadows stretching across the barren landscape.

One long shadow touched the edges of a long two-lane road, dotted with cars moving in both directions.  Modern but lonely, the road meandered around the base of a small mesa before straightening again for several miles toward a small and upscale housing tract where several hundred houses remained quietly nestled in a patch of green, well-manicured landscape.

One of the cars traveling the stretch of black asphalt finally slowed before turning onto a connecting side street which led into the community.  The car slowed further, almost to a crawl, as it approached a large steel black gate.  After several seconds, the gate split in the middle and swung open long enough for the dark gray car to continue forward.  After a short pause, the gates calmly began their swing back in the opposite direction until rejoining and locking.

Once inside the gate, the car traveled to the first intersection and turned left, moving down a quiet, well-maintained street and finally turning right, continuing to the end of the block where it reached the round of a cul-de-sac and eased into the driveway of a large white and green painted house.

Once inside the garage, a lone female came to a stop and put the Mazda 3 sedan into park before promptly unbuckling her seat belt.  She then grabbed a large leather satchel from the passenger seat and opened the door.

When she entered the house, it was already dark, with shades long since drawn to block out the relentless afternoon heat.  She dropped her bag on the dark counter in one motion while simultaneously reaching for the light switch, momentarily surprised when nothing happened.

She stared at the wall and flipped the switch down and up again.  Nothing.

Instinctively, she glanced up before looking around and spotted the microwave oven, checking to see if the power was out, but found the glowing green numbers from its clock brightly lit and displaying the correct time.

The woman then moved to the opposite side of the kitchen’s entrance and tried the living room lights—still nothing.

Then came the voice.

“Don’t bother.”

The woman instantly froze.

“They’re all off.”  The man’s voice was deep and sharp.  In a panic, the woman turned, looking for her satchel.

“Leave it.”

Shock turned to fear.  Her gun was in the bag and out of reach.  Her mind instantly ran through several panic-stricken thoughts.  Who was in the room?  Could she try to reach her gun?  How many seconds would it take her to retrieve it from the satchel, and would she be killed in the process?

Instead, she remained still, not at all confident.

“Stay exactly as you are,” the voice said, “and take three steps toward my voice.”

Shaking, she complied.

“Raise your arms over your head and step out of your shoes.”

The woman raised both arms and fumbled out of both shoes, kicking them forward and planting her stocking-covered feet flat on the smooth floor.

“Is there anyone with you?”

She shook her head.  “No.”

“Any weapons besides what’s in the bag?”

“No.”  The woman was dressed in a pair of dark blue slacks and a crème-colored blouse, her hair dark and straight.

“What else is in the bag?”

“Papers,” she answered in a trembling voice.  “A computer.  And my purse.”

The man became silent for several long seconds.  “Turn around.”

When she complied, all the woman could see was part of his silhouette—sitting in a corner near the darkened window, his hand resting on the chair’s arm atop what appeared to be the outline of a handgun.

“If anyone comes through that door,” he said, “I shoot you first.  Do you understand?”

She stiffened, then nodded.  “I–I have an alarm system…”

“It’s been disabled.”

That was even worse.  It was not just any alarm.  When her employer found the alarm offline, they would send someone.  Immediately.  Someone armed.

“You don’t understand–” she stammered.

“Quiet.”

Oh God.  She was going to be caught in the middle of it!

“Please–”

“I said QUIET!”

The stranger’s left hand moved in the darkness, doing something unseen.

“Listen to me very carefully,” the man’s voice said dryly.  “I am in no mood for games and have no patience for lies or fabrication.  Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

He tapped his finger on the gun.  “If you lie to me—if I think you are lying—I will terminate the conversation.”

The woman was barely breathing.

“Now.  Give me your name.”

“Janice Talbot.”

“Where do you work?”

This time the woman hesitated, inhaling nervously.  “For the government.”

She heard the irritation in the man’s voice.  “I said where, not who.”

Talbot blinked.  “At a research center.”

“What is the name of the research center?”

She hesitated, longer this time.  “Dugway Proving Ground.”

From the chair, the man caught a brief glint of sweat on Talbot’s forehead.  He gripped the gun and quickly stood up, causing the woman to step back fearfully, her hands still above her head.

The figure approached across a thick rug, and when he was within a few feet, he stopped and stared at her.  Then came a sound that startled her, causing her to jump and look behind her.

It was a loud, audible crunch.

There was someone else in the room.

A few moments later, it came again.  Another crunch—this time louder.

Talbot peered intently through the darkness, trying to make out the second figure, when the overhead lights suddenly illuminated, blinding her.

She blinked, shielding her eyes without moving her hands, squinting at the large figure behind her.  Another crunch, and then something else.  Something that sounded like…chewing.

The man behind her had black hair with a thick layer of stubble covering his chin. He peered intently at her through green eyes.

She blinked again, this time in disbelief.  The man behind her was eating an apple.

He took another crunch and continued chewing without speaking a word.

Talbot twisted back to the first man, who was still standing in front of her.

“W–What do you want?”

Using his gun, the first man motioned to a stool near the counter.  “Sit down.”

When she sat, John Clay rounded the other side of the counter and rested his gun on the speckled brown marble, his eyes still intently on Talbot as he withdrew a phone and lowered it next to his gun.

His eyes darted away momentarily as he brought up a number and pressed the call button, waiting as it rang.

The voice on the other end answered immediately.  “I’m here.”

“She’s here with us,” said Clay.  “Alone.”

The female’s voice was just as cold.  “What has she said?”

“Nothing yet.”

“Good.  I’ll tell you if she lies.”

Clay placed the phone down and raised the gun again.

Sitting fearfully on the stool, Janice Talbot remained motionless, nervously watching both men.  After several seconds, she glanced at the phone, realizing there was something familiar about the other woman’s voice.

“Janice Talbot,” the voice announced.  “This is Neely Lawton.”

20

Talbot’s eyes widened.  Stunned, she peered from the phone to Clay, then at Steve Caesare, who continued chewing and lowered what was left of his apple onto the counter next to him, rubbing both hands.

Neely Lawton.

“You remember me.”

Talbot looked up again.  “What…is this?”

Clay glared back without blinking.  “An interrogation.  One I strongly suggest you pass.”

Neely Lawton.  The woman who had escaped from Dugway along with Li Na, the Chinese girl.

“What do you want from me?”

“Information,” answered Neely’s voice.  “Everything.  Starting with where your pet project is.”

“Pet project?”

“James Seever.  Your genetic experiment.”

Talbot ceased speaking.

“We’re going to ask you again,” Clay said, raising his gun higher.  “Just once.  Where…is Seever?”

The woman gave him a long stare before shaking her head.  “I don’t know.”

Caesare stepped closer.  “Try again.”

“I said, I don’t know.”

“She’s lying.”

Talbot looked back at the phone.  “I’m not lying.  He’s gone.”

“I said no games,” Clay replied.  “You’d better become a hell of a lot more talkative.”

Seeing the anger in his eyes, Talbot shifted her posture uncomfortably.  “It’s the truth.  Seever is gone.  And I don’t know where.  None of us do.  He escaped—if you can call it that.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“What it means is that it’s not difficult to escape when the door is opened for you.”

“Someone let him go?”

“The Army,” nodded Talbot.  “Or the CIA.  One of the two.”

“Where did they take him?”

“I don’t know.  There was a plane waiting at the base, and that was the last anyone has seen of him.”

“Who is anyone?”

“All of us at Dugway who were working on the project.”

“Funded by the Army,” sneered Caesare.

“And the CIA,” she corrected.

“Who in the Army?  And who in the CIA?”

“We report to the very top—Director Hayes and General Bullman.  Together they control Dugway.  Seever became their prototype.”

“Not exactly a surprise,” said Caesare, “considering everyone else died.”

She ignored his sarcasm. Her gaze remained on Clay.

“Do they know where he is?”

“I don’t know.  My guess is no.”

“Because?”

Talbot inhaled and glanced briefly past Clay.  “Because I’ve been shut out.”

“Shut out of what?”

“Of everything.  Along with everyone else below me.  Locked out of our systems and all of our research data.”

“When did that happen?”

“Last week.”

Clay and Caesare looked across the counter at each other.

“What’s the name of this project?”

“The code name is Evergreen.  Was Evergreen.”

“How long?”

“It’s been going on for several years.”

“And what exactly is it?”

“The creation of the perfect soldier,” answered Talbot.

“Genetically enhanced,” Neely’s voice added through the phone, prompting Talbot to shake her head.

“Enhancement has been part of the Army’s R&D program for a long time.  This is more than that.  Much more.  Our project was not just to make a better fighter, but to change the very abilities of a fighting human being.”

“How?”

Talbot frowned at Clay and then motioned to the phone.  “I’m sure Dr. Lawton has already told you.  She saw some of what we were working on when she was at Dugway.”

Neely grimaced on the other end of the phone.  Talbot’s tone made it sound as if it had been a field trip rather than a kidnapping.  When the CIA found out about Li Na and abducted her along with Neely, and in the process murdering two members of Admiral Langford’s research team.

“You needed Li Na’s DNA to fix something with Seever,” said Neely.

Talbot nodded in front of Clay.  “Correct.”

“What did you have to fix?”

She glanced nervously at Caesare, and then at the door.  “It’s complicated.  James Seever is extraordinary.  He’s a horrible person but an extraordinary human being, genetically speaking, with a composition we still don’t fully understand.  Able to take edit after edit to his genome without any adverse side effects—unlike the others.”

“What kind of side effects?”

“It depends on the DNA that was changed.  Most resulted in physical abnormalities.  Mutations.  Things like cardiovascular and cerebrovascular accidents.”

Caesare frowned sarcastically at Clay.  “Some people call those heart attacks and strokes.”

Talbot shrugged.  “Heart attacks.  Strokes.  Respiratory deformities. Organ failures.  Eventually, too many changes to their genome caused serious or fatal reactions, requiring us to remove them from the program.”

“And what constituted removal?”

“Usually death.  Many who didn’t die immediately later requested it.”

“Requested.” Caesare shook his head in disgust.  “What did you do, have them sign a waiver?"

“If they were able,” replied Talbot.

“How wonderfully humane.”

Talbot looked at Caesare through cold eyes.  “I don’t expect you to understand.”

On the other end of the phone, just listening to Talbot’s voice left Neely nauseated.  The woman was like a soulless robot.  Unapologetic and unfazed.

“What’s so special about Seever’s system?”

“I told you, we don’t know.  We looked for answers in everything—integumentary, skeletal, muscular, lymphatic, everything we could think of.  Every aspect of his genome.  And we found nothing.  Nothing to explain why his body has absorbed the edits so well.”

“So,” replied Neely, “what exactly did you edit?”

Talbot hesitated.  If they disabled her alarm system, someone would be coming.  Quickly.  And they would enter the house by force if necessary.  The men in front of her were hardened and experienced, but no match for who was coming.

Talbot’s original thought was to stall, to drag things out until her rescuers arrived.  But a grim reality washed over her while answering their questions.  Being in the middle of a gunfight.  Because she could not be absolutely certain whether the men would be coming to save her or silence her.

People often died by overestimating their own value.  Whether they were an asset…or a liability.

“What did you edit?” Neely repeated.

Talbot’s mind was now running through scenarios. She decided her best bet was to answer their questions and get rid of them as quickly as possible to buy herself time.

“Primarily Myosin,” she stated flatly, “and other muscle chains.  But we also upgraded nucleotide sequences in the skin, the heart and some neural pathways.”

“How many?” said Neely.

“Full body sequencing changes?  Eleven.  He was re-sequenced and thoroughly tested after each successful edit.”

“And?”

Talbot tilted her head toward the phone.  “And what?”

“And what were the results?”

“What we’re asking,” Clay said, “is what can this Seever do?”

Clay watched as Talbot hesitated, noticing her expression had been gradually changing, resembling nervousness or perhaps anxiety.  “What can he do?” he asked again.

“A lot.”

Talbot wavered and once again glanced past Clay at the glowing numbers on the clock.  Why did they want to know about Seever?  To her knowledge, Neely Lawton had never met him or even seen him while he’d been held at Dugway.  Nor had Talbot ever mentioned him.  How did she know so much about Seever now, and Evergreen?

“This…is about him?”

“We need a copy of his DNA profile.”

The woman shook her head.  “Why?”

Caesare’s voice suddenly growled behind her.  “Because he may have murdered the Secretary of Defense.”

21

The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter landed less than three blocks away.  Painted black and fitted with noise-dampening rotors and engine, it was all but silent as it descended from the dark, velvety sky and touched down in the middle of a residential street.

With blades still spinning, several drivers came to a sudden stop in their cars and stared incredulously at the sight before them—a behemoth resting on the black asphalt while four men leapt out and broke into a sprint, running in black fatigues with assault rifles clutched in both hands.

It took less than a minute to reach Talbot’s street on foot and then her house, where in standard two-by-two formation, they circled both sides.  The first two moved to the side door of the garage and the second snaked around the back.

Once in position, the breach was immediate.  The doors into both the garage and then the house were kicked open and a flash grenade was thrown inside, followed instantly by the smashing of the sliding glass door on the opposite side of the house.

All four men were in, simultaneously sweeping Talbot’s entire kitchen and living room, finding and training their weapons upon the only person in sight.  A silhouette sitting in a chair near the fireplace, completely motionless.  Enough perhaps to have been restrained or drugged.

With perfect efficiency, two men continued down the hall, clearing the rest of the floor while the first two inched forward with rifles poised high against their cheeks.

“Bottom floor is clear.”

The lead maintained his aim and studied the still figure through a night vision lens in front of his right eye.  The person appeared to be covered by a white sheet.

“Janice Talbot?”

There was no response.

“Can you hear me?”

There was only silence.

He reached down and grabbed a tactical flashlight from his belt, clicking it on and illuminating the wide upholstered chair in front of him.

Something was not right.

He glanced back as the other two rejoined them in the living room, providing additional cover as he inched closer to the figure.

He could see no movement at all from beneath the sheet.  No signs of struggle, nor of breathing.

When he was finally within reach, he quickly leaned forward and grabbed a corner of the sheet, ripping off the white cover in a blinding motion.

“Shit.”

The commando glanced back and lowered his rifle, letting it relax in his hand.

They were too late.

One of the others found the wall switch and flipped it on, flooding the room from several overhead bulbs.  On the chair, sitting perfectly still, was a stack of pillows, different sizes all carefully arranged in the shape of a person.

Taped to the largest pillow was a piece of paper with five words written in Caesare’s handwriting: Early birds got the worm.

22

Talbot’s darkened house felt like a dungeon compared to the bright, airy foyer General Bullman stepped into just twenty hours later at his home in McLean, Virginia.  With oak flooring and white carpeted stairs twisting up along a matching white railing, Bullman, in full dress uniform, eased the heavy door closed behind him and dropped his keys on a round white-and-gray marble table.

Reaching in to remove his other pocket’s contents, Bullman was interrupted by his wife, who promptly appeared from the dining room.

“Hello,” he said, dropping his phone and wallet onto the table.  It was not until his eyes returned to her that he noticed the expression on her face.

Bullman squinted.  “What is it?”

His wife wrung her hands nervously in front of her emerald green dress.  “There are some people here to see you.”

The general stared at her for a moment before turning back toward the door.  He raised a hand, moved aside the narrow curtain next to the large door, and glanced outside, cursing himself for not noticing the plain gray sedan parked inconspicuously across the street, shaded beneath a large elm tree.

The two were waiting in the atrium.  Quietly, without speaking, both faced the entrance when Bullman stepped down onto the soft, eggshell-colored carpet.

His expression was unsurprised at seeing Admiral Langford and Chief of Staff Donna Backshall.  Instead, he bore a look of grim acceptance.

“Have a seat, General.”

Bullman paused before turning to close the double-glass doors behind him.  He then rounded a lounge chair and sank into it.  “What are you doing here?”

“Exactly what you think we’re doing here,” stated Langford in an icy tone.

With that, Bullman shrugged.

“We know about Dugway,” said Backshall, “and we know about your problem.”

The general eased back, resting a hand on each knee.  “What problem is that?”

On the couch, with one leg crossed over the other, Backshall stared at him with a trace of amusement.  “I presume you’re familiar with my background, General.”

“Vaguely.”

“I have spent the last twenty years in law enforcement, most of those with the FBI as a profile analyst.”  After no response, she added, “Do you know what a profile analyst is, General?”

Bullman didn’t respond.

“I worked up profiles for people who committed crimes—physically, mentally, psychologically.”

“Aren’t two of those the same thing?” he replied wryly.

“No,” she said politely.  “I’ve interviewed thousands of people throughout my career, usually suspects, and have testified in hundreds of trials.  And do you know what I found most interesting throughout those interviews?”

The general shrugged.

“What was interesting was how often I could tell when a suspect was guilty just from looking into their eyes.”

Watching the general shift in his seat, she continued.  “Because liars have a dilemma.  They must have a story to cover up their wrongdoing.  But their problem is, they can’t be sure what evidence the interviewer, like me, has against them, which results in anxieties that manifest in different ways.  Physical cues, for example, that any good psychologist or law enforcement officer can detect.”

Bullman gave a wry grin.  “Good for you.”

“I mention this because since entering the room, you have displayed more than one of these cues.  Would you like to know which?”

The general glanced briefly at Langford before again shaking his head.  “No.”

“Very well,” Backshall said and reached for a small stack of papers on the table in front of her, flipping through them.  “General, let me begin by saying that your candor in the next few minutes will greatly influence the outcome of this meeting and any subsequent actions decided by the White House, which is why we are having this conversation without the presence of legal counsel.”

The smirk on Bullman’s face faded.

“Now, tell us about Dugway.”

“Dugway?”

“The Dugway Proving Grounds.  Your research center, jointly run between the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Bullman straightened in his seat.  “It’s just as you said.  It’s a joint facility operated by both branches for hundreds of different research programs.”

“And what sorts of programs would those be?”

“Warfare tactics primarily, along with various weaponry development.”

“Why types of weapons?”

Bullman reluctantly replied.  “All types.”

“Biological?  Chemical?”

“Both.  Neither of which is a secret.  Our research in those areas has been going on for decades.”

“That we are aware of,” nodded Backshall.  “And what about…say genetics?”

“Genetics?”

“Genetic research.  Is that part of any of your programs?”

“Some.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know offhand,” said Bullman.

“Do you have an estimate?”

“I don’t.”

“You understand that all research projects at Dugway are sanctioned specifically by the federal government under a strict set of rules and accountability, not to mention transparency.  So, if you were, for example, running programs outside of the government’s purview or authorization, that would be a very serious problem for both yourself and Director Hayes of the CIA.”

Bullman stared but did not respond.

She glanced briefly at Langford before continuing.  “For the sake of expediency, I’m going to spare you having to wonder what we already know and simply tell you.  We know you and Hayes have been working on unauthorized and unsanctioned projects under the veil of national security.  And we are here to give you an opportunity to voluntarily cooperate, rather than in front of a military grand jury.”

The general’s body language changed as Backshall spoke, including his eye contact as he looked less and less at Admiral Langford.

After contemplating Backshall’s words, the general finally inhaled.  “The man’s name is Seever.  James Seever.  I’m afraid we’ve lost control.”

“He’s part of your project Evergreen?”

Bullman shook his head.  “He is project Evergreen.”

“Explain.”

“Genetic enhancement of human soldiers,” he replied.  “United States soldiers.  To make them superior to the enemy both mentally and physically.”

“And this has been going on for how long?”

“Eleven years.”

“How many are involved?”

“In total, a little over a hundred.”

“What about test subjects?”

“Forty-seven to date.”

“And how many of them are still alive?”

Bullman hesitated.  “I believe about eight.  I’d have to check.”

“Jesus,” breathed Langford in disgust.

“Are you saying thirty-nine subjects have died?”

“Yes.”

“How in God’s name did you hide that?”

The general faced Langford.  “By fabricating documents—medical records, preexisting histories.  Some were documented as being killed in combat operations.  Most of the subjects were selected for having minimal associations or family.”

Backshall glanced at Langford, who looked about to come out of his seat, and motioned for him to remain calm.

“And James Seever?”

“To date, Seever has been our only successful case.  He and a handful of others from Fort Leavenworth were offered commuted sentences for participation in the program.”

“You recruited prisoners?”

“We were looking for highly trained soldiers who could meet all the criteria with minimal risk of legal complications.”

“Legal complications?”

Bullman nodded.  “Fallout.”

“You mean in case they died.”

“Something like that.”

“Where is James Seever now?”

“We’re not sure.”

“You’re not sure?!”

“Not exactly,” Bullman replied.  “But we’re close to finding him.”

“How close?”

“Very.”

Backshall reached down and pulled out a manilla folder, placing it on top and opening it to reveal nothing inside.  “Seever’s service records no longer exist in our systems.  Did you know that?”

“They were deleted.”

“By whom?”

“By Hayes.  Including all references to his conviction and incarceration.  It was the deal Hayes cut when he extracted him.”

“Extracted him from where?”

“From Dugway.”

Backshall and Langford looked at each other.  “You’re saying it was Director Hayes who released him?”

“Correct.  I wanted to, but he wasn’t ready yet.  Not until we knew whether the last genome edit was successful.”

“What does that mean?”

“Seever was the only one able to absorb all of our genetic changes, also known as edits, without adverse side effects.  At least nothing that would kill him.  But there were still problems.  For example, an edit might strengthen one area but weaken another, so the subjects required close examination after each genetic modification.”

“Such as?”

“Such as skin, allowing him to absorb higher levels of damage or physical impact. Unfortunately, the strengthening simultaneously weakened his skin’s ability to regenerate.  I don’t know the exact science, but while Seever was able to take a hell of a blow, he couldn’t heal very well from it.  Which was why we needed the girl.”

Backshall frowned.  “What girl?”

Bullman glanced uncomfortably at Langford.  “His Chinese girl.”

Witnessing the confusion on her face caused the general to smirk.  “Hasn’t he told you?”

Backshall looked at Langford.

“Won’t that be an interesting conversation?”

“You needed this girl for what, exactly?”

“Evidently, because the genetic changes happening in her were occurring faster and more efficiently than what we were able to mimic, especially when it came to regenerating.  We need to see if it would solve Seever’s problem.”

“Why exactly was Seever able to absorb all these changes when no one else could?”

“We have no idea.  But eventually, he became our only option.  Our only working prototype.  Which made him increasingly valuable.”

“Too valuable for Hayes not to cash in on.”

“We all had a use for him.  But Hayes couldn’t wait.”

“You son of a bitch,” growled Langford as he angrily rose to his feet.  “You’re going to jail.”

23

General Bullman remained still, staring at Langford.

“Because of you and Hayes, Merl Miller is dead.  You set this guy loose in exchange for a hit!”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Wrong.  You’re just as complicit as that bastard Hayes.  And now both of you are going to rot behind bars.”

Bullman shook his head.  “I don’t think so.”

“You’re wrong,” roared Langford.  “Because I will make it my life’s mission.”

Still seated, the general looked at Backshall.  “That’s not what I mean.  Seever killed Miller—that much is clear.  But it’s not why you think.  It wasn’t for Hayes.”

“What?”

He said it again, staring up at a fuming Langford.  “I said, it’s not why you think.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Two days ago, a retired Special Forces commander named Thornberry was also murdered at his home in North Carolina.  He served for ten years as a liaison to several of the brass in AFRICOM.”  Bullman looked back and forth between them.  “It just so happens that Thornberry was an old commanding officer of James Seever.”

Langford’s eyes narrowed as the general continued.  “Thornberry was the person who had Seever brought up on the charges which ultimately landed him in Leavenworth.”

“For what?”

“It was a mission,” answered Bullman.  “In Africa.  Against a bunch of mercenaries protecting a warlord.  It got nasty, and several U.S. commandos were killed.  When they finally managed to take the bastards out, Seever went nuts.  Right off the deep end.  Started attacking some locals he suspected were part of the whole thing, accusing them of aiding in the murder of his friends. And when they didn’t talk, he began murdering some of their family members.”

Backshall looked at Langford.

“It wasn’t just that.  It was what he did to them that showed just how demented and unstable the man was.  When Thornberry and his men stopped him, Seever attacked them.  The whole thing turned into a god-awful mess.”

“So, Thornberry brought him up on charges?”

The general nodded.  “And before you ask, no, this was not some case of acute stress disorder.  The guy is certifiable.”

Langford wrinkled his nose.  “Bullshit.”

Bullman shook his head once again.

“Hayes didn’t have Seever murder Miller.  Did he hate Miller?  Yes.  But he knew better than that.”

“Then why did he do it?”

“Because Merl Miller also had a hand in Seever going to prison.  The investigation dug up some unfortunate intel.  Political boulders that should not have been turned over.  And to quickly sweep it under the rug, some kind of clemency was put on the table, until one of the prosecutors decided not to play ball, forcing the whole matter up the chain until Secretary Miller became aware of it.”

Backshall folded her arms.  “You’re kidding.”

“The bottom line is that when Miller learned what had happened, he took clemency off the table, ensuring Seever was sentenced to prison.”

“And you knew all this about Seever when you put him into your program?!”

“I didn’t.  But Hayes did.  For him, it was a calculated risk.  Seever was put through psychotherapy while at Dugway.”

“And?”

“It didn’t work.  Obviously.”

Both of them stared at Bullman in stunned silence.  “You said you were close to finding Seever?”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“We have a team closing in.”

“Where?”

“South Carolina.  Just outside of Florence.”

A seething Langford stepped forward.  “I want his location.”

Bullman pushed himself up and out of the chair.  “Okay, but there’s something you need to know about Seever.”  In that moment, Backshall thought she spotted a trace of regret in Bullman’s eyes.  Or perhaps merely unease.  “Those changes we made, the genetic changes, were not just about strength and speed.  He can do other things, too.”

24

There was something ineffable about the open ocean.  Something in the waves, from its endless rolling swells to its smallest ripples tumbling gently onto the shore where the glimmering water began its long stretch toward a pale distant horizon. It was a faraway location symbolic of perhaps one of mankind’s greatest quests.  And greatest needs.

Freedom.

Not just a feeling, but a deeply rooted chord within a man’s being, longing, yearning for emotional singularity—complete and unfettered freedom.

Perhaps it was the salty smell of the air or the cool breeze blowing over the lapping waves now tumbling upon the light gray sand beneath his feet.  A cool trickle washed over the tops of his bare feet only to immediately recede, taking sand around and beneath his soles as it traced back toward the bubbling surf.

James Seever was not a philosophical man, but even he had to admit to the emblematic relationship of the vastness of ocean before him, given his newfound freedom.  Standing on a nearly vacant stretch of South Carolina’s Myrtle Beach, he watched the small waves repeatedly tumble and roll up the sloping sand where he stood wearing no expression.

Like stone, he pondered the incredulousness of the last few days.  Merl Miller was dead.  So was Thornberry.  Two men he had long dreamt of exacting revenge upon.  It had been a desperate, hopeless dream that had somehow magically materialized into reality through a series of unforeseen and unimaginable events.  One after another, miraculously evolving into possibility, beginning with when he was inducted into the CIA’s program.  A massive stroke of luck having something to do with his profile, made even more profound when it was discovered he was one of the few, and eventually the only one, able to handle the program’s genetic changes.

The rest of the subjects weren’t able to endure the changes.  Their bodies had been too weak or susceptible, leaving Seever, through the process of elimination, the sole survivor of the program.  Superior, somehow, to all others, despite size or strength.

Miraculous, at least to him.  No, not miraculous.  Poetic.  And disappointing.  Extraordinarily disappointing to people like Director Hayes and General Bullman.  Not to mention that bitch Talbot.

And yet how ironic, since, at the same time, their failed efforts were turning him into something truly exceptional.  Something unstoppable. And as far as he was concerned, as close to a force of nature as anyone could imagine.  Even Talbot herself.

A long, painstaking process that had proved terminal for the others, leaving Seever quietly and patiently biding his time, telling them through gritted teeth precisely what they wanted to hear.  That he was their man and would be their prototype in the war on terrorism.  That he was someone who could carry out their orders tactfully and faithfully, resulting in a weapon with no accountability to those who wielded it.  Unseen and undetected.

Unseen, he thought to himself.  Of all the changes that had been applied to him, ‘unseen’ was the most extraordinary.

Seever glanced down at his feet, watching another small wave of water bubble past, swirling around his lightly bronzed skin.

It was getting easier.  Still difficult, but easier now.  It no longer required intense concentration, but just focus and attention, as though the changes were slowly becoming instinctual and holistically part of his own system.

Seever remained still, continuing to stare at his feet as he focused.  Waiting until it happened.

The skin atop his feet gradually began to shift, the pigmentation in his skin’s basal layer turning pale, as if the coloring was simultaneously draining from both feet and seeping into the sand below.

Further and further they changed until his skin’s color almost perfectly matched the grayish sand beneath them, becoming difficult to discern his feet from the beach.

He tried to remember what Talbot had called it.  Furcifer something.  DNA taken from the creature called a ‘chameleon,’  a tiny reptile with a unique second layer of skin allowing it to change its own color by altering the structure of those cells and the way they reflected light.  Faster than other color-changing animals, chameleons could change their entire appearance inside of twenty seconds.

For Seever, it still took more than twice that long.  But the ability to alter his cells with mere thought was astonishing, with each time requiring slightly less effort.

He examined his hands as they too began to change before he forced them to stop and turn back to their natural hue.  His grin broke into a full smile as Seever raised his eyes and looked back out to sea.  How badly, he wondered, were they now regretting giving him these abilities?

After several long moments, he was distracted by a nearby laugh and turned to find a small group approaching.  Mid-twenties and lumbering drunkenly, they traipsed in the surf, two men and three women laughing and splashing each other with their feet.

Briefly, he glanced at the tall hotels in the background which towered over the giant, glowing oceanfront boardwalk, complete with its 190-foot multicolored Sky Wheel glowing in the center, still and unmoving.

One of the women shrieked playfully at the cold water and ran up the slope toward Seever only seeing him when she turned to catch her balance.  Her eyes briefly met his before she turned and ran back to the water, mumbling something to her friends.

They all laughed and looked up at Seever, who was still watching the girl, clad in nothing more than a thin, blue-striped bikini.

There were a lot of things he had been deprived of at Dugway.

One of the younger men began glaring at Seever.  A boyfriend, perhaps. Getting no response from the stranger, he turned his eyes to the girl.

Seever’s gaze didn’t veer.  They remained on the girl, a mere thirty feet away, and examined her from head to toe.

“Hey, eyes to yourself!”

There was zero reaction from Seever.

The younger man tapped his drunken friend and pointed before they both plodded forward several steps closer.

“What are you, some kind of pervert?  I said eyes to yourself!”

Seever’s dark eyes finally shifted to the men.  His silence prompted them even closer, belligerently waving him off.  “Get out of here, perv!”

Behind them, the girls then joined the name-calling.

Seever was now focused on the two men.  Both were stomping forward over damp sand, with lean muscular bodies and slurring curse words.

“What’s your problem, dickhead?!  Beat it before we beat your ass!”

Any opportunity to dissuade them immediately evaporated when Seever offered an inviting smile, promptly followed by the same young woman egging them on to kick the pervert’s ass.

The men were too inebriated and now too incensed to stop, even when one noticed a brief shudder in Seever’s appearance, momentarily making it difficult to see his face.  But it was too late.  Now within reach and ambling forward, both men attacked simultaneously.

From the water, the girls could not see what happened next.  Or how.  In an instant, both men arched and appeared to convulse for a split second before folding and collapsing headfirst into the sand.  Their entire bodies became limp like rag dolls and tumbled into two separate heaps.  Two dead heaps.  Unmoving and unblinking.

25

Perched on a metal desk directly in front of him, Will Borger’s phone burst into song with a ringtone from Bob Seger’s Old Time Rock & Roll, causing him to quickly grab it and answer the call.

“Hey, Clay.”

“What do you have, Will?”

“Something interesting,” answered Borger, his eyes returning to his computer screen.  Behind him, Lee Kenwood sat studying his own monitor.

“How interesting?”

Borger shrugged.  “Well, they found Seever.”

“Where?”

“South Carolina.  They don’t have an exact location yet, but they’re close.  But that’s not the interesting part.  I mean, it is, but it’s not…you know what I mean.”

On the other end of the line, John Clay glanced at Steve Caesare, who sat next to him in a rented car.  The two were parked on a large patch of black asphalt outside Provo’s municipal airport in Utah.  A quick look at his watch showed 3:14 p.m.

“What’s so interesting?”

“The interesting part,” said Borger’s voice, “is not that they found him.  But how they found him.”

“Talk to us.”

Borger folded his arms and continued staring at his screen.

It wasn’t just interesting—it was fascinating.

“Will?”

“Sorry.  Watching this is incredible.”

“Watching what?”

He took a deep breath, causing his large belly to rise and fall beneath a purple and pink Hawaiian shirt, contemplating how to explain what he and Lee were witnessing.

“This is going to take a little explanation.”

“I’m sure you’ll go slow,” replied Clay.

Already back in thought, Borger missed the joke.  Instead, he wriggled his jaw while contemplating.  “All right, so you guys already know about the FBI’s facial recognition system, yes?”

“More or less.”

“It’s a giant project they started several years ago.  And it’s still very controversial.  So far, they have over 600 million photos of everyone in their database by culling driver’s license photos, passports, mugshots, pretty much any source of government required photo you can think of.  And they’re already using these photos to run hundreds of thousands of facial recognition searches every year.”

“The reason this is so controversial is because the FBI is doing all of this without any real authorization from Congress, no known safeguards and no public input.  They’re claiming they don’t need a warrant or probable cause to use this on everyone, so there’s a big Constitutional issue here.  BUT…this is not a civics lesson.  The reason I’m telling you this is to point out the magnitude of what’s involved, because recently a lot of corporations, especially social media companies, have joined the bandwagon in trying to sell their data to the government.”

“For a hefty price, I’m sure,” said Caesare.

Borger nodded.  “Undoubtedly.  Interestingly, though, in their effort to compete with each other, these companies have been taking things to the next level.  Using the FBI recognition system with their own massive databases of online photos, along with their applications that allow users to freely upload their pictures to the cloud from all over the world, every minute of every day.  One company doing this very thing is named EVER, selling the FBI access to their users’ photos to be scanned for facial recognition.  It’s a system that continues to get more and more sophisticated every year.  Now a picture of a giant crowd with hundreds or even thousands of people in it can be scanned in one pass.  This has now led to real-time scanning through uploaded photos or videos while the events are happening.

“And the funny thing is that EVER is small potatoes compared to the real giants in this industry.  Companies like Apple and Google.  These companies are so much bigger that EVER just recently closed down and went out of business.”

Clay’s voice interrupted.  “And all this matters because…”

Borger beamed.  “It matters because that’s what we’re looking at right now.  We’ve hacked into one of the FBI’s recognition servers, and I’m watching it scan through not just its own photo database but also through both Google’s and Apple’s.  And those are huge.”

“How huge?”

“Really huge!” he answered.  “Over a billion photos and videos are uploaded to both Google and Apple platforms every single day.”

“Did you say billion?”

“Yep.  With a B!  Every day!”

“Good Lord.”

“They found Seever not by using cameras on street corners, because there’s not enough of them.  They found him through people’s smartphones as they took pictures out in public, scanning millions of images per second.

“How is that even possible?”

Borger frowned at his phone.  “I just explained how.  Anyway, the best part is that because most of these smartphones embed GPS coordinates in the binary data of each photo, these giant tech companies are working on stitching them together into a live, digital mosaic.”

“A mosaic of what?”

“Of everything!  The world!  Through sheer processing power, they can literally stitch billions of digital images together into one massive picture.  One image that includes every piece or angle of the world captured at that moment in time, which is virtually every major city on the planet.  And then the next moment, and then the next.  A billion pictures a day is a lot of live images.”

On the other end, Clay and Caesare fell silent.

“And that’s not all, guys,” continued Borger.  “This has implications.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean serious implications.  Think about it.  With all this data constantly being gathered and saved, these massive global images, constructed of billions of pictures a day from every viewpoint, can also be rolled back.  By minutes, hours, or even days, which would allow someone to observe things in any given place, even in the background, when others were not watching.”  Borger inhaled again.  His eyes were still glued to the screen.  “This goes way beyond how they managed to find Seever.”

26

The moment James Seever stepped outside he knew something was wrong.

Above him, in bright neon lights, the bar’s name radiated like a glowing sun out and over a muted patch-ridden parking lot, bathing the entrance of the small building in a wash of pale-yellow light.  It was a true barroom throwback from the early 70s whose image was made complete by the long row of Harley motorcycles lined several feet from the front door.

None of which Seever noticed as he stepped off the last stone step with an arm around a girl stumbling about in a profoundly inebriated fog.  One drawback for Seever, both from what had been done to him as well as his body’s new accelerated metabolism, was that he could no longer get drunk.

Seever came to a stop, causing the prostitute next to him to stumble forward, grasping him for support.

Her glazed eyes blinked in confusion.  “What?”

He didn’t answer.  Instead, Seever carefully scanned the parking lot.  Made of gravel and asphalt, cobbled and patched together, it receded almost two hundred feet into the darkness.

The woman started to speak again when Seever immediately cut her off.  “Shut up!”

There was no sound.  No movement.  Just a lingering stillness that felt…inserted.

Then it happened.

A dull thump as a dart was fired from the darkness, appearing as an orange flash in a mere fraction of a second.  But a fraction was still long enough for Seever to sense and avoid it before it struck directly into the woman next to him.

She thrust her eyes open with a look of confusion and then shock as she stared down at her side and wavered.

Almost instantly, a shadow appeared to Seever’s left, and he heard another sound when a taser was fired, sending two wired and powerful electrodes directly at his chest.  But it was too late.  Seever was already reacting, stepping to the side, and clutching the wires as they flew past him.  He continued around, spinning in a blur, and leaping toward the shooter, mashing the electrodes into the man’s own face along with a paralyzing jolt that sent the man to the ground in a fit of uncontrollable shaking.

Behind Seever, the woman wobbled and collapsed as another dart was fired.  Missing him yet again and disappearing into blackness.

There was no third dart.  In the blink of an eye, Seever covered the distance and reached the second silhouetted figure, tearing the rifle from the man’s hands and whirling it up and over and then smashing it with astonishing force over the man’s head, killing him instantly.

Bullets erupted from the emptiness in front of him, shattering the building’s front door and ripping dozens of holes in the painted concrete wall.

Any attempt to take him alive was over.

Seever dove to the ground with the remainder of the tranquilizer rifle still in one hand.  Spotting another figure emerging, he whirled it as hard as he could, striking the third man in the legs and knocking him off his feet.  Seever quickly scampered forward on his hands and feet beneath another flurry of bullets which tore into the ground behind him, following him to the man on the ground, where he jumped on top and yanked his rifle away.  In one smooth, powerful motion, he rolled off with his head down and simultaneously pulled the man up in front of himself as a human shield, just in time to absorb several rounds before the bursts ceased.

Seever paused just long enough for the next man’s eyes to deaden as he peered up in a look of surprise, not long enough to see Seever’s skin quickly begin to darken.

The shooting had ceased, leaving the last two remaining men hesitating.

It was all the delay Seever needed.  With his skin now fully camouflaged against the twilight around him, he raised the man’s body out of the way and charged.

27

Admiral Langford remained quiet, his cell phone pressed firmly against his ear below a hairline of thinly cropped gray hair.  Listening patiently before finally nodding.  “Thank you.”

He ended the call and turned from the darkened hallway to face a bright living room where his wife was sitting on a leather couch reading.  When he said nothing, she glanced up with curiosity.  “Is everything all right?”

Before Langford could answer, his phone rang again and he stared at the screen.  This time hesitantly raising it back to his ear.

“Yes.”

“Admiral, it’s Will Borger.  I need to talk to you.”

Langford turned away from the living room and returned to the unlit hallway.  “Go ahead.”

“The Army found Seever, sir.  And they tried to take him out with a five-man team.”

“I was just told.”

Borger paused.  “Did they tell you…”

“That it failed?  Yes.  Law enforcement found the bodies.”

“Yes, sir.  That’s correct.  Which is why I’m calling.”

“You’re about two minutes too late, Mr. Borger.  As I said, I just received the call.”

“That’s not what I meant, Admiral.  I’m calling about Clay and Caesare.  A couple hours ago, we saw that the Army had a fix on Seever and were sending their men in.”

“And?”

Borger swallowed.  “Well, Clay and Caesare also wanted to know where he was.”

“Come again?”

“They wanted to know Seever’s location,” he repeated.  “Both of them.”

Langford raised his head and stared at the dark wall in front of him.  “Where are they now?”

“As far as I can tell, sir…on a plane.  And I can’t reach either of them.”

28

They could not be reached because John Clay and Steve Caesare had both turned off their satellite phones.

Admiral Langford’s orders had been to wait for further instructions—an order that couldn’t have been clearer.  Which they had only partially followed, to the Admiral’s chagrin.  But he’d let it slide after Clay and his team were first to identify Miller’s killer, sending him, in turn, to contact Donna Backshall.

But the order had not been officially lifted, either, even after Clay and Caesare found and extracted Dr. Janice Talbot from her home in Utah.

The admiral allowed them to continue gathering critical information, including the abduction of Dr. Talbot.  But what they were doing now had nothing to do with information.  Nothing at all.

This was about retribution.

From his seat, Clay was facing straight ahead, silent, with a face set like stone.  Much the same as Caesare, who was sitting just a few seats away.

Neither had any intention of turning on their phones.  With any luck, they could beat the Army’s extraction team.  Get there first and take out Seever before he knew what hit him.

Unlike the Army team, this was more than just another target in a string of “need to know” missions.

This was personal—for both of them.  Particularly given that both Clay and Caesare had met Seever before in the dark underground halls of Dugway.

They’d just felt the plane angle forward and heard the engines change in pitch when Clay glanced at his watch.

Twenty-five more minutes.

***

It took some time for Borger to find their flight and then their seats.  And while turning off phones was routine on commercial flights, he was developing a bad feeling.

Their phones had powered off long before their flight took off.  Probably even before they boarded, and both at the same time.

They were clearly headed for Seever.  But one question remained—Why were they avoiding Borger?  Were they simply avoiding being tracked by anyone to prevent Admiral Langford calling them back?

Borger had known Clay and Caesare for years and this was unlike them.  Maybe Caesare, but certainly not Clay.  But he also had to remind himself of their backgrounds, their history in the Navy before joining investigations and working for Langford.

Clay and Cesare had once been SEALs.  Killers.    Experts in combat and tactical warfare.  And even he was aware of the saying amongst the Navy’s most elite fighting teams—Once a SEAL, always a SEAL.

Borger leaned back in his chair.  He would soon know whether they were intentionally avoiding him if the phones remained off after they’d deboarded the plane.

Either way, it would then take them approximately forty minutes to gear up and reach Seever’s last coordinates.  But what if they arrived before he could warn them about what had just happened?  It could be catastrophic, leaving Borger desperate to find a way to communicate with them.

The gut-wrenching feeling in Borger’s stomach was growing worse. He found himself hoping it was just another instance of his paranoia, conjuring up his own worst-case scenario.  He prayed to God he was overreacting.

He waited a full fifteen minutes after he was sure the flight had deboarded, and after finding both men still offline, Borger reluctantly reached for his phone, scrolling through the list of contacts before stopping on a name and pressing the green ‘Call’ button.

When the person answered, he spoke quickly.  “It’s Will Borger.  Are you alone?”  After a moment, he nodded.  “Good.  Listen carefully.”

29

Chris Ramirez found Alison in the darkened lab, sitting in a chair, and illuminated by the glow of the large monitor before her, staring pensively at the screen.

Knocking softly on the metal wall, he asked, “Everything okay?”

She glanced at him without moving her head and without answering.

Chris frowned and closed the door behind him, cautiously walking across the room until reaching her. Alison swiveled her chair and stared out through the room’s side window.  Chris followed her gaze out into the darkness where a long, thin path of light reflected off the ocean’s swells beneath a partial moon.  Along the watery glow of moonlight, dozens of silhouetted objects could still be seen sticking out of the water.

“That is so weird.” He sighed, glancing at his watch.  “Most of them should be sleeping.”

Alison looked up at him sarcastically.  “That’s what is weird to you about this?”

“I’m just saying that normally…oh, you know what I mean.  Besides, they’re not the only ones acting weird.  For example, they’re not the ones in a dark room all by themselves.”

Alison frowned and continued staring before finally reaching forward and turning her monitor toward him, allowing Chris to see what was displayed.

It was the IMIS interface screen.  And on it, in the translation window, were dozens of messages.  All the same, repeated over what appeared to be the space of several hours.

Hello Alison.

Hello Alison.

Hello Alison.

Hello Alison.

Hello Alison.

Hello Alison.

Hello Alison.

According to IMIS, they were all messages from Dirk.

“You haven’t responded?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because something weird is happening, that’s why.”

“So, what do you think it is?”

“How should I know?!” she snapped and then motioned back out the window.  “They’ve been doing that for two days now.  You tell me.”  She fell back against her chair.  “They look like…zombies.”

“Zombie dolphins?”

She folded her arms.  “They want something, Chris.  A lot.”

“But we don’t know what that something is.”

“I know what it is,” replied Alison.  “But I don’t know why.”

“Then what?”

The sarcasm returned to her face as she stared up from her seat until finally turning back to the screen and pulling the keyboard toward her.

“Hello, Dirk,” she typed.

Almost instantly, Dirk replied.

You come now.

She stared at the answer before responding.

“Come where?”

You come swim.

Ramirez watched over her shoulder, puzzled.  “They want you to go for a swim.  At this hour?”

She shook her head.  “Wait.”

After a long pause, Ramirez shrugged.  “For…?”

Before Alison could reply, Dirk spoke again, and his words were added to the screen.

You and girl swim.

With a look of vindication, she turned to Chris.

“Li Na.”

“I don’t get it.”

“They want her.  In the water.  Still.”

“And still no idea why?”

“No.  But they ask constantly.  I told them this morning that the girl Li Na is afraid of the water.”

“What did they say?”

“Nothing.  I don’t think they believed me.  To them, it’s probably like saying a dolphin is afraid of air.”

“But…”

“I know, I know.  I’m just saying I don’t think they bought it.”

“Because they keep asking.”

“Exactly.”

Ramirez stopped to think.  “Is Li Na afraid of the water?”

“Wouldn’t you be with a hundred dolphins all staring at you?”

He shrugged.  “Probably.  Especially if they were wild turkeys?”

“Huh?”

“Remind me to tell you that story sometime.  And yes, I see your point.”

You come Alison.  Now.  And girl.  Fast.

“Why, Dirk?”

No understand.

“Why fast?”

No understand.

“Why do you want me to bring the girl?”

She go Alison.  Fast.  Now.

She stared at the screen before finally shaking her head at Chris.  “For some reason, they want Li Na in the water.  Badly.”

30

Li Na was sitting in the cafeteria, better known aboard naval ships as the galley, when M0ngol found her.

M0ngol, or Yong Yang, approached quietly, weaving between tables surrounded with blue plastic chairs, before reaching her near the far window where she was sitting alone.  He stood hesitantly for a moment before lowering himself into the chair across from her.

Neither spoke at first until Li Na, observing three sailors on the other side of the room, finally uttered in Mandarin.

“I miss China,” she said, peering down at her cup of tea.  “Do you?”

Yang nodded.

“Will we ever be able to go home?”

“I don’t know.”

“I feel safe here.  But so much is different.”

Yang managed a smile.  “They don’t make good noodles.”

For the first time in a long time, Li Na laughed, picking up her cup.  “Or tea.”

It was a strange arrangement, Yang thought to himself.  The Chinese government was now after both of them for different reasons.  And Yang, working as the hacker M0ngol, had actively helped his government try to find Li Na, who’d been on the run, in northern China before the Americans found her first and saved her.

But Yang would never have imagined he’d eventually be here, too.  Although, after thinking things through a little more, it wasn’t exactly a stretch, given how desperate his government was to find her no matter who or what the sacrifice.  Yang had reached this realization almost too late to save himself.

Li Na could feel the guilt inside of him bubbling just below the surface.  He had already apologized more than once, but shame was not easily erased.  Instead, it seemed to exude from him every time she saw him, detectable through his smell.

Yang appeared to flounder before looking back over his shoulder at the near-empty kitchen area lined by gleaming chrome counters and shelves.

“Hungry?” he asked.  “You wouldn’t know it by looking at me, but I can cook.”

“Really?”

He nodded.  “My mother taught me.  I’m not great, but I’m also not bad.”

Li Na almost laughed again as she glanced back down.  Then she shrugged.  “I have to be careful what I eat.  My body doesn’t like some things, like meat.”

“None at all?”

“Even a trace of undercooked meat triggers something, causing it to try to absorb the animal’s DNA—and causing me to have a bad reaction.”

“I heard about that.  It must be awful.”

“It is.  It almost killed me last time.  At least that’s what Ms. Lawton says.  She watches over me like a hawk now until we learn how to stop it.”

Yang pointed to her cup.  “Well, I can at least make better tea than that.  This tastes like it came from a cheap restaurant.”

“It does,” she said with a chuckle.  “It needs to be stronger.”

At that, both turned simultaneously to eye the small collection of condiments at the far edge of their table.  Next to the salt and pepper shakers stood a small paper box of tea packets.  Grinning, they glanced at each other and lunged for the packets in an attempt to grab them first.  But while Yang lurched, Li Na’s movement was almost a blur.

He slid back into his seat, defeated.  “Wow.”

“Part of the animal DNA my body has already absorbed.”

“What else?”

She shrugged.  “I can hear better.  A lot better.”

“Like what?”

“Like everything.”

“That must be pretty cool.”

The humor in her face faded.  “Not really.  When I say everything, I mean everything.  Every little thing.  Constantly.  Every noise, every clang, every creak.  And believe me, there are a lot of creaks on this ship.  It makes it very difficult to sleep at night.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought of that.”

“And there are other things.  All kinds of sounds that you can’t hear.”

“The way dogs do?”

“I guess so.”

He grinned, trying to inject some humor.  “You didn’t accidentally eat a dog, did you?”

Li Na laughed.  “No.  But I guess many animals have stronger senses, so…”

“Sounds a little like a curse.”

“It is.  I can’t stop it, no matter how hard I try.  I can’t keep it all out.  Or them.”

Yang’s eyebrows narrowed.  “Them?”

Li Na turned toward the window, peering through her interior reflection in the glass and out into the darkness where dozens of shadowed heads appeared in the water below the light of the moon.

“You can’t keep out the dolphins?”

She shook her head.

“What are you…hearing?”

“Everything.  The water, the ripples, birds overhead, noises and echoes all around the ship.   And them—talking.”

“What are they saying?”

“I don’t know.  Only the computer can translate it.  But it’s not just what they are saying.  It’s what they’re feeling.”

“Emotions?”

“Sometimes.  Some of them are trying to communicate with me on a different level.  I’m not sure how to describe it, but it’s not quite emotion.”

“Words?”

“No, not words,” she shook.  “But not not words either.  It’s hard to explain.”

“And you’re hearing this from them a lot?”

“All the time now.  Conversations.  Words and sounds I don’t understand but can feel things behind them.  But some of the others are communicating differently.   Directly at me.  As if they’re trying to tap in and learn something.”

Yang’s eyes became curious.  “What are they trying to learn?”

“I don’t know.  But I can tell they want me to come closer.”

“To learn more?”

“I don’t think so.  It’s more like they want to pull more out of me.  It doesn’t feel malicious, but it does feel a little, I don’t know, frantic.  Like instead of just pulling something from me, they’re also trying to pull something through me.”  After a moment, her sincere eyes looked up at him.  “It’s…beginning to scare me.”

“Have you talked to Ms. Lawton or Ms. Shaw about it?”

“A little.  They’re doing the best they can to help me.  But I’m beginning to feel like a lab rat, being studied and dissected a little more each time.”

Li Na turned her attention back to her cup of tea, which was no longer steaming.  “I feel safe with the Americans.  I do.  But sometimes I just want to go home.  Or be lost again where no one can find me.  Because in the end, they will eventually want the same things as our government, and I don’t know how to stop it.”

Across from her, Yang softly nodded his head, just low enough for the motion to reveal something behind him with each dip—a person, appearing at the entrance to the cafeteria and briefly scanning until she spotted them.  Or, more specifically, spotted her.

It was Neely Lawton dressed in off-duty clothing and wearing a strange look on her face.  Even from across the room, Li Na had no trouble sensing the fear.

31

The south end of town was Myrtle Beach’s bad area compared to its newer, northern half. The south side of the city was older and still housed the final remnants of the city’s long-forgotten industry.  Worn, yet still functional, the area was no stranger to the presence of crime.

Several patrol cars were haphazardly parked around the outside of the small brewhouse, lined on both sides by several aging warehouses.  Bright headlights pointed in many directions, lighting up much of Knowles Street.

Dozens of officers and investigators filled the block.  Some studied and photographed the dead figures on the ground while others carefully lifted and inserted each one into long black body bags.

Across the street, a large crowd had gathered and watched with stifled murmurs from behind a long strand of police tape.

From behind the crowd, both men watched the investigation from a distance before Caesare finally turned to Clay.

“Missed him by minutes.”

Clay nodded, moving his eyes from officer to officer and then from body to body.  He glanced at another dark-colored van easing through the police line, where it promptly came to a stop.  Another Dodge Sprinter from the county coroner.

“No ambulances,” said Clay.

“Which means no question that they were all dead.”

They watched one of the last bodies being lifted into a bag.  Thick chested with muscular arms and short-cropped hair, just like the others.

“Looks like a professional team.”

“Yes, it does,”  Clay said, studying two officers standing over a woman who was sitting on a step of an adjacent building, partially obscured behind a police car.  The cops were talking to her, and she appeared to be fidgeting.

“What do we have here?” asked Caesare, following his gaze.

“My guess….a witness.”

It was not arrogance that kept him there.  Not entirely.  There was a certain demented or psychotic element as well, watching your own crime scene from a distance.  But to Seever, it was more than that.  What he wanted to know was who.

Who exactly was after him?  And why?  Was it over Thornberry or Miller, or merely for going rogue?  They had no control over him now, which had to scare the hell out of them—someone with his abilities on the loose and capable of doing whatever he pleased to whomever he pleased.

Seever reveled in the fear they must now be experiencing.  It was poetic justice for what they had done to him and bound in a deep feeling of exhilaration.

Whoever was after him had failed.  Miserably.  A U.S. Army Special Forces team, most likely.  One of the best units in the world…dead.  All of them.  Killed by Seever in seconds as if they were standing still.

And whoever sent them had to know already, not just that they were dead, but how quickly and how easily.  Seever wished he could have been there to see their faces when they received the call, their expressions when they realized what they were truly up against.

He didn’t know how they had found him, but it didn’t matter.  They’d had the jump on him, and he’d still taken them out in seconds.  Perhaps he had also inherited a heightened instinctiveness and was able to sense danger faster than before.

If so, then he truly was unstoppable.

“This happened quickly, Clay.”  Caesare motioned across the street to the front of the pub where the exterior wall was being examined.

Clay nodded, now watching the bagged bodies being loaded into the vans.  “They’re not fingerprinting them, either.”

“Maybe they already know who they are.”

“And who sent them.”

“I’m getting a bad feeling about this.  These guys were not your average Tom, Dick and Harry.  They knew what they were doing and where to position themselves.  Two in close and the rest out of range.  And it hadn’t made a damned bit of difference.  I’ll tell you this—if that woman over there did see something, I’d give my right arm to hear what it was.”

Next to him, Clay blinked without replying as he stared intently at the woman.  After a long silence, he glanced around and calmly stepped back into a shadowed section of the street beneath a small overhang and into a corner.

“Clay?”

John remained quiet and reached into his back pocket, retrieving a small scope and raising it smoothly to his eye.  He scanned the scene in front of them before panning further down the street.

Turning only slightly, Caesare mumbled under his breath, “What are you doing?”

“Wondering.”

“About what?”

“Whether he’s gone.”

“I don’t think Seever is the kind to stick around.”

“I’m not so sure,” replied Clay.  He stopped briefly on a figure further down the street before continuing.

“What makes you think he would stay?”

“Who knows?  Vanity?  Or maybe wanting to see if someone shows up to claim the bodies.”

“Or maybe,” Caesare said with a nod, “he realized there was an eyewitness.”

“Also possible.”

When he finished one direction, Clay turned and searched in the opposite direction, farther down Knowles Street.  After several seconds, he paused and adjusted the scope’s magnification, examining something on the same side of the street which prompted him to ease out of the darkness for a better angle.

32

He didn’t care about the witness.  The woman was too drunk to understand what happened, let alone remember what he looked like.

Seever was more interested in the crime scene itself, noting how quickly they were carting the bodies away and wondering precisely from whom the police had received a call.

To Seever’s dismay, almost forty minutes later there were still no military uniforms visible.

What Seever did not notice was Clay, who was now much closer, only two blocks away and to his right, silently lowering himself to the ground near the corner of a small building and nestling into position behind the butt of a Barrett M82 sniper rifle.  He studied a thermal image in the distance through his handheld scope and then smoothly switched to the rifle’s scope.

The figure was standing in the darkness, unmoving beneath a large birch tree.  Oddly, he was nearly invisible when viewed through a standard lens, prompting Clay to hesitate until he saw movement.

He zoomed in further with a click of the scope and moved up the outline until he spotted them.

Eyes.

The whites of Seever’s eyes disappeared for a split second as he blinked, then reappeared and continued staring to the left, down the street of the crime scene.  He was clearly unaware of Clay watching him for several minutes now down the small cross street to his right.  Even if he had known, it was unlikely Seever would have noticed Clay and Caesare snake around the corner and into position within the shadows after retrieving two black bags from their rented car.

Clay zoomed in closer, lying on the ground behind the M82 propped on two tripod legs.  He could see Seever’s clothes better than the man himself, as though he was wearing black face paint.  But his eyes had given him away—eyes Clay had seen before.

Clay eased the barrel down, lowering the crosshairs to the middle of Seever’s black shirt.  Even from this distance, he could see movement as the man breathed in and out.

Then he inched his index finger forward, sliding it lightly over the metal trigger.

In the second before Clay fired, Seever felt something instinctual in his gut—a sensation of danger.  And he didn’t wait to find out what it was.

He moved.  Instantly—just before the bullet exploded into the concrete wall behind him, followed immediately by a second.

But Seever was gone in a blur, moving and ducking behind the tree trunk just a few feet away.

Two bullets.  Two was all it took for Seever to deduce which direction they’d come from.

And he charged.

Reaching and crossing the street in three blinding strides, he tore down the side street as he saw a muzzle flash from the third bullet and then a fourth.

Clay’s mistake was having to zoom in too far to verify it was actually Seever, which left him blind when the target moved and disappeared from his view.

He immediately rolled the magnification back with a slide of his left hand but still could not see him.  Urgently, he peered up and over the scope to find him.  It took only seconds, but that allowed Seever to make it almost half a block in his direction.  He was too fast for Clay to find in his crosshairs no matter what magnification.  Instead, he reached up and tore it from the metal rack atop the rifle, instead allowing Clay to aim through the barrel’s sights.

Jesus, he was moving fast.

He aimed for the image zigzagging toward him and opened fire, one right after the other, sending a barrage of bullets.

When Seever was within three hundred feet, Caesare stepped out from a doorway on the other side of the street with his own rifle and opened fire.

Seever reached Clay in seven seconds in a blur of movement and speed helped considerably by the dark shadows.

Seever felt the first bullet’s impact as he passed a partially illuminated window before reaching and hitting Clay with full force.  He paused only to turn and target Caesare, who was still firing from the doorway.

As Seever streaked across the street, Caesare’s magazine emptied its last round, leaving him no time to reload.  Instead, he discarded the rifle and in one smooth motion drew the Springfield .40 from his belt.

33

It was the rain on his face that brought Clay back into some semblance of consciousness.  His right eye fluttered open only to find a blurry field of blackness before him.

But the blackness was not emptiness.  It was an object.  A black object.  Which, after some difficulty focusing, appeared to be the end of a gun barrel positioned inches from Clay’s eye.

He stared at it, blinking, and then the dark gunmetal gray around the circle of blackness gradually began to recede until a face appeared behind it.

“Wakey, wakey,” said Seever, stopping when Caesare’s handgun was almost twelve inches away and leaving Clay to blink repeatedly and attempt to open his left eye.  But he couldn’t.  Or perhaps he had, and it wasn’t working, prompting him to follow the gun up to Seever, who cocked his head and examined Clay.

“I know you.”

Clay didn’t respond.

“You two rescued your friend and the Chinese girl.”  His dark eyes momentarily glanced at Caesare’s body next to Clay.

“And now here you are trying to kill me.”

Clay remained quiet, glancing around at his surroundings.  Dozens of rafters overhead were supported by old, rusted joists, and above those were several holes revealing the faint glow of distant clouds, allowing patches of falling rain through the roof.   His eye then moved down two dirty, marred walls covered in different colors of graffiti.

It looked like an old warehouse, explaining the slight echo of Seever’s voice.  The man momentarily disappeared from Clay’s view to pull an empty wooden crate closer and turn it on end, sitting down.

“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t wake up at all.”

Clay concentrated, trying to get his bearings and wondering how long he’d been out.  His guess was quite a while.

“So…who was it?”

“What?”

“Who was it?” he repeated.  “Who sent you?”

Clay tried his left eye again.  Still nothing.  “Everyone.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re a murderer.”

Seever shrugged.  “That’s debatable.  Depends on who’s giving the orders now, doesn’t it?”

“No one gave you orders to kill the secretary.”

“Ah, so you’re after me because of Miller,” he said.  Then added almost to himself, “The murderer of a murderer.”

Clay shook his head.  “Killing a killer before he kills someone else.”

To Clay’s surprise, Seever laughed.  “Well, isn’t that rich?”

He tried to move and felt something touch his shoulder, even through the jolt of pain.  He struggled to angle his head and saw that his shirt sleeve was torn, ripped open where threads from the torn fabric were grazing his skin just above the tattoo on his upper arm.  An eagle clutched a trident between its two talons.

“Your friend has one, too.  Navy boys.  SEALS.”

“Once.”

“Once a SEAL, always a SEAL.  Isn’t that the saying?”

When there was no answer, Seever stepped forward and kicked Clay hard in the side, breaking a rib and causing him to groan in pain.  “I’d say your reflexes are pretty damned shot.”

He turned to Caesare’s still figure on the floor next to Clay.  “And this one’s heavy as shit, even for me.”

“What do you want?”

“What do I want?” Seever knelt on one knee with Caesare’s gun still in his hand.  “I want to know.”

“Know what?”

“Who it was that sent you.  You were smart enough to keep your distance, unlike those other idiots.  Which means you must know more about me than they did.”

Suddenly distracted, Seever turned his attention to his own shoulder, where Clay could see a piece of cloth wrapped tightly around and under his armpit.  It was darker than the rest of the shirt, soaked in blood with a thin red trail running down the inside of his arm.

“Through and through,” he said.  “Lucky for me.”

From there, Seever glanced down at his leg, where a small piece of fabric had been torn away and another large crimson stain gathered around it. But despite his injuries, Seever still grinned.

“I barely feel them.”

“Congratulations.”

Standing over Clay, he returned his attention to his shoulder and lifted the soaked rag enough to peer underneath it.  The bloodstream immediately widened down his arm until he dropped the cloth and bit one end of the knot, grasping the other and yanking them tighter to stem the flow.  “Need to find a place to get sewn up,” he murmured, turning back to Clay.  “After you tell me who sent you.”

Clay remained silent, prompting Seever to re-aim the gun.

“Or maybe you want to be the hero.  Hold out until the very end.  Proud even in the face of death.  Except I have two of you.  You may be righteous enough to take it to the grave, but your friend may not be so eager—especially when seeing you dead.”

Keeping the gun on Clay, Seever eased back out of range and rolled it over, pulling the slide back and then releasing the magazine to find only two rounds left.  He studied Caesare’s body, spotting two more magazines clipped to his belt before calmly removing one and slapping it back up inside the grip of the gun, reloading.  “I wonder how proud your friend will be while I inch my way up his body bullet by bullet?”

A sliver of light finally appeared through the slit in Clay’s swollen left eyelid, leaving him staring at Seever for a long time.  “What do you want to know?”

“You’re too old to be an active SEAL.  So, who do you work for?”

“Investigations.”

Seever snorted.  “Right.  Investigations.”

Clay rolled carefully and painfully onto his back and winced.  “It’s true.”

“Naval investigations?”

“Yes.”

“What a load of crap.  If you’re investigations, then I’m—” Seever suddenly stopped, studying Clay.  The man wasn’t just trying to lie back—he was trying to reach something in his pants.

“You looking for this?” he asked, holding up Clay’s phone.  He watched as Clay stared at it.  “Maybe you’d like me to call 9-1-1 for you.  Or your family, so you can tell them how much they meant to you.  Or maybe,” Seever said, grinning again, “your commanding officer, to let them know they’re going to need a replacement.”

Again, Clay did not reply.  He merely stared at the device in the man’s hand.

“Then again,” continued Seever, thinking, “maybe your superiors would like a visit from me, too.  One by one, until they get the message to stop trying to find me.  Until they finally understand that I can’t be stopped.  That I will kill every last one of them until they get the truth through their thick heads.”  His voice slowed as he savored the thought.  “Imagine that.  Taking out every general one by one.  Men who have no conscience or remorse about anything they’ve done.  What a message that would send.”

He blinked and turned to Clay.  “Or maybe in your case…an admiral.”  Seever smiled, almost licking his lips at the idea.  “Which admiral are you under?”

Another voice suddenly spoke up.  Pained and throaty.  “Admiral You.”

Surprised, Seever looked at Caesare, who was staring at him beneath half a face of dried blood.

“What was that?”

“I said You,” replied Caesare.  “Admiral Screw You.”

Seever’s face displayed a brief look of humor before the expression disappeared.  Then he let out a pained sigh.  “I thought you would be the reasonable one.”

The exchange was lost on Clay, who was still intently staring at the phone in Seever’s hand, wondering if it was on or off.  He waited several long seconds until he saw it—a brief, tiny blue flash near the top of the phone’s dark screen.

Seever had powered it on, probably looking for information.

Which was all Will Borger would have needed.

34

It was Clay who heard it first, even in his badly beaten state.  Somewhere behind him outside of his field of vision.

A rattling.  Or something like it.  Brief but distinct.

The second time was loud enough for Seever to hear it through his talking.  He looked up at the far end of the empty building, where a tired metal door appeared to lead outside and a locked, rusted doorknob wiggled back and forth.

Seever was instantly on his feet, moving swiftly to a large concrete pillar, graffitied and badly chipped around its edges.

The noise promptly disappeared and the knob’s movement ceased.

“Who is it?” growled Seever, looking back at the men.  “WHO’S OUT THERE?!”

Clay didn’t reply, instead trying to twist his head toward the door.  For his part, Caesare did not bother moving.  He merely stared at the roof above him, aching, with eyes glazed in an apathetic look of acceptance.

Whatever happened, whoever or whatever came through that door, neither he nor Clay were in any position to do anything about it.  If there was gunfire, they could only hope not to be hit.

Clay had no idea how long his phone had been powered up.  Obviously long enough for Borger to track it.  He rolled his head to the other side and saw the second half of the abandoned warehouse, with puddles of water forming around large sections of debris where the roof had fallen in.

Whoever was on the other side of the door, however many of them, they had to know what they were up against in Seever.  They had to be ready for one hell of a fight, leaving him and Caesare bruised and broken on the floor.

When he heard the noise at the door again, Clay closed his eyes and held his breath, praying Borger had made the right decision.

The impact from the other side was sudden, sending the door swinging inward and hitting the wall behind it and then squeaking back slowly.  Outside, the glow of predawn light shone through the open frame.

Still behind the pillar, Seever remained perfectly still, Caesare’s gun leveled at the doorway, wishing he’d had the forethought to keep the men’s rifles within reach.

He glanced over his shoulder and spotted the bags against the far wall.  Both were zipped closed and contained rifles inside, though they were emptied of ammunition.

Was there enough time?  Whoever was outside would not use that door as the only entry point.  He looked up and scanned the dilapidated roof.  If they were good, they’d have three or four.

But no one came, leaving Seever puzzled.

Rescue teams came in fast with overwhelming force and a barrage of lights and flash grenades to stun their targets.  Physical and psychological bombardment.

Yet after almost a full minute, Seever was beginning to think he’d made a mistake.  Second-guessing himself.

He could have reached the rifles by now.  What were they waiting for?

Similar thoughts were running through Clay and Caesare’s heads as the latter finally opened his eyes and rolled painfully toward the door along with Clay.

Finally, something appeared.  Slow and cautious, edging into the frame as a dark silhouette against the lightened sky outside.

It was a gradual movement—puzzling, especially to Seever, who remained immobile and squinting, trying to make out a face.

From its outline, the figure appeared dressed in regular clothes with nothing resembling a pack or a weapon.  Even the person’s shape was a surprise, as the form appeared to be a woman.

Seever maintained his finger on the gun’s trigger, the barrel edging out into the open as he watched the person move fully into the doorframe.

He immediately turned and scanned the rest of the building behind him, his eyes searching the other points of entry—broken windows, different doors and then back to the giant holes in the roof.  Finding nothing, he turned around to the door in front of him and scrutinized the woman who stepped inside the building unarmed, illuminated by a soft glow through dozens of overhead windowpanes.

It took her only three steps inside before her face became visible, along with her shoulder-length brown hair.  Her eyes were fixed on the two men lying on the concrete floor.

It was Neely Lawton.

35

The look of surprise was shared not just by Clay and Caesare but also Seever, who squinted dubiously at her, followed by a wry grin.

It was the woman he had seen with these men at Dugway.  The same woman they were trying to rescue.

While Neely’s eyes moved from Caesare to Clay, Seever surprised them all by laughing.

Hard.

He roared and looked back at his two prisoners.  Neither had moved, yet both were staring at the woman in what could only be described as shock.

“You…have got to be kidding!”

Neely looked back at him without a word.

“What is this, some kind of joke?”  Seever glanced behind him again before stepping out from the pillar.  “Let me guess—you’re here to negotiate.”

“No,” she answered.

Seever turned up his hands as if waiting for an answer, but Neely remained quiet, blinking as she slowly examined the inside of the building—or what was left of it.  When she finished, her words were clear and unmistakable.

“We’re the cavalry.”

“What?”

Neely looked past him again toward the men.  Specifically, Caesare.  “I said…we’re the cavalry.”

Seever resumed laughing.  “And who is we?”

A moment later, another figure appeared at the door behind Neely, also unarmed and also female, and shorter by a few inches.  She stepped forward and came to a stop next to Neely.

Li Na Wei.

Seever’s laughter came to a gradual stop, now more perplexed than amused.  He stepped forward with the gun hanging limply in his hand.

“What is it with you four?  You can’t be that stupid.”

“We’re here for them.”

Seever studied the look on Neely’s face and followed her gaze as she looked back at Caesare with softness in her eyes.  And then he promptly began laughing again.  “Oh, this just gets better and better.  You’re the girlfriend.”

Nearly howling, Seever bent over for effect. “Good God, it’s a miracle any of you made it this far!”  When his laughter once again faded, he shook his head.  “None of you have any idea what you’re dealing with.  You, I can understand,” he said, looking at the men.  “But your rescue team is a couple of skirts?!  Who else do you have out there?” he snorted. “Lassie?”

Neely barely heard him.  Instead, she focused on herself, tightening both hands to keep from trembling.  The look in Seever’s eyes was frightening.  Even beyond frightening.  Crazed.

She was scared to death that none of them were going to walk out of that building alive.  Steve and John both appeared to have been badly beaten, which meant it was all up to her and Li Na.

She forced herself past her fear and concentrated on what she knew, and what Seever did not.  She focused on him—his eyes, his face, his body.  One arm was completely covered in blood, with his opposite leg much the same.

There was a slight limp as he moved toward them.  Mocking.  He sized them both up before dropping his gun with a menacing gleam in his eyes, as though he were about to do much more than just kill them.

When he was approximately forty feet away from them, she suddenly turned and whispered something to Li Na.  Then faced Seever as he closed in, reminding herself there was no courage without fear.

Next to her, Li Na wore no expression at all.  Nothing discernible within her dark, almond-shaped eyes.

She was also frightened, but Li Na was experiencing far more than Neely was.  She could both feel and smell Seever.  His anger and hate boiling deep inside, along with a trace amount of something else.  Not fear or surprise, but something indiscernible.  Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

36

When Seever finally attacked, it was in a blur of motion, racing toward them faster than anyone could have tracked.

Except Li Na.

Sensing his movement even before it began, she shoved Neely away from her—hard, sending her stumbling to one side and causing Seever to pass between them.  He skidded to a stop and turned to stare at the Chinese teenager.

She was as fast as he was.

Li Na nervously stepped back, putting some distance between them and feeling him and his emotions exuding through his skin.  The anger rising in his veins.  All this while she desperately tried to focus on what Neely had just said.

Seever raised an eyebrow and smiled at her sarcastically.  “What are you going to do, throw up on me?”

He was referring to the near-fatal reactions she’d had at Dugway.  Her body was able to absorb foreign DNA more naturally and efficiently—if the reaction to ingesting it didn’t kill her in the process.

The teenager returned his expression, grinning back at him.  “You’ll never get that close.”

A sense of excitement suddenly coursed through Seever’s veins.  Adrenaline.  The girl was fast, but she was barely half his size and weight.  She couldn’t do anything to him.  At least not significantly.  But then again, he thought as he stared at her…she was attractive.

He glanced dismissively at Neely, who had also backed away.  The younger woman might be hard to constrain, but it would make it all the more enjoyable when he did.

And when he was finished, he would kill them all.

When Seever lunged again, Li Na felt it and darted just as the man’s fingers brushed her skin, running like lightning and tearing through small mounds of debris scattered across the floor to the far side of the building where another door stood.  She immediately reached for its handle and pulled as hard as she could.

Nothing.

The door may as well have been welded shut, leaving her spinning and stumbling backward while Seever slowed to a stop wearing a dark grin.

Behind him, a thin trail of blood traversed the dusty concrete floor. He reached up to reposition the knotted cloth atop his shoulder.  “I hope a little blood doesn’t ruin it for you.”

He’d barely finished the sentence before she lowered her head and charged, launching herself directly into his chest, only to have Seever grab her and spin her off, careening over the floor and into the lower half of a nearby wall.

“Someone should have taught you how to fight,” he said, stepping forward and punching a rising Li Na in the side, sending her back to the floor.

She hit the stone with a thud and a wave of pain.  He was so strong!

Li Na managed to stand again, only to receive another blow, this time to her head. She collapsed again onto the floor.  In a panic, she scampered sideways on her hands and knees, trying to find her feet.

She’d barely made it up when Seever charged, attempting to ram her back into the wall.  But Li Na ducked below his arms, scrambling past, and leaving Seever impacting the cinder block with a thud and a broad smear of fresh blood.

He was growing frustrated—and angry, now staring at Li Na through gritted teeth.  She was no match for him, and he knew it.  Seever looked down and noticed the stream of blood dripping from his fingertips.  He then checked his shoulder to discover his tourniquet was gone, ripped clean off from his impact with the wall.

He seethed at the girl now.  His next bandage would be made from her clothing.

The rage was overwhelming now.  Sickening, like a balled-up feeling in Li Na’s stomach.  He was going to kill every one of them.

Li Na watched as Seever lowered his gaze and made a whipping motion with his hand, flinging a thick smattering of blood all over the floor.  He blinked briefly and then shook his head.

She felt it coming and turned to find Neely Lawton intently staring at her from the far side of the room, her eyes locked on Neely’s followed by a faint nod.

When he lurched, Li Na moved again, running this time.  Seever chased behind her, only inches away. Together, the two charging across the concrete floor at full speed less than two hundred feet from Neely.

They couldn’t beat him.  Not with his strength and speed.  Both women knew that.  They had to beat him with brains—beginning with Will Borger’s, who had not only located Clay and Caesare but once he did, was also able to witness their gunfight with Seever through satellite imaging, noting how even a small amount of lateral movement was enough for Seever to avoid Clay’s repeated shots.

What they needed was a straight line.  A perfectly straight line.

When she stepped into the building and saw the condition Seever was in, her whispered words to Li Na were short and sweet.  Keep him bleeding.  Or, more specifically, keep him moving and bleeding.

Now Li Na was tearing toward Neely Lawton at full speed, a near blur, with an enraged Seever directly behind her and just out of reach.  He was only moments away, giving Neely barely enough time to reach behind herself and yank the small 9mm gun free from her waistband.

What she did not need was stopping power.  She needed a fast bullet, one that was better at piercing.  Her chances of hitting him were slim, but then again, she didn’t need a vital organ.  All she needed was to increase Seever’s blood loss.

Because what she understood and he didn’t, was that Seever still could not heal.  His blood would not clot fast enough for that tourniquet to make a difference.

The last genome edit applied to Seever before he left the Dugway compound had not worked.  It had been rushed, according to Dr. Janice Talbot, leaving Seever still victim to one very simple vulnerability—bleeding out.

Neely had the gun out in barely a second and pointed directly at Li Na.  Her finger moved quickly to the trigger and praying the teenager would be able to detect the moment Neely pulled the trigger.  Detect and duck.

When her index finger yanked back against the trigger, it did so not once but several times in rapid succession.  Fifteen times in all, as fast as she could, emptying the entire magazine just as they reached her.  Li Na sliding to her feet and Seever over the top, bowling her over like a Mack Truck.

37

When she opened her eyes, Seever was on top of her, raised partially onto one knee and staring down at her but saying nothing.

As her eyes focused on him, he appeared different, with an odd, dazed expression.  He blinked repeatedly, his face growing pale as he peered down at his own body.

There were three new holes in his clothing, two of which were spilling blood down his chest at an alarming rate.  He gripped his hand, preparing to strike her when he stopped and weakly stared at it.  What was happening to him?

He wavered.

Only for a moment, but it was a moment too long.  He was knocked off her by Steve Caesare, who tumbled along with him onto the floor, and then, through agonizing pain, crawled on top of Seever and pummeled him with his good arm.

When he was sure Seever was unconscious, Caesare grimaced and turned, collapsing onto the cold floor beside Neely, eventually grinning through his bloodied mouth.

“And you said you didn’t like me.”

“Fine,” she said.  “Are you happy now?”

Rolling onto his back, he stared up at the high overhead ceiling, exhausted.  “Well, when you put it like that.”

***

The four were outside by the time the helicopter arrived.  A dark blue Navy VH-60N Night Hawk flying low over the buildings before circling and approaching an empty, unkempt field, sending thousands of dried weed sprigs into a violent cloud and whipping around the rotors as the craft eased down and bounced onto the hard ground.

As the blades slowed, the chopper's door was pulled open from the inside, sliding all the way back and revealing an extra-large green tropical shirt.

Clay and Caesare, supported by Neely and Li Na, both watched Will Borger mouth something over his shoulder before stepping to the edge and awkwardly jumping down onto the dirt.  To their surprise, he was followed by a slightly trimmer and older Admiral Langford, wearing a civilian shirt and jeans.

Next to the balding Borger, Langford’s short gray hair flittered wildly atop his head from the wind.  When they approached, neither man could hide his reaction at the sight of Clay and Caesare.

“Everybody okay?”

Caesare grinned painfully at the admiral, speaking loudly over the helicopter’s engine.  “We’re just getting ready to go bowling.”

The admiral chuckled and turned to the women.  “You ladies, all right?”

“Yes, sir,”  Neely said, raising a hand to salute before Langford stopped her.

“Not here, Commander.  The chopper draws enough attention as it is.”

Clay looked over Li Na’s head at Will Borger.  “I trust you were responsible for our rescue team.”

“It was the only thing I could think of.”

Caesare shrugged.  “I’ll take a dame in shining armor any day.”

A pensive Langford looked past to the old building behind them.  “Where’s Seever?”

“Inside.”

“Alive?”

“No.”

Langford nodded.  “You realize you both disobeyed a direct order.”

Caesare feigned a look of surprise and stared at Clay.  “How could you?”

“Something tells me you two have already been punished enough,” said Langford, who then motioned back toward the helicopter.  “We have medical staff standing by at the local hospital.”

Langford abruptly stepped forward without another word, eyeing Caesare’s pistol, again on his hip, and reaching out to pull it from the black nylon holster.

He then checked the chamber before passing them and walking silently toward the building.

38

“Hello, beautiful.”

Alison Shaw began crying when she heard Clay’s voice.  Trying hard to control her lips, she could only manage two words, “Thank God.”

“You okay?”

She nodded, the phone next to her ear.  “Yes.”

“I am, too.  Sorry I worried you.”

“Stop it,” Alison suddenly snapped.  “Don’t downplay this!”

Clay became quiet.

“Neely wouldn’t tell me anything when she left,” Alison said, crying through her words. “Don’t pretend it was nothing!”

“Okay.”

“From now on, you need to tell me.  Do you understand?  I don’t care about secrecy, or security clearances, or anything.  You need to tell me!”

“I didn’t want you to worry.”

“I know that.  But I’m tired of being lied to and left waiting in the dark!”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care if it’s for my own good.  I’m part of this relationship, and I’m not going to have it built on deception.  I know how dangerous your job is.  How dangerous all of our jobs are.  But if I can’t count on you to be truthful with me, then I can’t do this.”

“Okay.”

“And yes, I know it’s going to cause me more stress.  I know I’m going to worry more.  But I need to know where you are.  You don’t have to tell me everything, but I need to at least know where you are.”

After a long pause, Clay sighed.  “You’re right.  I’m sorry.”

“More than anything, I need to know in my heart that you won’t lie to me.”

“I understand,” he said.  “And I’m sorry.  I guess it’s just...how men are built.  It’s in our DNA to protect those we care about it.  And you’re at the top of my list.”

“Good.” Alison sniffed and nodded.  “But don’t do that again.”

“Which part?”

The humor in his voice forced her to laugh reluctantly.  “Stop it!”

“I blame Steve.”

“Of course.”  She leaned back, trying to squash her smile, squeaking one of the chairs in the Pathfinder’s lab.  “Now, tell me truthfully—when are you coming back to me?”

Clay inhaled and stared straight ahead.  “Truthfully, I’m not sure. The doctor here says we need a few days.”

“How bad is it?”

He bit his lip, looking down at the splint on his leg and the short cast on his left forearm.  “That’s sort of relative.  Compared to what?”

“My God, you’re killing me.”

“Steve says we’ve had worse.”

“Steve always says that!”

“That’s true.”

“Let me talk to Neely.”

Clay frowned and held up the phone, motioning to Neely, who was watching from the edge of Caesare’s bed.  She didn’t appear the least bit surprised when Clay handed her the phone.

“Hey, Ali.  You okay?”

“Please tell me it’s not that bad.”

“They’ll be fine with a little rest.  Their injuries probably have more to do with their age than anything else.”

“Hey!”

She shushed Caesare.  “I’m guessing they’ll be up and around again before you know it.”

“Okay, thanks.”  After a relaxed pause, a slow grin reappeared on Alison’s face.  “So…how’s Steve?”

“Stop.  I’m getting enough teasing from him.  And trust me, it’s way worse.”

***

For Alison, there had always been something relaxing about the open ocean.  Not just the water, but the experience of being in the water, the swells and soft surges nudging her back and forth.  And the quietness, with only the sound of lapping water over the surface.

It allowed her to feel as though she was utterly physically unplugged from the world around her.  All the chaos, all the misery, happening all over the world simply ceased to exist the moment she plunged into the water, staring up at the thousands of tiny bubbles rising around her.

And out here, it could not have been any better.  Warm, tropical, and infinitely welcoming, as though Mother Nature were wrapping her warm arms around her.

Alison let herself float motionless for several minutes, soaking in the feeling of peace and contentment, freedom from it all, letting everything slowly melt away.

John and Steve were safe.  Thank God.  Seever had been stopped.  And the world, even with all the insanity around the globe, no longer seemed to matter—if only for that moment.  It was as though the planet was trying to breathe a breath of fresh air directly into her, into both her mind and her soul.

Hello Alison.

Inside her face mask, Alison smiled and opened her eyes.  “Hello, Dirk.”

You come swim.

“Yes, I have.”

Me like swim Alison.

“Me too, Dirk.”

You come talk.  For heads.

She nodded, calm and relaxed.  “Yes.  I’ll come talk.”

There had been a distinct difference in their communications since Li Na had left.  No more pressure from the dolphins to get her into the water.  It was as though they knew the girl was no longer on the ship—which was not surprising, given the strong connection Li Na had with Edwin, who would have certainly noticed the absence.

What she couldn’t figure out, though, was why he continued to scan Alison every time they met to talk, as if he was somehow probing her.  Gently.  But he had to know she could feel it, the powerful buzzing passing directly through her suit and over her entire body from head to toe.  Powerful and unmistakable.

As usual, she felt Edwin before she could see him, finally coming into view from the darkness along with their three heads, or leaders.

“Hello,” she said, greeting them and releasing her hand from Dirk’s large dorsal fin.

Hello Alison.  Thank you for talk.

She grinned, noting their continuing improvement in human etiquette.

“You’re welcome.”

We happy for talk.

“As am I.”

There was a brief sound in her earbuds, noting a translation issue.  Still not perfect.

You girl no back.

“No, she’s not back yet.”

No back Alison.

“No,” she repeated.  “Not yet.”

Another error.

No you Alison.  More.

Alison tilted her head.  “What?”

The heads moved to another topic.  You say Alison.

“Say what?”

How you do.

“How I do?”

How you do.

Chris Ramirez’s voice abruptly sounded in her ear.  “Oh boy, here we go again.”

They were back to asking the same question.  ‘How you do?’  What did that mean?  Every time she heard it, it reminded her of the more formal human greeting ‘How do you do?’  But that couldn’t be it.  Their greetings were different.  And she’d never used that phrase before.

“It’s got to be something else, Chris.  I just don’t know what it is.”

“Well, that makes two of us.”

“How I do what?” she replied to the elders.

How you do.  He repeated.  Then finally added.  All.

“How I do all…what?”

No you Alison.  How human do.  All.

“How humans do all what?”

All.  All.

She clicked off her speaker, still frowning.  “All all?”

“All all,” Chris repeated, mulling it over.  “All all of what?”

“Maybe we’re thinking too literally,” she said.  “Too grammatically, perhaps.  Too much like humans.”

“I hate to break this to you, Ali, but it’s pretty hard for me not to think like a human.”

“That’s not what I meant.  I mean context.  Not what ‘All’ means to us.  But what would ‘All’ mean to them?”

“All humans?”

“Right.  Or maybe even more than that.  Maybe like All All.  All of all.”  She paused, thinking.  “All humans and all everything.  Or everything…of all humans.”

“I don’t know.”

“In other words, all…that all humans…do.”

“Or have done?”

“Right.  Or have done.”  She continued thinking.  “So, what have we done?  Maybe not from our perspective, but theirs.”

Chris was about to reply when he heard a tiny gulp from Alison.

“Chris, maybe that’s it.  All of what all humans have done, in their eyes.”

“What we have done?”

Alison went quiet before finally mumbling, “What do they think we have done?”

Ramirez saw where she was going.  “If I were one of them, it probably looks as if humans have taken over.”

“Taken over everything.  If that’s true, then they may be asking, how have we done it.”  How we do all.  “How humans have done it all.”

“Well, that’s interesting.”

“Right?  Their elders are smart, Chris.  Maybe smarter than the rest.  At some point, wouldn’t they want to know how we humans have done all of this?  How we have spread like we have?

“And taken over the world.”

“It certainly would seem like that to them, wouldn’t it?”

“If that is indeed what they’re asking.”

“Why wouldn’t they be?  If we were them, and we saw another species was everywhere all over the rest of the planet, wouldn’t we want to know how?”

“Or why.”

Alison thought for a moment.  “Maybe ‘why’ is not a factor.  Dominance, in all its different forms, is everywhere in nature.  Literally.  In every animal species we observe.  The concept of dominance couldn’t be foreign to them, could it?”

“With their intellect?  Probably not.”

“So given their brains are almost identical to ours, both in size and design. And theirs is even more folded, which means even more neural density—something you and I both know.  And considering how complex their social structure is, there is no way they would be unfamiliar with dominance or even hierarchy.  They are elders, after all!”

“So, we think they want to know how not why?”

“That’s my guess.”

“As in how we went about it.”

Alison nodded.  “Maybe literally.  As in how did we literally do it?”

“And they would be asking because…”

Alison remained quiet, staring at the dolphins through her mask, all of whom were silently watching her.

“My guess…is that this is not for informational reasons.  Or curiosity.  My guess is that they want to know because they want instruction.”

“As in how-to.”

“As in how-to,” she nodded.  “Maybe as in how we do the same thing…below the surface!”

39

Captain Emerson was on the Pathfinder’s lower deck in the engineering bay along with Elgin Tay and his team when Alison and Chris entered, Alison with a head of brushed but still dripping wet hair.

“Good morning, Dr. Shaw.  Dr. Ramirez.”

“Morning, Captain.  Are we interrupting?”

“Not particularly.  What can we do for you?”

She looked at both Emerson and Tay, then to the rest of the crew scattered about the large room studying various charts and pictures on the wall.  And below those, atop a long metal counter, rested several small artifacts they had managed to procure from the alien ship.

“How are things coming?” she asked.

Lieutenant Tay, shorter than Emerson by almost a foot, folded his arms.  “Slow, I’m afraid.  It’s proving harder than we thought to make heads or tails out of this stuff.”

“In what way?”

“Well, primarily the diagrams covering the entire inside of the ship.  Most look like buttons, eliciting some kind of action, but we can’t very well go along pressing them all.  We have no idea what they do.  With our luck, we’d end up pushing the wrong one and flood the whole damned thing.  It’s a miracle I found the one that opens the back of the ship.  Or maybe it was just dumb luck.  Either way, it’s proving much more difficult than we hoped.  I will say the navigation system is incredible.  But we still have to be careful.  We don’t want to accidentally turn things off.”

Alison and Chris nodded and turned to look at each other.

“Why?” Tay then added.  “You know something we don’t?”

“We’re not sure.  The dolphins have been asking a lot of questions.  Deeper questions. And we don’t think it stops with us.”

“What do you mean?”

Alison glanced around the room at the other men.  “Can we go someplace to talk?”

***

Entering the lab, Captain Emerson strode across the room and peered through the window on the opposite side, his hands behind his back.  The sun rising off the starboard bow was glowing a bright yellow and reflecting a beautiful turquoise through the water.  Blinking, he stared curiously at it.

“Your dolphins aren’t watching us anymore.”

“No, they aren’t.”

“Good.” He smiled.  “It was starting to feel a little spooky.”

“Well,” said Ramirez, “that’s actually part of what we wanted to talk to you about.”

When Emerson turned around, Alison took a deep breath and clasped her hands together.  “Okay.  So.  Some interesting things have been happening with the dolphins.”

“They’ve been asking questions.”

“Yes,” she nodded.  “They have.  But they always ask questions.  What’s different are the kinds of questions they’re asking, beginning a while back when they asked us to do something for them.”

“The aircraft.”

“That’s right.  The airplane we had provisioned for them so they could be taken up and shown some of our cities.  It was amazing. Afterward, it wasn’t all that surprising that it prompted them to want to know more.”

“About what?”

“Us, we think.  Humans.  But not just what we’re doing.  More like how we’re doing it.”  Alison squinted, hesitating for a moment.  “Questions that now seem to show more of an interest in how we’ve done things up until now.”

“And what does that mean?”

“Well, remember, our IMIS computer system used for translating our languages is improving all the time, but it’s still not perfect.  There’s still some ‘guesstimating’ when it comes to understanding what they’re trying to get at.  Especially now, as their questions grow more complex.”

“Spill it,” Emerson stated.

“We think they want to know how we’ve done it all.”

“Done what all?”

“How we’ve spread,” said Ramirez.  “How we’ve assumed dominion…over the planet.  Or at least over the land.”

Emerson’s eyes narrowed as Tay spoke up.

“You mean like having opposable thumbs?”

“Well, that’s certainly part of it, yes.  But that’s not the easiest concept to convey given our still somewhat limited vocabulary.  But then again, it’s also not the hardest.”  Before they could ask, Ramirez continued.  “You see, according to fossil remains, dolphins and whales appeared once to be four-footed land animals.”

“Excuse me?”

Ramirez nodded.  “Believe it or not, they share the same common ancestor as hippos and deer.”

Emerson looked at Tay.

“And that’s not all.  A dolphin’s pectoral fins contain bones that are homologous, similar to human arm and hand bones.  Similar to our humerus or upper arm, along with a ball socket joint just like we have for our shoulder blades.  Their fins also contain small bones roughly comparable to wrist bones and linear rows of bones that might resemble fingers.”

“So,” said Alison, “the concept of opposable thumbs might be foreign to them, but the idea of physical dexterity probably isn’t.”

“In other words?”

“In other words, Captain, they most likely would be able to understand the role that manual dexterity plays in an animal’s ability to interact with or manipulate its own environment.”

“Even with levels of dexterity they don’t have,” Emerson said.

“Well, they do have it, but for their environment.  Not ours.  But their environment doesn’t provide an avenue for big leaps in ability through environmental manipulation.  For example, they cannot create fire, obviously.  And without fire, they can’t gain the advantages we did, like warmth, keeping predators away, creating more advanced hunting tools, that sort of thing.  They cannot write or farm, not because they wouldn’t know how but because they don’t have the means or environment.  And considering their brains are at least as powerful as ours with even more neural density, the real question is what they’ve used those brains for instead, given their physical and environmental limitations? So yes, Lieutenant Tay is correct—opposable thumbs and dexterity are a big part of it, but so is the advantage that we evolved on dry land and not in the ocean.”

“And these are things they’re now asking about?”

“Kind of.  But along a much more accelerated timeline.”

“And they want to know this because…”

Alison looked at Chris.  “We think they want help in accomplishing the same thing as we did.”

“Go on.”

“Well, it stands to reason that if they can see we have dominion over the land, they could want the same over the ocean.  It’s human nature.  Or rather animal nature.  Hierarchy is something by which virtually all species understand and operate in one way or another.”

“You’re telling me they want control of the oceans.”

Alison raised both hands in a cautionary gesture.  “I don’t know that they want to control the oceans.  Maybe more like master them.”

“And why would they want to do that?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Why did we?” said Ramirez.  “After all, they still have predators to worry about.  With all animals, everything begins with safety and self-preservation and then builds from there.”

Emerson glanced at Tay, who was simply staring back, fascinated.  “And what did you tell them, Doctor?”

“Nothing,” she answered.  “We didn’t know what to say.”

“I see.  So, they want to know how we humans became dominant because they want to do the same.”

“We think so,” she nodded, “but that may only be the half of it.”

“And what does that mean?”

Alison looked at Tay.  “This is where it may have to do with the lieutenant and his team.”

Tay’s eyes grew with interest.  “How?”

“Through Li Na.”

Emerson frowned.  “Li Na Wei.”

“That’s right.  As you know, Li Na has been exposed to the liquid from the alien ship through a bacterium, transfused and later injected into her bloodstream, where it has been observed actively altering her DNA.”

“I am aware.”

“Then you’re also aware these changes have heightened some of her senses and abilities.  In some cases, dramatically.”

“I am.”

“Well, some of those changes, Captain, have to do with communication, namely around frequencies and sounds similar to what the dolphins use.”

He nodded.  “Yes. Commander Lawton briefed me.”

“Sir, one of the dolphins with his own special abilities has established a connection with Li Na on a level we don’t fully understand.  She uses the English word echo to describe it but it seems to be a much deeper kind of communication and exchange both emotionally and cognitively.”

“Li Na can talk to this dolphin?”

“Yes, and no.  In a way, maybe.  Dolphins use frequencies for their echolocation, but what Li Na was describing sounded deeper.  Like a stronger resonation.  So strong that Li Na said it felt like a probing of sorts both emotionally and physically.  Which brings us back to IMIS and our translations.  Before Li Na left with Neely Lawton, the dolphins kept watching her.  You saw them yourself.  All day and all night, staring at the ship.  At her.”

“But now they’re not.”

“Correct.  However, before she left, they were also asking about her.  Repeatedly.”

“Constantly,” interjected Ramirez.

“And what were they asking?”

“They were not just asking about Li Na,” said Alison.  “They were asking for her.”

“And that means what?”

“They wanted her.  Or so we thought.  But now we think what they really wanted was access to her.”

“Access.”

“Yes.  This is where it all comes together.  And perhaps even sounds a little crazy.  Like we said, the dolphins have been wanting to know more about us and how we do things.  Very specifically.  But until recently we didn’t understand their questions, because of our limited vocabulary.  However, if their special dolphin, whom we nicknamed Edwin, could connect with Li Na on a deeper, more effective level, they may have just decided to get it directly from her.”

Tay tilted his head.  “What, like a download?”

“Not really.  Or maybe.  We don’t know exactly what he was getting, or gleaning, from Li Na.  Maybe it was more like how she saw things or her understanding of the physical world.  We’re only guessing at this point.”

“If we’re guessing, then why does any of this even matter?”

“Because,” replied Alison.  “Because of what else it may have been.”

The captain shook his head.  “I feel like I’m hearing a puzzle.”

“Tell me about it,” she replied.  “Okay, so that’s the background.  And this is where it finally ties into Lieutenant Tay’s team.”

Alison paused and took a deep breath.  “If the dolphins were able to glean things directly from Li Na, then there is no reason to think that bringing her a little closer would have affected that, at least when it comes to the exchange between them.  BUT…they very clearly wanted her in the water.”

“But you just said having her closer wouldn’t have changed whatever they were already deriving from her.”

“That’s right, I did.  But there may be another reason they wanted her in the water.”

Tay suddenly spoke, looking almost hypnotized.  “The ship.”

Alison nodded.  “The ship.”

“What does the ship have to do with it?”

“This, Captain, is where we start deducing.  The dolphins want to know more.  We know that.  They’re hungry for it.  Maybe even desperate.  But they can’t get much out of us because of IMIS’s limitations.  But now they find Edwin can draw knowledge from Li Na.  But knowledge is a funny thing, because when we humans really want to know something, we want it all.  We want the complete answer.  Not theory but fact.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you.”

“Let me put it this way. If you’re in a room with several people and need to learn the most you can, quickly, who are you going to talk to?”

Emerson shrugged.  “The smartest one?”

“Exactly.  You’re going to go to the most knowledgeable source.  Or, in this case, the smartest person in the room.  Which is exactly what the dolphins are doing!”  Alison’s voice grew increasingly excited.  “Dolphins know humans are more advanced than they are.  No question.  But who is more advanced than humans?”

“The people who built that spaceship,” muttered Tay.

“Bingo!  Whoever built the ship.  So, if the dolphins are, in fact, able to somehow draw knowledge directly from Li Na, or more specifically, through Li Na, maybe they didn’t just want her in the water.  Maybe they wanted her in the ship itself!”

40

Both men stood frozen in the lab staring at Alison, part stunned and part incredulous.

There was no clarification needed of what she had just suggested.  None at all.  No questions, leaving only the significance to be considered.

Emerson blinked several times, thinking.  “They want her inside the ship.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure about this.”

“Almost positive.”

He noted the budding look of satisfaction on both of their faces.  “Something tells me there’s more.”

“There is more,” she said, forming a grin.  She then looked at Ramirez.  “Your turn.”

“Lieutenant,” he said to Tay.  “You said you haven’t been able to decipher the diagrams in the alien ship.”

“That’s right.”

“Even using IMIS.”

He nodded.  “Borger and Kenwood uploaded some of the diagrams into IMIS, but it hasn’t spit out anything yet.  You know that.”

“Yes, we do.  And it’s been months now.”

“That’s right.”

“And no telling how much longer it will take.”

“That’s what you’ve told us.”

“Captain,” said Ramirez, “this is the other reason we think the dolphins wanted Li Na in the ship.  The last time IMIS took this long to find even a single translation was in the very beginning when we first started.  When it was first sifting through all our data.  All the data we had on the dolphins.

“What if,” Ramirez said, speaking for both himself and Alison.  “What if…whatever language the alien symbols are in, are somehow more similar to dolphin language than human language?”

Emerson looked at Tay.

“IMIS,” continued Ramirez, “is programmed by humans, which means that its learning algorithms are chiefly human.  This may be why IMIS took so long to finally figure out its first dolphin words.  Because it was all so different, so alien, to the way our human minds fundamentally operate.”

“Dolphin brains are almost identical to ours,” Alison said.  “But that doesn’t mean their language works in the same fashion.  After all, their environment could not be more different from ours.  And language is a creation to allow animals to communicate within their immediate environment.”

“Are you saying the dolphins may have a better shot at deciphering this alien language than we do?”

Alison and Ramirez both shrugged.  “We really don’t know.”

“Then what exactly are you proposing?”

Alison looked at Tay.  “Any chance you have a dive suit that will fit Li Na when she gets back?”

41

The Grand Strand Medical Center was located on the coast of South Carolina’s Grand Strand community less than five miles northeast of Myrtle Beach.   It was a 371-bed acute care hospital providing exceptional cardiac, neurosurgery, and pediatric care.  And more importantly for Clay and Caesare’s sake, it housed the best Adult Trauma Center in Horry and Georgetown counties.

Both men were comfortably resting in the same room on the second floor, where Caesare’s snoring prompted many humorous glances between Li Na and Neely, who were sitting across from each other at the foot of either bed.

Li Na’s eyes moved to Clay to find he was also out cold before she slowly pushed herself up from the plastic chair.

“I’m going to stretch my feet.”

Neely grinned.  “Stretch your legs.”

“Yes, I will stretch those, too.”

Neely returned her attention to her laptop as Li Na passed her, reaching the giant wooden door, and quietly pulling it open.

She stepped out and quickly closed it behind herself to keep the noise out before looking up and down the peach-painted hallway, watching as several staff moved past her from different directions.

Li Na observed the quiet commotion and followed one nurse as she bustled down the hall around several pieces of equipment parked along the walls.

It was overwhelming.  Odors wafted past her, with the strongest being chemical antiseptics.  Then smells including latex and bandages followed by whiffs of flowers distracted her.  And then there were the sounds, loud and overwhelming, picked up by Li Na’s overly sensitive eardrums—talking, beeping systems from dozens of different rooms, patients coughing, the clicking of keyboards from a nurse’s station at the end of the hall, the air conditioning and a dozen other sounds she could not identify.  Everything swirled around her in a constant, crushing cacophony of stimuli, forcing the teenager to concentrate and filter out what she could until she caught a hint of something else.  Something pleasant.

She turned her attention to a waist-high metal cart further down the hall stacked with dozens of trays with round chrome-colored covers on top.

She strode toward it, curious, noting an orderly dressed in blue scrubs emerge from one of the distant rooms and continue pushing the cart to the next door.

Li Na continued silently walking, peering through the doorways of the rooms as she passed them, watching the orderly stop again and withdraw another tray from the cart, this time turning and suddenly smiling broadly as he disappeared inside the next opening.

“Hello, Isabella…”

Li Na stopped near the door and listened.  The man was talking with a young girl.

Li Na looked down at the tray and sniffed.  The aroma she had noticed was pork coming from a few of the trays.  The old man was delivering dinner to the patients.

She remained silent, listening as the man continued with the girl, speaking in an affectionate tone that reminded Li Na of her grandfather.  Low, yet nurturing.

It was a nice memory.

When she was very young, playing with his long white stringy beard as he laughed with her.  He hadn’t lived much longer after that, perhaps until she was five or six, but she remembered his beard, his laugh, and the soft, reassuring tone of his voice.  Masculine and caring.

And his pork.  He always made her the best braised pork.

Li Na raised her head, noticing the light gray linoleum, and followed it absently as it stretched down the hallway in the opposite direction past half a dozen sets of legs walking back and forth, until noticing a pair of dark shoes and slacks.  Her eyes traveled upward to the figure’s chest and head, looking into the face of a large man who was staring directly at her through a set of intense brown eyes. He was dressed in a uniform.

His eyes were locked onto her, and he immediately began walking in her direction.  He was less than a hundred feet away.

Li Na stepped back, pushing the tray out of her way, barely noticed by the orderly who finally reemerged and strode to the cart, picking up a piece of paper and crossing something off.

Li Na now hastily walked away, watching the man approaching until he suddenly quickened his pace.

She whipped around and headed as quickly as she could in the opposite direction, scouring the walls and doors for an exit.

She was already near the end of the hall and none of the doors led anywhere.  They were all rooms and she couldn’t even find any staff.  Finally, she spotted a side hallway and sped up, turning the corner and finding herself in another short hallway with more rooms.  With another right turn she arrived at the end.

Li Na was now running, desperately looking in through each doorway for someone—anyone.

She glanced back and suddenly came to a stop.  The man had not turned the corner.

She waited nervously

He should have reached it by now.  Where was he?  What had happened?  Had he changed his mind?  Or had he wanted someone else?

Li Na turned forward again and nearly screamed when he appeared almost on top of her from the other direction!

She flailed her arms, pushing him away, frantic to keep his giant hands from grabbing her.  And his voice.  Deep and frightening.  It jumbled along with all the other sounds flooding in through her ears.

“Easy!  Easy!”

She tried to run just as one of his paws locked onto her elbow.

“Ma’am!  Ma’am!”  His words became louder.  “Take it easy!”

Li Na froze, staring at him, her eyes wide with fear.  His eyes were dark but not evil.

He didn’t have the smell.  Nothing foul or putrid.

“Calm down,” the man said.  His hand was like a vice on her arm.  “Calm down!”

She let her arms go limp and stared at him.

“Are you okay?”

She didn’t answer.

“Do you need help?”

“What?”

“You look upset.  Do you need help?”

“N-no.”

“Are you a patient here?”

She shook her head.  “I’m visiting a friend.”

The large man nodded, his eyes still looking her over.

“Why…were you chasing me?”

“You were standing next to the food cart for a long time.  I didn’t know if you were doing something or just hungry.   We have to be careful these days.”  He looked behind him to see the bustling had resumed.  “Who are you visiting?”

She pointed past the nurse’s station.  “John Clay.”

“Li Na?!”

It was Neely, running up behind the man.

“What is it?  What’s going on?”

The guard stepped back and gently released her.  “Nothing.  I thought she might be lost.”

“Are you okay, Li Na?”

“Yes.”

The man stepped further back and turned, addressing Neely.  “I think she needs something to eat.”

***

The cafeteria was huge, much bigger than the Pathfinder’s galley but with worse food.

Li Na sat across from Neely, staring down into the mug of hot tea in front of her, her hands wrapped around both sides for warmth.  She’d thought the tea on the ship was bad.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” asked Neely.

“I am sorry for the confusion.”

“What happened?”

She looked up with a shrug.  “I thought he was trying to capture me.”

“Why would he be trying to capture you?”

“Everyone seems to be.  I saw his clothing…”

“His uniform?”

“Yes.  I thought he had been sent for me.”

“I see,” Neely frowned to herself.  “I’m sorry you were afraid.”

“I don’t…” Li Na sadly pursed her lips.  “I don’t know who to trust anymore.”  After hesitating, she said, “Do you think people will ever stop searching for me?”

Neely sighed.  “I don’t know.  Perhaps.  When we fix what’s happening to you.”

“Then they won’t try to find me anymore?”

“I don’t know that.  I really don’t.”  Neely reached out and laid a hand on Li Na’s.  “You’re the first one to have this happen.  The first and last.  But a lot of people want it.”

“So, what do I do?”

Neely didn’t have an answer.

“What do I do now?” Li Na repeated.  “If they will always chase me, then I will have to live on your ship forever.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Then where else?  Where else could I go?”

“Li Na, listen to me,” she squeezed the girl’s hand.  “We’re going to fix this.  We’re going to fix this!”

“But if we can’t…they will never stop.  “I helped you stop him,” she said.  “That man that was killing people.  What else can I do to be safe?”

“We’re going to figure it out.”

It was all Neely could think to say.

42

“Rise and shine, yahoos, it’s daylight in the swamp!”

Both men looked up from their beds to see Will Borger enter the room carrying four cups in one hand and a white paper bag in the other.

“I brought everyone fresh donuts and coffee.”

Caesare frowned from his bed.  “You understand we’re trying to get out of here, not in, right?”

“Oh, come on,” scoffed Borger.  “A few donuts never killed anyone.”

Caesare turned and looked at Clay.  “We don’t know that.”

Borger ignored the remark and offered coffees to Neely and Li Na, who both passed.  Clay and Caesare each took one. Li Na was the only one to pull a donut out of the bag.

“It takes more than that to hurt my feelings.”  Borger smiled happily as he reached into his bulging pocket to retrieve a can of Jolt cola, popping it open.  “So, how are we feeling today?”

“Better.  I don’t know about John, but now I’m just staying for the food.”

The rest couldn’t help but laugh.

Clay took a sip of coffee and winced, placing it down on the small cabinet between them.  “I’ll hold out for my orange juice.”

“No offense taken.”  With that, Borger turned and walked back out the door, returning moments later with another plastic chair, which he slid across the polished floor to the foot of their beds between Neely and Li Na.

“You seem pretty chipper, Will.  Sleep well?”

“Not at all.  But that’s what’s got me excited.”

“I can’t wait.”

“I have some interesting news,” he replied before twisting in his chair to make sure the door had closed.  “Anyone want to take a guess?”

Caesare raised his hand.

“Not you.”

He lowered his arm, dejected.

“Anyone else?  No?  Okay, I’ll tell you.  It’s about The Machine.”

“The stolen computer system you’re using to scour the history books,” said Clay.

Borger furrowed his brow.  “Let’s try to steer away from that word.”

“History?”

“No, stolen.”

Caesare considered a thought.  “Actually, is stealing from the government really stealing?”

Borger pointed at him.  “Exactly!  Let’s say I’m borrowing the computer system.”

“Done.”

“Okay, so listen.  We have some news about our ‘borrowed’ computer system.”

“Did you find something?”

Borger turned to Clay.  “Will you stop doing that?  Let me have my moment.  I’ve been up all night.”

“Sorry.”

“As I was saying, the kid and I have been running our deep learning algorithms through all the archives we can find, both public and private.  And yes, by private, I mean government databases.”

“Encrypted databases?”

“Yes, encrypted databases.  Specifically, those belonging to the NSA.”

“The same agency you’re borrowing all the secret computer hardware from.”

“Yes.” Borger nodded.  “I’m aware of the irony.  As I explained before, the NSA has been collecting data from every corner of the planet for decades.  And illegally, I might add.  Today, their systems are so enormous that they are literally capturing every phone call, every email, text message—basically every byte of data from every U.S. citizen.  And they’re also doing this in a lot of foreign countries, including our allies.  Very controversial, very illegal and very effective.  So much so that they’ve gathered far more data than they can sift through, even using things like artificial intelligence.”

“And you’ve found something in their archives?”

“Yes.  Which is no small feat.  Remember how I said much of their data is encrypted.  But the level of encryption used is commensurate with when the data was gathered.  Meaning data gathered today is encrypted with the strongest cryptography currently available.  But encryption has evolved, just like all technology, so data gathered say thirty years ago was encrypted with the level of cryptography available thirty years ago.”

“Which was not very good.”

“It was the best we had back then, but by modern standards it was quite imperfect.  And vulnerable.  Dozens of computer ciphers, if not hundreds, have been cracked over the years as their vulnerabilities were eventually discovered.  Usually, it was a logistical or mathematical flaw in the design.  Nevertheless, these were as good as we had back then.  And since the amount of data being collected by the NSA has only increased almost exponentially, most of that old data was never re-encrypted into stronger ciphers.”

“Meaning they’re still susceptible to being cracked.”

“Correct.”

“And,” Caesare said.  “You’ve cracked one?”

“No,” he replied, letting out a wide grin.  “We’ve cracked a lot.”

“And found what?”

“Okay,” Borger said, adjusting in his seat.  “Remember how the machine works—hardware made by Hewlett Packard is based on light, which is leaps and bounds beyond any of the older systems, coupled with ‘deep learning’ algorithms to search for clues throughout history that have been overlooked, clues to things that may be related to our alien ship buried underwater.”

“We remember.  Why are you reexplaining this?”

“Because of what I’m about to tell you,” Borger answered.  “Our first hits had to do with the lost Spanish Galleon in the Caribbean.”

“The King’s Ghost,” said Clay.

“That’s right.  The King’s Ghost.  Lost—or rather scrubbed from the history books when it returned with something vitally important, which turned out to be the part of the alien ship itself likely found by the Inca or Maya.  The challenge is that these deep learning algorithms are exactly that—learning.  Self-learning and self-taught.  So, the system learns and adjusts as it goes, redefining what signs or clues it believes are relevant.  It’s similar to Alison’s IMIS system which translates the dolphin’s language, but it’s much more powerful.”

“Okay.”

“So, the first hits we got from The Machine pointed us in the direction of the King’s Ghost, as well as the Piris Reis map, showing that ‘someone’ had mapped parts of Antarctica hundreds or thousands of years before it was covered in ice.  Those and other clues eventually led us to where that piece of the alien ship was located.

“This time, it seems to have given us a little more information.  Not just a year and some jumbled phrases, but the kid and I also think part of a location, at least with the first clue.”

“What kind of location?” asked Clay.

Borger leaned back and grinned a little apprehensively.  “How you guys feel about France?”

“Europe?”

He nodded.

“Your machine found a link to the alien ship in Europe?”

Borger shrugged.  “Honestly, we’re not sure exactly what it is that it found.  But we’re pretty sure we’re right about the location.”

“And what is the location?”

“An old church in France.”

43

“A church.”

Borger nodded.  “A cathedral.”

Caesare looked at Clay.  “That doesn’t sound good.  Mixing things up with religion.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” said Borger.  “Given how far back in time both history and religion go, I don’t think we should be at all surprised they overlap.  For centuries, history was frequently interpreted by religion and vice versa.  To be honest, the older the lead identified by The Machine, the more surprised I would be if it weren’t somehow connected with religion.  After all, the navigation system we found from the Spanish Galleon ruins ended up with the Maya before the Spanish Conquistadors took it.  And the Maya is a religion.  Whatever they managed to glean from the alien navigation system would no doubt have affected their religious beliefs, including their infamous Mayan Calendar.”

Clay considered it before lowering his hands and pushing himself up on his bed, turning sideways and letting both legs hang off the edge.  “How far back is this lead, Will?”

“The twelfth century.”

“Hmm.”

Clay eased his splinted leg down to the floor and gradually put some weight on it, then winced.  After a pause, he added more.

“I know you guys aren’t ready to travel yet.  But when you are…”

“You want to take us to France.”

“Sounds romantic,” said Caesare, looking at Neely, whose eyes were on Borger.  Only after an awkward silence did she look at Caesare with surprise.

Gritting his teeth, Clay eased the rest of his weight onto both legs and leaned forward.  Glancing at Steve, he unsuccessfully tried to transform his grimace into a smile.  “Good as new.”

Neely immediately stood up and walked to him, pushing Clay gently back onto his bed.  “Yeah, I don’t think so.  Alison would kill me.”

“Hey,” Caesare joked, lifting himself off his own bed.  “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

“We’re not in Vegas.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“I’m not about to escort a couple of geriatric cowboys around because they were impatient and didn’t feel like waiting until they were healed.  Am I making myself clear?”

Sheepishly, Caesare looked at Clay and returned to the edge of his bed.

“Your number one priority right now is to rest.”

***

Later that evening, Neely Lawton was back in her hotel room staring idly at her laptop screen, watching as the program repeatedly ran through large chunks of data—data she continued to feed into it, each time waiting for it to spit out the next result.

Connected remotely to her larger computer aboard the Pathfinder, Lawton worked through an entire genome sequence segment by segment, searching for commonalities, relationships to other markers amongst dozens of online genetic databases.

It was called Genetic Genealogy, a technique used to find someone through ancestral relationships using hundreds of groups of markers in an attempt to establish a relationship or lineage to other groups whose genetic information had already been mapped.

The current batch finished by painting a field of letters and numbers across the screen's top half, contiguous and crowded, with many differentiated by colors.

Suddenly, Neely leaped to her feet, knocking her chair over as she stared at the mass of characters, noting the markers highlighted in bright green.

One at a time, she looked at each group before backing away from the small table, holding a hand over her mouth.  She blinked several times before her hand fell unthinkingly onto her chest.

Her hunch had been right.

44

Neely glanced at her watch as she stepped out into the carpeted hallway.  It was just past 10:30 p.m. now, and she stopped in front of the adjacent door, pausing briefly with her hand still raised.

Thinking, she turned and glanced absently down the hallway.  Beige walls were adorned with dozens of small, tasteful picture frames stretching to the far end a few hundred feet away, ending at a large window and glowing EXIT sign overhead.  She only now noticed the carpet in the hall, dark blue with an artistic zigzag design, vaguely resembling a tiny narrow runway.

When Li Na opened her door, she looked as though she had just woken, leaving Neely both thankful and then guilty for disturbing her.

Li Na stepped back without a word and allowed her to enter before shutting and locking the door behind them.

“I’m sorry for waking you, Li Na.”

“Is something wrong?”

Neely crossed her arms.  “I don’t know.  But I need to go somewhere for a couple of days.”

“Now?”

“Yes.  And I wanted to ask if you’d rather stay here with John and Steve.”

Li Na stared back at her with a look of confusion.  “You would like me to stay?”

“Not really.  I’d rather you come with me.  But you may not want to.”

“Why?”

“Because of where I’m going.”

Li Na continued staring, waiting for Neely to finish.  When she didn’t, the girl shrugged.  “Where?”

“I need to talk to the woman who held us prisoner.  At Dugway.”

45

Waynesboro, Tennessee, was the very embodiment of the word rural.  Located almost dead center in the state and surrounded by miles of green oak and maple forest in all directions, the small town of just 21,000 residents was quiet and modern but still markedly secluded.

Less than four miles out of town, a small gray sedan sped along a lone winding road before eventually slowing and turning off onto a large patch of gravel, which then narrowed to a path just wide enough for the vehicle’s tires, extensively pockmarked with dips and ruts.

After another half mile, it approached a black iron gate with barbed-wire fencing extending on both sides, stretching amongst the tall grass until disappearing out of sight.  The car eased to a stop and waited for the small receiver hidden in the bramble to receive its signal and begin opening the gate.

Once clear, the sedan continued forward, heading beneath a wide swath of oak trees lining the dirt road.

The cloud was visible long before the sedan was, billowing up and over the rolling field of tall green grass, rumbling noisily over the gravel until rounding a small, spring-fed pond and heading toward a white two-story house.

Upon reaching the structure, the car slowed and eased to a stop approximately fifty feet from a grand wooden front porch stretching the house's entire length.

Waiting on the porch was a man with a short black beard dressed in a red flannel shirt, jeans and heavy boots.  He stood unmoving and stared intently at the car.  In his arms rested a black M4A1 carbine rifle.

Inside and behind the wheel of the car, Neely Lawton turned to Li Na.  “You okay?”

“Yes.”

“Good.  Stay here.  I won’t be long.”

With that, she threw open the door and climbed out.

The man remained silent, examining her beneath a heavy brow and unblinking eyes as Neely approached.

She noted the bulge on the man’s hip beneath his shirt and hesitantly raised a hand.  “Good morning.”

The man continued studying her before glancing at Li Na inside the car.

“You Lawton?”

“Yes.”

The man pulled a small picture from his breast pocket and stared at it.  Satisfied, he motioned her up onto the porch.

“John Clay said you’d be expecting me.”

The man squinted suspiciously.  “Who’s John Clay?”

“Uh…”

“Relax, I’m joking.  Follow me.”  He turned and led her along the porch with heavy steps, around the house's end to another more expansive porch on the opposite side.  It looked out over an empty field before another mass of distant oak and maple trees retook the land and extended off into the horizon.

In front of her, the large man stopped at the door leading into the house and turned to Neely.

“Wait here.”

She complied and stepped back, slowly examining the rest of the porch and house, unable to tell how old it was.

She turned and glanced out over the white railing and into the distance, noting an almost complete lack of noise interrupted only occasionally by the sound of a soft breeze or distant bird call.

When the man reemerged, he was followed by a woman with a light brown complexion who was also dressed in jeans and shirt.  Her eyes immediately widened when she saw who was waiting outside.

“You!”

Neely grinned wryly.  “Me.”

“What do you want?”

“What I want and why I’m here are two different things.”  Neely nodded to a wooden bench on the deck.  “Sit down.”

Doctor Janice Talbot hesitantly glanced at both of them before walking to the bench and sitting.

“Do you want me here?” the man asked.

“Probably better if you’re not.”

Expressionless, he turned and walked away, disappearing around another corner and leaving Neely alone, staring at the woman.

She looked different.  Almost compliant.

“You can’t keep me here forever.”

“I don’t need forever,” said Neely.  “If it were up to me, I’d have him take you for a walk in the forest and come back alone.  No one would find you out here.”

The doctor stared back without expression.  “What do you want?”

“First, I want to know how.  How you did it to all those soldiers—experimenting on them as if they were a bunch of lab rats, all the while knowing what was going to happen to them.”

“I didn’t always know.”

“You knew their chances were almost nil.”

“They knew there were risks.”

“Right.  Like suffocating on their own blood.  Or having their heart explode inside their chests.  I’m sure you disclosed all of that.”

Talbot didn’t answer.

“I hope it was worth it,” Neely said bitterly.  “Better yet, I hope it wasn’t.  I hope you had to see at least some of their faces as they died.  I hope you still see them at night when you close your eyes.  Haunting you.  People who were desperate to know what was happening to them, desperate for your help.”

“You have no idea what we were trying to do.  What I was trying to do.”

“Don’t I?”

“No.  You don’t.  You only think you do.  Standing there in all your righteousness, judging me.  Casting me down like some scourge on humanity.  But you don’t know anything except your own nobility.  You’re too wholesome and pure to step back and see things, the world, for what it really is.”

“I know what power and domination look like.”

Talbot rolled her eyes.  “Oh, please.”

“Then tell me—from one scientist to another.  One doctor to another.  What was it?”

Talbot stared back at Neely with a look of disdain.  “Don’t be naïve.  Medicine, just like everything else, is in a continual state of advancement. A progression.   Technology, engineering, agriculture, you name it, are all built upon nothing more than a series of stepping-stones, improvements incrementally advancing our abilities as a society and as a race.  Year by year, generation by generation.  One improvement on top of another, then another and another.  How many lives did penicillin save?” she spat.  “Eighty million?  A hundred million?  It’s still saving lives today.  The same foundation on which all modern antibiotics are based.  How many have they all saved?”

“There’s a big difference between saving lives and taking them.”

“You think I was trying to take lives?  To kill those men?  Every advancement of any significance costs lives.  How many people died on commercial airplanes before we could make them safer?  You think people were forced to fly on them?  How many have died in car accidents?  In surgical procedures?  Christ, how many have died from infections before Semmelweis suggested doctors just wash our damned hands?!

“People like you live in an ivory tower of righteousness and ideology, pretending that there’s a way to advance ourselves without sacrifice of any kind, that with enough time, somehow, we can gain with no loss.  With no sacrifice at all.”

“I know it’s not that easy.”

“Do you?  Are you willing to make tough decisions?”

“Like rushing forward, no matter what the consequences?”

“There are always consequences.  Always.  A smaller number of sacrifices now is more humane than millions later.  But you can’t see that, or you don’t have the stomach.”

“Sacrifices for what?”

“To save people!” Talbot fired back.

Neely Lawton stared back at her, speechless, shaking her head.  “Do you seriously expect anyone to believe you were trying to save people?”

“Do you even understand where we are as a species?  The magnitude of what’s happening today?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Deoxyribonucleic acid,” she replied sarcastically.  “The discovery of DNA has given us the literal building blocks—not just of animals or humans, but for all of life itself.  Every animal, every mammal, every insect, even every plant.  Every form of carbon life on this planet has been laid bare for us to see.”  She motioned past Neely.  “Look out there at the grass.  There are millions of blades right in front of you.  Right there.  And we can take any one of them and see exactly how it was constructed, molecule by molecule.  We’re not just talking about replicating life.  We’re talking about creating life one piece at a time.  Now do you understand?”

“I do.  Who needs God when you can create life?”

“It’s not about needing God.  God gave us the universe, the Earth, the laws of physics and the intellect to learn and understand.  And we have.  He also gave us the intellect that would allow us to eventually discover our own DNA, learn from it, and use it.”  Talbot shook her head.  “Don’t you see?  He wanted us to figure it out.  He wanted us to make ourselves better.  That’s why he gave us the ability to do so!”

“Beginning with?”

“With life.  There’ve been incremental improvements since the dawn of time, until we could break free from our own limitations.  Our own boundaries.  Think of all the illness and disease that has plagued our planet.  Not just in our bodies, but in our minds, people doing terrible things both to themselves and to others.  The same things over and over.  For eons.  For the same reasons and with no end in sight.  Our quality of life has never been better, and yet humanity is just as nasty as it has ever been.  Nastier, even—more apathetic and divisive.”  She stared at Neely.  “We’re not learning anything.  Everything around us is evolving except us.  Except human nature.  All of this guile and righteousness keeps the world from advancing as it should—just like the condemnation I see in your eyes.”

“No,” replied Neely.  “The world is advancing, but it’s foolish to believe taking lives now will make life better later.”

“It’s not foolish.  It’s a fact.  If people were unwilling to take the risk for a better tomorrow, how many people would have gotten on those airplanes or tried a new medication, even penicillin.”

“But they were aware of the risks.  Your patients were not.”

“You don’t know that.  Besides, people don’t have to be aware of the risks,” said Talbot, “to be part of the solution.”

“Spoken like a true fascist.”

“No,” she said. “Spoken like a realist.  And a scientist.”

Neely could only stare at the woman in stunned silence, thinking of how Talbot’s view of the world, of life, made her want to vomit.  Yes, advancement was a risk.  But the cost should never have to be borne by the unknowing or the innocent.

“So what was Seever, then?”

Talbot looked away, past the railing and over the open field.  “Seever was both a miracle and a curse.”

“Because?”

“I’m not an immoral person,” she said, looking back at Neely.  “I know when someone doesn’t deserve to be here.  But with Seever, we had no choice.  For whatever reason, the DNA changes we were making could only be absorbed by him.  No one else could take it.  This left us with a difficult decision—slow down and make much smaller changes or continue to move forward with Seever, the one viable patient we had and the last person who should have been improved.”

“Well, I guess we know which decision you made.”

“My choice didn’t matter.  Bullman wanted to continue, and Hayes was pushing him.”

Neely frowned dubiously.  “You wanted to slow it down?”

“I wanted to make progress, just not with Seever.  But I also knew that slowing things down wouldn’t give us the progress we needed using the other patients.  Not any time soon.”

“A calculated decision,” said Neely, folding her arms.

“Every decision is calculated.  Eventually.”

“Well, then here’s something for you to calculate,” said Neely.  “You can either help me or stay here until Seever finds you.”

Talbot’s eyes widened.  “What?”

“Didn’t you know?  He’s been moving from place to place killing all those who’ve wronged him.  And something tells me you’re on that list.”

“You said you were going to stop him!”

“We tried.” Neely shrugged, watching as Talbot’s face grew pale.  “But some of his attributes are adapting faster than even you predicted.  I suspect it’s just a matter of time before he finds out where we’re keeping you.”  Neely’s eyes became cold.  “All it would take is a phone call.”

“You… don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“I think I have some idea.  Then again, I suppose if Seever likes you, you don’t have anything to worry about.”

Talbot’s expression immediately shifted to panic.

“I suppose your third option,” said Neely, motioning behind her, “is the forest.”

***

In the car, Li Na sat quietly, listening through the glass at all the sounds around her—insects zigzagging over the tops of the lengthy grass, and small animals skittering deeper down near the ground.  Caws from birds in the nearby trees. Speaking.  Communicating across an open field and a barrage of competing sounds like nature’s symphony.

The field was vast and untouched.  Untainted.  Free from mankind’s control and machinations.  It wasn’t just the sounds or the noises she could sense.  She could feel all of them in her chest and deep in her gut.

Just as she felt Neely nearby.  And Talbot.

***

“Help you with what?”

“With Li Na,” Neely answered.

“The girl?”  The doctor curled one side of her mouth and looked back out at the horizon.  “I’m surprised she’s still alive.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Help you with her how?”

“Help me find a way to fix what’s happening to her.  To stop it before it’s too late.”

“It’s already too late.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It doesn’t matter what you believe,” said Talbot.  “The changes are too far gone.  You can’t just roll those back.”

“I’m not talking about rolling them back. I just want to stop them from getting worse.  A person can take only so many changes to their system before it becomes terminal.  You know that more than anyone.”

“I don’t know what I would be able to do.”

“You can use what you’ve learned to help me.”

“Or I stay here?”

“And wait for Seever.” Neely nodded.  “Waiting, wondering how many days you have left.”

“Unless someone else finds me first.”

“If you’re talking about General Bullman and Director Hayes, they have more pressing problems than trying to find you.  Trust me.  If anything, you’re a liability to them, not an asset, someone who can expose everything to an investigative committee.  I’ll bet they would be delighted for Seever to find you first.”

“You wouldn’t just tell him where I was.”

“Wouldn’t I?  Being the righteous person I am, I would afford you the same protections and considerations you gave your patients.”

Talbot squinted at Lawton, who rose from the railing and moved toward her.

“And in case you need more convincing, I’ll tell you this.  Help me try, and you live.  Help me save her, and I’ll tell you why Seever was able to absorb all those changes when no one else could.”

***

After almost thirty minutes, Neely rounded the end of the house and found their bearded friend not far away, waiting beneath a tree and surveying the dirt road they’d come in on.

She approached and briefly spoke to him before turning and walking back to the car, opening the driver’s door and sliding in.  With a quiet thump, she closed it and stared contemplatively at the house.

“Did it go well?”

She shrugged.  “As well as possible, I suppose.”

The teenager nodded.  “You were right.  She was lying to you.”

Neely inserted the key and turned the ignition, listening to the engine rumble smoothly back to life.  “That’s okay.  It was mutual.”

46

They were gone for three days.  On the fourth, Neely and Li Na strode into the hospital room just before 9:30 a.m. to find Clay and Caesare both standing, completely dressed.

“What is this?”

“We’re ready,” said Caesare.  “Feeling better and fit as a fiddle.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You said yourself.  We’re healing faster than normal due to all the time spent in that water around the ship.”

Neely eyed them suspiciously, then turned to Clay, noting that he no longer had the small cast on his arm.  She walked across the room and stood in front of him, examining his forearm, holding it in one hand and pressing firmly down on the bone with the other.

Clay showed no reaction.

“That doesn’t hurt?”

“A little,” he shrugged.

She stepped back. “I don’t like this.  No one can heal that fast.”

“We’re not a hundred percent, but we’re getting there.”  Next to her, Li Na remained quiet, while Neely glanced around the room.  “Where’s Mr. Borger?”

“He’s downstairs arranging transportation.”

“Transportation?  To where?”

“France.  We have a cathedral to check out.”

“You’re going to France?  Now?”

“We all are.” He grinned devilishly.  “To Paris, the City of Love.”

“And who told you we were going?”

Caesare glanced at Clay.  “What woman wouldn’t want to visit Paris?”

Maintaining her gruff exterior, Neely folded both arms in front of her.  “How about women who have other things to do?  Important things.”

“I think we could use a break,” said Clay, “after what we’ve all been through.”  He looked affectionally at Li Na.  “Besides, there’s someone here we can show that the world is not all bad.”

A surprised Li Na blinked and turned to Neely with raised eyebrows.

“It won’t take long,” said Caesare.  “Will knows exactly where we’re going.”

There was no answer.  Instead, Neely remained quiet, visually examining both men before speaking to Caesare. “Let me see you walk to the door.”

“What for?”

“To see how healed your leg is.”

He nodded and looked down at the gray-tiled floor, slowly walking forward and passing the women and then reaching the door and opening it.  He kept it propped open with his left hand.  “After you.”

With some trepidation, Neely shook her head but finally gave in, continuing into the hallway with Li Na trailing behind her.

Caesare turned and looked at Clay, who also stepped forward.

“How does it feel to walk?”

“Excruciating,” said Caesare quietly.  “How’s your arm?”

“I almost passed out when she pressed into my bone.”

***

In the hall, the four ran into Borger as he exited one of the elevators.  He appeared surprised and stared nervously at Neely.

“Oh, uh, hi everyone.  I was just, uh, looking for something to drink…”

“It’s okay, Will.  They know.”

He relaxed and grinned.  “Oh good.  Sorry.  I just–”

Neely cut him off, continuing past and into the elevator.  “Some advice, William—don’t ever try to be a spy.”

***

The flight out was from Myrtle Beach’s international airport aboard Admiral Langford’s commissioned Gulfstream III.  It was the same aircraft Clay and Alison had taken to Greece to find a professor holding a vital secret regarding the remains of their lost Spanish Galleon.

The route was similar. They stopped to refuel in the Azores, but this time flew directly to Paris.

Once airborne, Clay attempted to distract Borger from his flight phobia by asking to look through the folders in his hand.

“Okay, Will,” he said, opening the first.  “Time for the full rundown.”

Borger managed to tear his attention from the window and nodded.  “We’re, uh, headed to Chartres, France, a small city with a famous church known as the Chartres Cathedral.  It’s Roman Catholic and was built between 1194 and 1220, coincidentally where four other churches had once stood before it.  So, not surprisingly, there is quite a lot of history there, attracting tens of thousands of visitors every year, many of whom are travelers coming to venerate the Sancta Camisa.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s said to be the tunic worn by the Virgin Mary during Christ’s birth,” answered Borger.  “The place is huge, with one portal dedicated to Mary and the Visitation, the second to John the Baptist and St. Peter, and another to King Solomon.  And then there’s the chapel built next to it of Saint Piatus of Tournai, added in the early fourteenth century.”

“And you and Lee are sure this is the place your Machine identified?”

“Pretty sure.  Just like last time, the system identified the year, along with two words—Mary and Cathedrali.  We even got a few numbers that match the city’s GPS location.”

“Okay,” said Caesare, subtly trying not to move in his seat.  “So what are we looking for?”

“Well, that’s actually a tad vague.”

“A tad?”

Borger tilted his head. “A bit?”

“A bit?”

“As in, it’s not…entirely clear.”

“What is not entirely clear?”

Borger stammered and straightened his large Hawaiian shirt with one hand.  “Well, so, last time was a little different.  After a lot of narrowing down, the clue led us to the Piri Reis map.  This time is kind of…the opposite.  We didn’t have to narrow it down all that much, but the specifics are not as concise.”

“Spit it out, Will.  What does this mean?”

“It means the Piri Reis map was a singular item.  But the Chartres Cathedral isn’t.  It’s huge, adorned and represents lots of different aspects of history.  Different people, different ages, different stories.  For starters, there are literally thousands of different statues there.”

Caesare leveled his gaze at Borger.  “We don’t know what we’re supposed to be looking for?”

“Not exactly.  I was hoping the second lead would allow us to cross-reference something, but again, like before, the second clue appears to be something else entirely.”

“And what is that?”

“We’re not sure yet.  We’re still working on it.”

“But it’s not France?”

“No.”

“I see.  So, we’re just going to this Chartres place to look around for anything that jumps out at us.  Something that hopefully yells alien ship.”

Borger frowned and started to speak but stopped, still stammering.

“Oh brother.”

“Look,” Borger said. “It’s all we have at the moment.  And last time we found something.  Something huge!  We just have to stay sharp and keep an open mind.  It could be anything.  And I figured ten eyes are better than two.”

Clay was less than enthused.  “You’re proposing we just keep our eyes peeled while examining thousands of sculptures and paintings.”

“More or less.”

“Maybe we can save some time,” said Caesare.  “Let’s just ask the tour guides if they’ve seen anything that looks related to aliens.”

He glanced sarcastically at Clay, who surprised him by thinking it over.

“I was joking!”

“Look,” said Borger defensively, “last time we found the navigation system for that ship, and we didn’t even know what we were looking for.  This time we do.  Or at least what it may be similar to.  We’re not completely in the dark here.”

“That is true.”

Caesare glared at Clay.  “You’re agreeing with him?!”

“He’s right.  It could be almost anything in the Cathedral, but we at least have a hint of what we’re looking for.”

“Maybe St. Peter holding a toy spaceship in his hand.”

Borger shrugged, mulling it over.

“My God, don’t you guys know when I’m being sarcastic?”

Clay feigned confusion.  “Sarcastic?”

“Stop it.”

“I’m sorry, you guys,” said Borger.  “I wish we had more to go on.  But I’m hoping we see something that looks out of place or familiar.  Some kind of reference.  In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for anything else from The Machine we can use.”

After quietly contemplating, Neely raised her hand.  “You said this place was built in honor of the Virgin Mary?”

“Yes, primarily.”

“What about the Star of Bethlehem?”

“What about it?”

“Wise men from the east were said to have followed the Star of Bethlehem to find Mary and Jesus.”

“And?”

Neely stared at them, thinking out loud.  “I was raised Christian, and while Christians believe the star to be a divine miracle, other modern-day astronomers believe it may have been an actual celestial event.  In fact, some have even tried to trace back the constellations in an attempt to identify what the Star of Bethlehem really was.”

“What do you think?”

She shrugged.  “I’m on the fence.  In those days, no one knew what stars even were yet.  But let’s say for the sake of argument that it was a heavenly event as well as a celestial one.  You said the Maya may have figured out how to use that alien navigation system at some rudimentary level.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Then what if whatever we’re searching for now is also related to the navigation system and possibly allowed the wise men to view or identify the Star of Bethlehem either directly or indirectly.”

The jet's cabin grew quiet, filled only with the muffled roar of the aircraft’s powerful Rolls-Royce engines outside.

“That’s interesting,” Clay said.

“I’m not saying it’s true.  But if we think the Mayan texts were influenced by the artifact they found, who is to say it couldn’t have happened to Christianity, too?”

“So the star wasn’t real?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe it was,” suggested Neely, “and maybe some piece of our alien ship had been found and allowed them to witness it.”

47

They reached Paris just after seven in the morning, landing beneath a blanket of gray clouds and a light summer drizzle, awaking everyone as the wheels touched the runway and jolted the aircraft forward.

Clay and Caesare were immediately awake, with the former checking the time.  Outside, streaks of rain ran horizontally across the window’s outer pane, with a stiff morning breeze leaning the tall grass down all along the runway.

As the plane began to slow, the cockpit door opened and a pilot emerged dressed in a navy shirt and slacks.

He handed a business card to Clay.  “We’ve been instructed to remain here until you’re ready to leave, but we’re not sure where they’re going to park us.  Take my card and call me when you’re ready.  I’ll let you know where we are.  We’ll need about an hour to prep for departure.”

“Thanks, will do.  We’re not sure how long we’re going to be.”

“Take your time.” The pilot grinned.  “We wouldn’t be all that upset with a little nightlife in Paris.”

Clay nodded and slipped the card into his pocket, looking over the rest of the group.  All were yawning and peering out through their windows, watching idly as the plane bounced over an intersecting runway and onto the larger tarmac.

For her part, Li Na appeared enthralled, staring out her window in fascination and leaving Clay curious about what was going through the girl’s mind.

She’d been through so much, a constant assault of fear and despair that no two people dealt with in the same way.  She was strong physically and mentally, but he had no idea how she was coping emotionally.  Neely insisted she was maintaining her composure, but everyone had their breaking point, and he wondered just how close Li Na was to hers.  What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, as the saying went.  He genuinely hoped it was making her stronger, not slowly destroying her.

Caesare refrained from his quip when Borger’s large frame squeezed with some difficulty into the driver’s seat.  Instead, he turned to Neely, who was next to him, and winked, pointing out the window to some of Paris’ visible skyline.

“Even romantic from here,” he said, scooting an inch closer and resting an arm over the seat back.

Neely glanced at the narrow gap between them and gave him a curious look, but she didn’t move away from him.  The truth was she enjoyed being close to him, close enough now to smell the lingering remnants of his aftershave and feel the soft brush of his powerful arm against her shoulders and neck.  She hadn’t the faintest clue how long she could maintain her air of professionalism.

She wanted to let her guard down.  But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.  At least not yet.  She’d fought too long and hard for respect aboard a male-dominated ship to risk compromising her reputation in the eyes of her peers over a fling.  But then again, who was she kidding?  It was more than a fling.  Even she knew she was slowly falling for the man.  The brusqueness she’d initially seen in him was more of a playfulness mixed with a healthy dose of professional intensity, giving him a somewhat affable and lighthearted charisma she couldn’t help but find endearing no matter how hard she tried.

With an air of acquiescence, she turned away from Caesare but made no effort to move.  Instead, she peered out the front windshield, not touching him, but not far from it, either.  She was close enough that even an unexpected bounce or jolt would give her enough of an excuse.

The Charles de Gaulle Airport edged the city of Paris on its northeast side, forcing them to drive through much of the town and its heavy morning traffic, waiting for calmer conditions to prevail and eventually making their way southwest and directly toward the city of Chartres.  It was a ninety-minute drive that stretched into two hours packed like sardines alongside thousands of other cars on the motorway.

Conditions finally lightened up only thirty kilometers before Chartres, where patches of distant green hills finally reappeared between scattered housing developments.

Li Na rolled down her window and inhaled deeply, prompting Neely to turn back over her shoulder.  “What do you smell?”

The girl beamed in response.  “Everything.”

***

The Chartres Cathedral was nothing short of astonishing. Massive spires rising hundreds of feet into the air in true Gothic grandeur were visible a full kilometer away, along with its brilliant steeped green roof spanning four expansive and separate wings, each pointing precisely in its corresponding direction of north, south, east, and west.

Beneath each roof, gigantic ‘flying buttresses’ supported the structure on all sides, allowing the cathedral’s towering, uninterrupted ceilings within, in what was perhaps one of the most authentic and complete works of religious architecture still in existence.  It was a veritable landmark of medieval history that became utterly breathtaking once through the West Wing’s main entrance.

High above on virtually every wall rose the cathedral’s most stunning features—hundreds of towering stained-glass windows in what was called a “Solemn World of Light,” depicting distinctive eras throughout history.  The mountainous ensembles of sculptures and reliefs filled the church’s six expansive portals and two separate porches below.

Once inside, all five stood transfixed at the enormous stained-glass depiction of the apocalypse stretching high over their heads.  The last judgment, displayed in story-like fashion within a vast kaleidoscope of brilliantly colored glass panes, as did the North Wing in its sprawling overhead images of times past, including the Virgin Mary and prophets of the Old Testament.  Farther on was the renowned ‘Blue Virgin Window’ and its mystical azure of the Madonna’s tunic.  Everything was visually stunning.

“Wooow,” murmured Borger, with Clay nodding slowly next to him.

Each of their gazes moved separately from pane to pane, looking at each glistening section and each story element as displayed from Scripture.

Spectacular was the only description Caesare could think of.  “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Neely grinned and nodded.  “And we may never again.”

“So, these are the portals,” he said.

“Yep.”

“Incredible.  So, what are we looking for, again?”

Borger blinked from pane to pane.  “Not sure, but this entire place is clearly dedicated to Mary.  It has to be something to do with her.”

“Like the Star of Bethlehem?”

Neely shook her head, still staring upward.  “That was just an idea. It may not have anything to do with that at all.”

Caesare turned around to another giant stained window.  “Well, it’s better than any guesses I have.”

“I don’t see anything like that here,” she said.  “Lots of shapes and symbols, prophets, but nothing I see resembling a star.”  Neely turned, and along with Caesare moved forward, studying the Blue Virgin window.

Below the portals, hundreds of visitors grouped into small bands did the same.  Families kept themselves distanced from others.  Many still wore masks.

There was still nothing.

Clay moved farther down the hall and studied the famed Choir Wall, stretching a full hundred meters and adorned with hundreds of inlaid sculptures.  Many were of Mary in various scenarios, wrapped in flowing clothing, some holding the baby Jesus.

He studied the dozens of different faces closely as he remained before them.  All were etched in stone with eyes open and gazing upward.

Far behind him, Borger studied several glass panes and what appeared to be halos, glowing yellow half-circles wrapped atop different characters’ heads.  It was a heavenly depiction, but still nothing resembling a star.  There had to be something else about Mary they were missing.

After well over an hour, the five reconvened near the North Wing’s entrance.

“Okay,” announced Borger, “this may be harder than we thought.”

Neely nodded.  “Agreed.  Nothing stands out yet.  At least, not to me.”

“And we still think it has to do with Mary?”

“As far as I can tell.  But like I said, last time the clues were more specific.  This time it appears–”

“Like anybody’s guess,” finished Caesare.

“Without more context.”

Behind them, Clay’s eyes moved from wall to wall, then the smooth stone floor, and finally up again to the massive overhead beams of the cathedral’s ceiling.  “You said this was built on top of other churches?”

“Yes.”

“Is it possible our clue has something to do with them instead?”

“It’s conceivable.”

“Will,” said Caesare, “why do you think your machine chose those particular clues?”

“I’m not sure.  The AI algorithms establish a rating on any and all connections it finds and then sorts and prioritizes them based on criteria it deems relevant.  But it doesn’t necessarily specify which connections are identified and why.”

“No way to look it up?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.  It would all be in computer code, though, and very hard to decipher.  After all, the syllogism of an AI doesn’t always match our own.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t always match?”

“I mean the depth of an artificial intelligence’s decision isn’t always clear.”

“Even when we program them?”

“Yes.  Even when we program them.”

Caesare shook his head. “Wonderful.”

“All right,” said Clay.  “If our lead relates to a church that used to be here, there’s not a lot we can do about it.  So, we have to assume it was smart enough to be referencing the present—or at least something that still exists.”

Borger nodded.  “Very likely.”

“And it specifically links the word Mary with the Latin word Cathedrali.  Or Cathedral.”

“Along with the year and location.”

“Then it has to be this cathedral.”  Clay rotated, continuing to examine the walls.  “What we don’t know is whether the computer was referencing Mary herself, or the cathedral that is dedicated to Mary.”

“Correct.  But that may be a distinction without a difference.”

Clay nodded.  “So who knows the most about Mary?”

Everyone turned to Neely, who stared back with two raised eyebrows.  “What?”

“You said you grew up Christian, right?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t make me a scholar.”  She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, holding it up.  “I have a better idea.”

***

The five retreated to a corner where everyone crowded around Neely as she quickly read, almost mumbling.

“Mary was a first-century Galilean Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph, and the mother of Jesus…”  Her voice trailed off momentarily as she scrolled down, scanning.  “Mary has been venerated since early Christianity, considered by many to be the most meritorious saint of the religion…Eastern, Oriental Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran Churches believe Mary to be the Mother of God…”

She continued skimming.

“…Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Virginity, Assumption into Heaven…Queen of Heaven in Latin…Mother of God by the Greeks…Mary in Islam.”  Neely suddenly paused.  “Huh.”

“What?”

“Says here Mary is mentioned more in the Quran than the New Testament.  That’s interesting.”

“Do you think it means something?”

She looked at Caesare and shook her head.  “Doubtful.  Just interesting.”

She continued reading.  “Early history says Mary lived in Nazareth in her parents’ house…where the angel Gabriel came to her.  After Jesus was born, her husband Joseph had a dream King Herod wanted to kill the infant, and they fled to Egypt.”

Neely frowned curiously and looked at Borger.  “Ring any bells?”

“Not yet.”

“What about Egypt?”

“No.”

She nodded and continued.

“Says Mary was involved in only one event in Jesus’s adolescence, which was when Jesus was separated from his parents at the age of twelve…later in Jesus’s death and ascension, and then she disappears from biblical accounts.  No mention of Mary’s death, but Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions have her assumed back into heaven.  Mary is also called a Chosen One, a Purified One, and a Truthful One…  According to Islamic tradition, Mary and Jesus were the only two children whom Satan could not touch.  God had imposed a veil between them and Satan.”

Again, Neely stopped and looked up.  “Anything?”

“A veil,” thought Borger.  “A veil of what?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“Energy.  Light maybe.”

“Maybe.  But listen,” Neely said, looking at them, “this barely scratches the surface.  There’s a lot more on Mary all over the internet.  This is just a short history on her, which means if we really think she is the key, then we all probably need to do a lot of reading.”

“Right.”

“Not to mention there appears to be quite a bit on Mary in the Quran, which means we may need some help with that, unless we can find a good version translated into English.”

Caesare crossed his arms and gazed absently around the cathedral.  “Looks like we’re going to be here a while.”

“Didn’t you say, ‘What woman wouldn’t want to see all this?’”

“Paris!  I said Paris.”

Clay looked at Borger, who appeared to be pondering something.  “Will?”

“Yeah?”

“What is it?”

He squinted and tilted his head.  “I think Neely’s right.  This could take a while.  And frankly, unless one of us is secretly a theologian, it may not make much difference.  We don’t know what we’re looking for and may not even know if we found it.”

“True,” Clay nodded.

“So…maybe we should call someone.”

“Like whom?”

“Like a theologian or scholar.” He shrugged.

“Great, let’s find some yellow pages.”

Borger frowned at Caesare.  “That’s not what I mean.  I mean someone we know.”

“Do you know somebody, Will?”

“Kind of.”

Clay raised an eyebrow.  “Kind of?”

“Okay, yes.  I know someone.  But they’re not specifically a scholar.”

“Or theologian?” added Caesare.

“Right.  She’s more like a jack-of-all-trades.  She’s one of those people who just knows stuff.”

“About what?”

“About everything.  You might say she’s plugged in, to a lot of things.  And a lot of people.”

“Can she be trusted?”

“I think so.”

“And how do you recommend we explain our predicament?”

“You mean as far as security?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” shrugged Borger, “obviously we leave out the part about the alien ship.”

48

Borger’s call was answered on the third ring just outside of San Diego, California, by a woman in her late 50s.  Her computer clicked several times as it scanned the line.

“Hello, William.”

“Hi, Clydene.  How’d you know it was me?”

“You’re the only person who always calls me from a satellite number.”

“Sorry for the early call.  Did I wake you?”

“Actually, no,” the woman replied.

“Good.”

“How’s France?”

Borger glanced at the others, who were standing with him outside the cathedral’s main entrance.  “How did you know I was in France?”

Clydene smiled and stared blindly ahead in her study.  “I can hear people speaking French in the background.  And judging from your tone, I’m assuming you’re not on vacation.”

“Correct.”

“Let me guess—you’re wearing a Hawaiian shirt.”

“Very funny,” replied Borger.

Clydene chuckled.  “How was the flight?”

“I’m getting better.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” she joked.  “Fortunately, there’s a lot of room for improvement.”

“So, how are you?”

“Come now, William.  You’re not calling to find out how I am.  Besides, I don’t like small talk any more than you do.”

“Right.”

“I presume your call is related to why you’re in France.  And hopefully, you’re not calling from a cell at the DGSE.”

“Uh, no,” he replied.  “I’m calling from Chartres.”

“Ah, returning to your religious roots, then.”

“You might say that.”

“Oh, William,” she replied, lowering both arms onto the rests of her wheelchair.  “You’ve never been one for suspense.  Let’s hear what it is that got you on a ten-hour flight.”

“Some friends and I are looking for something.”

“Ooh, a treasure hunt.  A religious relic of some kind, I presume.”

“We’re not exactly sure.  We built a system, a computer system, that uses Deep Learning to search through old historical records looking for connections.”

“Undiscovered connections?”

“Yes.”

“Very clever.  What information are you searching through?”

“Some public, some…not so public.”

“As in private?”

“More like…government.”

“I see.  Encrypted?”

“Yes.”

Clydene smiled again.  “Sounds fun.  Continue.”

“The problem is with the hits our system produces.  They can be a little…arcane.”

“For example?”

“We only have a couple of words, a location and a year.”

“Can you share them with me?”

Borger relayed the pieces to Clydene, who mulled them over.

“And these brought you to Chartres.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm, not much to go on.  I presume you’re not sure whether this has to do with the Virgin Mary or the cathedral itself.”

“Precisely.”

Clydene thought for almost a full minute.  “That’s all you’ve gotten from this machine of yours?”

“No.  We’ve gotten a second lead, but we’re still trying to nail that down.  It’s just a date and a single word.”

“Which is what?”

When Borger told her, Clydene again became quiet, this time for longer, before the call suddenly ended.

Borger pulled the phone from his ear and stared at it.  Then he looked up.

“What happened?”

“We got cut off.”

He blinked at the small screen and waited. After a moment he started to call back when a short text message appeared.

Get an untraceable phone and call me back at the following number.

Borger finished reading as a second message appeared, this one displaying a ten-digit phone number.  He glanced curiously at the others.  “We need another phone.”

***

It took a half an hour to find a store and purchase a throw-away cell phone that could dial internationally.

When it was finally active, Borger dialed the number Clydene had sent and waited, eyeing everyone as they sat around a small black café table.

When she answered, Clydene immediately began speaking.

“Who are you with in France?”

“Four colleagues,” answered Borger.

“Are they trustworthy?”

“Extremely.”

“Are they currently with you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in public?”

“Yes.”

“Are you being followed?”

He shook his head and gazed around the small plaza.  “Not that we’re aware of.  No one knows about our machine except us.”

“Good.”

“Why?”

“You said you weren’t sure about whether it was Mary or the cathedral itself you were after.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s the cathedral,” Clydene replied flatly.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.  It has nothing to do with Mary.  What you’re looking for is something else represented in that church—or more specifically, someone else.”

“Who?”

“First, tell me more about this machine of yours.  Not what, but why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you build it?” she asked.

“I told you, to search for historical connections–”

“No,” Clydene interrupted him.  “The real reason.”

Borger frowned and stared apprehensively at Clay across the table.  “I can’t tell you that.”

“I see,” she replied.  The line fell silent before she continued.  “And you really have no idea what you’re searching for?”

“Not here, no.”

On the other end, Clydene used the knob on her wheelchair to turn away from her phone and computer, staring forward and seeing only figments of the rest of the room where an old bookcase filled the entirety of the opposing wall.

“You’d better sit down, William.”

49

It took two hours to make it back to the airport, where all five sat buckled in their leather seats while the Gulfstream III taxied back out onto a runway.

The craft continued bouncing under a steady roar as it rolled forward before finally slowing and turning around, providing a brief look at the glowing skyline before promptly disappearing again out of view, replaced by runway lights and a small forest of the dark trees at the end of the airport.

The wait was short before the jet engines roared to full power and pilots released the brakes, causing the aircraft to quickly surge forward and gain speed.

Inside the lighted cabin, Clay, Borger, Caesare, Neely and Li Na remained quietly seated as they had during their entire drive back to the airport, not from exhaustion, but shock.

Shock at where they were headed—and why.

50

The silence on the plane was as profound as the complete absence of sound surrounding Elgin Tay, approximately two hundred and fifty feet below the Pathfinder's giant hull, beneath the ocean and standing solemnly inside the alien ship.

He studied one of the many walls inside it. Like the others, the wall appeared nearly identical.  But it wasn’t.  It was the peculiar markings they were all covered in that looked the same, strange objects or inscriptions, etchings which bore little resemblance to anything they had seen previously.  Many contained pieces or remnants of simple shapes like circles or squares, even occasional triangular outlines within the etchings, but that was the extent of anything even remotely recognizable.

Tay turned and looked to his left, where SEAL divers Beene and Corbin were carefully recording another wall section.

Was it nothing more than luck that Tay had previously managed to push the correct object on the wall and escape through the cargo bay door?

At least hieroglyphics had recognizable pictures.  And still, those had remained unreadable for centuries until the Rosetta Stone was found in the Nile Delta.  But this was beginning to feel impossible.

To him, it resembled something between Sanskrit, hieroglyphics with some alien engineering schematics thrown in, making him wonder whether anyone would be able to figure it out.

What they needed was an expert linguist.  Or a team of them.  But who could they trust with something like this?

His eyes continued upward to the rounded corner, then over the less populated ceiling, looking instead like the floors.  It was similar to lines of circuitry which emanated a bright green when pressed.

On a more positive note, what they had found was a second level to the craft.  With proper lighting, it became clear there was significantly more to the ship, accessible by way of the area they referred to as the ‘cargo hold.’  Three more elongated rooms traveled directly below the upper level, covered with etchings or instrumentation from floor to ceiling.  And even more notably, it was also missing what appeared to be large ‘pieces’ of the ship.

When the SEALs finished scanning and measuring their section, Beene relaxed and shook his head at Tay.  “I hope someone out there is a hell of a lot smarter than we are.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Corbin said. “This is going to take years.”

“Or decades.”

Tay frowned in silence.  He agreed, but it was frustrating.  It would definitely take longer than anticipated—potentially much longer.  But he was still hopeful human ingenuity would prevail.  After all, he knew which button he had pushed to open the door.  That section of the ship had surprisingly little instrumentation on its walls, so there was a possibility of using that as a place to work backward, by studying and deducing common elements from the few to the many.

Everything could eventually be reverse engineered.  The question was—how long was eventually?

Soon they would have every square inch of the ship mapped out, allowing them to create a computerized 3D model to dissect and study in much greater detail aboard the ship.  Piece by piece, section by section.

All they needed was one breakthrough.  One piece of the puzzle which would allow them to connect a second and then eventually the third.  They’d study slowly and methodically until they had a foothold and enough breadcrumbs to begin figuring it out.

Tay finally stepped back and folded his arms, again studying the walls, ceiling, floor and corners, even the openings between rooms.  As odd as the etchings were, the rooms' basic dimensions and angles were not all that unusual.  Yes, the corners were more rounded, the passages tighter and tapered, and the surfaces had a strange feel to the touch, but the general dimensions and shapes of each room gave off a sensation of familiarity.  The ramp, the doors, the ship's general orientation, even the giant shield surrounding it were all basic rooms.  Some were small, some large, but all were square and subject to Earth's same fundamental concepts.  It was a familiarity that left Lieutenant Tay wondering just how technologically far ahead of humans this alien race had been when the ship was built?

***

Hours later, Tay and the rest of his research team had all returned to the ship, using the same diving bell and winch as they had been for weeks.  Slowly, they traveled back up through the stale open air before passing into the rippling wall of ocean mysteriously being held back by some force within the alien ship.

Now, in the small office of the Pathfinder’s machine room, Tay glanced at Alison Shaw and Chris Ramirez as they both peered up at the screen displaying the green interior of the alien cargo bay.

“So, no one has any idea what any of this means?”

“Nope,” answered Tay, shaking his head.

“Well, add me to the list then,” she said with a sigh, “because I don’t, either.”

“Same here.”

Tay continued staring at them.  “Keep watching.”

They both glanced at him curiously and continued watching the screen.

“What are we looking for?”

“Just wait.”

The video switched to a waterproof camera affixed to the top of the diving bell.  Inside, Tay, Beene and Corbin could all be seen climbing in and calmly donning their scuba gear as the steel-barred door closed and they began their ascent.

The bell stopped a few minutes later, approximately thirty feet below the ocean water, the overhead layer being held back like a thick layer of wavering sky.  When all three had their masks on and tested, they each held up an okay sign to each other before Beene pushed a sizeable green button next to the metal door and they continued their ascent, slowly reaching and then breaching the salt water above them.

Alison glanced back at Tay and shrugged.  “Something wrong with the cage?”

“Keep watching.”

The picture became less transparent as the air in and around the bell was immediately replaced with water flowing in and out of the dozen open steel bars.  Alison and Chris continued to observe as the three engineers in the video remained still, each grasping one of the bars as they traveled upward.

Because the bell’s camera was angled down, it took several more seconds before they saw it—a dark shape beyond the bars, still and unmoving, shrinking as the bell rose.  Then another came into view.  And then yet another, until several could be seen as the cage and camera continued upward.

“Whaaat?”

“It’s your dolphins,” said Tay.

Alison nodded, perplexed.  “What are they doing?”

“You tell me.”

She glanced at Chris, who appeared just as confused as she.  “Excuse me?”

“They’re your dolphins,” said Tay.  “What are they doing down there like that?”

“How are we supposed to know?”

“You’re the ones who can talk to them.”

“It’s not that easy–” Alison started, frowning, before reaching for the mouse and backing up the video, allowing her and Chris to watch it again.

There were several dolphins positioned around the path the divers had ascended inside the cage.  As the video continued playing, even more shapes were seen just as the light gradually faded into darkness.

“What exactly were they doing?”

Tay shrugged.  “Nothing.  They were all just floating there watching us.”

“How many do you think there were?” asked Chris.

“Fifty,” guessed Tay.  “Maybe a hundred.”

“A hundred?!”

Tay nodded.  “All floating in place.  I’m not going to lie—it felt a little weird.”

Alison paused the video.  “Were you doing anything special today?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.  Anything out of the ordinary they might have found curious?”

Tay stared at her for a long moment.  “It wasn’t just today.  They’ve been doing that all week.”

51

Back in the lab, Alison turned and faced Chris as he closed the steel door behind him before approaching with a look of confusion.

“What in the hell is going on down there?”

“I don’t know,” she said.  “But I think we were right.  The dolphins want to know what’s inside that ship.”

“But why?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Chris glowered.  “Come on. You seem to understand what they’re thinking better than anyone else.  It’s as if you and Sally are in some kind of zone.  Like females reading each other’s minds.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Listen, I grew up with sisters.  Try playing charades with them.  Or any game for that matter.  Sometimes women just have a way of knowing what the other one is thinking.”

“And you think because of that I know what Sally is thinking?”

“No.  But I think you’re better at guessing than any of the rest of us.  Of what they’re thinking.  And I’m here to tell you, whatever they are doing down there is really starting to freak me out.”

“You’re not the only one.”

“Maybe not.  But their elders clearly have some kind of agenda to which we are not privy.  Maybe they just want knowledge, or maybe they do want us humans to tell them how to take over their world down there. But whatever it is, it’s becoming more and more obvious that it has to do with that alien ship.”

“Take it easy, Chris.”

“No, I’m not taking it easy, and do you know why?  Because I was talking to one of Tay’s engineers the other day.  You want to guess why they’re so afraid to touch anything down there?”

“Down where?”

“In the ship.”

Alison stopped and stared at him.  “Why?”

“Because they’re afraid it’s booby-trapped.”

“What?”

“That’s right.  Whoever came here in that thing built those caverns and put all their DNA in there.  And then they buried their ship so it wouldn’t be found.  Apparently, that’s all you can do with a ship that doesn’t rust or decompose because it’s designed to heal itself.  So, they took it apart and buried it, presumably so no one could find it or use it.  But eventually, someone did find it—us.

“So…”

“So, Tay’s team thinks that whoever took it apart had to know it was possible, at least theoretically, for it to be found and put back together again.  After all, we found the navigation system, and it reconnected itself to the ship!  So obviously, it can be reassembled, which they must have known.  Whoever they are.  So, what would you do as a safeguard if you knew that something you didn’t want to be put back together could be, even if you didn’t want it to be?”

Before Alison could reply, Chris answered.  “You booby-trap it.  You booby-trap it so that if someone begins putting it back together, you set the damn thing to blow itself up!”

Alison stared at him, speechless.

“That’s what they’re afraid of.  That whoever it belongs to took extra steps, one way or another to make sure it cannot be reused.”

“Is that true?”

“Yes, it’s true.  Just ask Tay.”

“Then why didn’t the aliens just blow it up in the first place?”

“No one knows.”

“Huh.”

“And now we have the dolphins suddenly obsessed with this ship, too, which makes me even more nervous.  What if that ship is booby-trapped?  And what if we don’t set it off but the dolphins somehow manage to?!”

Alison didn’t respond, prompting Chris to step forward.  “What kind of explosion do you think alien technology might be capable of?  Because if that thing goes nuclear—or worse—you and I and everyone on this entire ship are sitting right on top of it!”

52

What Clydene had pointed out to Will Borger about the Chartres Cathedral had nothing to do with the Virgin Mary, and nothing to do with her entire portal or any of the bays or sculptures within it.

The leads that their Machine had given them were for the cathedral itself.  And after returning to the church, it took Borger and the others only minutes to find what they should have been looking for.

It was on the South Porch, verified by one of the church’s own guidebooks, where hundreds of statues and smaller statuettes were located.  In the inner archivolt of the outer arch rested twenty-eight statuettes of kings and queens of the Old Testament. David with his harp, Solomon and his scepter, and the Queen of Sheba holding a flower in her left hand.  At the top, four bearded major prophets talked with four clean-shaven minor prophets.

All encompassed in the South Porch of the cathedral and had been built the same century the Ethiopian sacred text Kebra Nagast had been written.

All five, except Li Na, who was sleeping, remained silent and contemplative in their seats, buffeted by occasional turbulence.

Interestingly, the two clues Borger’s Machine had tied together weren’t unique, or even unknown, for that matter.  The connection had been documented and known by many researchers for decades, perhaps centuries, as evidenced by the sculptures on Chartres’ famed South Porch.  However, the difference was that no one alive today who was aware of the connection actually believed it.

Yet what no historian could know was the legend’s link back to an alien ship buried on the Caribbean Sea floor.  This connection in all human history, only five people, presently flying aboard the Gulfstream III business class jet, were aware of.

Neely was the first to break the silence.

“What exactly are we doing?”

All three men turned to her with inquisitive faces.

She raised both hands in a helpless gesture and shrugged.  “I mean…what?”

Borger’s face turned to puzzlement.  “We’re trying to solve a mystery.”

“That’s not what I mean.  What do we do after?  If we’re right.”

There was no reply.

“This…” she said slowly, “may be one of the greatest mysteries in modern history.  Maybe all of history.  What do we do if your computer is right and this turns out to be true?”

“Well, let’s find out first.”

Neely shook her head.  “No, we need to think about this now.  Beforehand.”

“You’re asking what happens if other people find out?”

“No.  I’m asking, should we even be trying to do this?”

Clay gradually nodded.  “It’s a good point.  This isn’t just any secret.  If people like Hayes and the CIA already know some of what we’ve uncovered, what if they find out about this?”

“It’s even bigger than them, John.  This is about what we do if we’re right.”

“We?”

She stared at the men.  “What I’m asking is, should this be solved?”

Borger wrinkled his brow.  “All mysteries should be solved.”

“Spoken like a true conspiracy theorist,” quipped Caesare.

“Listen,” Borger shot back,  “an awful lot of conspiracies have turned out to be proven true.  Do I believe in government coverups?  Yes.  Do I think people have the right to know?  Yes.”

“This is not a government coverup,” said Neely.

“Maybe not, but the same principle applies here.  We deserve to know the truth.  All of us.”

She mulled it over before again shaking her head.  “This isn’t just about the principle.  This is about practicality for the same people about whom you’re talking.”

“Truth trumps practicality.”

“Maybe,” she pondered, staring at him.  “But that’s not how the real world operates, Will.  We all know that.  What we want, collectively or individually, is never how things ultimately turn out.”

“You have to have faith in people, Neely.”

“I wonder,” Clay said, interrupting.  “Look what happened with the Chinese and Russians when they found out about the bacteria.  Look what happened in our own government.”

“Exactly,” added Neely.  “If what we’re searching for really is another piece of the alien ship, one revelation can and probably will eventually lead to the other.”

“But that’s not what you’re talking about.”

“No,” she said.  “I’m also talking about physical safety.  Everyone’s.  Not just the world’s reaction if this comes out, but in what this thing may be capable of—even accidentally.”

The cabin grew silent once more, once again replaced with the muffled roar of the aircraft’s engines.

Clay finally turned to Borger.  “Will?”

He blinked multiple times before answering.  “It’s possible.  If we’re right, this thing could be the alien ship’s power plant.”

“Or power source?”

“Yes, or power source.  Whatever it was that got the thing here.”

“Any ideas on what it might be made out of?”

Borger stared back. “I couldn’t even begin to guess.  But whatever it is, it would have to be God awful powerful.”

“No doubt.”

Borger was still staring ahead blankly when he shook his head and held up a finger.  “I think I should elaborate.”  After a long, contemplative pause, he took a breath and said simply, “Time travel is real.”

The other three looked at each other.  “What?”

“I said, time travel is real.  It is fact.  Not speculation.”  He looked back and forth between them.  “It’s happening right now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Einstein,” said Borger, “proved that the faster one travels, the slower time moves.  This is an absolute fact, and it’s been repeatedly tested and proven.”

“What do mean it’s happening right now?”

“Right now.  For us in this jet.  We’re traveling hundreds of miles per hour, which means time is, in fact, passing more slowly for us than for people on the ground.  But the difference is so extraordinarily small that it’s not noticeable or even measurable.  However, if we were on something faster, much faster, we could measure it.”

“For example?”

“For example, the International Space Station.  That travels a hell of a lot faster, just over 17,000 miles per hour, and we can measure time differences at that speed.  Still very tiny, but it’s there.”

Clay watched him curiously.  “Are you talking about the twins?”

“Yes, I am.  The Kelly twins.  Scott and Mark Kelly, identical twins and both astronauts.  One of them, Scott, was assigned an eleven-month mission aboard the International Space Station, where due to its high-speed orbits around the Earth, it resulted in Scott returning eleven months later, younger than his twin brother on the ground.”

“He came back younger?”

“Yep.  Thirteen milliseconds younger.  Because under a much faster speed aboard the I.S.S., time had actually slowed for him.”

Caesare rolled his eyes.  “Geez, Will.  Get to the point already.”

Borger squinted at Caesare.  “Excuse me, but there’s something called build up.”

“Maybe in horror or suspense movies, but there’s also something called losing your audience.”

Neely grinned at Caesare.  “Do you have someplace else to be?”

“I can think of a lot of places I’d rather be,” he retorted.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Not true,” Caesare said.  “I now eat with a napkin.”

Neely shook her head and laughed.

“Can I continue?” asked Borger.

“Go ahead.  But I already believe you because time is dragging for me as you tell this.”

“Fine, I’ll pick it up.  What I’m trying to get at is that traveling anywhere, especially through space, has an effect on time.  Sometimes a little and sometimes a lot.”

“Does this have to do with the spaceship’s power plant?”

“Yes!  Because there are huge differences in speed when traveling through space.  Our fastest spacecraft is still comparatively slow, taking years just to get to the other planets in our solar system.  Our absolute fastest is a solar probe, which circled the Earth seven times to build up more speed before heading off toward the Sun.  And at one point, it reached a whopping 430,000 miles per hour, astonishing by human standards.  So, if Scott Kelly had been aboard that probe for eleven months, he would have come back more than three hundred milliseconds younger.  But that’s still only three tenths of a second.”

“Losing…audience,” moaned Caesare.

“My point is that you can see just how much faster something has to go before time is affected to any significant degree.”

“Yes.  We get it.”

“Good.  Because this is where it comes back to the alien ship.  If the power plant is in fact what we’re searching for here, then it has serious implications.”

“Our very brightest engineers,” he continued, “can only conceive of what it would take to travel fast enough to reach another star or a distant plant.  Even the closest would take years at the speed of light, and Einstein says the speed of light is impossible.  So, you either go slightly below that, which still appears nearly impossible or…”

“Or what?”

“Or you change the rules.”

Caesare squinted at Borger.  “What does that mean?”

He didn’t reply.

“What does that mean?” he repeated.

After a moment, Borger grinned.  “Not a bad build up, eh?”

Caesare rolled his eyes and threw up his hands.

Clay, enjoying the exchange, asked, “How do you change the rules?”

“Some astrophysicists think that given the incredible distances involved, it may be more practical to travel over space rather than through it.”

“And how do you do that?”

He shrugged.  “By manipulating time and space itself.”

“And that’s more practical?”

“It may be for getting around Einstein’s light-speed limit.  Some physicists think it may be the only viable solution, since even if we could reach light speed, it would still be too slow, considering how far away everything is.  The only solution may be to change the rules, to develop the ability to warp time and space.  Or, in other words, a propulsion system powerful enough to warp spacetime and pull it through the ship.  And something like that,” finished Borger, “would have to be God awful powerful.”

Neely’s face suddenly became serious.  “And God awful dangerous.”

***

It took seven hours from Paris, France, to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.  They arrived long before the first glimpses of sunlight had risen, a landing that shook Li Na awake and had her glancing around the cabin.

But none of them could sleep.  Instead, each struggled to escape the sheer profoundness of the trip.

Seven hours to solve a mystery spanning millennia.

And the better part of all of written history.

They were all pensive and exhausted as the plane finally came to a stop and its door subsequently pushed open.

When no one spoke, Caesare smiled at the others and pushed himself up out of his chair.  “Let’s find some breakfast.  We’ll all think better on a full stomach.”

53

The clang of metal was heard late in the day, followed by a man’s voice calling to someone at the end of the row.  After a long wait, the guard finally appeared and briefly searched through the steel rusted bars past dozens of figures until finding the one he was looking for huddled in the corner of the room with his arms wrapped around both legs.

“Farangi,” the guard barked in Amharic.

The figure glanced up with a look of surprise.  Dark skinned and lean,  he was dressed in dirty pants and a long, striped shirt and his hair was short, gray and dusty.

“You have a visitor.”

The man stared back with a confused expression before releasing his legs.  “I do?”

“Yes, you.  Now get up.”

The prisoner promptly sat up and pressed a pair of wire-frame glasses back up onto his nose.   “Who is it?”

“How should I know?” growled the guard.  “Just get up.”

With one hand on a wall, the older man quickly rose and scrambled toward the open door, stepping through and waiting as the guard slammed them shut again behind him.

Without a word, he followed the guard down the cracked and crumbling concrete corridor, passing dozens of other overcrowded cells, ignoring comments from the other prisoners as he walked—jokes about him being taken to Zone 9, the dark section of Kaliti Prison from which few prisoners returned.  Fear caused the man to grow sick in the pit of his stomach while treading obediently behind.

Was someone really there, or was it a ruse to get him to come peacefully?  Until it was too late to resist.  Leaving only a final desperate fight against what was about to happen.

He found himself surprised and extraordinarily relieved when the guard led him out of the noisy cell blocks and into the smaller, brightly lit room he’d seen only once before.  The room was lined with a dozen cheap plastic chairs all facing the same direction—through a wall of large, thick, filthy panes of glass.

Pushed toward one of only two remaining seats, the man stumbled forward, confused upon seeing no one he recognized.

“Here!” barked the guard, yanking him back and dropping him clumsily into the first chair.

Perplexed, the man gave a long stare through the glass before apprehensively reaching for the receiver.

He studied both men in front of him.  One was tall and lean, muscular, while the other was overweight and dressed in a distractingly colorful shirt.  Each man held his own receiver.

“Who are you?”

“Are you Graham Goodwin?”

The older man responded, almost reluctantly.  “Yes.”

“We’ve been sent by Clydene.”

“Clydene, who?”

“Clydene Nee.”

The man adjusted his glasses and shook his head.  “I don’t know who that is.”

On the other side of the glass, Borger glanced briefly at Clay.  “You don’t?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think I’d know.”

Borger looked down at a small piece of paper in front of him, a photograph of a younger Graham Goodwin from the internet.  It was him.  Older, unkept, and dirtier, but the thin face and jawline were the same.

“My name is Will Borger, and this is John Clay.  We were told to come find you.”

“I’m guessing that wasn’t too difficult.” He grimaced.  “Even for a couple of Yanks.”

“And you don’t know any Clydene?”

“No.”

Borger and Clay looked at each other again, still confused.  “Why exactly are you in here, Mr. Goodwin?”

The man studied them before replying.  “How do I know you’re not working for them?”

“Working for who?”

He smiled through a pair of cracked, chapped lips.  “Right.”

“I don’t think we’re following.”

“Precisely what they would say,” said Goodwin.  “Clever, though, to use a couple Americans.”

“Who are they?”

The older man leaned forward onto the small metal shelf before him.  “Sorry, gents, I wasn’t born yesterday.”

Both men peered quietly at him through the window.  “Believe it or not, we don’t know why you’re here.  There are no public records regarding your incarceration.”

“Of course, there aren’t.  But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

Borger and Clay both frowned simultaneously.

“I expected something like this,” said Goodwin.  “You can keep me in this gulag, but you won’t get me to do it again.”

Clay reached into a pocket to retrieve something, prompting Borger to do the same.  Together, they held and pressed their passport photos up against the glass.

Goodwin scratched at his dirty scalp before leaning in to study them.  “Bravo.  Very impressive.”

“What is?”

“Forgeries.  But I’m not exactly in a position to notify the American consulate, now am I?”

Both men lowered their passports and proceeded to pull out their ID badges with the words Department of Naval Investigations printed in large bold letters across the top.

Goodwin appeared more impressed after glimpsing these.  “Those are even better.”

Borger shook his head and dropped the badge next to his passport.  Thinking a moment, he retrieved a pen from his pocket and jotted something down on the back of the paper photo.

“Listen.  We don’t know why you’re here, but we’re guessing it has something to do with this.”  With that, he held up the paper and flattened it against the window with his palm.

On the paper was written a single word.

TABOT

Goodwin stared at the paper then peered back to the two men.  It was an odd choice of word to write down.  And interestingly, their reactions thus far appeared remarkably genuine.

He stared back at Borger.  “Where were you born?”

“Sparks, Nevada.”

“Never been there.”

“I wouldn’t be in a giant rush if I were you.”

The older man released a wry grin and looked at Clay.  “You’re American too, eh?”

“Born and raised.”

“Okay, what was it that started your Yankee revolution against us in 1773?”

Clay smiled.  “Tea.”

Goodwin slowly nodded and glanced casually at the guard at the door.

“If you are who you say you are, then why are you here?”

Without a word, Borger raised the paper and once again displayed the five letters scribbled on the back.

“How long are you in here for, Mr. Goodwin?”

“Quite a while, I’m afraid.”

“How long is quite a while?”

“Honestly, chaps, your guess is as good as mine.”

“Maybe there’s something we can do to help.”

“I suspect that would be rather impossible.  The people who put me here don’t want to see me leave.”

“Who put you in there?”

Goodwin lowered his voice as he spoke through the mouthpiece.  “That would be the Ethiopian government.”

54

It was incredible how shockingly opulent a government office could be, or a government building, for that matter, particularly in poverty-ridden countries.  Prime Minister Abebe Imru’s office was no exception, ornately framed from wall to wall in 14k gold behind ivory sculptures and million-dollar paintings adorning nearly every square foot of the room, many depicting famous Ethiopian battles.

Above his desk, the famed Battle of Adwa took up half the wall, depicting dozens of victorious Ethiopian soldiers dressed in red and gold tunics, holding swords high and lauding over their white-faced Italian enemies.

It was more than ironic, given Prime Minister Imru’s royal blue suit made from Escorial wool in the very country they’d invaded in the painting above him.  Irony entirely lost as he sat stoically in an alligator leather chair, listening in amazement to Ethiopia’s President and head of state standing in front of his enormous desk.

“You cannot be serious.”

“I am, your excellency.”

“The President of the United States?”

President Selassie nodded, unable to hide his surprise.  “He is on the phone now.”

The prime minister blinked uncomprehendingly before slowly reaching for his phone.  Then he suddenly stopped.  He was only vaguely aware of the man called Graham Goodwin, a British citizen convicted of treason against the Ethiopian Republic.

“Why would the United States be calling about this man?” he asked.

“I do not know, Your Excellency.”

“Is he still alive?”

“We’re checking,” answered Selassie.

Imru lowered his eyes and stared at his phone before finally picking up the receiver.

“Hello, Mr. President.”

On the other end, President Scott Carr’s voice was unmistakable.  “Mister Prime Minister, thank you for taking my call.”

***

When Carr hung up several minutes later, he peered up at Admiral Langford, who stood quietly before his desk.

“You going to tell me what this is about, Jim?”

“I’d rather not,” answered Langford honestly.  “It’s complicated.”

Carr smirked and leaned back in his chair.  “What isn’t, these days?”

55

The prime minister had remained quiet, thinking, his dark hand still resting upon the phone’s receiver.

“Why are the Americans so interested in this man?”

“I do not know.”

“Then find out.”

“Yes, your Excellency.  Are we to release him?”

With a blank stare, Imru slowly nodded his head.

***

It still took several hours before a cleanly dressed Goodwin with a freshly shaven head stumbled outside the prison gates and into darkness.  His feet, squeezed into secondhand shoes two sizes too small, kicked up a spray of tiny gravel stones as he floundered for balance beneath a warm sky filled with stars and a nearby field of chirping crickets.

When he looked around, he spotted a single object— a small black car, turned off, with Borger and Clay both standing in front of it.

“Merry Christmas,” said Borger.

Goodwin looked back at the prison entrance and ambled forward with some difficulty.  “How in the bloody hell did you do that?”

“Friends in high places,” replied Clay.

When Goodwin reached them, he looked them up and down before peering into the empty car.  “What exactly does this obligate me to do for you?”

“We just want information, beginning with what you’d like to eat, followed by how exactly you ended up in prison for treason.”

***

Pasta beu siga was as close to spaghetti Bolognese as a foreigner could come in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's largest city and capital.  Meaning ‘new flower’ or ‘natural spring,’ the city had a population of just under three million people and lay a few miles from the East African Rift, splitting the country in two.   And where Goodwin was presently scarfing down a dinner faster than anyone could believe.

“Didn’t think I would ever meet someone who ate faster than Steve.”

An unamused Caesare glared at Borger.  “Funny.”

“The first insect-free meal I’ve had in months,” Goodwin mumbled, barely looking up.

“That’s enough to take the appetite right out of you.”

From a hotel suite in the city’s Piazza district, all four sat watching the bald Goodwin devour his plate.  Li Na, sitting farther away in a larger leather chair, studied the strange man from a distance, feeling waves of nervous jubilation rising inside the man from what felt like an ocean of despair.

Goodwin lowered the empty plate onto a wooden coffee table and eased back against a couch pillow when he was done, looking at the four in front of him.

“For that, I am eternally grateful.”

“Our pleasure.”

“So, four Americans,” he said, then looked past to Li Na.  “And…”

“One Chinese.”

“An interesting troop you have here.  All the way from the U.S. just to find me?”

“More or less.  Now tell us about your incarceration.”

Goodwin squinted beneath his dark brow.  “How do I know this isn’t some foxy swindle?”

“Foxy swindle?”

“A ruse,” he said.  “A hustle.”

“Yeah,” Caesare mumbled, “we flew over here to hustle you into letting us get you out of prison and feed you.  Evil genius.”

Goodwin gave him a dour expression.  “I don’t like you.”

Caesare chuckled.  “Get in line.”

“Listen…Graham,” Clay said, leaning to one side and reaching into his pocket.  “We’re not hustling or swindling you.”  He dropped Goodwin’s British passport onto the table.  “You’re a free man, at least for the moment.  All we want is a little help.”

Goodwin picked up his passport and examined it, checking the pages.  “Help with what?”

56

He was still clutching his passport when Goodwin’s brown eyes returned to Clay.

“Tell us how you ended up in prison.”

He slid the small booklet into his shirt pocket and folded his arms.  He still wasn’t sure about this group, but if it were a ruse, why would his captors go to such lengths to get him to reveal what they already knew?  Unless…they were legit.

“Well,” Goodwin began slowly, “as you can probably guess, I’m not Ethiopian.  I’m from Luton, England.”

“That we knew,” said Clay.  “Where you grew up to become a college professor in your mid-thirties.  Then later, a research academic.”

“A scholar,” corrected Goodwin.

“Scholar.  And then a traveling scholar, working for some rather interesting people.”

“That’s a large oversimplification.”

“So, who was your employer this time?”

“I already told you. The Ethiopian government.”

Neely spoke up.  “Did you betray them or something?”

Goodwin looked at her as if noting her attractive features for the first time.  “No.”

“Didn’t deliver?”

“There was nothing to deliver.”

“Then what was it?” crowed Caesare.

“I was imprisoned,” Goodwin said, “for reasons of plausible deniability.  Or should I say, political deniability?”

“You mean a cover-up?”

“Yes.  When the endeavor failed, they needed a scapegoat.  Although I suspect they had already long since considered that scenario.”

Clay eased his chair forward.  “And what exactly were you doing for them?”

“I was attempting to ascertain the location of an important relic, one the Ethiopian government has been keen to lay their hands on for decades, if not centuries.”

“And what was the relic?”

Goodwin grinned at Clay and then peered at Borger next to him.  “Again, you already know the answer per our previous conversation.”

“The Tabot,” Borger offered.

“Yes.  Quite right.  But you see, the Ethiopian government, at least this government, has had quite a significant obstacle before it for a long time—the Ethiopian people, a rather religious bunch who take their religion and their faith very seriously.  Therefore, I was to serve as the proverbial broker.”

“So they could deny involvement if something went wrong?”

“No, so they could deny involvement when things went wrong.”

“Wait, they set you up?”

“I can’t prove it, but yes.”

“Who knows about this?”

“A dozen people, perhaps.”

“Including the prime minister?”

Goodwin spotted a bowl full of nuts on a side table and promptly moved across to retrieve it.  Popping a handful into his mouth, he shook his head.  “I don’t think so.  Not now.  I suspect it was someone else high in Parliament.  My contact, a man named Negasi, was not that high.”

“But he worked for the government?”

Goodwin nodded.  “He said he was part of the CUD, but I don’t think that’s true.”

“The CUD?”

“It stands for Coalition for Unity and Democracy.  It’s the primary opposition to the ruling EPRDF party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front.  I’ve come to believe Negasi was instead part of the country’s ruling EPRDF already in power.”

“Then this was political?”

“Everything is political,” said Goodwin, mockingly.  “Everything on the planet.  But yes, the EPRDF controls Ethiopia, at least for now, but their power and influence are waning.  They are losing control of the country and growing more vulnerable to their opposition—more vulnerable and more desperate.  Which is why they hired an outsider like me to help them.”

“How is that?”

“By finding the Tabot.  The real Tabot.  By seizing and revealing it to the country and to the world to show they are the true leaders of their people.”

“Because of the Tabot.”

“Yes.  The Tabot, also known as the Tablets of Law onto which the Biblical Ten Commandments were inscribed as recognized by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.  But it’s known to the rest of the world by another name—the Ark of the Covenant.”

“And you believe it’s here, in Ethiopia.”

Goodwin nodded confidently.  “I know it’s here.”

“A lot of people don’t believe it exists at all,” replied Borger.

“Believe me, it exists.  And it is here.”

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because it literally can’t be anywhere else.  All the evidence points here.  All of it.  More than enough to be certain.  You just need to align the correct pieces of the puzzle for it to become clear.”  Goodwin studied the four in front of him.  “And something tells me you’ve already arranged some of the pieces yourself.”

“A few,” admitted Clay.  “Which is what brought us to you.”

“Evidently.  So again, I ask, what do you want from me?”

“Your story.”

“My story?”

“The whole story, including all the pieces you have put together.”

Goodwin stared at Clay and mulled it over.  “On one condition.”

“You already have your freedom.”

“Fine. Two conditions.”  When no one answered, Goodwin said simply, “You take me with you.”

“If I were you,” injected Caesare, “I would be on the first plane back to England.”

The Englishman stared back at him thoughtfully.  “Let me tell you a story.  I had a dear friend not too long ago, a younger woman I’d known for the better part of twenty years.  She was a lovely lass by the name of Erin.  Brilliant, beautiful, charming.  A loving mother and wife.  A person who truly had it all until one day when she had a sudden heart attack and died without warning right in front of her home.”

Clay blinked before turning to the others.  “We’re sorry.”

“She was only forty-four years old and was an incredible human being, the kind others felt blessed to have known, just as I did.”  Goodwin stared blankly at the group for several seconds before taking a deep breath.  “Do you know what losing her taught me?”

Clay shook his head.

“It taught me that it could happen to any of us at any moment.  Just like that.  Something we all know but don’t always believe.  Death is ruthless and indiscriminate, caring nothing for what you have done or the type of person you were.  Because if it did, it would have taken me long before her.”

“We’re very sorry,” said Neely.

“When we’re younger, those sorts of things rather roll off our backs, don’t they?  But now, as an old man, her death spoke to me instead.  Deeply.  Like a clarion call.  It told me that if you intend to do anything in this life, you damned well better do it now, because this might just be the last day for any of us.  And when you’re gone, everything you believed in goes with you.  Just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers.

“Now in my sixty-third year on this great planet of ours, I’ve been around the block once or twice, and I know how fleeting a true sense of purpose can be.  Real purpose.  Doing something worth a damn, not just for ourselves but for everyone.  For the world.  For humanity.”  Goodwin fell silent, staring down at the table in front of him.  “For Erin, who cannot do it.”

He looked back up and addressed them.  “Take me with you.  Who knows how many mornings I have left?  And I’d rather not spend them in a small, cold, lonely flat just waiting them out, thinking about what I wish I had done.”

Clay leaned back.  “Our government cannot protect you if we run into trouble.”

“They’ve already done more for me than my own country ever did.”

“If things go bad, I don’t think the Ethiopian government will be putting you back in prison.”

“Good.  Because I’m not going back,” replied Goodwin.  “Something tells me this is the last great safari for this old Englishman, no matter what ends up in the history books.”

Clay looked at the others and thought it over.  “Take us as far as you can and we’ll see.”

The older man smiled again, then leaned forward extending his hand.  “Cracking good, then.”

Still on the couch, Graham Goodwin rubbed his hands before resting them on each knee.  “All right then.  To catch you all up, we need to go back a ways.”

“How far?” asked Caesare.

“All the way,” he replied, “to Solomon.  And the first thing you must understand is that no one knows what the Tabot actually is, or even what it looks like.  Yes, there are descriptions in the Old Testament about it being the embodiment of God, of His power, His stronghold.  However, in the end, all we are really left with is some rough dimensions and cherubs supposedly mounted on top.  But nothing about what it actually is.”

“But–”

“Yes, yes.  I know,” Goodwin went on.  “We’ve seen it over and over in movies and television shows, always portrayed as some impressively ornate creation sculpted in shapes of glistening angelic gold.  But that may not be the case at all, because there is little evidence in terms of what it really looks like, particularly since the box was rumored to be built with wood and merely lined with gold.”

“Sounds like it would still stand out.”

“Perhaps,” he nodded.  “Perhaps not.  Even assuming it hasn’t been damaged, obscured, adorned, buried or even dismantled.  Nevertheless, the fact remains that we still know more about the outside of the Tabot than the inside.”

Borger quietly glanced at Clay but said nothing.

“Why do you believe it’s in Ethiopia?”

“Because the clues tell us so,” Goodwin replied matter-of-factly.  “If a person can detach themselves from one’s preconditioning.  For example, one’s own faith, or the emotions and hopes for what we want the Tabot to be–”

“Assuming they even believe it exists.”

“Precisely.  That alone rules out three-quarters of the world’s population.  As for its power—causing tumors, leveling mountains and laying waste to cities, I think that’s where theory crosses into the realm of fanciful.”

“So where does Solomon come in?”

“King Solomon comes in because he built the first temple in Jerusalem for the sole purpose of housing the Tabot, or Ark, to preserve and worship both its importance and its power.  That is, until it up and vanished.”

“From the temple?”

Goodwin nodded.  “And the history books.  From the Holy of Holies, without a single word in any written scripture.  It’s almost as if it had never existed at all.”

“If there was no mention or record, how do you trace it here?”

“I said there was no mention in the scriptures,” he said.  “I didn’t say anything about personal accounts.  Numerous personal accounts over nearly a thousand years paint a different picture.”

Caesare dubiously studied Goodwin.  “There’s been a lot of personal accounts of Bigfoot, too.”

Goodwin laughed.  “In a world of seven billion people, anything can be claimed or corroborated by someone.  But before the Common Era of Christ, things were rather different, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Well, if you’re implying people didn’t lie back then…”

“No, no.  Of course not.  But it was much harder to conceal things.”

“Why is that?” asked Clay.

“Because back then, the entire world population was only a sliver of what it is today.  Today, the world houses over seven billion occupants.  During King Solomon’s reign, it was barely one percent of that and spread out over a much smaller geographic area, so when something happened, people noticed.”

“Major events were much harder to keep quiet, certainly until enough generations had died out, leaving a bloody long time for people to leave all kinds of references behind.”  Goodwin looked past the others at Li Na, who was sitting quietly behind them, listening. Suddenly, a thought came to him.  “Where did you all come from?”

“We told you, the U.S.”

“No, I mean immediately.  Where exactly was your last stop before coming to find me?”

Borger glanced at the others next to him.  “France.”

“Where in France?”

“Chartres.”

The older man grinned.  “Mary’s Cathedral.  I presume you visited the South Porch.”

“We did.”

“And what, pray tell, did you find there?”

Borger glanced at Clay, who nodded back.  “A statue of King Solomon.”

Goodwin’s grin persisted.  “And?”

“Along with a statue of the Queen of Sheba.”

“Yes!” he exclaimed with satisfaction.  “The queen from the Kingdom of Saba who traveled to Jerusalem to meet the Israelite king with her caravan of gifts.”

“Yes.  We read about her.”

“Very good,” Goodwin said.  “And did you also read about their ensuing love affair?”

“We did.  The rumor of it, anyway.”

“Bah!” said Goodwin.  “It is no rumor. It is fact, as is the son who was born unto her after returning home to Saba—a son named Menelik.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Align the pieces, my friend.  Some contest this, but many do not.  Menelik was the son of Solomon and Sheba, born and raised by his mother until the age of twenty, when he traveled back to his father’s court and was instantly recognized and accepted by his father, a father who many believe still held the Tabot.”

“Until it was stolen,” said Borger, “from the temple by the Babylonians when they invaded hundreds of years later.”

“Yes.” Goodwin nodded. “Many believe that.  But that is not what happened.”

“Then what did?”

Goodwin adjusted himself on the couch.  “Let me first ask you this—why would the Ark, something so profoundly important and arguably the most powerful and sacred item in the known world, be mentioned so frequently in the Old Testament but only until that point in time?”

Borger frowned.  “I’m not sure I understand your question.”

“It is mentioned over two hundred times in the Hebrew Bible until the end of Solomon’s reign.  Then it vanishes, not just from existence, but from the scriptures themselves.  The most prominent and important item in the history of mankind, the very embodiment of God, simply dropped from testament as though it never existed.  No mention of it again.  Not even once.”

“Why?” asked Neely.

“That is what I’m asking you.  Does that not seem a tad odd?  Perhaps even…intentional?”

No one responded.

“Moreover, if Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians captured the world’s most sacred item, wouldn’t that be worth mentioning?  I should think so, and yet instead we have nothing, not even a proverbial footnote anywhere in the rest of the Old Testament.”

“Which is why you believe something else happened to it.”

“Precisely.  There was no mention after Solomon for nearly six hundred years, and then we simply assume the Babylonians took it as part of the booty carted out of Jerusalem when they burned the city to the ground, even though there was no mention of it even by them.  The Hebrew Bible states very clearly over and over that Solomon had the Ark, and then it never mentions it again, leaving almost every modern scholar to simply assume it was taken by Nebuchadnezzar and his band of merry soldiers, all of whom decided to never speak of it again?”

“That does sound unlikely.”

“Except,” Goodwin said, holding up an index finger, “others do speak of it later, in many different references—one of which is the Chartres Cathedral.”

Caesare raised an eyebrow.  “What do you mean?”

Goodwin gave him a stare and sighed.  “What did you see on the South Porch besides King Solomon and Queen Sheba?”

“A hell of a lot of other statues.”

“I mean near them.”

Borger shook.  “Not much.”

“You didn’t see the small servant near Sheba with distinctly African features?”

“No.”

“Or the box-shaped object carefully etched in stone?”

Now all four looked at each other.  “No.”

“Wait,” said Borger.  “I thought you said Sheba was from Saba.  That would make her Middle Eastern, not African or Ethiopian.”

“Many modern scholars claim she was likely from the Kingdom of Saba, which indeed would lie in Southern Arabia.  But to me, this is a mere technicality.”

“And why is that?”

“Because Yemen and Ethiopia are separated by the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, a body of water only sixteen miles wide.”

“So, she could have been from either,” offered Borger.

“Or,” replied Goodwin, “she could have been from both.”

57

“Both?”

Goodwin nodded.  “Who knows how far the Kingdom of Saba reached?”

“Okay,” said Clay.  “Let’s assume you’re right…”

“Assume?”

He frowned.  “Let’s say you are right.  How did the Ark make its way to Ethiopia?”

“It was brought by Menelik, son of Solomon and Sheba.”

“His son stole it?”

Goodwin laughed.  “No.  Something like that could never be stolen.  King Solomon gave it to Menelik.”

“Is that referenced somewhere,” asked Caesare, “or are you speculating?”

“I’m not speculating.  I’m deducing.  The Tabot disappeared from the scripture so suddenly and so thoroughly that it could only have been for one obvious reason.”

“A cover-up,” said Clay.

“Yes.  Its location was intentionally hidden from the rest of the world, an act that would have required the help of Solomon’s priests and scripters themselves.”

“Why?”

“Because Solomon was dying and he was wise enough to know that neither the Ark nor Jerusalem would be safe forever.  Eventually, it would fall to someone.  And he was right, even though it would take another four hundred years to a conqueror who wouldn’t even be born for another six or seven generations.”

“Nebuchadnezzar.”

Goodwin nodded.  “The longest-reigning and most powerful monarch of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.  He was described in the Book of Jeremiah as The Destroyer of Nations, a warrior king with an insatiable appetite for conquest.  So,” Goodwin said, “does that sound like someone who could capture the greatest artifact in the known world and simply keep it to himself, saying nothing to anyone and never even attempting to use it?”

“You said no one knows what it actually is.”

Goodwin shook his head.  “I said we don’t know.  I didn’t say they didn’t know.”

“Okay.” Clay nodded, thinking.  “So, Solomon fears what might become of the Ark following his death and decides to give it to his son.”

“Yes.  In failing health, he gives it to his son Menelik to take back to Saba where he and his mother could protect it, in perhaps the last place anyone would ever expect it to be, including most scholars almost three thousand years later.”

“So, hide it,” Neely said thoughtfully.  “And let it gradually fade from relevance.”

“Not just relevance, from existence,” corrected Goodwin.  “Most of the world no longer believe it exists.”

“Which would make it one of the best deceptions in history.”

Goodwin nodded. “Better even than King Solomon could have hoped.”

A long silence followed as everyone digested Goodwin’s explanation before Clay replied.  “But someone in the Ethiopian government seems to think it’s real.”

“Very much so,” said the Englishman.  “Someone very high up.”

“Where do they think it is?”

“In the city of Axum.”

“Where is that?”

“Near Ethiopia’s northern border.  Seven or eight hundred kilometers from here.”

“Have you been there?”

“Of course,” replied Goodwin.  “It’s where I was arrested.”

***

Unknown to everyone in the room, several hundred yards away on a darkened rooftop, something suddenly moved, only slightly at first, before another change that was more pronounced—a smooth shift between two shadows.

A dark figure adjusted his position, keeping a long black shotgun microphone pointed at the hotel balcony while reaching down to check a black digital recording device.  He momentarily replayed the audio with his index finger for verification before he removed the chip and replaced it with another.  The figure tucked it into a pocket and carefully settled back into place behind one of two large air-conditioning systems.

58

It was early morning when Caesare, unable to sleep, stepped out onto the sizeable wrought iron balcony where Li Na quietly sat next to a small table.

He approached and set down a hot mug beside her.  “The only tea I could find.”

Li Na smiled politely.  “Thank you.”

“Can’t sleep either?”

She shook her head.

From the railing, he peered out into the darkness across the illumination and the city’s thousands of lights stretching off into the distance.  Some were large and bright, but many were dim like tiny stars scattered between patches of darkened city blocks, all combining to create a soft ambient glow high over a silhouetted skyline, nestled beneath air that was warm and dry, filling the breeze with the scent of arid desert.

“How are you holding up?”

The girl gave him a puzzled expression.

“How are you?” he said, rephrasing.

“I am fine.”

Caesare turned to study her.  He knew enough about women to know the word fine didn’t always mean fine.

“You sure?”

“What?”

“Are you sure you’re fine,” he clarified.  “You’ve been pretty quiet tonight.”

“I am just listening.”

He knew better than that, too.  “There’s been a lot to take in.”

“Yes.  Very much information.”

“Do you understand what we’ve been talking about tonight?”

“Not all, but most.  Ms. Neely explains things to me.”

“I see.” He nodded, looking back out at the cityscape.  “As long as you’re okay with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Did Neely explain where we’re going?”

“We are flying to another city in the morning.”

Caesare nodded again and raised his own mug, sipping and squinting back at some of the worst coffee he’d ever had.

“You are trying to find something,” Li Na stated.

“Yes.”

“Something important to the Christians.”

“To everyone.”

“But especially the Christians.”

He grinned and sipped again, almost painfully.

He wasn’t sure how much the girl understood, let alone the magnitude.  This was something so profound that none of them still had any idea what to do if it were true.

How did it come to this?  Borger’s new system was built to connect disparate pieces of history no one else had, all after discovering an alien craft sitting beneath the ocean for centuries with implications going back to South America.  Built by Will Borger and Lee Kenwood and based partly on the capabilities of the original IMIS system, The Machine was designed to decipher the actual language of another species—dolphins, eventually leading them to the ship in the Caribbean.

Caesare shook his head, amazed at how piece by piece, each discovery had somehow led them to another, and then another, slowly adding new fragments to a much larger reality spanning thousands of years.  And then there were the Piri Reis maps.

“Is it dangerous?”

Lost in thought, he turned back to Li Na.  “What?”

“I asked, is it dangerous?”

“Is what dangerous?”

“Where we’re going?”

He blinked.  “I don’t know.  Probably not.”

“Probably?”

“Sorry. Probably means maybe or most likely.”

Li Na frowned from the chair.  “I know what probably means.”

“Ah.”

“Why did you say probably not dangerous?”

Caesare’s eyes returned to the city as if mesmerized.  “Let’s just say that sometimes trouble has a way of finding Clay and me.”

“Why is that?”

He took another sip.  “I’m sure that’s open for debate.”

“Trouble always follows you?”

“Not always,” he grinned.  “Once in a while, nothing happens to us at all.”

“Like France?”

“Yep.” He nodded.  “Like France.”

“And Brazil?”

He blinked forward before turning.  “How did you know about Brazil?”

“I hear things,” Li Na shrugged.  “Including China?”

One of Caesare’s eyebrows rose.  Clay had rescued her in China.  “I said once in a while.”

“Have you traveled everywhere?”

“No.  A lot of places, but not everywhere.”

“Where have you not been?”

“Half the countries in South America.  Or even most in Africa.”  He peered briefly at the bitter liquid in his cup.  “Been to most of the Middle East, though, but not much of Asia.  How about you?”

“I traveled with my parents when I was young and they were alive.  Malaysia, Taiwan and Indonesia, mostly.  Places much easier to understand than here or America.  But there are many more people there.”

“I’m sure.”

Their conversation fell quiet, silence accompanied by a warm breeze lightly whipping in and around their balcony.

“You like Ms. Neely.”

“Excuse me?”

“You like her, yes?”

Caesare studied her again.  “Why, did Neely say something?”

Li Na grinned.  “Ms. Neely does not need to say anything.  I can feel it between both of you.  It’s like the echoes with the dolphins, but different.”

“And what do you feel?”

“From you, I feel strong emotion and attraction.  You care for her.  And you worry like you want to protect her.”

Caesare stared at the girl, bemused.  “Not bad.  And what about her?”

“You mean what does she feel?”

“Yeah.”

Li Na’s slight grin now turned into a genuine smile.  “Ms. Neely told me to tell you it’s none of your business.”

“What?”

“She said I was to tell you–”

“Yeah, no, I heard you.  Why would she tell you to say that?”

“In case you asked.”

Caesare shook his head.  “Wonderful.”

Li Na was still smiling, almost devilishly now.  “Ms. Neely knows what is happening to me.  She knows what I can feel.  That is what I was supposed to say to you if you ever asked about her feelings.”

“Of course you were.”

“Are you brooding?”

Caesare frowned.  “Am I what?”

“Are you brooding?” the teenager asked again.  “Ms. Neely said you would brood after I told you what she instructed.”

Unbelievable.  Caesare rolled his eyes and turned back around.  His mother had once told him as a boy the kind of woman he would really want one day was a smart woman.

He was beginning to have his doubts.

59

The flight took less than two hours from beginning to end, placing them on the ground in Axum by 9:15.  Shortly after, they were packed into a small vehicle that felt like a Jeep had married a subcompact car and had been built at a tenth of the cost, leaving them all thankful that no one was claustrophobic.

Peering through a streaked windshield, with all side windows down due to a broken A/C, Clay squinted through the glare of the blazing sun reflecting off the vehicle’s hood.  Ironically, it was the cleanest part of the vehicle.

With his thick dark hair blowing wildly through the open window next to him, Steve Caesare reached down and attempted to find a radio station playing something recognizable, but after several minutes and scanning the entire band, he turned it back off.

“So much for that.”

Clay shrugged.  “Maybe you can just sing something.”

“Very funny.”  Caesare looked over his shoulder at Borger.  “How about you, Will?”

“Pass.”

Caesare then glanced at Neely, who was sitting in the very back next to Li Na, who had a light sheen of perspiration on her forehead.  “How about you, darling?”

“Darling?!”

“Never mind.”

He dropped the subject and twisted back around before something arose from below the whipping wind—words, and then a song softly sung by Li Na which sounded like a slow, gentle Chinese melody.

She continued for a few minutes before ending and falling quiet again, prompting Neely to turn to her.  “What was that?”

“An old song.  It tells the story of our people rising against the Mongolian invaders.  My father used to sing it to me when I was young.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“My father was a wonderful singer.” She beamed.

Neely smiled along with her.

However, the teenager didn’t mention the aria was most commonly used as a Chinese funeral hymn.

60

Their trek through the city was slow.  Crowded, busy streets often brought them to a standstill in the morning traffic.  At over 6,000 feet in elevation, Axum’s morning air felt almost refreshing beneath the same sun that would go on to bake the rest of the region.

Clay and Caesare watched as dozens of people crossed in front of their stopped car. The busy street was lined with trees and parked cars as far as they could see, while above the trees, several buildings towered in the distance from the city’s downtown.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think we were in a small metropolis in South America.”

“Axum is quite modern,” replied Goodwin.  “Like many cities these days.  It’s considered the holiest city in all of Ethiopia and is the destination for many pilgrimages.”

He peered out the window as they passed a large Catholic church.  “Its history dates back before the Romans to the Aksumite Empire and it was a major trading power at the time.”

“How far back is that?” asked Borger.

“Hard to say.  There aren’t a lot of historical writings going back that far.  Most sources come from old church records.  Somewhere around 365 CE, for example, was the first conversion of an Ethiopian ruler to Christianity, which I dare say has given the country a rather interesting history.”

Goodwin’s words quickly faded when they passed a storefront sporting a red awning and black railing leading up to its front door.  Above the entrance, in bright block letters, read Axum Coffee.

“Say,” he said, leaning forward. “I don’t suppose I could talk any of you fine people into a cup of java.”

Clay immediately responded by slowing the car and pulling over, prompting Goodwin to smile and clap him on the shoulder.  “Good man.”

Caesare and Goodwin were gone less than ten minutes before returning and squeezing back into the car.

“Now that,” Goodwin beamed, drawing a sip, and raising his paper cup, “is the best part of being free.”

Clay smiled in the rearview mirror and pulled back into traffic.

“Now, where was I?”

“The history of Axum,” answered Neely.

“Yes, right.  Interesting indeed.  Not all rulers were converted, of course, but Christianity remained a staple of faith and grew throughout the region for centuries—until Makeda.”

“Makeda?”

He nodded and took another long sip.  “The name of the Queen of Sheba and her later visit to Jerusalem.”

“And the Ark.”

“Yes, the Tabot brought back by their son.”

“And you think the Ark is here in Axum?”

Goodwin lowered his cup and frowned.  “I didn’t say that.”

Caesare suddenly turned around, “Wait, what?”

They all looked at the Englishman as Clay slowed the car and pulled over again, turning around from the driver’s seat.

“What did you say?”

He looked back and forth between them.  “What?”

“You didn’t say that?”

He shrugged.  “No.”

“You don’t think it’s in Axum?” Caesare clarified.

“Well, it may be, but I doubt it.”

“You said this is where you were looking for it.”

“No, I said this is where I was arrested.”

Caesare glared irritatingly at Goodwin.  “So you weren’t looking for it here.”

“Only in a manner of speaking.”

Clay reached forward and pushed the car into park.  “What are you talking about?”

Goodwin thought for a moment and held up a hand.  “I apologize. I see where we went off-track.  I told you I was arrested here.  And yes, I was looking for the Tabot—more or less.  But I wasn’t really expecting to find it.”

“Because?”

“Because the Ethiopian government hired me to find it, and they think it’s here.”

“And why do they think it’s here?” asked Neely.

Goodwin turned around.  “Because everyone says it’s here, as they’ve believed for hundreds of years.”

“You mean the government?”

“No.  I mean everyone.  All the Israelites who live here, including the guardians of the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion.”

Clay and Caesare looked at each other.

“Which is why I don’t believe it’s here,” finished Goodwin.

“But you came anyway.”

“I came because the government is convinced due to hundreds of years of religious doctrine.”

“Which you don’t believe?”

Goodwin shook his head.  “I didn’t know for sure.  But let’s face it, if it was here as everyone claims, wouldn’t it have been stolen by now?”

Borger nodded.  “He has a point.”

“Maybe it’s a case of hiding in plain sight,” offered Neely, prompting Goodwin to frown.

“Bah.  Nonsense.  The greatest artifact in history hidden in an unguarded church?  I think not.”

“The church isn’t guarded?”

“Not in any traditional sense.  Only by a single monk who has been chosen to protect it—and who, not surprisingly, refuses to let anyone see it.”

“A single monk.”

“Yes,” nodded Goodwin.  “And a very old monk, at that.  So how secure do you think the Tabot would be?”

“Okay, so you came here and did what exactly?”

The older man finished off his coffee.  “What the Ethiopian government paid me to do.  I broke in.”

“Into the church.”

He shook his head.  “The Ark was moved to the Chapel of the Tablet, a smaller building next to the old church.”

Caesare nodded sarcastically.  “Of course.”

“Do you want to know why it was moved?” Goodwin grinned.

“Boy, do we.”

“Because it is said that divine heat from the Tabot cracked the stones in the older church’s sanctum.”

“Is that true?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea.  But it adds a certain flair to the story, don’t you think?”

Behind him, Neely rolled her eyes and peered out her window.

“Okay, so you broke into the place and then what?”

Goodwin lowered his empty cup to the floor and dramatically raised both his hands.  “So there I was, hiding in the dark, in the bushes.  Waiting.”

Caesare moaned.  “Just get on with it, man.”

“I went to jail for this bloody story,” snapped Goodwin.

“Fine.”

“So there I was, hiding in the dark in the bushes…”

Caesare stared pleadingly at Clay.

“I had to wait for just the right time,” continued Goodwin, “since the Tabot’s guardian lives in the chapel.  His name is Shenzu and is the only one allowed to view it, in accordance with the biblical dangers of doing so for non-Kohanim.”

“And that is?”

“Non-priests.”

“How old is this monk?”

“No one knows for sure.  Some say in his eighties. Others claim he’s over a hundred. But he’s been guarding it for decades.”

“Okay.  So there you are in the bushes,” Caesare prompted.

“Right!  I was waiting.  The guardian receives supplies about every two weeks, but not on a fixed schedule.  After which, he closes and locks the door, remaining inside, guarding and praying to the Ark.”

After a long pause, Borger looked at Goodwin and shrugged.  “Then what?”

The Englishman smiled demurely.  “For that, my good man, I think it better to show you.”

61

The recording stopped abruptly with Goodwin’s voice in mid-sentence as the audio file came to an end, leaving several moments of silence between Ethiopian President Selassie and the man in front of him.

The man was Negasi.  He appeared lean and hawkish, with stubbled gray hair on each side of his head.

“When was this taken?”

“Last night at the hotel.”

The president stared forward, deliberating.

“Why would he be telling the Americans?”

Negasi shrugged, tilting his head.  “It is nothing we don’t already know.”

The president nodded.  “I know.  But why the Americans?”

“You said they were the ones who got him released.”

“Yes.” Selassie exhaled.  “By leaning on the prime minister.  And now even he wants to know why.”

The president continued thinking and eased back in his chair.  It was bad enough the man was out of jail, but now things had attracted the prime minister's attention, such as who Selassie had gone to great lengths to keep in the dark over the true circumstances of Goodwin’s arrest.

Now he wanted details, particularly around Goodwin’s connection with the Americans, which unfortunately even Selassie didn’t understand.  And even someone as inept as the prime minister wouldn’t need to dig far to find things Selassie did not want exposed.  Not just about Goodwin, but about him.

The president continued thinking before exhaling and peering intently up at Negasi again.  He was a man of deep loyalty, but a man just the same.

When people became targets of an investigation, loyalty frayed quickly.  How would Negasi react?

“Where are they now?”

“Axum.”

Selassie cursed beneath his breath.

“I do not think we need to worry,” Negasi stated confidently.  “All he can tell them was that someone in the government was behind it:—me, of which he knows nothing.”

“They can find out.”

“Only if you let them.  Goodwin currently thinks I work for the other side.  Let him continue believing this.”

The president shook his head.  “Lies never last as long as you want them to or need them to.  Slowly they unravel and break like a worn rope.”  He tapped a finger on his desk.  “The longer they exist, the more vulnerable they become.”  His eyes suddenly bore upward.  “Do you agree?”

Negasi immediately nodded.  “Of course.”

“Good.  Because there is only one way to stop the rope from unraveling once it begins.”

“How?”

“You burn it.”

62

“Where are we?”

Goodwin slowed and waited for the others to catch up before ascending the two dozen stone steps.

“We are here,” he announced and looked up at the giant object before them.

“This doesn’t look like a church.”

“It is the Stele,” he answered.  “The Great Obelisk of Axum.”  Goodwin continued forward, walking over sandstone with weeds growing between its cracks, approaching the giant structure towering over him.  “It’s one of the last remnants of the Kingdom in Aksum erected during the fourth century CE.  Grave markers for ancient royal burial chambers.  This one, the Great Obelisk, was erected by King Ezana and eventually fell where it had laid for hundreds of years until the bloody Italians stole it leading up to World War II.”  Goodwin turned to Caesare.  “No offense.”

Caesare immediately turned to Clay.  “I don’t like him.”

Clay was busy studying the giant monument, carved initially from what appeared to be one giant, colossal piece of stone, gray and now deeply worn with four thick cracks revealing where the column had been broken and reassembled.  All four sides displayed hundreds of etched images and symbols.

“Incredible.”

Goodwin nodded, peering up with the others.  “Monoliths like these have been carved for thousands of years here, but this is the granddaddy of them all.”  He walked closer still and circled it until he found what he was looking for.

“It is believed this Stele was created not long after the reign of the Queen of Sheba.”  When the others closed in, he pointed to a section about halfway up on the side, to a rectangular image with a circle behind it.  “Anyone want to take a guess what this is?”

“The Tabot?” asked Borger.

“Bingo.”

“And the circle behind it?”

“A halo, often displayed as flat and two dimensional back then.”

“And you believe this is an indication that the Ark is here?”

“Was here,” corrected Goodwin.  “At the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, where Ethiopian Emperors themselves were once crowned.”

Goodwin stopped speaking and turned at some noise behind them approaching from down the steps and the opposite side of a six-foot-high stone wall.

“Right on time.”

The others watched curiously as a line of people appeared and climbed the broad stone stairway toward them.  Several dozen people walked in a long procession behind an Ethiopian man who spoke to a female who then translated for the rest.

The man leading the group was dressed in comfortable, bright clothing and glasses. He looked curiously at Goodwin and the others as he approached before abruptly pausing.

The man continued slowly climbing the steps as a brief glimpse of curiosity in his eyes turned to confusion.  Before he spoke, Goodwin broke from the group and approached him and the converging crowd.

“Graham?”

“Yonas!”

The Ethiopian’s dark eyes stared intently at Goodwin before moving to the Americans.

“You have been released?”

“Thanks to my new acquaintances here.”

Yonas’s face spread into a slow smile, and he continued forward to embrace Goodwin.  “This is wonderful news!”

“My thinking exactly.”

“When did you arrive in Axum, my friend?”

“Just this morning.”

Yonas’s smile faded slightly, and he blinked.  He then turned and scanned the open field around them.  “You did not escape.”

“No, no.  I was freed.  Legally.”

The Ethiopian’s cautious grin returned.  “How is this possible?”

Goodwin turned to Clay and the others.  “They pulled some political strings.”

Yonas extended his smile to the others while listening.  Abruptly, he appeared to remember his tour group behind him and turned back to the woman, briefly delivering a short description about the obelisk, and encouraging them to look around.

“My friend, I am very pleased to see you.  I feared they might never let you out.”

“As did I,” replied Goodwin.  “But I am here now.  To see you.”

Yonas’s smile nearly disappeared.  “What do you mean?”

Goodwin motioned to Clay and the others.  “They’re here about the Tabot, so I’ve come to finish what we started.”

The man’s face grew concerned and he took a step backward, lowering his voice.  “My friend, I cannot…help you.  I narrowly escaped going to jail with you.  I cannot risk that again.”

Goodwin put a hand on the man’s shoulder.  “Relax, Yonas.  You needn’t risk anything.  All I want is the camera.”

When he didn’t answer, Goodwin stepped in closer.  “You have my word I will not affiliate this with you or your family in any way.”  When Yonas still did not answer, Goodwin’s face became serious.  “You do still have it.”

After a long nervous silence, the Ethiopian finally nodded.

Yonas’s surprise at seeing Goodwin was similar to Li Na’s upon seeing the tour group marching obediently behind the man, all bearing light skin, dark hair, and almond-shaped eyes just like hers.  They were unmistakable, even at a distance and including those wearing masks.

They were Chinese.

And they were speaking Mandarin.

Neely moved next to Li Na as the girl studied them all, fascinated, while the group approached and circled the monument.  Several of the older women also noticed her.

“Go ahead,” prodded Neely.  “Go talk to them.”

The girl needed no more encouragement.  She stepped forward enthusiastically, approaching a small group of women who’d been staring at her and greeting them in Chinese.

Caesare stepped in next to Neely as she looked on.  “What do you suppose the odds of that are?”

She grinned, watching while Li Na conversed.  “Given their population, I’d say pretty good.”

It was over thirty minutes before Li Na finally returned, beaming.

“Have a nice conversation?”

“They are from the province of Tianjin, next to mine.  They are on a tour through North Africa.”

“What did you tell them about you?”

“I told them I was working for an international benefactor as a translator.”

Neely laughed.  “And who might the benefactor be?”

“Mr. Clay.”

“I see,” she said, still laughing.  “At least you didn’t say Steve.  No one would have believed that.”

The teenager absently nodded and continued watching as the tour group gradually made their way back down the steps.  “Next, they are traveling to Uganda and then to Egypt to see the pyramids.”

The rest of the team joined the two women. Goodwin interrupted. “Are we ready?”

“Where to now?”

“To the church,” he replied.  “Yonas will bring me the camera there.  Then you will see.”

63

With tall, arched stained-glass windows and gray rock walls resembling marble, the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion was simultaneously larger and smaller than they had expected.  It was larger in its domed-Christian origins but smaller for the grounds on which it resided.  It appeared tightly compressed inside a tall aqua and yellow-painted fence, with tall trees surrounding the structure.  Inside the fence’s bars, nothing appeared to be moving.

More than a hundred yards away beneath a large acacia tree, all six stood and studied the much smaller chapel, turning around when a little blue-and-white taxicab turned onto the dirt road behind them, stopping only long enough to open a door and drop a small cardboard box onto the ground before quickly speeding away again.

Goodwin trotted out of the shade and retrieved the box from the road before returning and kneeling.  Carefully, he ripped it open and revealed a miniature video camera packed delicately inside a mound of worn newspaper.

He turned the unit over, examining it, and then he depressed the small red power button.

“Is it charged?” asked Borger.

“Only a little.  But enough.”

Goodwin briefly scanned through the footage with his head down, slowing the video just a few minutes in.  “Here it is,” he said, turning the camera so the others could view the tiny screen.

The frame jumped as it played, as the person recording the footage appeared to approach the same fence they could see surrounding the chapel.

“The sun was almost down, so it’s a little hard to see.  But this is where Yonas engaged the monk Shenzu in front of the chapel.”

“Engaged?”

Goodwin shrugged.  “Got him to come out and talk for a bit.  Creating a distraction.”

“A distraction?”

“For me to sneak inside,” he said.  “Here!”

The video on the camera suddenly became erratic, bouncing wildly as its holder appeared to be running around the outer chapel walls and then up and in through the tall open door.

“How long were you inside?”

“Just a minute.  The place is barely a thousand square feet, and as you can see in the video,” he explained, angling the screen outward, “it’s all just one big room—except for a small loo in the corner.”

The camera quickly steadied and focused and they could hear rapid breathing in the background. The camera scanned a richly adorned room covered in long red drapes and dozens of tall candles around what looked to be an elevated platform in the middle of the room.

The camera hastily scanned the rest of the room before coming back to the platform and a large rectangular object resting upon it.

Goodwin paused the picture, leaving everyone to squint at the screen.

“Wait…is that it?”

“Yep.”

Caesare tilted his head sideways.  “It looks like…just an old chest.”  He glanced at the others, who were also frowning.

“That’s precisely what it appears to be,” said Goodwin.  “But not just any chest.  An ancient wooden chest.”  He used two fingers to zoom in.  “One that is very obviously falling apart.”

Several sections of the box in the still video frame looked to be discolored where the wood appeared dark, rotting and splintering.

“This is the Ark of the Covenant?”

Goodwin nodded affirmatively.  “It’s what these monks have been protecting for many hundreds of years.”

With raised eyebrows, Clay turned and stared back over the open ground to the tiny chapel.

“You brought us this way to show us this?” said Caesare.

“I brought you here so you could see for yourself what is really inside and so you may know that the real Tabot cannot possibly be in there.”

One by one, the others turned and peered out from under the tree toward the small chapel.

“What we see is nothing more than a symbol, which is what I was trying to convince their government.  And of what was most likely inside.”

“No Tabot,” said Clay.

“And no Commandment tablets.  How could they be?  Just look at the place.  Look how bloody easy it was for me to get in.”

Still silent, Neely reached forward and pressed the button on the screen to continue playing, at which point, loud yelling could be heard in the background.  The video became erratic again as Goodwin suddenly fled back outside.

“This was when Shenzu discovered me and began screaming.”

Goodwin had cursed under his breath as he fled, circling back around the chapel and attempting to scale the fence.

The picture tumbled wildly as he then tossed the camera over the fence and into a tall patch of grass, leaving the grunting Goodwin struggling offscreen before hitting the ground with a thud.

In the corner of the video frame between long blades of grass, flashing blue lights could be seen drawing closer in the distance.

“Bloody hell–” were Goodwin’s final words before he stopped the playback on the camera.

“That’s when things went bad.  Negasi and his men were supposed to get me out of there.  But when it all went pear-shaped, they arrested me instead and denied involvement.”

Caesare spoke to Clay.  “Not the most sophisticated operation I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, I’m not exactly James Bond.”

“You’d think this Negasi could have come up with a better plan than that.”

“I don’t think Negasi believed the Tabot was there either,” said Goodwin.  “It was clear by the end he was just following orders.”

“Whose orders?”

The Englishman turned toward Clay.  “I don’t know.  Someone higher up.”

“So, your friend Yonas escaped, but you didn’t.”

“Correct.”

“Do they know about Yonas?”

Goodwin shrugged and stuffed the camera into his pocket.  “I assume so.  But they didn’t need anyone else to blame it on.  They had me.  I allowed the government to close the case quietly with no attachments to them.”

“And they didn’t know about the camera?”

“No.  Only Yonas and I.”

“So now you have evidence they may want.”

The faint smugness on Goodwin’s face suddenly disappeared.  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Clay nodded to Caesare, who immediately took the hint and turned to scan the area around them.  Neither he nor Clay could spot anyone, but that didn’t mean much.  If things were as politically sensitive as Goodwin indicated, and he had been framed to avoid embarrassment to the government, it would be foolish to assume they wouldn’t want to know what Goodwin was up to now.

Hearsay was easily debunked, particularly when coming from the mouth of an angry prisoner.  But video footage was something else entirely.

True to Clay’s suspicion, nestled in a thick patch of jasmine bushes just three blocks away, another long black telescoping microphone stirred slightly, causing a few of the bush’s leaves and flowers to wriggle.

This time the feed was being recorded and transmitted live to Negasi’s phone, where he sat quietly listening in the driver’s seat of a black Mercedes.

He still didn’t understand why the Americans were interested in the Tabot.  But it no longer mattered.  If Goodwin had video footage of the event at the chapel, he might have more, perhaps even recordings of previous conversations in Negasi’s own voice.

If Negasi could be implicated, he had little doubt the Ethiopian President Selassie would do whatever was needed to keep it from implicating him, ensuring any footage would never see the light of day and draw the attention of the prime minister.  And if the Americans had enough influence with his own prime minister to free Goodwin, surely they had enough to request a formal investigation.  Which meant things could get very ugly, very quickly.

Negasi could sense the sick feeling of unease growing in his stomach as he continued listening to the transmission.

“So, you’re saying this is merely symbolic?”

“That’s right,” Goodwin replied.  “Think about it.  If you really had the greatest artifact in history, something potentially of great power, would you really tell people where it rested?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Precisely.  Even the most unsophisticated person knows how and when to lie.”

“Unless,” Neely’s voice said, “they believe this symbol is just as valuable.  Spiritually.”

“Or,” said Goodwin, “the wooden box is simply a decoy.  Perhaps even the entire chapel!”

Beneath the broad reach of the acacia tree, Clay studied Goodwin curiously.  “The whole chapel?”

“Right.  And I don’t just mean the location.  What if the Chapel of the Tablet itself was built as a decoy hundreds of years ago?”

“That would be a clever diversion.  Something tells me this didn’t just come to you.”

“Jail gave me a lot of time to think.”

“Because by then, you knew the real Ark was not in the chapel.”

“Correct.”

Borger thought it over.  “It’s not the craziest theory.”

“That the Ark is real, but it’s not here?”

Borger nodded and wiped a line of sweat from his forehead.  “He’s right.  What’s the point of hiding something if you tell everyone where the thing is?  No one would do that.”

“Unless they thought God would protect it for them,” said Neely.

“Then why is it not in the chapel,” countered Goodwin.

When she nodded, he quickly added, “Believing in God does not eliminate man’s treachery.”

So,” said Clay, “if it was in the church at one time and the chapel was then built to convince people it was still here, where would they have taken it?”

“Now that, my friend,” said a grinning Goodwin, “is the question.”

The rest grew quiet again when Neely thought of something and looked around.  “Where’s Li Na?”

The others looked up and glanced around.

“She was just here,” Caesare said, standing up from a kneeling position to do a 360-degree scan.  “I didn’t hear her leave.”

“Neither did I.”

“There she is,” he said, pointing to the grounds on the opposite side of the church.  Through several trees and bushes, the teenager could be seen standing near a smaller fence.  It was old and black and appeared to be made of wrought iron.

“What is she doing?” asked Neely, stepping forward.

“I don’t know.”

“What is she in front of?”

Goodwin squinted before answering in a solemn tone.  “It’s the church’s graveyard.”

64

The private graveyard was small, barely a thousand square feet, and checkered by perhaps thirty or forty headstones.  Many were so old and modest as to be hand carved.  The small, neat patches of grass between them showed the area to be meticulously groomed.  The teenager stood before the small fence beneath the waving shadow of a nearby tree, her dark hair blowing gently in the breeze.

“Li Na?”

She didn’t turn around when the others approached.  Instead, she remained still, staring quietly into the cemetery.

Neely reached the fence, trying to see what the girl was staring at.

“Li Na, is something wrong?”

The teenager’s head remained fixed.  “Something feels bad here.”

“In the cemetery?”

She nodded.

“What are you feeling?”

“Sickness.”

Neely frowned to herself.  It was a cemetery.  “A lot of people die of sickness, Li Na.”

The girl shook her head.  “Not that kind.  Something poisonous.”

Caesare stepped closer.  “Someone was poisoned?”

She shook her head again, not as an answer, but slower, peering toward the back of the small lot.  As though trying to measure.

“More than one,” she said.

Caesare turned to Goodwin, who was now behind them, followed by Clay and Borger.  “What is this place?”

“A private burial site,” Goodwin answered.  “Sacred.  For the monks and clergy who serve the church.”

They looked back to Li Na, who was still moving her head.

“Poison is not the right word,” she finally said.  “It is different than that.  Something…warm.”

“Warm?”

The girl nodded and extended her hand over the waist-high fence.  “I can feel it.  From here.”

Behind everyone else, Borger pursed his lips and looked at Clay.  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

***

It came in a cardboard box, twenty-four inches wide by thirty-six long, delivered into the hands of a perspiring Will Borger, just two kilometers from the church and thirty minutes away, using unnamed and poorly maintained roads.  The delivery was made possible through a phone call from a now very reluctant Yonas, who wanted nothing more than to remain uninvolved in whatever Goodwin was doing.

Nevertheless, Goodwin and Borger were left standing outside one of Axum’s Polytechnic College Science Department's heavy metal doors staring into the open box at several pieces of instruments.

“Is that it?”

Borger studied the contents for a few moments before nodding.  “Looks like it.”

When they returned to the church, the sun was setting and the rest of the group were waiting following an improvised nearby dinner of flatbread and legume stew, of which Caesare was visibly disappointed.

When Goodwin and Borger arrived with the box, they set it down and began removing the pieces.

“Have any meat in there?”

Borger ignored the joke and paused momentarily, moving a few things aside and pulling out a large yellow metal box.  In his other hand, he retrieved a black coiled cord affixed to a long black tube.  He lowered the yellow box, propped it on one side, and plugged the end of the hanging cord into an outlet approximately the size of a headphone jack. Then he turned the box right side up and peered at the display on the front, directly below a mildly scratched pane of clear glass.

Flipping it on caused a tiny arm to jump briefly along the curved bar before promptly returning to zero.

“I think we’re ready.”

Clay glanced at his watch.  “Another half hour until dark.”

Even beneath a rising crescent moon, the spate of overhead trees cast more than enough shadow for Clay and Borger to safely move forward from tree trunk to tree trunk until reaching the outside corner of the gated cemetery.

They stepped over the low fence and squatted near the ground with no one in sight while Borger readied his instrument.  He flipped it on and jumped at the sudden squawk of feedback through the speaker, rushing to turn its volume down.

Even on low, the clicking was unmistakable, prompting both men to look at each other.

“Well, that’s interesting.”

Minutes later, Goodwin was waved over, trotting out from beneath the trees in a low, awkward crouch.  He ambled out and over a stretch of dirt until he reached the fence and clumsily scrambled over after a quick scan of the church grounds.  Then, he remained on his hands and knees, crawling to Clay and Borger.

Waiting in the center of the small graveyard, Borger shook his head at Clay.  “That was worse than me.”

Goodwin arrived slightly out of breath.  “What do we have, chaps?”

Borger waved the tube over several headstones, causing the Geiger counter to erupt in a flurry of low clicks.  “It’s coming from these stones here in the middle.”

Goodwin turned and eyed each corner of the yard, then stared down at the headstones.  “Almost exactly in the center.”

“That’s what I just said.”

The Englishman wasn’t listening.  Instead, he studied the other headstones.

“It’s radiation,” said Borger.  “Alpha.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Not unless we stay here for a couple months.  But it’s only this row.  None of the others.”

Under the unobstructed moon, Goodwin studied each headstone individually, running his hands gently over each surface.  “Some are more worn than others.”  After another pass, he rotated around, still on his knees, to face them.  “In fact…it feels as if the stones are more worn as you move to the right.”

He stopped on the last and studied it closer.  Its surface was worn smooth, with the only features being the letters carved into the stone in a single word.

“Do you recognize those letters?”

“Looks like Ga’ez.  Classical Ethiopic.”

“Can you read them?”

“Not well,” he said with a frown before moving to the left.  “This one looks as if it might be newer.  And–”

When Goodwin stopped, Clay and Borger both followed his gaze to the second headstone.  “Looks like the same word.”

“It does.”  Goodwin nodded and moved once more to his left then again.  “They all say the same thing.”

“But you can’t read it?”

He remained quiet, thinking, fingering the first few letters.  “They look familiar,” he said, tapping the stone with his index finger.  “I think this says guard…or maybe guardian.”

“They all say guardian?”

“I said I think.”

“Like the monk in the chapel.”

“Like Shenzu, yes.  But there are no names on any of them.”

“Just the same word on each.”

Goodwin turned around again, studying the rest of the cemetery.

“What is it?”

“Their location,” he muttered.  “These headstones are positioned almost dead center in the middle of all the others.”

“You think it means something?”

“I think…it’s symbolic.”

“Maybe a symbol of protection,” offered Clay.

“You think too much like a soldier.” The Englishman frowned.  “Putting them in the middle would not be a symbol of protection.  It would be a symbol of honor.”

It was a profound idea, and not until Goodwin scooted backward, preparing to crawl out, did he notice something more, made visible by the moonlight, appearing at the bottom edge of the first headstone—the oldest.

What Goodwin had initially taken as a flake or chip in the stone appeared at a closer glance to be something else.

“Well, well.  What do we have here?”  he said, gingerly moving his finger back and forth, feeling the indentation.

“What’s that?”

With his glasses, he moved closer to the ground, studying the small mark at eye level.  “It looks like a very faint shape.”  He gradually moved his eyes back and forth, examining the rift from different angles.  “The shape, if I’m not mistaken, is of a hexagram.”

“What, like the Star of David?”

Goodwin continued, his chin grazing the ground.  He then rose and rocked back onto his knees.  “Like the Star of David, which is what most people would think of.  But the Star of David isn’t that old.  It was established in the 1890s as a representation of the worldwide Zionist community, and later the broader Jewish community.  However, both pentagrams and hexagrams have much older associations.  They were both symbols of the Seal of Solomon—King Solomon.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I am not.  And what’s more, I think I know who these headstones belong to: The Black Jews.”

Borger frowned.  “Excuse me?”

“The Black Jews,” Goodwin repeated.  When neither Clay nor Borger spoke, Goodwin frowned.  “Relax.  It’s not a racial slur. It’s a historical reference.  An important one, which I dare say has been largely wiped from many of our modern history books.”

65

The Black Jews, better known as The Falashas, had faded from most modern scholars' discussions, due in large part to years of warfare having destroyed all accounts of their early lineage, in addition to numerous political parties who had deemed their existence unfavorable.

Surviving for centuries in the mountains of Northwestern Ethiopia, the group had become so disconnected and so cut off from the rest of Judaism that the Falashas believed themselves to be the only Jews remaining in the world for years.  Reachable only by foot or horseback until very recently, the group, numbering in the thousands, were said to have originated following the great Exodus from Egypt when a band of Hebrews headed south rather than across the Sinai Desert.  Or alternatively, perhaps as captives following the destruction of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 B.C.E.

Now sitting in a quiet, rundown restaurant, all six sat around a circular wooden table marred in nicks and grooves with only faint traces of its original green paint still visible.

All eyes and ears were on Goodwin, listening in earnest as he explained, even Caesare, who sat gnawing quietly and happily on a large turkey leg.

“They’re here because of the Assyrians?”

Goodwin shook his head.  “That’s just one of the theories.  Another claims they are descendants of Elephantine Island's Jewish colonists in the Nile near modern-day Aswan.”

“So, no one really knows where they’re from,” replied Neely.

“Well, scholars might not agree, but the Falashas appear to know.”

“And?”

“And…” said Goodwin, momentarily peering up at a young group of Ethiopians who, laughing, entered, and navigated between tables to the opposite side of the room.  “As it turns out,” he continued, “all you have to do is ask them.”

“The Falasha.”

He nodded.  “They know exactly where they’re from.  Descended directly from King Solomon’s son Menelik—or rather his half-brother who accompanied Menelik to Israel.”

“And helped him bring back the Tabot,” Clay said.

“Precisely.”

“Which is why you believe the headstones in the cemetery belong to them.”

“At least some of them.” Goodwin smiled and leaned forward, placing both arms on the table.  “The hexagram is a symbol for both King Solomon and the Falasha, the Last Tribe of Israel, marooned two thousand miles away from their homeland here in the mountains of Ethiopia.”

“Marooned?”

Goodwin shrugged.  “Marooned…shunned.”

“What are you saying, thousands of Jews that no one believes?”

“Most historians feel there are too many inaccuracies in their story, beginning with the dates.  King Solomon died somewhere around 930 B.C., but the city of Axum didn’t exist then.  It wasn’t established until several hundred years later—several hundred years after his son Menelik supposedly brought the Ark back.”

“Well, that’s a problem,” muttered Caesare.

“Maybe to some,” replied Goodwin.  “The Ark, or the Tabot, could have been kept somewhere else in Ethiopia during that time, especially if you consider one obvious possibility—that the Tabot was never here in the first place.”

“I thought you said it was held in that church before the chapel was built for it.”

“I said it was rumored to have been there.  It’s also rumored to be in the chapel now, which we know is not true.  At least not the real one.  For all we know, it was never there in the first place, that it was all a ruse from the very beginning.”  He grinned at the others.  “Modern man didn’t exactly invent lying.”

“If it was never here…” said Neely.

“Then the largest inconsistency in the Falashas story, according to the scholars, is removed.”

“Is there a second?”

“Yes, historians also claim the Falasha get a bit fanciful with their stories and subsequently discount them.  But some of what they consider embellishment has roots in historical fact.  For example, the Falasha’s claim there was once a Dynasty of Jewish Kings who ruled Ethiopia was dismissed by decades by historians, even though many references have since been uncovered to support that very notion.”

“But not enough to change anyone’s mind?”

Goodwin shook his head.  “Historians and scholars are no different from the rest of us.  They’re human, and just like experts in any other field, they have reputations to protect, particularly after having spent a lifetime arguing a different case.”

“Finally, something we can agree on,” quipped Caesare between bites.

“Human pride can be a daunting obstacle to truth,” Goodwin added.  “Particularly for those who have been labeled experts by their peers.  Opinions do eventually change,” he said, “just very slowly.”

“Okay,” nodded Clay.  “So, where exactly are these Falasha?”

“Southwest, in the mountains a couple hours from here.”

Neely glanced at Caesare, who was still eating.  “So, we need to find out who those common headstones belong to.”

“Theoretically,” agreed Goodwin.  “Though it may be a little easier said than done.”

66

Mountainous was an understatement.  At a mile above sea level, the Ethiopian Highlands were as rugged as any Clay and Caesare had ever seen.  Thankfully, they were accessible by a single-lane highway climbing over several miles of ascending switchbacks before breaking through two jagged peaks to reveal Lake Tana, the country’s largest inland body of water and source of the famed Blue Nile River.

After finding rooms at an antiquated hotel and lacking any electronic security, the group left their bags. Now packed into a rented Toyota Land Cruiser, all had the same reaction of awe upon seeing the giant lake before them—everyone except Goodwin, who was peering through the side window absently holding another empty paper coffee cup.

“Now that is something,” Neely breathed, staring out over fifty miles of pale blue water which shimmered beneath a rising morning sun.

Goodwin turned and peered through the windshield along with them.  “The lake was originally much larger but it’s still very impressive.”

“Yes, it is.”

“There are nineteen different monasteries on the lake’s many islands, housing artifacts and relics from ancient Ethiopian emperors, many of whom were crowned in Axum.  One island, called Tana Qirqos, is especially holy.  There, it is said, the Virgin Mary rested on her journey back from Egypt. Only the holiest of monks are allowed there.”

They continued east, following the narrow road as it wound around the lake's perimeter less than two miles from the water’s edge.

“Where are we headed?”

Goodwin gestured forward.  “To one of the inland churches.  We’ll need a guide.”

***

The guide was a young monk who, after extensive haggling, agreed to take them to several island monasteries.  In Goodwin’s broken Amharic, a seemingly terse negotiation left Neely a surprised witness until she looked at Li Na, who seemed utterly unfazed by it all.

“There are many monks in China,” she said simply.

The five followed Goodwin, who in turn followed the young man wrapped in a brown and red robe, or kasaya, with matching sandals.  His dark hair was shaven to within half an inch of his amber-colored scalp.

Climbing back into the Land Cruiser left the vehicle resembling a cattle car, with Borger, Neely and Goodwin squeezing into the back seat and Li Na and the young monk packed into the rear cargo area like pretzels.

Through a series of difficult translations, the young monk guided them to a dirt road and small clearing near the water, where they thankfully spilled back out of the vehicle into the cool morning air.  Nearby, a crumbling wooden structure sat next to the water with an even shabbier dock stretching out over the gently rippling water.  It housed a single metal boat with its bow tipped up from a heavy motor's weight on the back.

The young monk approached and spoke briefly to someone in the shade beneath what remained of a roof, and then he exited without a word to the others.  Instead, he merely led them out over the dock and gestured to the boat.

Neely frowned at the aluminum benches inside, caked with dirt and grime, and apprehensively climbed aboard behind the young monk, followed by Li Na, Borger, Goodwin and finally Clay and Caesare, who unwound the lines and pushed them off.

“Nice rowboat,” remarked Caesare as he plopped down next to Neely.  “Hey, Clay.  Remember that time in Turkey?”

John nodded with a grin.  “This one isn’t sinking.”

“Not yet.”

Borger moaned.  “Please stop.”

“You afraid of the water, too?”

“Not the water,” said Borger.  “Just the things that can happen in the water.”

An amused Goodwin listened to the banter and chuckled.  “How did you lads ever end up working together?”

“Luck,” replied Borger.  “Bad luck.”

This time Goodwin laughed and looked away, glancing forward as the outboard engine belched to life behind the monk, briefly enveloping them in a cloud of smoke as the boat accelerated.

Borger looked around the small craft.  “Would it be weird to ask him about life vests?”

Caesare grinned.  “I think fruitless is the word you’re looking for.”

With a frown, Borger slunk down and remained quiet.

The engine continued coughing and sputtering as they trolled across the calm surface until reaching smaller waves that rocked the boat enough for everyone to grip something.

Light slapping began from beneath the metal hull, widening Borger’s frown.  At that point, the monk spoke to Goodwin and pointed outward over the water.

“You can see the largest island far in the distance,” the Englishman translated, “but the lake has many smaller ones.  Some he will take us to first, those where many of the monasteries reside.  The two on the big island are more popular and are visited frequently, making late afternoon the best time to go.”  He shrugged.  “At least I think that’s what he’s saying.”

The monk continued babbling, now moving his arm, and pointing at the smaller islands around them.

Listening carefully, Goodwin went on.  “Sounds as if he was assigned to one of these smaller islands for a time.  A few years, maybe.  Then he was reassigned to the church onshore.  He says these islands are better.”  He paused before correcting himself.  “Easier.  Easier to show us.”

It took a little over ten minutes to reach the first small island.  The island barely ten feet above water level and housing a small structure within the island’s group of trees and vegetation.

Once out of the boat, it took no time to reach it. They found the monastery well-constructed and surprisingly colorful inside.  Decor on the main wall included more ancient fabrics and metal trinkets, as well as statuettes situated around a large sword which hung in a hard leather sheath and showed signs of rust around its handle.  Along another wall sat a heavy wooden chair, adorned with symbols and writing, indicating a throne from an age long ago.  A large fresco picture hung above it depicting the Virgin Mary’s church beneath a group of angelic faces peering down.

On the other walls were several crosses and more statuettes, a collection from previous Ethiopian reigns throughout their Orthodox history.  And finally, to the side there was a box—tall and thin and draped in exquisite red linen.

“What is that?” asked Neely.

When Goodwin asked the monk, he appeared surprised at the answer he received.  “It’s the Tabot.”

They all turned to him.  “The Tabot?”

He nodded, listening as the monk continued speaking.  His face taking on a look of apprehension.

“He says the Tabot is the root, or the core, of every church and every monastery.”  He questioned the monk in broken Arhamic and continued.  “Something about the symbolism.  That the Tabot is not part of the church, the Tabot is the core—I think.  And the church is built around it.”

“Wait a minute,” said Neely.  “Are you saying all of them have a Tabot?”

“That’s…what it sounds like.”

“Every monastery has one?”

Goodwin blinked, still listening.  “Not just the monasteries.  I think he means all religious structures, including churches.”

“They all have an Ark?”

“I think so.”

Caesare stepped forward, examining the slender box which barely reached his waist.  “This?  This is another Ark?”

Goodwin nodded uncomfortably when the monk spoke again.  “Evidently.”

Caesare turned and looked at Clay.  “Oh boy.”

Three more islands confirmed their suspicion.  The Tabot, or Ark, was not just partially but entirely symbolic.  Each Tabot was different, both in shape and size, as well as condition.  Some were worn and scarred, while others were not a box at all, or even made of wood.  The fourth was a large and heavy book bound in ancient leather with many pages seemingly deteriorating between the two covers. Goodwin became visibly deflated.

“Bloody hell,” he murmured and promptly stepped back outside.

The others followed one by one, waiting for the Englishman to speak.

“This is not…” he began, but his voice trailed off.  “Just not…”

“What you were expecting.”

The older Goodwin turned away and walked back down the slope, following a weed-strewn path until reaching the small beach where their boat bobbed idly in the water, waiting.

When he reached it, Goodwin collapsed onto the moist sand, letting his feet splash clumsily into the water in front of him.

“It can’t be,” he said softly.  “It can’t be.”

Neely lowered herself next to him, remaining quiet.

The others remained behind them and stood peering out over the water.

“It has to be here.  It has to be,” muttered Goodwin, looking briefly at Neely, helplessness in his gaze.

“It still may be,” she offered.  “Just…not here.”

He didn’t respond or even seem to hear her.  Instead, he turned and stared at the sand beneath him.

The unfortunate truth was now clear to all of them.

The Tabot, the Ark, was not a physical object.  It was a spiritual object.  An emblem.  A representation of what the Tabot meant.  What it stood for—the sanctity and the message of the Tablets of Law and the Ten Commandments, their purpose in guiding all of humanity.

Each Tabot was imbued with this belief.  This faith.  And just as the monk had explained, the church was then built around it.  Every church and monastery was not built around an object but around the faith of the object.

The Tabot was not a single golden box.  It was merely a physical depiction of something much more significant.  The whole of Judaic faith.

67

It was a devastating blow for Goodwin, who fell wholly silent and remained so for the rest of the afternoon and into the early evening, even while they all converged around a small fire pit at the only hotel in Bahir Dar, a town located along the southern coastline of Lake Tana.

Made of rough concrete and blackened from decades of use, the circular pit contained several burning, crackling wood pieces releasing dozens of bright embers to float up into the air before disappearing into nothingness.

“It may still be in Ethiopia,” said Neely.

“No,” answered Goodwin quietly.  “It doesn’t exist.”

His words ended as quickly as they began until a perplexed Borger spoke to Clay several minutes later.

“What I don’t understand is why we were sent here.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Machine,” answered Borger, “thinks it's here.”

Clay shook his head and peered into the fire.  “What does it think is here?”

“I don’t know.  Something.”

Goodwin raised his head and looked through the glow from the pit.  “What are you talking about?”

“Sorry?”

“What Machine?”

“It’s…nothing,” Borger said dismissively.

Goodwin’s expression changed as though realizing something.  “When you found me in prison, you said you were sent to find me by a woman.”

“By my friend Clydene.”

“Why?”

“We told you why.”

Goodwin’s eyes suddenly hardened.  “You said it was because you wanted information on the Tabot.  But you never said why.”

Borger glanced at Clay.  “That is why.”

“No,” said the older man.  “Not why you wanted me.  Why you are trying to find the Tabot?!”

Clay sighed.  “It’s complicated.”

“It can’t be that complicated.”

Sitting next to Neely, Caesare tilted his head sarcastically.  “You’d be surprised.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Caesare let out a small scoff.  “I’m not sure how else to phrase it.”

Goodwin suddenly stood up.  “I’ve had enough of these games!”

Caesare slowly rose from his seat to meet him, prompting Li Na to speak up suddenly.  “I thought we were here for the stones.”

Goodwin nodded, with eyes fixed on Caesare.  “Yes.”

“Then we are in the right place.”

Both men blinked and turned toward the girl, as did the others.

“What?”

“We are in the right place,” she repeated.

“What do you mean?”

“I can feel it.”

Neely stared at her through the firelight.  “You can feel what?”

“The same thing I felt at the graveyard.”

“You said you felt a sickness.”

Li Na nodded.  “It is stronger here.  Much stronger.”

Neely finally turned her whole body toward the girl.  “You can feel it here?  Where?”

The girl looked and motioned into the darkness.  Toward the direction of the giant lake.  “Out there.”

68

Will Borger sat hunched over a wooden bench and table with his laptop retrieved from the car, his face illuminated in the darkness.  On the computer was a map of the area, with the tiny town of Bahir Dar centered in the middle.  He dragged his finger down the mouse pad to expose more of the lake.

“Okay, Li Na,” he said.  “Which direction?”

The teenager was several feet away, standing in the open patch of dirt.  She closed her eyes and slowly raised her right arm, pointing outward, while her eyes remained closed.

A dozen steps behind her, Steve Caesare pulled up a pant leg and retrieved his large black military knife.  He turned it over and unscrewed the bottom of the handle to reveal a small magnetic compass and then held it up in the direction Li Na was pointing.

“I’d put the bearing somewhere between five and twenty degrees.”

Borger nodded.  He scrolled down a list of programs and opened one, overlaying the round diagram of a compass rose on top of the map.  Enlarging it, he then dragged the rose over the town of Bahir Dar and added straight red lines out at both five and twenty degrees, creating a narrow triangle.

He studied the screen for a long moment.  “You’re sure that’s the right direction, Li Na?”

The girl opened her eyes and nodded.  “Yes.”

This time Borger glanced back past Neely, who was also studying his screen, and motioned Clay and Caesare over.  When they approached, he tilted the screen back so they could see.

“What is it?”

Borger pointed at the narrow pie shape and explained.  “There are a dozen or so islands here on the eastern edge of the lake, scattered not more than a mile or two from each other.”  He highlighted a cluster of small shapes on the map.  “Most of them appear to have some kind of presence.  Either a monastery or what looks like a small house where someone probably lives.  Except this one.”

All four, now including Goodwin, leaned in closer.

“This island here is large enough but doesn’t have anything on it.  It’s just covered in rocks and trees.”

“Hmm.”

“And while it’s not an exact circle, this one is largely surrounded by the others.”

“Surrounded by the others,” repeated Clay.

“Right,” Borger nodded.  “And it also falls well within the directional range where Li Na is sensing something.”

Clay shifted his blue eyes to Goodwin.  “Is it possible the island is uninhabited for a reason?”

The Englishman’s eyes were still fixed on the screen.  “What’s the name of the island?”

Borger zoomed in.  “Says it’s called Tana Almeida.”

“Doesn’t sound familiar.”

Caesare straightened and folded his arms.  “You said the headstones in the cemetery being surrounded by the others was a symbol of honor.”

Goodwin nodded.  “Or reverence.”

“Maybe it’s the same with the islands.”

Goodwin continued staring at Borger’s satellite picture, a fat elongated island with terrain that appeared rougher than the rest.

Pieces were falling into place again, but this time, the feeling in Goodwin’s stomach was notably different than before, one that was distinctly not jubilation.

“Professor?”

Goodwin blinked and looked at Clay.

“Possible?”

There was something oddly real about what he was looking at, what he was experiencing.  It was as though all the layers of excitement or anticipation had suddenly been stripped away, exposing a sensation that felt much more like trepidation.  Like raw, uncontrollable truth.  As though history itself were in the process of revealing one of its deepest, darkest secrets; a brutal truth so emotional and alarming it now felt intensely unsettling.

It was in that moment Goodwin realized that through it all—the obscure legends, the decades of digging through long-forgotten records, the endless speculation about what had really occurred all those centuries ago—had merely been a means to his own ends, a way for Goodwin to convince himself that he was right, while everyone else was wrong.

Certainty.  Vindication.  All wrapped within a veil of personal obsession that was not at all what he was feeling now.

Had he contemplated the significance of what it would mean to actually find the Tabot?  Yes.  But he had still not managed to grasp its full meaning.  No one could.  Not through hypothetical musing.  Not without knowing what reality would genuinely feel like.  Not when the sheer unadulterated force of truth was bearing down upon you like the heat of the sun, burning through generations of sweat, toil and death.  Echoes of the real sacrifice so many before him had been forced to bear.

Real truth.  Bitter, ruthless and unforgiving.

“Professor?”

Goodwin blinked himself out of his trance, realizing he had turned back to the image of the island.  When he spoke, his words were clear and unmistakable.  “There is someone there.”

69

Negasi stared past the giant dashboard of the Humvee and out through the vehicle’s front windshield, watching absently as trees on either side of the road sped past in a blur, tall and powerful amongst the rest of the darkened landscape beneath the last breath of sunset.

The narrow two-lane road was no longer illuminated by sunlight, but now by the Humvee’s glaringly bright headlights stretching out over the endless and winding rocky asphalt.  For what seemed the hundredth time, the first of five military vehicles slowed to take the next tight corner, back and forth, methodically making their way up the endless series of mountain switchbacks.

For Negasi and the Ethiopian President, in mere hours, the situation had changed considerably.  Negasi’s mission had been simple before—silence Goodwin and the Americans if necessary before the turmoil embroiling the Tigray region grew out of control, which could happen overnight if the populace discovered the president’s plan of finding and seizing the Tabot in an attempt to solidify power over Ethiopia’s crumbling government, to destroy the wedges driving their ruling parties apart once and for all and dethroning the prime minister in the process.

The situation was now far too volatile to allow such a rumor out.  Revolutions had a way of igniting from the inside from the most unexpected places, turning into unruly mobs which history had shown time and time again to be utterly unpredictable.

The safest and most sensible play was to simply kill Graham Goodwin and then decide whether the Americans would have to be silenced, too.

But now, after hearing the latest recording of their conversation from Axum, the stakes had wildly changed.

Was it possible the Tabot truly existed, that it had been hidden near Lake Tana the entire time?

The president was still a believer, even if Negasi wasn’t.  But now Negasi wasn’t so sure.  The new clues that had been unearthed with the help of the Americans had him doubting everything he’d thought he knew.

Was it truly possible?  The ultimate hoax perpetrated by the Falashas?  The group his country had spurned and ostracized for decades while in possession of the famed Tabot the entire time—the one artifact that could solidify a man’s claim to Ethiopian royalty, substantiating his power and preeminence not just in the citizens' eyes but in the eyes of the world.

Negasi continued gazing into the darkness, clutching the overhead handle as his driver slowed the giant vehicle for another sharp turn.

The situation had changed, as had the stakes, but not the plan.  Goodwin still had to be silenced.  And most likely, the Americans, too, after Negasi had extracted every last piece of information from them.

And there was no better place to hide a body, or five bodies, than in one enormous lake.

70

The look on the man’s face upon seeing one thousand American dollars was utter shock, evident in the glow beneath a single overhead lightbulb, the only person remaining at Bahir Dar’s small marina.

The man, Micah, snatched the money as fast as Clay had presented it, glancing about furtively before pulling the American into a surprisingly large maintenance shack.

Speaking just above a whisper, the man’s words were unintelligible to Clay, prompting Goodwin to step in and translate.

“He says he has several boats.  You can take any of them.”

The Ethiopian, older and bald and sporting a thin gray beard, smiled broadly, producing a set of white teeth.  He then moved to the wall and turned a key on a cabinet, pulling the door open with a squeak.  Inside were a dozen or so sets of keys, all on small rings and hanging neatly across two rows of nails.

“My kind of guy,” Clay mused, then turned to find Caesare’s silhouette standing nearby in the darkness.  “The bar is open.”

Caesare nodded, and without a word, he stepped out onto the wooden walkway and strolled out toward the small floating dock.  One by one, he looked over each of the boats, varying in size from small to large. He stopped at two crafts that appeared to be touring boats.  Methodically, he continued on before stopping again to closely examine another craft from bow to stern. Neely spoke up from behind him.

“Isn’t that one a little small?”

“A little.” He nodded.  “But this one also has a trolling motor.”

“Planning to do some fishing, are we?”

“I’m a terrible fisherman.”

“Then what’s with the second motor?”

With a wink, he walked past her back toward the marina.  “Redundancy.”

After gassing up, they climbed into what proved to be an even tighter squeeze than the monk’s boat, with Clay at the bow and Caesare manning the large outboard.  The other four packed in side by side on the two middle benches, leaving Borger uncomfortably close to the edge.

“You did this on purpose,” he said, glowering.

Caesare smiled back at his friend in the darkness, flipped the large idling engine into reverse and backed them away from the dock.  “It’s only funny once, Will.”

When far enough away, he switched again and began accelerating forward.

***

The evening tide was calmer than the afternoon, sporting only light ripples that allowed them to zip out into the open lake at nearly full throttle.  Ideal conditions, given the several miles they had to travel in the dark with only enough moon overhead to spot something large in front of them.

At the front, Clay navigated using his phone, the screen’s brightness turned down to the lowest setting to avoid being spotted from Bahir Dar or any of the islands.

“You know,” said Neely over the roar of the outboard engine.  “They can still hear us.”

Caesare winked again, just as he had on the dock.  “If we get close enough.”

She didn’t have time to answer before Clay looked up from his phone and made a slicing motion across his neck, causing Caesare to let off the throttle and power down. He then immediately reached back and killed the engine altogether.

The water from the boat’s wake surged forward and rolled beneath them, lifting Caesare first as he began fiddling with the smaller trolling motor, attaching one of the dangling cables to a post of an insulated car battery at his feet.  He studied the controls for a minute and flipped it on.

This time the acceleration was barely noticeable with the boat still coasting forward. Moments later, the rippling around the edge of the boat resumed, confirming they were once again underway.

Neely Lawton stared at Caesare with curiosity.  “You said you wanted that for redundancy.”

“I did,” he answered.  “It doesn’t hurt that it’s also electric and silent.”

***

When they neared the island, Will Borger gripped the edge of the boat with one hand and reached down to his feet with the other, retrieving the small yellow Geiger counter and placing it on his lap.  He turned it on and was immediately met by a wave of loud clicking which gradually increased in pace as they drew closer to the island's outline, dark and silhouetted by the moonlight illuminating the water around it.

Without a word, Caesare steered the boat in the direction of Clay’s outstretched arm while still peering at his phone until a small gravel beach came into view.  Caesare eventually eased the throttle back to a crawl upon approach and stopped the propeller altogether when less than twenty feet from the rippling surf.  Slow and quiet, but not enough to prevent the gravel-sized pebbles from scraping loudly against the bottom of the hull when they came to a stop.

Immediately, Clay was out, splashing in knee-deep water and steadying the boat from its bow as it rocked gently in the water.

“Everyone out on this side.  One at a time.”

Knee-deep for Clay was thigh-high to the others as they piled out from the middle, followed by Caesare, who walked forward and calmly jumped out near the front, grabbing a frayed nylon rope as he exited along with the boat’s makeshift anchor made from a plastic milk jug filled with sand.  After dropping the jug with a thud, Caesare gently eased the boat off the pebbled shore and turned to face Clay and the others.

No one spoke.  They all remained still, waiting for Clay, while Borger quietly lowered the volume on his Geiger counter.

When Clay finally looked up from his phone, he scanned the surroundings one last time and slid the device into his pocket.  “What do you think, Will?”

“There’s definitely radiation here.  But a short visit shouldn’t hurt us.”

“How short is short?” asked Goodwin.

“A couple hours, tops.”

“Wonderful.”

Neely turned to Li Na.  “Any ideas?”

The teenager shook her head silently.  “It’s everywhere.”

“This is a strange pattern,” said Borger, listening to the Geiger counter.  “But it doesn’t sound especially powerful, which makes me think whatever the source is, there may be something shielding it.”

“Like what?”

“Rock, maybe.  But it would have to be pretty dense. Maybe even underground.”

Clay nodded and turned to study the wall of shadowed foliage before them.  “We can’t cover the entire island in two hours.  Let’s take the middle and see if we can eliminate one side or the other.  If so, we can then begin carving out cross-sections.”  He looked down and activated the light on his watch.  “If we don’t have something in ninety minutes, we leave.”  He began walking, then paused and turned back around.  “And we can’t use any lights here, so be careful where you step.”

The small island's interior was rougher than expected, presenting several obstacles in the form of large rock outcroppings the group had to scale or traverse a way around, carefully feeling with their hands and using short, tentative steps.  Everything was beneath a patchwork of gangly trees serving to block most of the available moonlight.  Clay led the way, attempting to navigate a line through the island's body, finally halting when the clicking on Borger’s counter unexpectedly intensified.

All five stopped and watched as Borger swung the small rod out in a wide arc, sweeping in front of him, before turning around and repeating the process.

“Got a direction?”

He shook his head.  “Not yet. We need to go a little farther in, I think.”

Clay motioned to Caesare, then turned and looked for a way up a side incline, taking Borger with him.  They trudged uphill until both men disappeared through a mass of bushes.

Neely examined the dense foliage around them and turned to the teenager.  “Everything okay?”

Li Na was staring past her into the darkness.  “There are no animals on this island.  Or insects.”

Goodwin stared at Neely in the darkness.  “How does she know that?”

“Women’s intuition.”

Neely’s reply was short, not from irritation but distraction—and concern.

If whatever was on this island was indeed related to the alien ship, something might be wrong.  The ship, the hidden caves of alien DNA, even the green liquid they’d first discovered in Guyana all had the opposite effect.  They attracted vast amounts of flora and fauna, providing a giant boost to their growth and vitality.  Borger had even once said he thought the liquid could be both a nutrient and an energy source, explaining why the dolphins had located their massive birthing ground so close to the hidden ship.  It turned the entire environment into something extraordinarily fertile.  Plants grew three times their normal size and various aquatic life showed signs of advanced regenerative capabilities.

So why then would this island be devoid of animals or insects?  What was different about this piece of the alien ship?  Unless…that’s not what this was.

After a few minutes, Borger came to a stop behind Clay.  “It’s getting weaker.”

“Okay, let’s head back.”

Thrashing back through the bushes, they returned to the group and climbed another small incline on the opposite side, disappearing again without a word.

Several minutes later, Clay returned and motioned silently for the others to follow him.

When they all reached Borger, he was standing still, slowly waving the counter back and forth.

“The clicking is faster and louder, but there’s no indication of which direction to go from here.”

“Then let’s keep straight.”

Another ten minutes again brought them to a stop, this time before a large mass of dark rock which towered roughly fifteen feet above their heads and stretched off into the darkness in both directions.

“Now what?”

Clay checked the map on his phone and shook his head.  “Hard to tell on here.”  He peered up, left then right, before rechecking his watch.

It was taking too long. At this rate, they would only cover a fraction of the island before having to turn back.

As if reading his mind, Caesare stepped forward and whispered to Clay.  “You and I could do this faster if we were alone.”

“I know.”

“Uh…Clay?”

Both turned toward Borger’s silhouette standing near the rock wall.

“What is it?”

Borger’s shadow stepped forward and moved the Geiger counter rod closer to the wall.  “This is interesting.”

The clicking on the counter increased, then slowed again as Borger stepped back.  He brought the rod forward again and the clicking re-intensified.  He then stepped back and followed the rock upward.  “How big do you think this thing is?”

“It’s hard to tell.”

Borger nodded.  “How thick do you think this rock is?”

It was a rhetorical question.  There was no way to know.  They could only guess at the circumference.

Borger began moving again, staying close to the wall, and pushing past Clay and Caesare.  He kept his left hand on the rock while grasping the rod in his right along with the Geiger unit, carefully searching for footing as he continued out of sight.

The others followed, remaining several feet behind but keeping Borger in sight. It wasn’t difficult. Borger remained the most visible of all of them due to the reflection of the moonlight on his colorful shirt.

They all stopped in their tracks when the Geiger counter suddenly erupted.

71

“Whoa,” whispered Borger.  He moved his right hand and the rod out ahead of him.  “We’re getting a lot more…right here.  If I were a betting man, I would say this rock in front of us just got less dense.”

Clay looked at Caesare.  “Maybe an opening?”

Borger marched forward through a tall patch of weeds, remaining close to the wall.  “All the way over–” He stopped abruptly when the activity on the counter slowed again.  “…here,” he finished.  Turning back, he said, “From there to here.  Maybe eight feet.”

Both men stomped forward and examined the dark stone in the shadows, where rough crags covered the entire surface.

Clay’s hand stopped when he fingered something, and he raised his other hand to examine the same spot.  “Feels like a small crevice here,” he whispered.  “Stretching across…” he slowly inched forward, “and down.”

Next to him, Caesare found it too—a small gap just wide enough for his fingertips.  He turned and looked over his shoulder.

“Li Na?”

The girl stepped forward and placed a hand on the rock.  “It is very strong here,” she acknowledged.  She remained still for a moment with her eyes closed before suddenly opening them and jumping back from the wall.

“What is it?”

The girl looked worriedly at Clay and Caesare.  “There is someone inside.”

72

“What?”

Li Na continued backing away.

“As in a person?”

“Yes,” she said.  “A person.”

Clay and Caesare stopped and stared at the wall.

Even if they could find a way in, what or who was on the other side?

“What do we do?” asked Borger.

Clay looked at the teenager.  “How many, Li Na?”

“Just one.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Can you sense anything else?”

“That is all.  Just the energy and a person.”

Caesare nodded and turned to Borger.  “Okay, Will.  We’re going to need you to go first.”

“What?!”

He reached down and pulled up his pants leg.  “Here.  Take my knife.”

“WHAT?!”

“Fine.  Don’t take it.”

“Will you stop?” cried Neely.

Caesare grinned.  “Come on, would you stop if it was this easy?”

Borger squinted at him in the darkness.  “I officially hate you.”

“Oh, take it easy.  I’m only joking.  Clay’s going first.  Right, Clay?”

Clay didn’t answer.  He remained quiet, studying the wall, before asking Goodwin, “Who do you think would be in there?”

Goodwin thought about it.  “A monk.”

“A monk?  Like the one at the chapel?”

“Yes.  A guardian.”

“Armed?”

“I don’t know.  If what’s inside really is the Tabot, then hiding it for this long would have been no small feat.  They would have to be very determined.”

“Right.  On an island completely unprotected?” challenged Caesare.

Goodwin shrugged.  “If no one else has managed to figure this out until now, perhaps it has engendered a feeling of overconfidence.”

Caesare nodded at Clay.  “Then maybe whoever is inside isn’t armed.”

Clay continued staring at the wall and shook his head.  “This is weird.”

“Well, whatever we’re looking for, both Borger and Li Na think it's on the other side of this wall.”

“That’s not what I mean,” said Clay.  “It’s just weird.  Plus, if there’s no one else on the island except someone inside, they’d have to be able to get out—by themselves.”

He approached and placed his hands on the rock again.  “Which means that if this is a way in, or out…it would probably have to be movable by a single person.”

More carefully this time, Clay found and ran his fingers along the crack, looking for a gap or any space wider than just his fingertips.  He eventually found it approximately two feet from the ground.

He examined around and inside the large hole with his fingers, feeling, in the darkness, an inside surface that was moderately smoother than the outside, as if it had been hand cut.  Or chiseled.

“What is it?” asked Caesare.

“Feels as if there could be a handhold here,” he replied, kneeling and changing position.  He scooted back and gripped with both hands, pulling harder.

The rock moved by a quarter inch and the tempo on the Geiger counter increased.

Clay looked at Borger.  “You sure about that two hours?”

Borger checked the unit.  “It’s strong, but still well below the red.  Believe me, if it gets there, we’ll know.”

“How comforting,” said Caesare, bending down next to Clay.  “How hard did you pull?”

“Not very.  I think this may open quickly, but it may not be quiet.”

Caesare stood back up, gripping his knife tightly in one hand. He then turned and looked at Li Na, who quietly nodded back.

“I guess it’s now or never.”

73

Clay was right.  With a heave, a small section of rock loudly swung outward with a thunderous scraping of stone upon stone, followed immediately by a blast of bright light from inside which bathed all of them in a brilliant green hue.

Caesare immediately yanked Clay backward and jumped in front, knife drawn and in a ready position.  Waiting.

And waiting.

But nothing came.  No movement at all from within.  Only light, accompanied by the Geiger counter's sound in Borger’s hand exploding in a barrage of metallic clicks.

“Listen to that!”

“Yeah, we hear it, Will,” replied Clay as he rose.

“No.”  Borger turned up the volume.  “Listen.”

The clicking was constant and loud.  But there was something else within the noise.

“Radiation particles collide with gas inside the rod, releasing electrons.  But listen carefully to the clicking.  It’s not constant.”

Everyone remained quiet.

“Sounds like it’s fluctuating.”

Borger agreed.  “Which is strange because it should be constant.  This sounds more like…waves.”

“Great,” said Caesare.  “It’s wavering.”  His eyes were still fixed on the opening in front of them.  A little more than four feet high by two feet wide, it was awash in green light like a giant glowing mouth in the darkness.  “Are we going in or what?”

Clay eased past with a cautionary hand on Caesare’s shoulder, stepping to the side of the opening and trying to peer inside.

“What do you see?”

He studied the opening and then the inner edge.  “Looks like a small cavern.  Natural.  With a path that’s been chiseled out—or through.”

“See anyone?” asked Caesare.

“No.”

“Anything moving?”

“Not that I can hear.”

Clay looked deeper inside and peered up.  “Some stalactites overhead, but don’t see a lot of stalagmites, which may mean the bottom is further down.”

“Can we fit?”

“Yeah.  Once inside, we should be able to stand up, at least most of the time.”

After waiting several long minutes with still no sound of movement, Clay took the knife and ducked low, carefully easing himself inside, followed by Caesare, then Neely, Goodwin, Li Na, and finally Borger, who muted the volume on the counter before entering.

Standing inside was easier said than done.  In addition to stalactites, the rest of the calcified rock ceiling was jagged and uneven, descending several feet.  Everything was bathed in glistening green with a thin sheen of vapor covering crystallized walls.

Several sections nearly touched the men’s heads, causing them to carefully angle around while maintaining their footing along a narrow, slippery path that repeatedly switched between natural stretches of rock and manmade footholds.  Step by step, the men in front descended to the right along the cavern wall in a series of careful, deliberate movements, revealing one cavity after another, including indications of another large open cavern below them.  Judging from its brightness, it was the source of the illumination.

Clay abruptly paused and held up a closed fist, signaling for the others to stop.

He could hear movement, but the direction was hard to discern.  The sound was short and brief within the echoes of their own steps, and then nothing.

With his free hand, Clay pointed forward, indicating to Caesare a dark crystalized cavity shadowed and out of the direct path of the light, traveling back perhaps a dozen feet where several more stalactites descended from the ceiling and melded into what resembled a pockmarked wall.

But as they descended, what Clay failed to do was look back…and up.

The scream came instantly, surprising even Li Na when a large figure attacked from a ledge, falling onto Caesare’s broad shoulders and dragging him to the floor while smashing Clay over the head and shoulders with a long staff in the same motion.  Knocking Clay sideways, the figure instantly whirled back into his forearm with full force, followed by the sound of cracking bone.

The knife in Clay’s hand disappeared, falling between the rocks at his feet when he was immediately struck again across the face.

The staff was a blur, spinning and hitting Neely and then Goodwin before circling back to strike a rising Caesare, sending him back to the ground with an agonizing thud.

A flash of brown was all Caesare saw before the staff came down again on top of his head.  Just as suddenly, it stopped.

In an instant, the weapon was cut short, frozen just inches from Steve Caesare’s scalp, seized by Li Na.  Her hands gripped firmly around the striking end of the staff like knuckled vices.

The monk, bald and dressed in a flowing robe, peered at the girl through fierce brown eyes, momentarily confused and pulling back.  But his weapon did not budge.

He yanked again, harder, but Li Na held tight, fighting to keep the staff from twisting.

He stared into the girl’s eyes and screamed, trying to free his weapon.  Not only was he shocked when it did not release, but even more when Li Na slowly began to rotate his weapon in the opposite direction.

With a sudden clang, the intensity in the monk’s gaze disappeared, his eyes briefly rolling up a split second before his body became flaccid and collapsed, crumpling forward, heavy on top of Li Na’s smaller frame, revealing Will Borger standing behind him and holding a bright yellow and severely dented Geiger counter.

74

Clay’s vision was slow to return, eventually revealing two blurry images leaning over him.

“John?  Can you hear me?”

He managed to blink, long and lazily, before reaching up to touch his aching head.  “What…happened?”

One of the blurs had Neely’s voice and felt as though it was dabbing his head with something.

It was a moistened piece of cloth.  “Can you understand me?”

“Yes.”  He squinted and then forced his eyes fully open.

“What’s your last name?”

“Clay.”

“How old are you?”

“Forty-six.”

A male voice suddenly asked, “What’s your favorite flower?”

Clay stared upward as the second dark figure gradually crystallized and began to take on the shape of a broad, obnoxious Italian.  “Very funny,” he said, angling his head and trying to look around.  “How many were there?”

“Just one.”

He frowned.  “Well, thank God for that.”

“Tell me about it.”

Clay could now make out Caesare’s grin. “Anyone else hurt?”

“Just bruises.  You took the worst of it.”

“Guess I should have let you go first.”

The blurry figure looked at Neely.  “He’ll be fine.”

Clay pushed himself into a sitting position, looking through one eye at a time, while the other three outlines slowly came into focus.

“Where is he?”

Caesare turned and looked at the figure on the ground, facedown with his hands tied with laces from Caesare’s and Borger’s boots.  “He’s still out, knocked cold by Will and his trusty instrument.”

Clay’s lip curled approvingly, and he raised a hand to check his head, pulling it back to find all four fingers covered in blood.

“It’s not as bad as it feels.”

Clay looked up at Borger’s looming outline.  “Nice job, Will.”

“Well, it’s kind of a good news/bad news situation.”

“Why is that?”

Borger held up the unit.  “The good news is we’re alive.  The bad news is that we no longer have a way to measure the radiation.”

“Well, then I guess we’d better hurry.”

***

With Clay now supported under each arm by Neely and Goodwin, Caesare and Li Na led the group forward one careful step at a time. Borger pulled up the rear, still clutching his broken Geiger counter as if ready for another round.

It took another twenty to thirty feet of arduous stepping before they reached the edge of the lower cavity, where another even narrower path continued downward.

But it was not necessary.  What they were looking for was in plain view over the rim of the opening.

And it was utterly jaw-dropping.

Below, in the center of the lower cavern, was a single object approximately six feet long by three feet wide and almost three high. It was a perfectly shaped rectangular cube made of what appeared to be solid gold and attached to four long iron chains, each secured to four roughly carved corners of the cavern.  All four were secured and drooping toward the Tabot as it levitated in midair at least ten feet above the rocky bottom beneath it.

Facing the Tabot, carved from more of the rock, was a small platform where dozens of candles, statues and pictures surrounded it, along with red and gold fabrics draped amongst them.

In a wide circle, the space around the cube appeared to move like a bubble of rippling air, the sheer energy within the box powerful enough to bend time and space—and even gravity.

They all stared at it for a long time, soundless, in a state of awe.

Then all at once, they turned when the silence was broken when the monk regained consciousness and shrieked intensely.

When they looked back at the Tabot, Caesare finally spoke.  “So, what the hell do we do now?”

Clay, still leaning on Neely and Goodwin, shook his head.  “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

75

Back in the boat, the mood was utterly surreal.  Eerie.  A bizarre feeling of existence tainted with a sensation that parts of the world, of reality, would never be the same.

At least not for them.

They couldn’t stay.  They knew that.  And binding the monk’s hands and feet gave them all little more than a few hours before he would find a way to free himself, perhaps using a sharp stone to cut through his bindings. Then maybe only a little longer than that to signal someone.

Goodwin appeared utterly unaware they were even underway, despite the quiet purring of the small electric motor behind them, unaware of the gentle rocking of the aluminum hull beneath him or the cool breeze into which they were slowly motoring.  Instead, he felt as though he were in another world, devoid of what he’d believed this one to be.  Not only what it was, but what it meant, as though history itself were devolving in his mind into a caricature of religious fighting and political scandal spanning untold centuries and over something genuinely extraordinary.

Next to him, Will Borger sat just as quietly, pondering from a very different perspective, one to which Goodwin was not privy, and one less about what the Tabot was than what was in it.

The Tabot, or the Ark, was indeed made of gold, just as the legends claimed, but was it in tribute to the Tabot’s reverence and holiness—or something else?

No one could argue the sanctity of the object or its immense significance, but gold had other attributes, some that few understood or appreciated—one of those being that gold was one of the best materials on the planet for absorbing radiation, and therefore, perhaps one of the best shields for what appeared to be radiating from the Tabot.

So what was it that was radiating?

What was inside the box?

The green hue suggested a relationship to their sunken alien ship.  And if it were, could the object inside be the alien craft’s propulsion system?  Or was it something else?  Perhaps another part of the craft.  Maybe the power source itself, powerful enough to affect the very laws of physics, at least as far as humans understood them.

Then there was Neely, who was trying to grasp the biological significance.

Why was there no life on the island?  Was the radiation so intense that it outstripped the liquid-infused healing properties within it and the rest of the alien ship?  If it was, how did that explain why the long line of monks was able to remain in its presence for so long?  And how long was ‘long’?  Exactly how old were those monks buried in the church’s graveyard?

Behind her, Caesare’s thoughts were different still as he quietly rested his forearm atop the tiny vibrating motor.

How quickly could they make it back to safety before word spread.  Who would their monk try to notify, and how fast could he do it?  Did he have a way of informing someone ashore back in Bahir Dar?  Once far enough away, Caesare could use the large outboard again, which at full speed could get them back within an hour and then up over the mountain and headed for Axum within another hour.

But if Caesare’s thoughts were tactical, Clay’s thoughts as he sat upon the small boat's bow, were strategic.

If they were indeed the first to find the Tabot, was it a revelation the Falashas could even do anything about?  Moving it again would require time and effort just to get it back out of that cavern.

And while they might be able to do it, even quickly and quietly, they would not be able to do so unnoticed.  Unlike the world as it was centuries ago, there were now dozens of ways the Falashas would be seen.  The cube expelled an immense amount of energy and radiation, easily detectable by dozens of satellites and military aircraft.  They simply could not get the Tabot out without lighting up the electromagnetic spectrum like a Roman candle, which meant Clay and his team had at least some time to figure out what to do next.

All five remained deep in thought, looking up only briefly when Caesare switched to the larger, more powerful engine and immediately accelerated toward the tiny twinkling lights of Bahir Dar in the distance.

All five were too distracted to consider what their sixth passenger was thinking.  The teenager who had led them to the island in the first place had mostly remained silent during their trip.

For her, there was nothing surreal or philosophical about what had just occurred.  There was only fear—fear in the realization that the danger would never end.  It would always follow them.

And her.

Because they held secrets the rest of the world had shown they would do anything to seize, no matter how long it took.  No matter who stood in the way—including her own government, who she was sure was still searching for her.  They would eventually find her, something of which even Yong Yang was confident.

Even more was the fear Li Na was now beginning to feel, a sensation spreading within her as they bounced over tiny swells in the darkness with the wind in their faces and the roar of the motor behind them as they headed toward the small cluster of yellow lights.

***

By the time Li Na realized what was giving her the odd sensation, they were nearly there.  She’d been unable to discern it through the whipping wind and roaring engine until Caesare had finally throttled down to half speed.  Suddenly, the alarm bells went off in Li Na’s head.

They were only a few hundred yards from the dock when it happened.

Lights.

Everywhere.

76

Headlights.

Bright headlights from five large vehicles spread out along the shore and all pointing at the same place in the water; the small, narrow channel leading back into Bahir Dar’s marina where Negasi and two dozen men stood waiting.

Even in the dark, the loud outboard motor could not have provided a better indication of where the Americans were and where they were headed, confirmed in part by the marina supervisor, who explained in a panic how the Americans had stolen his boat.  This was a serious crime, even in the most remote regions of Ethiopia.

All were now watching with grim satisfaction as the small boat suddenly surged to a stop in the dark gray water.

Clay and Caesare studied the figures positioned in an arc around them, some at the water’s edge and others higher on the bank.  All were silhouetted by the glaring lights behind them and all appearing to be holding weapons.

Any sense of wonder and reflection in the boat evaporated in an instant, replaced immediately by dread.  Their minds attempted to piece together who the shadows were and how they had found them—and worse, what they knew.

Neither Clay nor Caesare needed to speak.  They both knew the situation they were in.  Outnumbered and completely unarmed.  Trapped, in the worst possible place, on the water like proverbial sitting ducks.

It was the mother of all mistakes.

Their only option was to wait and see what the other side did, to see just how hostile the situation was.

Who were they?  Falashas?  Or a group used to protect them?  How had they found out so quickly?

Yet if they didn’t know who Clay and the rest were, they might be able to talk their way out of it by exploiting the language difference as some kind of misunderstanding.  It was a tactic that had worked before.

But Goodwin was not sharing Clay’s sense of hope—any of it.  Instead, his face remained drawn as he stared at the two dozen shadows around the water’s edge, listening for any words spoken between them.

But none came.  There were no words above a whisper from two men in the middle of the group.

Negasi continued peering at them with bemusement.  He truly could not have hoped for a better outcome.  The Americans were trapped, floating helplessly in the darkness with all beams upon them like giant floodlights, inching ever closer to shore with each gentle ripple of the water beneath them.

He whispered to the lieutenant next to him, dressed in black clothing and holding a military rifle like the others.  “Any weapons?”

The man shook his head and replied dryly in Amharic.  “They would be out by now.”

Negasi nodded and then turned and motioned to a small group of men at the water’s edge.

No one in the boat moved.  They sat like stones, waiting for an indication of what was to come, prompting Neely to extend her hand and gently lower it on the teenager’s arm.

“Li Na,” she whispered.

The girl turned.

“What do you feel?”

Li Na turned back as she replied, “They are not friendly.”

On the shore, four men suddenly broke off from the group and began their way toward the dock, stepping aboard the floating wooden planks and walking with heavy footsteps toward the rest of the boats.  They appeared in the distance to be unwinding the lines and throwing the ropes back into two separate hulls.

Behind her, Caesare’s voice was grave.  “This is not good.”

“What are they doing?”

“They’re taking us back out.”

77

It was early sunset when the message came in, sounding a loud ding on Alison’s satellite phone and lighting up the screen.

She’d been in the process of gearing up for a night swim with the help of one of the Pathfinder’s crew members when she’d stopped to fish it out of her shorts, folded and off to the side, where the bright illumination of the small screen could be seen through the tan fabric.

Shawn Beard, a crewman in his late fifties smiled politely and paused while holding her dive vest.

“Sorry.  One sec.”  Alison brought the phone out and studied it, grinning when she saw the message from John Clay.

I love you.

“From Commander Clay?”

She nodded at Beard, a man she and Chris had become friends with over the last several months.  Beard was a family man from California with a thin, muscular frame and full mustache beneath a short dark-haired head.  Alison smiled gingerly and reinserted the phone in her shorts pocket, then glanced out at the heads of Dirk and Sally, who were patiently bobbing above the top of the water.  “I’ll reply later.”

“Playing hard to get.”

She laughed.  “When I have time to talk!”

“Of course.”

Clay often sent short messages to let her know he was thinking about her.  It was one of the things she loved about him.  He’d stop at any given time just to let her know she was on his mind for whatever reason.

Beard, for his part, dismissed it with a humorous grin and held her vest out for her, waiting.

When Alison turned and slipped an arm through, she did so with a joke.  “Shouldn’t a man named Beard have a beard?”

“Very funny.  I’ve never heard that joke before.  Oh wait, yes I have.”

Alison laughed again, working her left arm through the opposite side of the vest.  She then peered down to zip up the Neoprene while Beard picked up the second piece, the IMIS translation unit, fitting it carefully over the front and allowing Alison to adjust it before pulling it taut and securing it from the back.

“I think your friend Lee Kenwood needs to redesign this.”

“Believe me, I’ve asked.  He says he can’t put the zipper in front because the computer has to remain as one piece.”

“Maybe when the clothing companies start making cheap knock-offs, then.”

Alison continued laughing and flipped on the unit to ensure it was fully charged while continuing with the rest of her gear.  After both vests came the rebreather tanks, strapped and secured to her back, followed by the hoses wrapped up and over the front of each shoulder.  Next was the clear mask, which Alison lifted and began guiding over her face. Her vest finished booting up and instantly began translating.

You man.

Alison turned and looked at Sally.  “Yes.  My man.”

Behind her, Beard stopped as well.  “How did she know that was from Clay?”

“She’s pretty uncanny at reading emotions.”

Alison turned the small computer back off.   “Now I’m trying to teach her about prying.”

Less than two minutes later, after testing the mask and slipping into her fins, Alison stepped off the edge and plunged into the warm water with a large splash.

Watching the giant cloud of bubbles rise around her, she calmly let herself float back to the surface before giving Beard the A-okay sign, inhaling fresh cool air through her regulator.

While bobbing in place, she turned the IMIS vest back on and waited, surprised when it immediately began translating again, this time through her waterproof earbuds.

You man Alison.  You man.

Good Lord.  She was still on this.

“Yes, Sally.  My man.  I know.”

You man no back.

She nodded politely inside her mask.  “No.  He is not back.”

You girl no back.

‘Girl’ was the unofficial nickname the dolphins had given Li Na.  “No.  She’s not back either.  They are away.”

She no back Alison.  She no back again.

“I know, Sally.  She’s not back yet.  She’s not…”  Alison’s words suddenly slowed.  “Again?”

No Alison. No again.

Alison stared at Sally, who was now beneath the water with her.  “Chris?  You there?”

“Right here, Ali.”

“Are you getting this?”

“Loud and clear.”

“No.  I mean, are you getting these translations?”

Chris lowered the coffee mug from his lips and peered up at the screen in the small computer room.  “Yep.  I see the translations.”

“What did Sally just say according to IMIS?” asked Alison.

“Let’s see…she said, ‘No Alison.  No again.’”

“Do you see any problems?”

“Translation problems?”

“Yes.  Like substitutions or corrections.  Any changes at all?”

It was not an unreasonable question.  IMIS routinely corrected words after inaccurate translations.  But this time, Chris shook his head.  “Nope.  No changes.”

In the water, Alison remained quiet, thinking.  “What do you think that meant?”

“Think what meant?”

“The word ‘again.’”

It took Chris a moment to respond.  “I don’t know.  I didn’t really think much about it.”

She no again, repeated Sally.

“There.  Right there.”

“What?  The word?”

“Why does she keep saying again?” asked Alison.

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“John has been back and forth to the ship several times.  But not Li Na.  Why would Sally say Li Na’s not back again?”

You girl no back again.

This time Chris stared curiously at the words on his screen.  “Huh.  That is interesting.  Bad context from IMIS, maybe?”

“Maybe.  But she keeps saying it.”

“Or IMIS keeps saying it.”

Alison nodded to herself.  Or IMIS keeps saying it.

“Maybe she’s asking when Li Na is coming back again.”

Alison shook her head.  As astute as Sally had become at reading Alison’s emotions, Alison had also become better at hearing Sally.  “It doesn’t sound like a question.”

“So, it’s a statement.”

Alison fell silent again, pondering.  Like humans, dolphins had different skills within their genders.  The males were faster and stronger, making them not only better hunters but better at leading or protecting.  It was Dirk, after all, who had rescued Clay when he’d been trapped underwater.  Twice, in fact—once beneath the Bowditch and the second when she and Clay had saved a father and son.  Each time it was Dirk who’d ultimately found them.

And yet, for all the males’ natural abilities, just as in humans, the female dolphins excelled at other things.  One of which was communication.

Over the years, it was usually Dirk who would misspeak.  Not Sally.  Unless it was a faulty translation.  But right now, there did not appear to be a translation issue.

Alison began to think backward.  Sally was always more deliberate in her communication, forcing Alison to remember the last time Sally had misspoke.

Alison.  You man.

This time, Alison’s eyes narrowed, and she peered deeper into Sally’s own dark eyes, studying her.

Then something clicked.  A thought—fleeting, but significant, as though a tiny connection had been made to something that might have been overlooked.

Something about Sally.  About her communication.  And her words.  Something about her words.  No, not about her words.  Something in her words.

There it was again.  A connection deep in Alison’s own synaptic network linking a series of vague memories and recollections of things Sally had once said.  About her. And about John.

Times when Sally knew Clay was nearby, even when she couldn’t see him.  Or when Alison was thinking about him.  Things Alison had attributed to emotion.  Like feeling happier just thinking of Clay.  Or expecting him.

But there were other things she now remembered, not just with her and Clay, but with the others.  Things with Chris and Lee.  References not just about what the humans were doing.

But what they were preparing to do.

One by one, the connections continued, linking one memory to another until there were dozens of instances, all riding atop a new and sudden wave of excitement inside Alison.

Excitement, and then, oddly, concern, something deeply profound as the pieces continued falling into place.

Now that she thought about it, Sally rarely, if ever, misspoke.  It was usually IMIS that was at fault, if not misstating, then mistranslating.

Sally’s instincts were always accurate.  She always knew when Alison was coming for a swim, or when she was in trouble, or even unconscious, such as during the oil rig explosion—or the impending Russian attack aboard the Pathfinder.

“Chris,” she whispered.

“Yeah?”

But Alison did not finish.  Instead, she remained fixed, mesmerized, until suddenly gasping.  “Her baby!”

“What?”

“Her baby!” she repeated.  “Sally’s baby!  Her unborn calf!”

“What about it?”

“She knows, Chris.  She knows her baby is male.  A boy.  That’s it!”

“What’s it?”

“It’s not emotion, Chris!  Or intuition!  Don’t you see?!”

“See what?”

“All of the references she’s made that we always took for intuition.  They weren’t that at all!”

“Ali, what in the world are you talking about?”

Alison could feel her heartbeat increasing beneath the tightness of her vest.  “All this time.  All these years, you and I kept asking the same question.  Dolphins have more neural density than we do.  More capacity, but a physical body that lacked the same dexterity to use or exploit it.  If that were true…then where was it all going?  Mother Nature is not wasteful, so what was all of that cognitive ability being used for?  Remember?!”

“Yes, I remember.  But we don’t know the answer.  Not yet, anyway.”

“Yes, we do!  It’s been staring us in the face this entire time.  We just never realized it.  We always assumed the problem was between species.   A fundamental, biological limitation of being able to truly understand each other.   But it wasn’t us.  The problem was not us.  The limitation was IMIS.  It’s always been IMIS!”

“Ali, I hate to break this to you, but once again, I’m not following.”

“We were wrong about IMIS, Chris!  But we were right about Mother Nature!  She is not wasteful!  With brains like ours, the dolphins lacked a physical body to create or build, to shape their environment.  So, if their abilities could not turn outward, the only other option was to turn inward!  Don’t you see?  All the things that Sally has known, even things Dirk knew, it was not intuition.  It was prescience!”

78

There was nothing but silence, both from Chris over the headset and from Sally, who remained floating effortlessly in front of Alison.  She reached out with nervous hands and stroked the dolphin’s leathery soft skin.

“My God!” she marveled.

As for Sally, she remained still, tranquil, as she continued staring directly through Alison’s clear facemask.

How did I not see it before, she thought, and then turned to watch the other dolphins moving around her in a stunning, breathless state of fascination.

She’d known they had more abilities.  She’d known it.  But she’d never imagined…this.

“Uh, Alison?”

“Yes.”

Chris cleared his throat over the radio.  “That’s big.”

She grinned.

“I mean really big.”

“I know.”

“No, I’m serious.  That’s just wow.  Wow, wow…wow.”

Alison continued affectionately stroking Sally’s head.  “It’s the only thing that makes sense,” she said.  “And all this time, it was right in front of us.”

She could hear Chris lean back in his squeaky chair.

“How dumb must she think we are?”

Alison laughed and almost cried at the same time, still staring at Sally.

“Something tells me we’re going to have a hell of a lot more questions.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Beginning with what she was talking about with John and Li Na.”

“Right.”  Alison peered up at the sparkling water above, grinning and noting the sunlight was nearly gone, telling her the sun was likely now below the horizon and reminding Alison to call John when she got out.  Her thoughts returned to his sweet message, then finally back to Sally and her teasing about ‘her man.’

And from there, back to Sally’s words.

You man no back, she thought to herself.  Then eventually, the reference to Li Na.  You girl no back again.

The adulation on Alison’s face appeared to freeze and then gradually grew dimmer.  No back again, she said to herself.  It still didn’t quite make sense, even with their new revelation.   Again, she repeated.  Again.

Li Na had only left the boat once, with Clay and Caesare.

Again.

If it didn’t make sense, maybe it wasn’t about leaving. Perhaps it was the opposite, about arriving.  She repeatedly blinked, deliberating inside her brightly lit mask.  Was that it?  By ‘back,’ did Sally mean…arriving again?

Alison’s face became drawn, first from curiosity, then concern.

If Sally was referring to arriving, the message read very differently.  You girl no back again suddenly sounded like not coming back.  As in Li Na not coming back.

Her eyes quickly fell back to meet Sally’s.  Was Li Na not coming back?  Was there a reason?  And if so, what did it mean that Sally had said the same thing about John Clay?

“Sally,” Alison said nervously.  “Is the girl coming back?”

The dolphin’s answer, and the corresponding translation seemed to take forever.  When it finally arrived through Alison’s earbuds, it was in a single word.

No.

Alison’s fingers began to shake.  “What?”

No back, repeated the dolphin.

“Ever?”

Again, a long pause.

No ever Alison.

Alison’s eyes widened behind the glass.  Oh God.  Was it a warning?  Had something happened to Li Na that Sally could sense?!

Before she could answer, she froze completely, suddenly petrified with fear.  Had Clay been in danger when he’d sent his message?!

79

“Remain in the boat.”

It was the dark, faceless voice of Negasi standing at the water’s edge, ordering the Americans, as well as Goodwin, not to move.

Clay and Caesare watched in silence while both boats were started and one at a time backed away from the dock, each containing two dark figures sitting inside.

Looking back at the shore, it was unclear which silhouette had spoken to them, but all still appeared to be aiming their guns over the water.

The powerful engine continued to putter idly behind Caesare, his hand still on the vibrating throttle.

They could not outrun them.  No question about that.  Both boats now approaching appeared larger than theirs and were probably fully fueled.

“Clay?”

In the front, John Clay shook his head, his gaze still forward.  “Resisting now could be a big mistake.”

He was right.  Their only move here would be to jump over the side.  Bullets could be neutralized with enough depth, breaking apart by sudden vibrational stress through the water.  But it would take several feet, and they could only remain submerged for so long.  Even that option was no good.

The only other option was to comply and hope for an opportunity to escape.  There was only one reason to take them back out on the lake.  To come back with their boat ‘empty.’  And unless they were stupid, Caesare thought, the four men now approaching would be very careful to stay out of range.

“Listen,” said Caesare in a low voice.  Both boats were now past the halfway mark.  “Don’t do anything unless we tell you to.  Understood?”

All four in front of him nodded.

“If they take us out, we’ll follow them and see what they want.”

It was a lie—one Caesare had no trouble telling.  For him and Clay, the situation was dire, which meant you always went with the math.  Four assailants were better than twenty, even in the middle of a lake—assuming they made it that far.

The boats continued drawing closer.

“Don’t worry,” Caesare added.  “No one is getting out of this boat.”

Another lie.  They needed everyone to remain calm.  It was fear that killed most soldiers.

It was then that the two larger boats split and began to spread apart.

Neely turned to Li Na.  “Listen to me.  No matter what happens–”

There was no reaction.

“Li Na?”

The girl was not paying attention.  Her head was turned away, and her straight black hair hid most of her face.

“Li Na?”

She didn’t hear Neely.  Her senses were overwhelmed with the deluge of sounds around them, the loudest being the two approaching outboard engines.  But within all of it, there was something else.  Something odd.

It was an echo like so many others, but this one she could not quite place.  IT was a resonation that contained only the faintest trace of familiarity.

Negasi was staring intently over the water, transfixed on the Americans while both of his boats swung out and carefully circled in from opposite sides.

He knew two of the Americans were military.  Naval intelligence officers.  Perhaps even with some fighting experience, which was why they were taking no chances.

His plan would be quick and dirty.  Escort them back out from shore where they would be unseen and could extract one of the group, probably one of the females.  The rest would be taken farther out and quietly disposed of, their dead bodies fastened to the metal boat before being sunk and sent to the bottom of the lake, leaving no trace for months or years.  That would be more than long enough to establish a bulletproof story of American treachery against the nation of Ethiopia.

His fixation was the reason Negasi did not immediately hear the noise, barely more than a muted shuffle several yards behind him, until someone else noticed.  One of the men looked directly behind him.  Then another.  Not just with an expression of surprise, but curiosity.

It wasn’t until something moved next to Negasi that he finally noticed and turned.  Seeing nothing in the darkness, he glanced downward, mildly surprised like the others as he peered directly into a pair of bright hazel-colored eyes belonging to a small gorilla.

80

Negasi stared at the small creature, puzzled.  There were no gorillas for hundreds of kilometers.  Certainly no young gorillas–

His eyes suddenly widened.

A young gorilla usually meant another was nearby.  A parent.

He slowly turned and scanned the rest of the embankment, including the dirt road behind them, just as his other men now were.

But there was nothing.  Nothing else in the darkness.  Just a line of his men and an open expanse behind them.  Nothing except–

His eyes stopped on something else.  Another animal.  This one was much smaller than the first and lighter in color and appeared to be another ape—a monkey like those children watched in television shows.

The word he was searching for was capuchin, sitting quietly in the middle of the dirt road and watching from a distance, munching on something in its tiny hand.

“What the hell–” was all he got out before noticing yet another shadow on the road emerging from the darkness.  A human figure, short and slender, appearing from the tall brush and stopping in the moonlight next to the small monkey.  Now visible in the glow, he had a bald head and wore a strange outfit that appeared almost reflective.  The figure was shorter than any of Negasi’s men, several of whom had spotted him and immediately began yelling and aiming their weapons.

And finally, next to the stranger appeared a dark-haired woman wearing tan pants and a white T-shirt beneath what appeared to be a vest with a tiny, glowing blue light.

Through the yelling, a perplexed Negasi looked back down at the gorilla, who pointed a long sinewy arm toward the water and peered up with a giant toothy grin.

Behind him, the woman’s vest emitted two words.  Me Steve.

The yelling suddenly intensified. Negasi spun when the gunfire erupted and immediately drew his own weapon from behind his back.

There was a strange flash of light and muzzle flashes from Negasi’s men were seen from all directions when the small bald man moved like lightning.

In an instant, he reached the nearest soldier and ripped the weapon from his hands in a blur, twirling and smashing it into the side of the man’s head. Then, just as abruptly he was gone again.

The next closest managed to squeeze his trigger twice, only to find his weapon unresponsive before being impacted, followed by a trailing barrage of bullets from the others ripping into the soldier’s arms and chest.

But the stranger was already gone, this time hitting two of Negasi’s men simultaneously.  These two also found their rifles unresponsive a split second before collapsing dead.

On the water, the shooting from the embankment surprised Negasi’s men in their approaching boats, causing them to swerve and turn back toward the shore.

It was all Caesare needed.  Neither he nor Clay knew who was fighting, and frankly, they didn’t care.  Any momentary distraction was an opportunity, no matter how brief.

“Hold on!” Caesare yelled and twisted the engine’s throttle, roaring forward and directly toward one of Negasi’s boats.

Clay was immediately on his feet, his hands gripping the edge of the bow and climbing up onto the metal seat.  Leaping in midair as they rammed into the other hull, Clay hit the man in the middle who was brandishing what appeared to be an AK-47, taking him directly over the side and into the water.

Caesare may have had a smaller boat, but it was heavier with five people inside, four of whom nearly fell out from the impact.  All were now grasping at the edges in a desperate attempt to stay in the boat.

“Stay down!   Stay down!” he yelled over the motor.

Bullets suddenly peppered the water around them, forcing Caesare to yank them into a hard turn.   Then there was another barrage.  Small plumes exploded all around them, with one round piercing the hull with a loud bang precisely where Clay had been sitting moments before, ripping the small metal seat in half.

Caesare pushed forward now, again turning to the left and then back to the right, attempting to keep from giving the second boat a clear shot while also trying to keep their own from capsizing.

Behind them, Clay struggled underwater in a cloud of bubbles, grappling with Negasi’s man, and attempting to wrest the rifle out of his hands.

Above them, the second man rose to his feet in the boat and pointed his rifle at the surface, trying to discern who was who in the churning water.  He yelled in Amharic before abruptly spotting something and opening fire.

The water suddenly became still, and after a long silence, a figure appeared at the surface surrounded by a slick of dark crimson.

The man standing in the second boat yelled again, his gun still down, searching around the outer edges of his boat and waiting for movement.  But what he found instead was an explosive series of gunshots through the bottom of the hull.   Several rounds ripped through the thin aluminum and into the man’s legs and abdomen, sending him screaming.   He collapsed forward as fire erupted from the craft’s gas tank.

Caesare continued to zigzag, keeping everyone down and away from the ensuing gunfire and directly out of the light from the vehicles.  Gunfire continued to explode in the water around them, with another round suddenly glancing off the top of the motor and taking a chunk of skin off the top of Caesare’s forearm.

Then there was another short burst, this time just three rounds before the plumes around them disappeared, leaving Caesare hunched and searching through the bright lights behind them.

After several seconds, he found the head of John Clay bobbing in the water, with one hand holding onto the burning boat and the other gripping the AK-47, smoke still rising from its barrel after killing both men in the remaining boat.

From the shore, gunfire continued to erupt, sporadic and desperate over the constant yelling of Negasi’s men trying to locate their attacker, who was moving faster than they could track, hitting man after man in a blur, striking each with a speed and force that seemed incomprehensible.

Negasi himself was in a panic, trying to follow with his handgun and finally releasing multiple rounds. He hit nothing but air and then one of his own men.

In less than forty seconds, every man within ten meters of Negasi was dead, before their target, using one of the fallen rifles, began firing at those farther away.

Negasi screamed and desperately emptied the remainder of his magazine, instantly searching his waistband for another. He was cut down by Clay before he could find it.

The entire clash lasted less than two minutes in a fight of extraordinary and unbelievable precision.

“Jesus!  Did you see that?” Caesare yelled over the motor as he steered their boat back toward Clay.  In front of him, four huddled masses could be seen peeking over the edge of their boat before he released the throttle and let it coast forward, turning at the last minute to float alongside Clay.

From the water, they both watched as the smoke gradually began to clear, slowly dispersing under a cool breeze and revealing the figure who was now standing quietly and surveying the ground around him—someone Clay and Caesare had both met before.

The man’s name was Ronin.

81

On the dirt road, DeeAnn Draper raised her head fearfully from the ground and scoured the area, as did both primates.  Dexter was not far from her and Dulce was closer to the water.  The sound of the battle still rang in their ears over a sudden and eerie silence.

Dulce was the first to her feet before loping quickly back to DeeAnn.

You scare.

“Yes,” she replied, picking herself up.  “Very.”  Once standing, she dusted off both hands and searched for Ronin, finding him staring out at the water as though nothing had happened.

When they all reached him, he turned and looked them over.  “You are unhurt?”

“We’re fine,” she said, surveying the bodies.  “How on earth did you do that?”

He peered at her as if confused by the question.

“I am a warrior class, DeeAnn Draper.”

She nodded sardonically.  “Yes.  Yes, you are.”

Caesare reached the shore, pulling Clay alongside the boat and still in the water.  Clay finally let go upon feeling the bottom under his feet and pushed away, marching, with some difficulty out of the surf.

Caesare powered down and rocked the large engine forward, locking it in place moments before the metal hull scraped to a stop over the silty gravel.

Me Steve, me Steve, was the first thing he heard stepping out, and he searched through the bright glare of the lights to find Dulce scrambling down the slope and running toward him.  He caught her when she jumped up and into his arms.

“There’s my girl.”

Dulce immediately climbed up and wrapped two long arms around his thick neck, rubbing her head against his.  Then she sniffed and looked down at his bleeding arm.

You hurt,  she said, translated through DeeAnn Draper’s vest as she approached.

Caesare gave DeeAnn a warm smile.  “Boy, are we happy to see you.”

The older woman grinned and patted him on his thick shoulder.  “Sorry we’re late.”

“How did you know?”

DeeAnn finished looking him over and turned to Clay, noting the bruising along the side of his head.  She touched him gingerly and replied, “A little bird called us.”

“A little bird?”

She motioned to Neely Lawton, who was fashioning a bandage for Steve from her shirt's torn piece.  When Caesare looked at her in surprise, Neely shrugged and wrapped the cloth over his arm, tying it snugly into place.  “Women’s intuition.”

“Huh?”

“Earlier today, when we were with the monk, I had a bad feeling about things.”

Speechless, Caesare turned and looked at Clay, who simply shrugged.

“Hello again, Li Na,” DeeAnn said with a nod.

From behind the group, Goodwin stared at them in a daze.  “Who…are you people?”

“Graham Goodwin,” said Neely, “meet DeeAnn Draper and Dulce.”  She motioned to the others.  “Over there are Ronin and Dexter.”

Goodwin stared at each of them as if in shock.  “I don’t…” blinking repeatedly, he turned and peered back out at the lake.  “I don’t…”

“That’s okay.” She grinned with amusement.  “You wouldn’t believe it if we told you.”

82

“Hello, beautiful.”

Alison nearly cried at the sound of John’s voice.

“Thank God, you’re all right!”

“And thanks to DeeAnn and Ronin.”

“I don’t want to hear what happened.  Not now.  Just tell me you’re safe.”

“We’re safe, Al.  I promise.”

“Are you hurt?”

“A little banged up, but I’ll be okay.  We all will.”

Alison exhaled in a sigh of relief and, after a short pause, asked, “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“More or less.”

“Where are you?”

“In Northern Ethiopia.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“We will be if we can’t get out of here.  The admiral is arranging transportation.”

“How long until you’re back?”

“It’s hard to say.  We have a drop off to make in London, but it shouldn’t be long after that.”

“So…what did you find?”

“I don’t have a lot of time right now. I’ll have to explain when I see you.  But let’s just say Borger’s history-sniffing computer works—maybe a little too well.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that sooner or later, someone is probably going to think of the same idea, just like those other teams now copying your footsteps with your IMIS system.”

“You think the same thing will happen with their Machine?”

“I sure hope not.”

Alison looked up from where she was sitting.  “Speaking of interesting, you’re not going to believe what I have to show you when you get back.”

“Good.  I’m looking forward to it.  Unfortunately, like I said, I don’t have much time.  I’ll have to call you back in the morning.  I just wanted you to know we’re okay.”

“Thank you, and that’s fine.  I have someone waiting for me anyway.”

“Talk to you soon,” he replied.  “And don’t forget who loves you.”

Alison took a deep breath and withdrew the phone from her ear before hanging up, relieved to know he was safe.  That they were all safe.

She dropped her hand into her lap and peered up at a dark head waiting in the water nearby.  Then she stood up and turned the vest’s microphone back on.

“Sorry, Dirk.  What did you want to tell me?”

You come Alison.  Come now.

“It’s nighttime, Dirk.  I’ll swim tomorrow.”

No swim Alison.  You now.

She frowned.  “Tomorrow, Dirk.  I promise.”

Now Alison.

There was an abrupt pause in the translations, with Dirk continuing to add several more clicks and whistles as though IMIS hadn’t caught all of it.  She waited for several seconds and opened her mouth to speak when IMIS finally translated the final word.

Important.

“What’s important?”

Sally.

“What’s wrong with Sally?”

Come Alison.  Come now.  Sally.

Before she could reply, Dirk spoke again.

Sally want.  Sally be mother.

83

It took only minutes for her to get suited up in a wild frenzy, with Chris and Beard frantically shoving pieces of equipment at her. Over her bathing suit went a thin thermal Lycra suit to minimize the water's evening chill, then the BCD, the IMIS vest, fins, mask, and gloves to avoid accidentally scraping something in the dark.  And finally came the tank, leaving Alison stumbling forward and almost thrown in from the side of the ship’s stern.

Once in the water, she released the air from her BCD and let herself sink, kicking forward and diving headfirst.

“Can you hear me, Chris?”

There was no answer.  Alison continued kicking as hard as she could to reach Dirk.

“Chris, are you there?”

It was some moments before a winded Chris rushed into the Comms room and dropped into his seat.  “I’m here, Ali.  Read you loud and clear.”  He brought the keyboard forward and began typing.  “Starting the recording.”

“Can you see my camera?”

“Yes.”

“Good.  We don’t want to miss this.”

Chris watched the screen, trying to make things out in the dark water.  “What are you seeing?”

“Nothing yet,” she said, panting.  “We’re still a few hundred yards…from the birthing ground.”

Chris checked the coordinates from her vest and began typing again, bringing up a bathymetric map to track her underwater progress.

“Looks about under four hundred yards out, straight ahead.”

Alison kicked harder, reaching Dirk and wrapping both hands around his dorsal fin.  Dirk then immediately accelerated using the powerful pumping of his giant tail.

It took no time at all for glimpses of the distant green glow to appear through the darkness, gradually growing brighter and brighter with every foot they descended until they reached the enormous underwater depression filled by a thick blanket of vibrant vegetation.  Thousands of plants carpeted the bottom in giant, glowing green leaves which swayed rhythmically in the smooth underwater current.

Even more incredible were the hundreds of dolphins.  Just as before, the males swam above in a protective ring while the females swam below in a slower, looser circle, either in the process of birthing or assisting as midwives—yet another surprising similarity to humans.

“Wow,” breathed Alison.  She was amazed at the size of it all, with hundreds of dolphins resembling an enormous school of fish both in size and number, all taking place above the almost hypnotic glow below them, in what could only be described by Alison as a brilliant and unimaginable symphony of life.

When they finally reached the rim, Dirk did not stop.  Instead, he continued through the vast ring of males, diving farther down to the bed below until they reached Sally, whom Alison would never have spotted on her own within the slower-moving crowd of females.

Aboard the Pathfinder, Chris remained still, waiting impatiently, unable to see since Alison’s vest was pressed firmly against Dirk’s back with only occasional glimpses here and there until she released and the image became clear.  Extraordinarily clear, just as Alison was viewing it.

Alison had less trouble keeping up with the females who were swimming back and forth and then up and down in slow, relaxing movements to help their calves exit their wombs tail first.  All around Alison, dozens of tiny flukes could be seen extending out from their mothers’ bellies, slowly and gently growing longer and longer.

“Sally,” Alison said.  “Can I help?”

Sally’s response was not immediate, as if she were in a struggle, or at the very least distracted.

No Alison.

She continued.  Up and down, side to side, helping the tiny fluke of her own son finally emerge, watched closely by a second female next to her.

“Chris!  Are you getting this?!”

“I am, Ali. All of it!”

“Look at his tail! It’s so cute!”

“It is,” he said, laughing.

The tail fin was completely out, followed now by several inches of his tiny body.

With more side-to-side writhing, several inches became ten, then twelve, prompting Sally to slow to a crawl and roll onto one side, resting, sinking several feet to the bottom where both the mother’s and son’s tails brushed the plants' tops.

After a few minutes, Sally resumed, pushing up and regaining her rhythm, allowing the fluke to progress further.  The small tail grew thicker as more of the calf emerged.

Eighteen inches.  This was followed by a sudden widening of the little torso, prompting Sally to pump her tail harder and accelerate.  More writhing occurred until the tiny tail began to move on its own.

A few more inches of the body appeared…and then it all happened.

In one fell swoop, one final flex of Sally’s body, and the rest of the calf suddenly slid out in a small plume of soft, nutrient-dense blood.

Sally and her newborn suddenly accelerated, swimming together, mother and son, with his tiny tail kicking wildly as he jetted blindly through the warm water.  Both exploded excitedly forward, leaving Alison and the midwife behind.

In the Comms room, Chris raised an eyebrow when he heard nothing for a long time, just the fading image of Sally and her calf.

“Ali, you there?”

There was no answer.

“Can you hear me?”

Again, no response.  Only a silent nod from Alison, whom he could not see.  Nor was he aware of the trickle of tears running down her smiling cheeks.

84

The climb up the mountain was arduous.  Over a thousand feet through dark foliage at two o’clock in the morning made the trek feel as though it was straight up,  without lights to betray their position.

Sirens could be heard far below, signaling the news of what had happened was already spreading.  Emergency vehicles wound their way through the narrow mountain pass while Clay and his team trudged upward through the dense forest, often feeling their way over boulders and around trees. They headed for the nearest clearing that could accommodate a transport helicopter.

After another strenuous push, Goodwin groaned and held up his hand.  “Another break.  I need another break.”

In the front, Clay slowed to a stop and looked around, spotting a patch of level ground nearby, where Goodwin wasted no time in finding a place to sit.  The others, also winded, sat or fell onto one knee, trying to regain their breath.

“How much farther?”

“Another five hundred feet or so.”

“Let me rephrase that—how much longer?”

Clay and Caesare were now both peering down through the trees, counting the flashing red lights.  “At this pace, maybe twenty or thirty minutes.”

“Dear Lord,” gasped Goodwin.  “Are you sure there’s going to be someone waiting for us?”

Clay pressed a button on his watch, illuminating its face.  “I hope so.”

“You hope so?” panted Goodwin.  “Shouldn’t we make sure…before continuing?”

Caesare turned away from the trees.  “What difference does it make?”

“Difference?”

“What’s the alternative?”

Goodwin leaned back on the tree stump, trying to inhale more air.  “I don’t know…” he said, sarcastically.  “Maybe find a nice spot… build ourselves a cabin…live off the land.  Feels bloody easier at the moment.”

“They know we’re on foot by now,” said Clay.  “And it won’t be long before they’ll be scouring the hillside.  If we don’t get out of here soon, we may not get out at all.”

“Brilliant,” Goodwin said with a nod.   “Just brilliant.”  He looked around at the rest of the group and his gaze stopped on Ronin. He changed the subject.  “And just who exactly are you?”

“We don’t have time for questions and answers,” Caesare interrupted.  “Save your energy for the climb.”

Goodwin narrowed his eyes.  “Anyone ever tell you you’re a real stick in the mud?”

“Never.  Why?”

Caesare abruptly looked down when he felt a hand slide into his.  Dulce, rising barely to his hip, smiled up at him.

Behind them, Li Na was studying the small gorilla from a distance, sensing the connection between her and Caesare.  Deep and innate.  Emotional.

The sensation was similar to the subtle echoing she’d felt with the dolphins.  And she was detecting the same kind of connection from the smaller capuchin.

Li Na remained quiet, studying the two primates before finally turning and peering down the mountainside herself, wondering who it was this time trying to find them.  Who else would now be looking for John Clay, Neely, or Steve Caesare?  All of them.  Even the touchy man named Goodwin.  How long before it would eventually lead back to her—To her and the secret inside of her?

It was never going to end.

***

After two more breaks, the group finally managed to reach the top of the hill minutes before the thumping blades of a distant helicopter could be heard approaching from the horizon as a dark shadow beneath a moonlit sky, visible by blinking lights on either end.

The chopper was a Boeing CH-47 Chinook, twin-engine, tandem rotor helicopter painted light tan upon approach.  Its Saudi Arabia markings were easily visible as the craft finally slowed to hover less than a hundred feet above them.

A bright light illuminated beneath the cockpit, bathing the ground in brilliant white light while the pilots rotated a full 360 degrees as they examined the terrain, searching for level ground.  Gently, they lowered the craft over a patch of tall grass whipping wildly under the turbulence.

No sooner had the aircraft reached the ground than its giant side door slid open, revealing two airmen with helmets and matching suits.  Together, they extended a short rope ladder and waved them all forward.

Caesare jogged up and steadied the bottom of the ladder while Clay began sending person by person toward the chopper.  Borger, then Goodwin, then DeeAnn, who marched forward carrying Dexter while holding Dulce’s hand.  Then Neely, holding her hair out of her face, motioned to Li Na and made her way briskly toward the loud aircraft, reaching the ladder just as Caesare was hoisting Dulce up and into the arms of one of the crewmen.

Grasping the rope firmly in both hands, Neely climbed the three rungs before she was immediately clutched and hauled inside.

She grinned at the others and turned to reach for Li Na, but her hand found nothing but air.  Puzzled, Neely looked down to see Caesare with his arm still waiting.

When she spotted Li Na, her heart sank.

The girl had not moved.  She was still standing near Clay, who continued waving her forward, trying to yell to her over the noise.  Receiving no response, he instead sent Ronin, who trotted up to the door and scaled the ladder with little effort.

From the doorway, Neely continued staring at Li Na, confused, watching as Clay walked forward, still trying to get her moving before stopping to talk to her.  After a lengthy exchange, he turned and looked somberly at Caesare, then at Neely, and shook his head.

It was all Neely needed.  She rushed forward, trying to scramble back down the rope before Steve Caesare stopped her.

His steely eyes were not on her or Li Na, but on several more lights approaching in the distance.

“I have to get down!”

Caesare stared at the lights and shook his head, turning back to Neely.  “We don’t have time.  We have to go.”

She looked back at Li Na, who was staring at her, motionless and silent beneath the deafening wind from the helicopter’s blades.

“I have to talk to her!” she yelled.

Caesare shook his head again and motioned to Clay, who, without warning, hugged Li Na and leaned in to say something in her ear.  He stepped back with his hands on her arms before letting go and turning toward the chopper.

“No!” screamed Neely, trying once again to scramble down the ladder.  This time she was grabbed and hauled back up by both airmen.

The lights in the sky were quickly growing in size.

“We have orders to leave.  Now!”

“No!  NO!  Not without her!”

Neely was flailing, trying to wrest herself free, her eyes staring out through the door, locked onto Li Na.  She watched as the teenager frowned sadly at Neely and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.”

“NOOOO!”

It was too late.  The twin turboshaft engines suddenly roared like giant beasts, and the aircraft’s rotors disappeared into a gray blur, with Caesare and Clay quickly scrambling up and into the cabin, followed by the ladder. Then the heavy metal door slammed shut behind it.

Once released, Neely leaped to the closed door and stared through one of its square windows, watching Li Na, alone on the ground, shrinking as the helicopter climbed into the air.

85

The flight was back to King Fahd Air Base, where the group was then transferred to a waiting C-20 Gulfstream bound for RAF Mildenhall just north of London, England.  It was a much longer leg, most of which the group slept through until finally reaching the English Channel and a layer of sustained turbulence.

Caesare was the first awake and turned to scan the small cabin, finding Neely two seats away and wide awake, staring out the window next to her with sunlight streaming in through beneath a half-drawn shade.  Her eyes were red and tired.

Caesare unbuckled himself and used the seatbacks to move to the leather seat across from her.

“You okay?”

There was no response.

“Neely?”

Her eyes blinked before turning to look at him.

“You okay?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

When she didn’t respond, he added, “I couldn’t let you back off the chopper.”

Without a word, her eyes moved back to the window.

Caesare continued watching her, then accepted her apparent disinterest, unbuckled and rose back out of his seat.

“You should have,” she finally replied.

He stopped in mid-rise before lowering again.  “We didn’t have time.”

Neely merely shrugged.

“I guess I also need to apologize for something else.”

Silence.

“I think I may have been partly responsible for Li Na staying behind.”

Neely’s eyes moved back to his.

“We were talking, in Axum, and don’t think I left her with the best impression.”

“What do you mean?”

“I said something to the effect that we were always on the move.  That trouble seemed to have a way of finding Clay and me.  In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have said that.  I don’t think it left her feeling particularly safe.”

Neely stared at him for a long time.  “That wasn’t it.”

“No?”

She shook her head and sighed.  “I made similar comments, thinking I was helping her, preparing her for what lay ahead.  I thought it would help her, but now I see I just made it worse.”

Caesare tried to break the ice with a smile.  “So, I’m not a heathen.”

“I didn’t say that.”

His smile deflated.

“But it’s not your fault,” said Neely.  “It’s mine.”

“Honestly, I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault.  Clay told you what she said to him, that the only way she could truly be safe was to disappear—which would be impossible staying with us.”

For several long minutes, Neely watched below as the expanse of blue ocean gave way to the tip of England’s southern shoreline.  “I could have helped her.”

“Probably.”

Her gaze shot back at him.  “I could have figured it out.”

“That’s not what I meant.  There’s a lot more going on with that girl than just her biology, Neely.  She lost her mother, then her father, was chased halfway around the world, was kidnapped–along with you, I might add.  That girl has gone through a lot of suffering, which I don’t think you can fix.  Nor should you.”

Neely’s eyes widened in silent protest before Caesare cut her off.  “Pain makes us who we are.  It makes us stronger and defines us.  In many ways, it determines our character and our values.  And no one, not even the incredible, brilliant Neely Lawton, can change how that will define Li Na.”

Her face seemed to soften, and Neely turned back to the window with another sigh.  “I know.  I do.  But there’s more to it than that.”

“I’m sure there is.”

“I mean biologically.”

“Biologically?”

“Her DNA.  Not just what’s happening to her, but why.”

Caesare frowned.  “It’s because she was injected with the bacterium by her father.”

Neely nodded.  “He tried to save her life.  And he did.  But he had no idea that there were deeper ramifications.”

“How could he?

“Think James Seever.”

Caesare gave her a puzzled look.  “James Seever is dead.”

“Yes.  But there was something about him and his role in that joint program that the CIA and the Army couldn’t figure out.  Neither General Bullman nor his lead scientists.  Not even Janice Talbot.  No one could understand what made Seever so special, what allowed him to absorb so many genetic edits without succumbing to the side effects that killed other subjects.”

“You’re beginning to sound almost sympathetic for the woman.”

“Sympathetic?  No.  Empathetic?  Yes.”

“Please tell me you’re kidding.”

“We struggled with the same problem, she and I.  She with Seever and me with Li Na.  In the end, our two problems were not as different as they originally appeared.  But Seever was the key, the most obvious, and ultimately, the easiest to work out.  Easier than Li Na.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It was his DNA,” she said.  “They were looking too closely.  Too specifically.  It wasn’t until I zoomed back out that I finally found it.”

“Found what?”

“The reason why he was able to survive so many edits.”

Caesare stared at her in surprise.  “And?”

“You may not believe me if I tell you.”

“Try me.”

Neely paused, almost thinking to herself.  “The first clue was his name.  But even I missed that.  I shouldn’t have, but I did.  It was the cross-referencing of his lineage, his genetic heritage, that revealed it.”

“Revealed what?”

Neely gazed at Caesare.  “He’s Native American.”

Caesare continued staring, waiting.  “So?”

“Native American.”

“I heard you.  So what?”

“Don’t you see?  History is replete with stories about the Native Americans, the people Columbus famously misnamed when he thought he’d landed in India.  Stories about them having special skills.  Special attributes.  Of being one with nature.  Being able to relate and understand the world around them at a deeper level than the white man could understand.  Including the animals.  Even in their ability to mimic certain behaviors.”

“The animals’ behavior?”

She nodded.  “According to ancient folklore.”

This time Caesare didn’t answer.

“But what if it wasn’t folklore?  Tradition is rooted in truth.  What if it was true and their ability to mimic stemmed not from some kind of magic but something else?  Like their genome.  Ancient genes that had not fully gone dormant like in the rest of us.”

“Is that possible?”

“It’s something I would have thought only theoretical a few years ago.  But now, with Alison and her dolphins and the things she’s discovered, it seems possible, even probable, that we shared certain abilities which we lost, but they didn’t, through thousands of years of evolution.  Maybe hundreds of thousands.  Now consider that the Native Americans were largely isolated on the North American continent for a very long time.  Who is to say what they lost or didn’t lose?”

Caesare was dumbfounded.  “Wow.”

“Our genetics stay with us for a long time, thousands upon thousands of years.  Hundreds of generations, if not more.  Seever was still twenty-five percent pure Native American, and as far as I can tell, the only one with that lineage in the CIA’s program.  Everyone else died.  He didn’t.”

Caesare inhaled, contemplating.  “Wait, you said it was the same problem as Li Na’s.”

“That’s right,” Neely nodded.  “They seemed different, but I’m not so sure anymore.  Like I said, genetics stay around for a very long time.”

“And that means what?”

“Li Na,” she said flatly, “is Chinese.  Pure Chinese descent.”

“Which is different than Native American.”

“That may depend on how far back you go.  A hundred years, yes; a thousand years, maybe; ten thousand years, maybe not.  The Native Americans are believed to have emigrated from Asia, Steve, migrating across the Bering Land Bridge tens of thousands of years ago.  And that means that some of those lingering attributes still active in Seever also appear to be active in Li Na, in effect, making them ancient genetic cousins.”

86

Caesare was stunned.  Truly stunned.  And he remained so for a long time.  Their conversation was finally interrupted when Dulce appeared from the narrow aisle and climbed into his lap.

“Sorry,” said DeeAnn, following her. “We’re on our way to the potty.”

Caesare grinned, absently handing the young gorilla back to her and causing DeeAnn to raise an eyebrow.

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah.  Just talking about Li Na.”

DeeAnn turned her attention to Neely.  “Are you okay?”

“Yes, thanks.  I’ll be all right.”

DeeAnn nodded.  “We’re landing soon. If you want to freshen up, now’s your chance.”

“Thank you.”

She disappeared with Dulce, replaced a moment later by Will Borger, who stood over them in a colorful, badly wrinkled shirt.  “Hey, Steve.  Good, you’re up.  I wanted to talk to you about something if you’re free.”

Caesare glanced at Neely, who managed a polite grin.  “Yeah, sure.  Is Clay up?”

Borger shook his head sarcastically and turned around.  “Are you kidding? Clay never sleeps.”

***

The whining of the landing gear told them they were close, just minutes now from England’s Royal Air Force Mildenhall, more commonly known as RAF Mildenhall.

Located approximately 65 miles north of London, Mildenhall was home to the 100th Air Refueling Wing. Despite its Royal Air Force designation, it had served primarily as support as a United States Air Force base of operations since the early 1950s.

Covering over a thousand square acres, the base and her runways were easily visible beneath a sky of muted gray clouds and heavy drizzle.  It was surrounded by a patchwork of various land plots ranging in color from brown to dark green, resembling a quilt stretching off into the distance beneath an incoming storm.

Once on the ground, the Gulfstream was routed to an isolated section of tarmac housing a long line of quiet hangars where a single black cab was waiting alone.

Staring through the window, Goodwin looked at Clay.  “Is that my ride?”

“Quiet and nondescript.  It’ll take you anywhere you want to go.”

“My passport is still in Axum.”

“So are ours.  I recommend your first stop be the Identify and Passport Service.  There don’t appear to be any law enforcement agencies looking for us, at least not yet, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting things replaced.”

“And what if my name and picture get plastered all over Sky News before that?”

“I think we have some time.  The Ethiopian government is most likely still trying to figure out how much attention they want to bring upon themselves, and the U.S. is ready to suppress or misdirect whatever does come out, providing you with some legal cover in exchange for your discretion.”

“My discretion.  You mean a gag order.”

“There’s a lot to be considered here—for everyone.”

Goodwin looked back through the window and nodded.  “Fine.  But if that protection disappears, so does my gag.”

“Fair.”

Goodwin sighed and finally dropped the pretense.  Instead, he straightened and stared firmly at Clay.  “I should be thankful, not insolent.  If it weren’t for you,” he said, then motioned to the others in the cabin, “I would still be back there in that miserable place.  Even if we hadn’t found…well, you know, I would still owe you a debt of gratitude.  And for that, I thank you.”  He nodded humorously at Caesare.  “All of you.”

Caesare smiled and approached, holding his hand out, which Goodwin took and pumped gladly.  “It’s been a pleasure, Professor.  May our paths cross again one day.”

“Indeed,” Goodwin said, and nodded.  He turned and shook Clay’s hand, then waved a fond farewell to the rest.  “Travel safe, my friends.”

The door opened and stairs were extended, allowing Goodwin to exit.  He carefully descended the wet metal steps and briskly walked to the waiting cab, noting the giant refueling truck circling the craft and coming to a stop just beyond the portside wing.

From the doorway, Caesare finally turned to Clay after the cab disappeared.  “Discretion?”

“What?”

“You seriously don’t think he’s going to tell anyone?”

“I don’t think it matters,” shrugged Clay.  “There’s a big difference between knowing something big and getting people to believe you.”

A grin spread across Caesare’s face, and he laughed.  “Isn’t that the truth.”

From there, they both turned to face the others, who were all standing around.  “We have about an hour to refuel if anyone wants to take a walk and stretch.”

***

After finding a small cafeteria on the base, the team was back in the air in just over seventy minutes, relaxing in a loose circle within the cabin.

Over the next two hours, DeeAnn listened patiently to what had happened, beginning with Secretary Miller’s murder, Seever’s role in the CIA’s secret program, their tracking and finding him, followed by the discovery using Borger’s history-digging computer that had sent them to France and ultimately, Ethiopia.  Coincidentally, that was not all that far from where DeeAnn and Ronin had been with the primates, in Rwanda's mountains, where they had previously discovered the second vault of alien DNA housed inside hundreds of more glass pillars and filled with the strange green alien liquid.

The green liquid was nourishing millions of seeds and embryos from another world.  The same green liquid had been discovered in Guyana and infused within the structure of the alien ship buried below the surface not far from Trinidad island.

The liquid gave incomprehensible regenerative properties to nearly everything it touched, from plants to dolphins to people, and even the ship’s hull itself, supposedly allowing the craft’s shield to heal itself during the long flight through interstellar space.  Palin, one of Ronin’s leaders, was particularly interested in this as a possible catalyst for restoring much of his planet’s ecosystem after it had been destroyed in simultaneous catastrophes.

Of course, ‘interested’ was an understatement.  It was DeeAnn who’d uncovered Palin’s intent to harvest the liquid secretly and confronted him, in the end agreeing by way of Admiral Langford and Secretary Miller to allow Palin only twenty of the giant glass cylinders for study.  No more.  DeeAnn had personally remained behind to ensure this fact.

When the team was finished, it was DeeAnn who, after letting the story sink in, finally fished an object out of her pocket and then leaned forward and placed it on the small table between two of the opposing cabin seats.

It was a cube, approximately one inch on each side and colored a rich deep green, resembling sparkling, transparent jade.

“What is that?” asked Borger.

“That’s it,” she replied.

He looked at the others.  “It what?”

“Our mysterious liquid solidified.”

Caesare studied it from a standing position.  “And…”

“They finally know what it is.  Palin and their scientists.”

Borger studied the cube again with renewed interest.  “What is it?”

“Olivine.”

Caesare crossed his arms.  “What’s olivine?”

Borger reached forward and picked up the tiny cube.  “Olivine is a mineral.  A magnesium iron silicate.”

“Oh, right.  Of course.”

“That’s not all,” Borger continued.  “It’s a common and very abundant mineral, like a lot of others, but olivine is different.  Not necessarily in what it is, but in what it did.”

“What did it do?” asked Neely.

“Researchers believe olivine was one of the earliest minerals created during the formation of our planet, and more importantly during the birth of life.”

DeeAnn nodded.  “That’s right.  It’s thought that life first began underwater near Earth’s hot hydrothermal vents in a swirling mixture of amino acids, heat, and energy.”

“Along with a bunch of other molecules,” added Borger.  “But the environment was too violent for the molecules to easily link and bind together.”

“They needed protection.”

“Enter olivine.  They believe large clumps of mineralized olivine gave the molecules the shelter they needed to bind and eventually grow into more complex strings—and eventually, using the energy from the vents, into the earliest forms of microbial life, a process that without said protection may never have taken place.”

“In other words,” said DeeAnn, “olivine is believed to be part of it all.  An essential ingredient to life itself.”

“Wow.”  Caesare reached out and took the olivine from Borger, studying it more closely.  “So, this is what’s in the alien tubes?”

“Yes,” she replied.  “At its core but enhanced into something even greater based on the mineral’s unique role in the creation of life.  This is what Palin’s team is now trying to understand.”

“So that’s what all this has been about.”

“It seems so.”

Caesare handed the cube to Clay, who examined it next.

“The color is kind of unmistakable.”

“Very similar to what we saw with the Tabot.”

There was a long silence before Caesare stared at Clay.  “Well…now what?”

To which Clay merely laughed.  “How should I know?”

EPILOGUE

I

Three weeks later.

The cemetery was small.  Personal.  And peaceful.

It was the final resting place of Merl Miller, just miles from where he’d grown up as a boy outside Springfield, Illinois.  A mound of fresh dirt, wholly ensconced in tall colorful flowers, lay before an ornate marble headstone which was engraved simply with his name, years of age, and a single line of remembrance from his wife:

To Merl, a man like no other.

The service brought a tremendous turnout in Washington D.C., even under the current circumstances.  Thousands of people attended, all wanting to pay their deepest respects to a man who’d spent a lifetime both defending then serving the nation he’d loved.  A man of strength, integrity, and courage when it came to protecting what he believed was right and true, safeguarding both the values and character of the greatest country in mankind’s history no matter what the cost.

Now, in the small town of Auburn, Illinois, Miller was at rest.  Honorably.  Finally freed from his lifelong duties.  Next to him, an empty plot remained, peaceful and silent, soon to accept his wife Elizabeth Miller for shared eternity.

Admiral James Langford stood before the colorful mound in silence, reflecting on his own life.  His own values.  His own decisions.  He wondered if, in the end, any of it would truly matter, or whether life instead was just a series of actions providing a temporary, fleeting sense of meaning to be lost or forgotten entirely with the passing of a few generations.

Langford stared down at the flowers, contemplating.  Life indeed was fleeting.  And purpose even more so.  How long would his own children and grandchildren remember him?  And would his great-grandchildren know of him at all, beyond a service record or pictures on a wall?

Finally, he inhaled and raised his head, deciding in the end the only thing that mattered was the virtue of the here and now.  Agendas and opinions too often modified even those legacies that did survive history’s gradual erasure.  To him, the answer was simple.

All that mattered was what we did today, just as Merl believed.

It was a conclusion that prompted him to glance at his watch and note the time.

***

Almost a thousand miles east, Langley's streets were still slick from the morning rain, leaving behind the heavy smell of moisture in the air, and cars making their way slowly along the George Washington Memorial Highway.  Headlights reflected the glistening spray kicked up from thousands of wet tires upon the soaked concrete less than a quarter mile from CIA Headquarters and the long hallway in which CIA Director Andrew Hayes was now traveling.  He walked briskly in a dark blue suit and a yellow tie, his cell phone pressed firmly against one ear and ignoring everyone he passed, including his secretary, who rose to meet him when he reached his office. In a fit of irritation, he waved her off and swung open his door, suddenly startled upon stepping inside.

Near the window, two people were calmly sitting on the black leather Chesterfield couch.

Hayes immediately stopped, staring at both women in surprise, and then lowered his phone and promptly ended the call, turning to close the door behind him.

“Do you have an appointment?”

Both women stood.

“No.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here?”

Donna Backshall, the Chief of Staff, spoke first.  “Director Hayes, this is Melissa Rowcliffe, White House Chief Legal Counsel.”

Hayes’s eyes narrowed.  “I know who she is.”

With shoulder-length brown hair and dressed in a charcoal blazer and skirt, Rowcliffe stepped toward Hayes with a pair of hardened green eyes.

“Director Andrew Hayes, on behalf of the President of the United States, I am here to inform you that you are hereby relieved of your post.  Effective immediately.”

II

“It’s so beautiful.”

John Clay stopped and followed Alison’s gaze out over the blue water to a distant cloud-filled horizon, while small waves rolled and crashed upon the white sand beach in front of them.

“It really is.”

She stepped closer to the water, pulling him by the hand until she was close enough for it to wash over her bare feet, slowing and eventually retreating down the gentle grade and back to the surf.

“Everything feels so surreal these days.  Do you think things will ever be the same?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, taking a deep breath.  “The world was forced into a lot of self-reflection.  I can’t imagine that being a bad thing.”

Alison nodded and turned to glance down the stretch of beach dotted with small groups of people wandering along the open expanse of white beach or swimming in the glimmering turquoise water.

“How’s Sally and her son?” asked Clay.

“Good.  It’s kind of amazing, actually.”  She turned around. “Just watching them…and listening.”

“To what?”

“What Dirk and Sally tell him,” she answered.  “Most of it IMIS can’t translate, but what it can is incredible.  Just the fact that we can hear and witness it all is incredible—aside from the implications.”

“Implications?”

“If you think about it, he’s the first dolphin to be born into an environment with both dolphin and human languages, like a child who grows up in a bilingual family.

Children like that always have a more natural advantage, a more advanced understanding of both cultures.”

Clay grinned.  “Which means…”

Alison shrugged.  “Will it carry over for Dirk and Sally’s calf?  Will the intercommunication somehow be easier for him or more natural?”

“That’s an interesting thought.”

“He’s so smart, John.  I know I’ve said it before, but it’s true.  Just listening to him try to repeat every click or whistle Sally and Dirk make shows how quickly he’s learning.  Humans don’t begin speaking for months.  He’s already emulating their language after just a few weeks.”

“Speaking of He, have you thought of a name yet?”

She smiled.  “We’re thinking about calling him Echo.”

Clay laughed.  “Perfect.”

When another surge washed over her feet, Alison stopped and looked back down at the water.  “You want to hear something really crazy?”

“Sure.”

She looked back over the ocean and inhaled.  “Lieutenant Tay and his team are still no closer to deciphering the alien symbols on the ship, which has me thinking.  What if…” she said, slowing, “what if the language is more similar to how a dolphin brain works?  What if the dolphins can help us in deciphering it?”

Clay stared at her admiringly.

“And what if Echo, growing up not just bilingual, but ‘bi-species’ is somehow able to help us figure it out?  Or even just some of it.”

“Now that would be something.”

“Crazy, right?”

“I don’t think the word ‘crazy’ applies to us the same way it used to.  Not after all this.”

He continued walking and pulled her along with him, splashing through the water when it surged up the sand and gazing outward as they strode, eventually passing a small group of children playing in the surf.

After a few more minutes, they passed a man farther out, casually floating over with the incoming swells. He eventually righted himself to look back at them.

Out of the corner of Alison’s eye, something appeared in the distance next to the man, then another, causing her to turn and look.

A little over fifty yards out and one by one, objects continued to appear, then multiple appearances together, until she finally realized what they were.

Dolphin heads.

She suddenly stopped and studied them, momentarily perplexed, as each of the dolphins appeared to be watching her.  Then almost absently glancing at the man again, she squinted and raised a hand over her brow to block the sun.  “Oh my God.”

Alison walked forward, looking closer.  “Is that Chris?!”

She scanned the group of dolphins before suddenly spotting Sally.  Then Dirk.  And Echo, with his tiny head bobbing between them.

“John, look at that!  It’s Chris!”

There was no answer.

“John–” she stammered, turning to find Clay no longer standing next to her.

He was kneeling.

Clay calmly reached into his pocket, retrieving a small red box.  “I had to do it this way.  They wanted to see.”

“What?”

“They wanted to see,” he repeated.  “Sally and Dirk.  They wanted to see what it was like when a man professed his love for a woman.”

Alison was suddenly speechless.

“When a man tells a woman that he is deeply in love and can’t live without her.  That she means more to him than anything else in this world.  And that she is the one thing he has been searching for his entire life.”

“Oh my God.”

“Alison Shaw,” he said, reaching up to take her hand.  “You are the woman I’ve been searching for.  The woman I’ve been waiting for.  And the woman I am meant to spend the rest of my life with.”

Alison looked down as though she were having trouble breathing.  Her mouth was agape and eyes wide as she stared in disbelief.

“Alison?”

She was trembling.

“Alison…will you marry me?”

Her eyes teared up, and her chest shuddered as she cried and laughed at the same time.

“Yes.  Yes!  I will!”

She bent down and wrapped her arms around him, leaving his hand outstretched and still clutching the ring before she remembered and stepped back again, giving him room to remove it from the box and slip it onto her finger.

At that moment, overwhelmed beneath a wave of emotion, all she could think about was—How in the world did he know her ring size?

Through her daze, Clay stood up, his hands still holding hers, followed by the eruption of clapping from a nearby group of onlookers.

Alison blushed and waved at them, then turned back to John. She started to speak and then abruptly stopped as she looked back at those clapping.

One by one recognition came.  Steve, Neely, DeeAnn, Will, Lee, and suddenly a bolt of lightning.  Her sister and her mother and father!  All standing together, cheering.

“OH MY GOD,” she shouted.  She tossed Clay an excited glance before suddenly breaking off into a run.

A smiling Clay followed, walking up the gentle slope until reaching Steve Caesare and Will Borger.  Both stepped forward to congratulate him, followed by Lee Kenwood, and finally Alison’s father, all shaking his hand.  He waited and watched while Alison jumped up and down in front of the women.

“Thank God she said yes,” said Caesare.

Alison was beside herself, hugging everyone, before noticing more faces behind them.  Two friends from college and one Donna Hankinson.  A former colleague who had been with her when Alison had first met Dirk and Sally.

But when she saw the last face, her look of exhilaration froze.

He was now twelve years old, with bright eyes and standing on his own two feet with the help of two crutches.

“Edwin?” she said, pushing past the others.  EDWIN?!”

She immediately ran to him and wrapped both arms around the boy, smiling from ear to ear and staring into his big bright eyes, strong and healthy, before turning to her sister in shock.

“He’s been getting stronger,” she said.  “Ever since your visit to the hospital.”

Elated, she stared back at Edwin and shook her head, excited and astonished.

How in the world?

III

The rumbling was deafening, emanating from an old engine well past its prime and roaring like a dying beast from the rear of the bus while simultaneously drowning out the constant squeaking of the vehicle as it swayed side to side over the small rocks, clawing its way up a steeply graded dirt road beneath a giant cloud of brown billowing dust.

It was as dirty inside as it was outside, with two dozen windows down to provide what little relief they could from the heat that felt like an oven.  Every seat was filled with locals dressed in old, worn clothing, most clutching various bags or boxes on their laps.

Except one.

Near the back in an aisle seat and rocking from side to side with the others sat a young teenager of Chinese descent with long, straight black hair sitting quietly with her eyes closed as if trying hard to drown out the noise.

She opened them only occasionally to glance toward the front at a mother and child sitting sideways near the driver in a side-facing seat, the tiny child upon the mother’s lap lying weakly against her bosom for comfort.

The young girl only had clumps of hair left and was clearly sick.  But Li Na could feel more than that.  Not just the sickness, but the dark misery within the girl’s tiny heart, a dwindling, terminal sensation.  Not of pain, but acceptance and profound sadness.

This left Li Na wondering—What might happen if the young girl was given a drop of her own blood?

MESSAGE FROM THE AUTHOR

Thank you very much for reading Echo. I hope you enjoyed it, and honestly hope Echo, and the rest of the Breakthrough series for that matter, have allowed you an escape from what can sometimes seem a wild and chaotic world.  One that sometimes feels to be running low on optimism, or on hope, or perhaps just a genuine aspiration of the human condition.  A dearth of what is truly meaningful when it comes to what we might one day achieve, not just as a race, but as a species.

There is so much truth woven into these Breakthrough books that so many of the pieces feel like they are just within reach.  Some so astonishingly close that they might be felt with one’s own fingertips.  Pieces that could one day soon truly allow us, mankind, to take another exciting step forward in understanding not just who we are, but who is here with us.

After all, all great things achieved…must first be imagined.  Right?

Finally, if you could please take a moment to leave a review for Echo, I would be eternally grateful.  Being self-published, I cannot emphasize enough just how much I rely on your support to keep writing.

Thank you very much,

Michael

Visit Amazon or Click Here to leave a review for Echo.

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EPILOGUE

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III