A bleach-blonde anchor on CNN asked her guest, a seismologist, about it.
“It is unusual, Ashley,” the man replied. “Large earthquakes can be felt around the world. The magnitude nine Indian Ocean earthquake in 2004 caused the whole planet to vibrate.”
“But that was just one quake,” Blonde Ashley said.
“Right. We’re breaking new ground with this one…if you’ll pardon the pun. This wasn’t a domino effect, with one quake triggering others. These were simultaneous earthquakes, and that’s something we can’t explain.”
Carter had heard enough. She turned to Dourado and made a cutting gesture, a signal to mute the audio. “We need to look into this.”
The other woman returned a blank look. “Our people might be in trouble. That’s the only thing that matters right now.”
“And what are we supposed to do to help them?” Carter shot back.
“What are we supposed to do about that?” Dourado asked, pointing at the screens. “It’s terrible, but natural disasters aren’t our job.” She winced, as if regretting the comment. “I suppose we could coordinate with the Red Cross, but—”
“Is it?” Carter asked. “A natural disaster, I mean?”
Dourado’s expression changed to reflect confusion. “What else could it be? You don’t think…” She trailed off as if unable to even speculate about Carter’s thought process.
“You heard what he said. Simultaneous earthquakes don’t happen. Not naturally. This is something else.”
“What?”
“A new weapon. Some kind of earthquake machine. Runaway fracking. I don’t know. But we need to find out.”
Dourado gasped and whispered something to herself. She swung her attention back to the screens and began entering information. After a few seconds, a list of search results for ‘earthquake machine’ appeared on one of the screens. One particular term stood out to Carter. “HAARP?”
“It stands for High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. It’s a U.S. military research facility in Alaska, supposedly built to study the ionosphere for the purpose of improving radio communications.”
“Supposedly,” Carter echoed. “What was the real purpose?”
“Well, if you believe the conspiracy theorists, they were trying to build a weapon that could create extreme weather, control people’s minds, set the atmosphere on fire, or…” She allowed a dramatic pause. “Cause earthquakes.”
Carter chose her next question carefully. “Is that what you think it is?”
“I believe that powerful people would like to be able to do those things, and that the U.S. government could probably do some of it if they wanted to.”
Carter couldn’t disagree with the latter sentiment, but that didn’t mean she was ready to get fitted for a tin-foil top hat. “I’ll take a look at it. Can you send these to my tablet?”
Her tablet was back in her lab, which was still trashed. She wondered again at the overall wisdom of staying underground, but then decided that Dourado was right. Cerberus HQ was the place they needed to be.
“On second thought, I’ll just work on it here, if that’s okay with you.”
The other woman appeared somewhat discomfited at the prospect of sharing a workspace, so Carter added, “If there are any aftershocks, we may need to evacuate. Probably best that we stay together. And I want to be here if…when…you make contact with the team.”
Dourado gave an unenthusiastic shrug. “I guess you’re right.” Her gaze flickered to a news broadcast and then her eyes went wide. Carter turned and saw a message displayed in bold graphics: ‘Sun Stands Still?’
Dourado restored the audio.
“…unconfirmed reports from observers that the sunrise on the East Coast was late.” The anchor drew out the last word for emphasis. “By at least a full minute. John, is that even possible?”
The guest commentator shook his head. “Ashley, sunrise and sunset times vary from place to place because of the Earth’s curvature, so it’s not unusual for there to be disagreement between the time when the Internet says the sun should rise in a given place, and when you actually see it happen.”
“But John, these reports are coming from observatories up and down the East Coast. They’re saying that the sunrise was late. Now, we all know that it’s the Earth that moves, not the sun—”
“Most of us,” the seismologist said with a nervous laugh. “There are still a few Flat-Earthers out there.”
Ashley pressed on undaunted. “People are asking, is there some connection to these earthquakes? Did the Earth stop moving?”
John shook his head. “No, Ashley. That’s just not possible. Look, people are freaked out right now. I get it. This is nothing more than a misinterpretation of the data. I promise you, there’s a rational, perfectly boring explanation for this.”
Carter wasn’t so sure. She turned back to Dourado. “Something’s going on. Something big, and we need to figure out what it is before it happens again.”
FOUR
Lazarus hunched his shoulders forward, sheltering Fiona from the debris raining down, and hurried down the passage, trying to outrun the collapse. Fist-sized chunks pelted him with increasing frequency. Each impact felt like a sledgehammer pounding his body. He took no comfort in the fact of his own invincibility. If a larger chunk came down on them, putting himself between it and Fiona would make little difference to her.
“Look out!”
Lazarus glanced back in response to Fiona’s shout. Through the haze of headlamp-lit swirling dust, he could see the ceiling coming down like a gigantic flyswatter.
He turned his eyes forward again and realized that the collapsing section stretched out ahead of them, well past Pierce and Gallo, who were a few steps ahead of them.
He ground his teeth together and braced himself.
Maybe it wasn’t as heavy as it looked.
Maybe he could buy Fiona the fraction of a second needed to get out in front of the cave in.
Probably not.
More chunks of stone rumbled to the ground all around them, bouncing like rubber balls…
No, not bouncing. Rising.
It was as if the world had turned upside down. The cascade of debris reversed direction, falling up instead of down, coming together, coalescing into…
He looked down at the girl in his arms. Fiona’s lips were moving, speaking ancient and powerful words.
A tall figure, like an enormous statue, materialized from the gloom, hands raised to catch the falling slab. Lazarus ran past without slowing, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw the golem compressed like a gigantic spring under the weight of the collapsing ceiling.
A loud grinding noise chased after them, then the boom of an explosion. Another blast of wind buffeted him, pelting him with stones and filling the passage with choking dust, but the thing he dreaded most did not occur.
Fiona’s golem had saved them.
Blinded by the debris cloud, Lazarus skidded to a complete stop. The ground was no longer shaking underfoot, and the cave-in appeared to have stopped, leaving the passage quiet.
“I think it’s over,” Fiona whispered.
Lazarus nodded. “Good job back there.”
She started to say something then broke into a coughing fit.
“Cover your mouth,” he advised. “Don’t breathe this shit in.” He peered into the haze and saw a faint glow ahead. “Pierce! Sound off!”
Pierce’s voice, faint and broken by spasms of coughing, reached out to him. “We’re okay.”