Repelled by an undulating, unscalable wall of blue, more powerful and unyielding than anything he had encountered before, Alexander withdrew, feeling like he bounced off entirely. And landed—
Inside of a huge snow-capped mountain, Phoebe and Orlando race into what looks like a floating globe, then soar outside in an exhilarating rush before half the mountain collapses around them.
And then he returned, wiping the grin off his face just as Jacob noticed, and Isaac turned around sharply. “What do you think he saw, brother?”
Jacob shrugged. “A happy childhood memory?”
Isaac laughed. “Couldn’t have been happier than ours. What with the hunting, the remote-viewing, the killing.”
“Everything we ever wanted,” Jacob said glumly.
Alexander shook his head. “You aren’t my brothers. I don’t care anymore. You’re nothing like my father.”
“And you,” Isaac spat, “are too much like your mother.” He grinned and raised his hand for a high-five with Jacob, who let it hang there.
Alexander felt his blood boiling. Fists clenched, he was about to advance on Isaac when he saw the boy still carried the sword-cane in his other hand behind his back. And Alexander noted the body laying beside the chair. Montross, bleeding out still, his blood pooling onto the polished floor.
Bleeding. That means he’s still alive.
“Isaac. Jacob,” Calderon stepped between them. Reached over and held out his hand. “Ah, there it is. My cane, please.”
Isaac handed it over with a slight bow, never taking his eyes off Alexander.
Jacob cleared his throat sheepishly as he glanced up to the engineers. “So, is it over?”
Calderon spun his cane, keeping his eye on Alexander. “Why don’t you boys tell me? I know I brought the mountain down around those Stargate fools, but I don’t know if any are still alive under all that rubble.”
“Let’s get us a look-see then,” said Isaac. “Seems to be all we’re good for.”
Jacob managed a grin. “Found us our brother in Alexander, we did.”
“And wait a sec. Hold the phone, he never thanked us for that, did he?”
“Boys!” Calderon snapped. “Enough. Now we have to prepare. It’s time.”
Jacob and Isaac smiled and closed their eyes, their training kicking in. “Time,” they both whispered.
“Time to shed these skins. Leave our bodies and travel the path of the Great Ones to the Red Land…”
“…where we’ll be reborn,” Isaac and Jacob said in unison.
“…and from our new home, with new eyes, we’ll observe the death throes of this planet and imagine the suffering as the world is purged. First, I will follow the instructions on the Tablet, and I will let it guide me from this flesh and into the machine, where only pure matter can interact with the Emerald Tablet’s true form.”
Isaac clapped his hands slowly, picturing it.
“We’ll set the target as the earth’s very core, and send the scalar energy waves at a direct path through the pole…”
Calderon approached the device, about to retrieve the Emerald Tablet, when a call came in over the speakers from the techs upstairs. He glanced up, and two men in lab coats rushed out of the room and leaned over the railing.
“What is it now?” Calderon snapped. “You should be powering down and resetting the arrays before we—”
“But that’s it, sir. We can’t power down!”
“What?”
Alexander perked up. His attention turned to the chair-device, where for just a moment he thought he saw an outline, like an afterimage of Calderon sitting there.
Except, that wasn’t Calderon.
“We can’t power down! It’s not letting us, not responding.”
Same build and posture, but one thing different…
Calderon fumed. “Then what’s it doing?”
…red hair!
“It’s firing, Sir.”
Calderon fumed. Firing without my guidance? “All right, so it’s still blasting Mount Shasta. Just turn the damn thing off already, that’s taken care of.”
“It’s not aimed at Mount Shasta anymore.”
Swearing, Calderon started toward the chair. I can’t wait until we’re free of this damned world. Just a few more hours. “All right, then where is it aiming?”
The technicians looked at each other, whispering, then pointing back. One of them ran inside the control room as the other raised up a hand to wait.
“Oh for heaven’s sake.” Calderon took another step toward the machine, which was still humming, still throwing off waves of photo luminescent energy, then stopped as one of the boys wasn’t standing still any longer.
Alexander had slipped by on the right, and was kneeling by Montross. Leaning over, whispering something as he tried to apply pressure to the stab wound.
Montross?
Calderon spun his head back around to the device, and for a glimmering instant, saw him: the flaming red hair, the shining blue eyes. Everything scintillating in an emerald radiance.
Montross! Sitting like an emperor on his throne. Like Loki after usurping Odin. Like Lucifer on the throne of Heaven, or just like Thoth, imagining he could usurp the rule of Marduk.
“Where is it aiming!?”
“Sir,” came the voice from above. “Nowhere right now. Just up in a straight line towards the east.” The tech’s voice cracked. “But in three hours and twelve minutes, after the scalar wave of destruction has traveled a distance of two hundred and fifty million miles…”
Calderon closed his eyes. “No.”
“…entering into the path, will be the planet Mars.”
“I assume,” Calderon said in a dull voice, “You’ve calculated the precise point on the surface that will be affected?”
“We have.” Another pause. “Cydonia.”
Throwing down his cane in frustration, Calderon dropped to his knees. Basking before the Emerald Tablet’s glow, he prepared himself.
“He’s got you,” Alexander whispered, glaring at him from his uncle’s side.
“Shut up.”
“Tricked you good.”
“Shut him up!” Calderon pointed and the guards moved in, past Isaac and Jacob, who were still standing, open-jawed, unsure of what just happened. “And if the dead man stirs, shoot him!”
“Father?” Isaac was at his side.
“Be quiet, and be ready. I’m going to stop the traitor. Beat him at his own game.”
“But has the pulse already fired?”
“Not long enough,” shouted the tech above. “Another thirty seconds and the power level of the scalar wave will be sufficient to penetrate the depth of the Cydonia installation, smash the barriers and reinforced supports, and—”
But Calderon had tuned him out. Or, more appropriately, he no longer had ears with which to hear.
He stood on gossamer legs, his form shimmering with plasma-like sparks.
Everything was as he had foreseen.
Freed from flesh, he was power.
Freed from all restrictions, he was invincible.
He was a god.
And his enemy sat before him, startled at his sudden appearance. And unable to extract himself from the machine. Unable to defend himself.
Thirty seconds, Calderon thought.
Plenty of time.
10.
Ten minutes earlier, while three F-16 Fighting Falcons roared overhead, dispatched from Eielson Air Force Base, the Jeep Cherokee rammed through the chain wire fence at the southwest edge of the facility.
“Think it’ll work?” Caleb shouted over the tortured metal-on-metal collision that sent them rocketing off-road for a moment. The tires dug into the fresh snow, spun, then Nina got the Jeep back on the old service road and accelerated for the dimly-visible supply center, adjacent to the office buildings.