Before Painter’s call, convinced he was dead, she had been locked in one of the bedrooms of the suite. At the time she knew these people were going to kill her. She didn’t care. Drained to a hollow shell of herself, she had simply sat on the bed’s edge. She was still aware of feeling fear, coiled around the base of her spine, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of desolation that gripped her. She had seen too much blood, too much death. Her own life held little meaning. She considered breaking the mirror in the bathroom and using a shard of glass to spill her own blood, as if by so doing she could wrest back some modicum of control.
But even that had felt too much like fighting.
She simply didn’t have the strength.
Then the call had come. Her uncle was alive, so were the professor and Jordan, and even that walking refrigerator called Kowalski. She’d seen their picture on Rafael’s computer screen, some frozen image from a broadcast of the group’s rescue.
After the call, jubilation filled those hollow spaces inside her, shining a warm light into that dark vacuum. Her uncle’s last words stayed with her.
I’m going to come get you. I promise.
He’d said he would not abandon her — and she believed him, which is what ignited the keening terror inside her now. She suddenly wanted to live, and in allowing herself to feel that desire, she realized that once again she had everything to lose.
But there was no escape.
She glanced over to her sole companion at the dining room table. It was the muscular African woman named Ashanda. Kai had initially been terrified of the woman, but then, at the time, the woman had been heating irons in the fire, carrying out a torture upon Rafael’s orders. But over time, that fear mellowed into something that resembled discomfort mixed with a kind of curiosity.
Who was she?
The woman was so unlike the others, clearly not a soldier, though she fought for Rafael. Kai pictured Ashanda rising from the shadows of the mud-heated cavern, running with a lithe speed that defied her size. Kai had also seen Ashanda working at the computer as she herself talked to Painter, the woman’s dark fingers racing over a keyboard. It was clear that she was more than a technician.
In the bright light of the room, Kai noted vague scars thickening the woman’s skin, forming rows of small dots that made stripes along her arms, looking almost like the skin of a crocodile. Her face was similarly scarred but in a more decorative pattern, one that accentuated her dark eyes and swept in wings to her temples. Her hair was done in tight, dark braids that spread from the crown of her head and draped gracefully to her forehead and shoulders.
Kai watched the woman staring at Rafael. Before she had seen only emptiness in those eyes, but this was no longer true. Deep within those dark mirrors, Kai knew, stirred a well of sadness. Ashanda sat so very still, as if afraid of being seen, yet at the same time, wanting more. There was devotion in that gaze, too, along with weariness. She sat like a dog waiting for a touch from its master, knowing that a mere touch was all she was ever going to get.
The reverie ended with the chiming ring of a phone.
Kai swung around.
At last.
Rafael appreciated punctuality. The director of Sigma had placed his follow-up call precisely at the time he had promised. It was not the call itself, but what the man offered when he spoke, that dismayed the Frenchman, coming as it did so unexpectedly.
“A truce?” Rafe asked. “Between us? How does that serve me?”
Painter’s voice remained urgent. “As promised, I’ll tell you where the Fourteenth Colony is located. But it will do you no good. The cache is set to explode in approximately four and a half hours.”
“Then, Monsieur Crowe, if you wish your niece to live, you’d best make this exchange as quickly as possible.”
“Listen to me, Rafael. I’ll tell you the location now. The Fourteenth Colony is hidden somewhere in Yellowstone National Park. I’m sure that such a resting place makes sense to you, does it not?”
Rafe fought to understand such a drastic turn of events.
Is this a ruse? To what end?
Painter did not let up, speaking rapidly. “Give me an e-mail address. I’ll send you all the relevant data. But in a few short hours, that cache is going to go critical, triggering a blast over a hundredfold stronger than the one in Iceland. But you know that’s not the true danger. That explosion will release a mass of nanobots. They’ll start disassembling any matter they encounter and keep spreading and growing larger. The nano-nest will eat its way down until it reaches the magma chamber under Yellowstone, where it will ignite the supervolcano buried beneath that park. The resulting cataclysm will be the equivalent of a mile-wide asteroid slamming into the earth. It means the end of most life, certainly all human life.”
Rafe found himself breathing harder. Could he be telling the truth?
“I doubt that such destruction will serve even your aims,” Painter continued. “Or those of anyone you work with, for that matter. We either team up, share our knowledge, in order to stop this from happening, or it’s the end of everything.”
“I… I will need time to think about this.” Rafe hated to hear the stammer in his own voice.
“Don’t take long,” Painter warned. “Again I will send you all of our data — whatever you want. But Yellowstone is spread over two million acres, and this creates a huge challenge to us. We must still discover and pinpoint the lost city’s exact location, and we must do it while the clock keeps ticking downward.”
Rafe checked his wristwatch. If the director was telling the truth, they had until 6:15 A.M. to find the lost city and neutralize the material that was hidden there.
“Send me what you have,” Rafe said, and gave him an e-mail address.
“You have my number.” Painter signed off.
Rafael lowered the phone, hanging his head in thought.
Do I believe you, Monsieur Crowe? Could you be telling the truth?
Rafe lifted his head enough to glance toward Kai Quocheets.
The director had never asked once about his niece. That, more than anything, spoke to his honesty. What did it matter if he negotiated for one life when the lives of all of mankind were at risk?
The phone rang again, making Rafe jump. He stared down at the mobile device in his hand, wired to the encrypting software. But that wasn’t the source of the ringing. He turned to the dining room buffet, where his personal laptop and cell phone rested. He watched his phone vibrate and heard it ring again.
Leaning more heavily on his cane than he usually did, he stepped over and retrieved the device. His personal phone was meant only for direct communication with his family, along with a few of his associates at the research facilities back in the French Alps. But the caller ID simply listed the caller’s name as blocked. That made no sense. His phone didn’t accept blocked calls.
He was ready to dismiss the matter and not respond, but the phone was already in his hand and he needed something to distract himself with while he awaited the data from Painter Crowe.
Irritated, Rafe lifted the device to his ear. “Who is this?”
The voice was American, soft-spoken, nondescript, perhaps a hint of a Southern accent, but too faint for Rafe to tell anything more than that. The man told him his name.
Rafe’s cane slipped from his hand and clattered to the marble floor. He reached back to the buffet to catch himself. He noted Ashanda rising, ready to come to his aid. He sternly shook his head at her.
The caller spoke calmly, distinctly, with no threat in his voice, only certainty. “We’ve heard the news. You’ll cooperate with Sigma to the fullest extent. What is to come must be stopped for all our sakes. We have full confidence in your abilities.”