The Underworld rumbles like thunder. Crimson flames shoot out from the serpent’s open mouth, an emerald eruption of energy still pouring from the fifth-dimensional conduit. The subterranean ceiling is fragmenting, exposing curtains of brilliant white light.
Devlin snarls at her from the edge of the pit. Spreading his wings, he dives into the maelstrom.
And then everything is gone.
Dominique finds herself kneeling by the edge of the artificial lake, back on the planet’s surface. Hurricane-force winds howl in her ears, threatening to swoop her up into its vortex. She looks around, blinded by volcanic dust.
Mick is lying by her side, the Guardian’s transport pod rocking twenty feet behind them.
Stooping painfully, she positions Mick’s arm across her shoulder and half carries, half drags him to the spacecraft. She pulls him inside. Seals the hatch.
‘Computer, get us on board the Guardian’s transport as fast as you can!’
The pod struggles to lift against the monstrous currents of air and debris.
Dominique holds on, unable to think through the insanity of the moment as they are inhaled within the hurricane’s vortex. She squeezes her eyes shut, memories flashing in her mind as the space vehicle whips around the eye wall of the storm as if caught in a washing machine.
Flash: She is back in the Miami mental asylum, sitting before her new director, Antonio Foletta, discussing her new patient.
‘Why was Mr. Gabriel incarcerated?’
‘Mick lost it during his father’s lecture. The court diagnosed him paranoid schizophrenic and sentenced him to the Massachusetts State Mental Facility, where I served as his clinical psychiatrist.’
‘Same kind of delusions as his father?’
‘And the mother. Archaeologists Julius and Maria Gabriel were convinced that some terrible calamity is going to wipe mankind off the face of the planet. Mick also suffers from the usual paranoid delusions of persecution, most of it brought about by his father’s death and his own incarceration. Claims that a government conspiracy has kept him locked up all these years. In Mick Gabriel’s mind, he’s the ultimate victim, an innocent man attempting to save the world…’
Flash: Her first visit with Mick. The handsome paranoid schizophrenic with the ebony eyes moves closer, inhaling her scent. ‘I swear on my mother’s soul that I won’t harm you.’
Flash: She is in the Gulf of Mexico, on a boat with Mick, after helping him escape. ‘Mick… back in the asylum when you asked me if I believed in evil. What did you mean by that?’
‘I also asked you if you believe in God… if you believed in a higher power.’
‘I believe someone watches over us, touching our souls on some higher plain of existence. I’m sure part of me believes that because I need to believe it, because it’s comforting. What do you think?’
‘I believe we possess a spiritual energy, which exists on a different dimension. I believe a higher power exists on that level, one we can only access when we die.’
‘I don’t think I ever heard heaven described quite like that. What about evil?’
‘Every Ying has its Yang.’
‘Are you saying you believe in the devil?’
‘The devil, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, what’s in a name?’
Flash: Back in Chichen Itza, on the winter solstice of 2012, the prophesied day of doom. Ennis Chaney grips her by her wrist, refusing to let go, as Mick walks purposefully toward the dead alien serpent’s open mouth-the entrance into the nexus.
‘Let me go! Mick, what are you doing-’
‘I’m sorry, Dominique. I love you-’
He steps over the bottom rows of teeth and enters the serpent’s mouth… leaving her forever Forever…
‘I love you Dominique…’
Forever…
‘Ma… thank you. I love you.’
‘I love you, too, Manny. ’
Forever…
‘ Be happy. ’
Forever…
Her eyes flash open as she screams, ‘Jacob!’
The transport ship leaps clear of the olive green whirlwind, climbs into the atmosphere, and races into space.
Mick’s eyes flash open as he regains consciousness. ‘No… no!’
Dominique grabs hold of him as the pod rockets higher. ‘Shh… it’s okay-’
‘No! I am One Hunahpu! I am One Hunahpu!’
‘Mick, it’s me, it’s Dominique-’
‘Abomination… trying to kill me… seeping into my mind… I am One Hunahpu… I am in control… I control my mind, not the Abomination.’ He tears at his hair. ‘Oh, God, oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh, God-’
Dominique struggles to restrain him as invisible hands guide the ship toward the potato-shaped moon.
Mick thrashes wildly, his madness like a raging tsunami. ‘My mind
… a safe haven. My mind… protects me… a cave. Oh, God, let me die! I want to die! Let me die, let me die-’
The moon-shaped vessel appears in the view screen, an immense eighteen-mile-long, twelve-mile-wide iridium transport ship, its hull pockmarked by indentations and one very massive crater-sized dent.
‘Abomination! Abomination! I will focus on the cave walls and not the exit and the Abomination cannot harm me!’
‘Mick, stop, it’s me! It’s Dominique!’
A tractor beam grabs hold of the pod, guiding it inside a landing bay.
The craft stops with a jolt. The pod’s hatch pops open, revealing the three Guardian elders.
Mick is screaming, tearing at his harness.
The female Guardian reaches inside the pod and touches her palm to his forehead. ‘Sleep.’
Mick’s eyes roll upward, and he passes out.
The younger male grabs his wrist, effortlessly lifting him out of the ship, hoisting his inert body over his shoulder as if carrying a small child.
The female reaches inside the pod to assist Dominique.
She pushes the female’s hand away. ‘You lied to us. Why didn’t you tell us this was Earth? Why didn’t you tell us the Nephilim were dead?’
The female offers her a motherly look… as she touches her forehead.
Dominique blacks out.
An azure lagoon, surrounded by a lush tropical jungle. A cool breeze stirs the palm fronds.
Dominique climbs onto the foam cushion, lies back, and floats.
‘Dominique? Dominique, dear, it’s time to wake up.’
She opens her eyes, staring into the female’s face. ‘Where-’
‘Safe. On the transport.’
Dominique sits up, feeling light-headed. The female Guardian helps her off a free-floating medical table, then points to a solid wall.
A viewport projects upon the metallic surface. The image reveals they are traveling in outer space, the silvery red world growing smaller in the distance.
Jake…
Dominique turns to the female. ‘Jacob is dead. Why did he have to die? To save a bunch of evil people?’
‘The Nephilim were not evil, my dear, they were lost lambs, led astray. It was God’s will that they be saved. Jacob’s sacrifice saved his own soul and theirs.’
‘And Devlin?’
‘That, I cannot say.’
Dominique rubs her eyes, thinking about everything. ‘So what happens now?’
‘The Earth we knew is long gone. By returning through the wormhole and into the past, we may yet be able to prevent the holocaust that destroys human civilization.’
The female’s attention turns inward as she listens to an incoming telepathic message. ‘Come. Michael needs you.’
Dominique follows her through a short corridor into the main compartment of the transhumans’ transport ship. She looks around, incredulous.
There are close to a million of them-eight-foot-high cryogenic pods, set in countless rows on multiple levels throughout the eighteen-mile-long vessel.
Dominique peers inside the frosted glass at the gangly being inside. ‘The posthumans?’
The female nods. ‘Their souls are finally at peace.’
She leads Dominique to an immense vaultlike door at the very core of the ship. At the female’s telepathic command, the door swings open, revealing the interior of a spherical chamber.