She paused.
“You have to consider the greater good, Peyton. Do you understand?”
Peyton nodded. “I understand. But I don’t like it.”
“You shouldn’t. You should never be comfortable with what we just did.” Without looking at him, Lin said, “Dr. Greene?”
“Ma’am?”
“Report.”
He exhaled. “I executed our exigency protocol. I have the latest data dump and maps of the sub.”
“Good. Chief Petty Officer Adams.”
“Ma’am?”
“We need a plan for defending the Beagle against intruders. If I’m right, we’ll soon be in a fight for our lives.”
Chapter 8
Conner was stretched on a cot in the back of the van. Still parked outside the office building off Sand Hill Road, the vehicle had drawn no interest from the mixed units of National Guard, Army, FEMA, and Navy units. The combined units were simply called X1 troops, since no other moniker seemed to fit.
Desmond lay on a hospital bed next to him. The rhythmic beeping of the machine monitoring Desmond’s vitals was like a metronome, coaxing Conner to sleep. He resisted.
The reports on the police scanner narrated the Citium’s conquest of the world, and the start of a second American civil war. The voices of the National Guard troops and police rang out, the stress and worry in those voices growing by the hour.
Enemy combatants moving up El Camino Real Street. Request backup.
Riot beginning at the Stanford Treatment Shelter.
Fire started at Trader Joe’s at the corner of Embarcadero and Alma. Request fire crews.
Conner was too young to remember the fire that had burned and disfigured him, but the effects had shaped his life. He didn’t wish that on anyone. Fear rose in him each time the fire was mentioned on the radio. He felt like running, getting far away, going somewhere safe, where he could never be burned again.
But only one place like that existed: the Looking Glass.
Doctor Park’s face was lit by the glowing laptop screen.
“Status, Doctor?”
“He’s still experiencing the memory.”
“Any idea how much longer? The fighting is moving toward us.”
“Yes, I can hear that…”
“Watch your mouth, Doctor, or you’ll lose the senses you don’t need for this task.”
Park swallowed, and when he spoke, his tone was neutral. “I’ve been monitoring his brain waves. I’m trying to develop an algorithm that would tell us the approximate time remaining on the memory in progress.”
That was good. Conner needed to know the second they could move on. He sensed that moment was coming soon.
The tables of the library were stacked high with books. The chandelier glowed, its seven rings lighting all three stories of the vast space. Desmond sat at one of the long tables by the windows, scratching his head at his hairline. A notebook filled with writing lay beside the history book he’d been reading.
The San Francisco Bay glittered beyond, but Desmond had barely glanced at it. Since coming here, he’d spent every waking second reading and thinking about Yuri’s riddle. Why did the indigenous Australians fall behind the rest of the world?
Fifty thousand years ago, they had been arguably the most technically advanced humans on Earth. They crossed vast stretches of open sea on primitive boats, with no map, reaching Australia—a landmass that had never before seen human habitation. And they conquered it. Then their advancement stalled. It was as if they entered a time warp, and the rest of the world progressed without them.
Desmond had spent days reading volumes on evolution and history, and now… now he felt he was close to a working theory.
He rose and paced the library, stretching his legs. Sometimes when he wanted to think, or when he was too tired to think, he walked along the library’s stacks. He ascended the spiral staircase to the second floor, made a lap around the horseshoe-shaped balcony, then moved to the third floor.
A row of leather-bound volumes caught his eye. They were labeled Archives of the Citium Conclaves. Desmond opened the first book in the set. It contained printed scans of documents that looked old—the paper yellow, the text handwritten in faded letters. The originals were in Latin, and in each case, an English translation was on the opposite page. He brought the tome back down to his table and read it. Then he went up for another, and another.
The records detailed meetings that stretched back over two thousand years. The conclaves were held annually, and were attended by leading thinkers from all over the world. The documents told of debates about the nature of existence and the purpose of the human race, its origins, and its destiny.
The first meeting of the Order of Citium took place in 268 BC on the Greek island of Kition, also known by its Latin name, Citium. The conclave was moderated by the order’s founder, Zeno, a leading philosopher at the time. The roll call read like a who’s who of the ancient world. Even Archimedes was there, though he was only nineteen at the time.
The central presentation at the first conclave was given by Aristarchus. He proposed that the Earth was not the center of the universe—as was the general consensus at the time. He placed the sun at the center, giving credit as he did to Philolaus, a Greek Pythagorean and pre-Socratic philosopher who had lived a hundred years earlier. Philolaus had proposed that the Earth, sun, and moon rotated around a central fire.
But Aristarchus went further. Not only did he identify the sun as the central fire and the center of the solar system, and assert that the path of Earth’s orbit was circular, he was also the first to propose that the stars were very far away from each other and that the universe was much larger than anyone suspected. He even proposed that Earth was spinning on its axis and that it took one day to complete a revolution.
Desmond was surprised. He had always associated the heliocentric theory with Copernicus and then Galileo. But Aristarchus had proved the truth, mathematically, over 1800 years before Copernicus. In fact, Copernicus acknowledged Aristarchus in the first draft of his book, but the reference was removed before it was published.
Unfortunately, Aristarchus’s own book on the subject was lost. The best-known mention of his work comes from Archimedes. In a letter titled, ‘The Sand Reckoner,’ sent to King Gelon, Archimedes stated:
Aristarchus has written a book in which he says that the universe is many times bigger than we thought. He says that the stars and the sun don’t move, that the earth revolves about the sun, and that the path of the orbit is circular.
Galileo Galilei, who was born twenty-one years after Copernicus died, restored Aristarchus’s place, identifying him as the discoverer of the heliocentric solar system. He referred to Copernicus as the “restorer and confirmer” of the hypothesis. The heliocentric theory would of course go on to land Galileo in trouble with the Roman Inquisition, who placed him under house arrest until his death.
Desmond soon found that Aristarchus’s heliocentric presentation set the tone for all future Citium conclaves—and for the organization itself. They were a society open to bold ideas, no matter how radical. They only demanded proof, and open discussion. They held humanity at a distance. They saw themselves as part of a universe that must be studied objectively and understood, not at the center of creation or on a pedestal. And they sought truth above all else.
Desmond pored through the archives, watching the group’s thinking progress as the years and then centuries passed. Some theories were thrown out, others disproved over time, but gradually a central, unifying theory emerged: the universe is a single organism, a biochemical machine of some sort, and the human race is a component of that organism—a component with an important role to play. They believed the universe’s beginning and ending were linked somehow—that in fact they had to be. And central to this theory was the idea that something powered the universe, a process or entity that drove it from its origin to its destiny. They called this force the Invisible Sun.
Desmond re
ad in rapture, his mind opening with each volume.
The tenor of the meetings changed in 1945. Where before they had been consistently reflective and patient, now the members of the Citium began to grow anxious, eager to transition from theory to action. Instead of an annual meeting, they began having quarterly conclaves. They focused more on their experiments, and every priority was now aligned with the construction of the Looking Glass. The urgency to finalize their plan for the mysterious device grew with each meeting. In the 1960s, while the USSR and USA were stockpiling enough nuclear weapons to annihilate the human race many times over, the members of the Citium cried out for action. Their members had given the world the atomic bomb, and they were convinced it would be humanity’s end. They desperately wanted to atone.
A group of members launched the Beagle from Hong Kong in May of 1965. At every conclave thereafter, members of the Beagle expedition returned to reveal their findings. Desmond was shocked at what they found. He felt as though he were sitting in the Library of Alexandria, reading records long forgotten, filled with discoveries that would forever change the world.
And then, in 1986, the records stopped—without explanation.
Yuri visited three times a week, usually in the evening. They played chess by the window overlooking the bay, the headlights of cars driving over the Golden Gate Bridge glittering in the distance like fireflies skimming the water.
“I’d like to read the rest of the Citium conclave archives,” Desmond said.
Yuri took one of Desmond’s knights with a rook and raised an eyebrow.
“The records after 1986,” Desmond clarified.
“There are none.”
Desmond leaned back in his chair. “You might be the least talkative person I’ve ever met.” That was saying something, given that Orville Hughes had raised him.
Yuri ran his thumb over the knight he had just taken from Desmond. “I grew up in a place where words could get you killed. Even the wrong look.”
Desmond knew Yuri had grown up in Stalingrad and had been only six years old when the Nazis had invaded. Yuri had lived under Stalin in the years after. And Desmond knew what it was like to grow up scared to speak your mind. He had gotten more than a few tongue-lashings—and worse—from Orville.
“Why did they stop keeping records?”
“You have it backwards.”
“How so?”
“The meetings stopped.”
“Then…”
“You read the minutes. You saw the fear creeping into the members.”
“They felt time was running out.”
“Yes. And there were competing projects.”
“So what happened?”
Yuri set the knight on the table. “Your move.”
Desmond advanced a pawn, barely able to focus on the game.
Yuri moved his king, positioning it out of Desmond’s reach. “A tragedy occurred. A sort of… force of nature.” He paused. “I believe you’re familiar with such things.”
The massive fire that had taken Desmond’s family—why was Yuri bringing that up? Was he trying to distract him? Was the older man hiding something?
Desmond moved his only remaining rook to protect his own king.
Yuri took it with a bishop.
Desmond studied the board. He was going to lose. He didn’t care. He wanted to know why the archives had stopped. There was something more to it—he sensed as much.
“Your focus is misplaced.”
Desmond glanced at the board, but Yuri pointed at him. “All I can tell you is that in 1986, we were forced to go into hiding. But that will end soon.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Looking Glass. It will heal all wounds. Even our deepest burns.”
Conner listened to the orders from the National Guard units coming over the radio. A curfew had been established—nationwide. Anyone caught out after dark would be taken to the X1 pandemic camps and confined.
He glanced out the window. He guessed that the sun would set in about two hours. The units were taking up positions, gearing up to conduct a grid search just after nightfall. When they did, they would find the vans off Sand Hill Road. Conner and his men would need to be gone by then.
If they weren’t, they’d have to fight.
Chapter 9
On the flat screens inside the submersible, Peyton watched the Beagle come into view. The wrecked submarine seemed almost embedded into the ocean floor now, as if the Earth were wrapping its fingers around it, trying to pull the wreck down and swallow it whole. Beside her, Nigel shivered, the messenger bag clutched tightly to his chest like a life vest.
“Our first order of business,” Lin said, “will be to equip Dr. Greene. There’s cold weather gear in a supply room here.” A map of the Beagle was spread out on the floor, and she pointed to a chamber near the submersible docking port. She turned to the two Navy SEALs sitting at the controls. “Chief Adams, you and Seaman Rodriguez must prepare to repel a boarding party. I defer to you on that matter. What can we do?”
“We have to consider our advantages,” Adams said. “First, we know the battlefield. Second, we can choose where in the sub to fight. If they want to capture you, they have to come through us.”
“And working against us?” Lin asked.
“Time and surprise.”
The submersible banked as Rodriguez maneuvered to the Beagle’s docking port.
“They can wait us out,” Lin said flatly.
Adams nodded. “Given the choice, you’d rather attack a starving, fatigued enemy. And they can do it at a time of their choosing. We must always be ready. They can rest and plan and choose their moment.”
A good analysis, Peyton thought. And deeply concerning.
“But we’ll be ready,” Adams said. “We can make the Beagle an extremely hostile environment for them to operate in.”
On the Citium submersible, Commander Furst watched the video feed from the camera they had placed on the ice. He kept hoping to see Stockton’s arm reach out of the water, grip the surface, and crawl out. But there was no sign of him. It was as if the water had paralyzed him. Stockton had extensive cold weather training. What had Lin Shaw done to him? The former Citium researcher had killed two of his men—highly trained operatives—in minutes.
Furst had underestimated her. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.
The crew had anchored poles in the ice to hold battery-powered lights, which shone like buzzing lamps in an ice parking lot. The sailors were working feverishly, throwing supplies off Arktika’s deck, which was less than ten feet above the water line; the ship was sinking fast now. The captain was shouting orders and pointing. A column of men carried a long metal ramp out of the ship, clamped it to the lip of the deck, and let it fall to the ice.
A column of people poured from the ship—dressed in white clean suits and civilian cold weather gear. They carried bundles and crates, some of which had the word SPECIMEN scrawled on the side in white letters.
Furst shook his head. Priorities.
The civilians began unpacking the bundles, laying insulated pads on the ice, and erecting tents. They knew each minute they spent out in the elements would push them closer to death.
A second group began cutting into strips the red tarps that had covered the lifeboats. They placed the pieces on the ice, tacked them down with metal stakes, and spread them out, forming a large X.
Furst smirked. Futile.
The roar of an engine drew his attention. A snowmobile emerged from the aft bay doors, turned on the deck, and slowly powered onto the ramp and down it to the ice.
Furst watched, hoping…but the ice held. Of course it would.
Another snowmobile followed. The drivers were wrapped in layers. Two swollen duffel bags sat on the back of each snowmobile, with a drone and radio signal booster strapped on top.
Furst smiled ruefully. He had underestimated the Russians. It didn’t mean they would survive, but it would force him to expedite his attack. He
couldn’t wait out the Shaws. Help might arrive.
Lin Shaw had killed Stockton and Brommitt, men who were like brothers to him. She would soon pay for that.
Inside the Beagle, Peyton watched her mother pry open the door to the supply closet. The frozen hinges screamed like a trapped animal. Lin took a stack of thick blankets off the shelf and handed them to Peyton, then grabbed the closest suit and a helmet. Both were bulky, and reminded Peyton of the suit Neil Armstrong wore when he walked on the moon—which was likely only a few years before this one was manufactured, she thought wryly.
Over the comm channel, Lin said, “It’s old, but it’ll keep Nigel warm.” She checked the suit’s heater and oxygen supply, then pushed a button, activating the helmet lights.
Peyton was amazed everything still worked. I guess they don’t make them like they used to.
Lin squatted down, moved a pair of boots off of a steel box, and lifted the lid, revealing a row of handguns. She tucked two in the pockets of her suit and handed a third to Peyton.
“You know how to use it?”
“I’ve… had some basic weapons training.”
“That’s all you need. If you’re forced to use it down here, it’ll be at close range.” Lin looked over at her daughter, her headlamps meeting Peyton’s like two lighthouses in the night. “If forced, will you use it?”
She was asking if Peyton could take a life. And Peyton didn’t know the answer. Just the thought of it went against the oath she’d taken as a doctor. It went against her very being.
“I’ll do my best.”
Lin stared at her for a long moment. “Remember, we’re not just fighting for our lives. We’re fighting for others, too.”