Peyton felt as though her mother knew exactly which buttons to push. But with each passing hour, Peyton had begun to see a new side of her mother. She’d watched her do things she had thought Lin Shaw utterly incapable of. Like killing those two soldiers aboard the Arktika. Those sort of skills and instincts didn’t develop overnight. They took years.
Peyton had always felt that her relationship with her mother was split between two periods: before and after that day in 1986 when the Beagle sank and she was told that her father was dead. The Lin Shaw before that day had been a nurturing mother, cheerful, doting even. Afterward… she became withdrawn and stoic, hiding a deep sadness. She spent endless hours on her genetics research. She saw to her three children’s needs, but she did it with measured distance, as if she was scared to love, to get too close. And perhaps her fears had been well-founded. Her oldest, Andrew, had been taken from her—by Yuri—as a way to control her. She had never married again, or even dated.
Only now did Peyton know the truth: her mother had been waiting all those years, hoping her father would return, that Yuri would be defeated. Half of that hope had come true: three weeks ago, Peyton had found her father, who had been in hiding since the day the Beagle sank. But within two days of being found, he was killed by Yuri in the battle on the Isle of Citium.
They had recovered her brother though, and Peyton would forever be grateful for that. He was in Australia now, trying to put his life back together. She didn’t know if that would be possible after all he had done—been made to do—but she hoped.
But if Lin Shaw was once driven by hope, Peyton thought, she was no more. Now she was driven by a desire for revenge. Her mother wanted to finish her research, to build a device to counter Yuri’s Looking Glass, but her need for revenge—her driving hatred—was the only thing that could have enabled her to leave those people to die on the ship. The only thing that could give her the will to dispatch those two soldiers without a moment’s hesitation.
Peyton motioned to the gun in Lin’s pocket. “Do you know how to use it?”
“Yes.” She stepped out of the supply room. “I learned a lot of things when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong. Things I didn’t want to know.”
High above the Beagle, the Citium submersible was navigating to an indentation in the ice sheet about a mile from the Arktika. Furst and his team had made the pocket before the assault, and had used it to broadcast an update to their mother ship, the Invisible Sun. A thin layer of ice had formed since then, but the submersible punched through it easily.
When the channel was open once more, Furst said, “Ice Harvest calling Invisible Sun. Do you copy?”
“We read you, Ice Harvest.”
“Project report as follows: nest is gone, however two birds were spotted flying south at high speed. Recommend you surveil and tag.”
“Copy, Ice Harvest.”
“Destruction of nest has left some birds on the ice. Also recommend you intervene.”
“Copy, Ice Harvest.”
“Final project update: mother bird and her youngest have flown the nest, believed to be making their way to a previous nest. Going there next in hopes of capturing for further study.”
“Understood, Ice Harvest. Godspeed.”
A hundred and fifty miles north of Alaska, a cruise ship floated in the Arctic Ocean, its engines off. There were no tourists on deck or in the cabins below. The Invisible Sun was a Citium vessel, and despite its appearance, it wasn’t a cruise ship at all. It was a floating fortress.
In the CIC, a bank of screens showed satellite footage of the ice sheet. The feeds panned across the white desert until it found the snowmobile. Coordinates and speed appeared a second later, updating in real time. A second snowmobile appeared on another screen.
Captain Mikhailov watched the feeds, sizing up her adversary. “Fire at will.”
On deck, the floor of an outdoor basketball court opened up like a drawbridge, and a platform rose from within it, holding twelve long-range missiles. Two of them launched.
A few seconds later, the screens revealed the result: two hits. Mikhailov just hoped the targets hadn’t gotten a message off.
One of the satellites began repositioning to surveil the wreckage of the Arktika. Prior to now, they had purposefully avoided direct surveillance on the off chance that it would tip off the Alliance about their attack.
An hour later, the video feed showed the location. The massive icebreaker was gone, a pond of blue-green water left in its wake. A large red X was spread out in the ice, with dozens of white tents at the end of one arm, glowing green and purple in the dim light of the Aurora Borealis. Four lifeboats floated in the still water.
“Captain?” the tactical officer asked.
“Start with two.”
Through the windows of the bridge, she saw the missiles take flight. The screens went white as the weapons reached their destination.
Lin climbed into the submersible, dragging the suit behind her. Nigel was shaking violently now.
“Hang on, Dr. Greene. You’ll be warm soon.”
Peyton unfolded the thick blankets and wrapped them around Nigel. Lin placed the open end of the suit against the electric heater’s vent. Nigel stared at it, shivering.
“The suit’s been on ice for thirty years,” Lin said. “You don’t want to get in yet.”
Peyton ran her hands up and down Nigel’s body, trying to warm him.
A few minutes later, Lin pulled the suit back from the heater and tipped it, letting the water pour out onto the floor. She ran a rolled up blanket inside, doing her best to dry the legs, arms, and torso area.
When Nigel was suited up, the three of them crawled back into the Beagle and set about finishing their part of the preparations. They sealed the bulkhead doors surrounding the docking port, then walked back to the supply closet, where they each took a sack and filled it with duct tape and flashlights. They snaked through the passageways, gathering up the LED lights on the floor and placing them in their sacks. At the rows of bunks, they rolled the corpses toward the wall and peeled off the sheets and blankets. Their plan required every one they could find.
They closed every door and sealed every hatch they encountered. In the spaces in between, they periodically stopped, squatted low, and stretched a folded piece of duct tape across the corridor—creating false trip lines just above ankle height. The two Navy SEALs had deployed similar measures, except some of theirs were connected to actual explosives. The key was to slow the enemy, to wear away at his vigilance. Make him get sloppy.
In the longer passageways, they hung the blankets and taped them to the ceiling, walls, and floor. Beyond these, they spread out the LEDs and put flashlights in position. Adams had predicted that their adversary would have night vision goggles. These blankets would create a wall that, when removed, would release a blinding flash of light.
Finally, they met up with Adams and Rodriguez in the labs. The chambers would be their citadel—the arena where they would fight to the end, if forced.
The SEALs merely nodded when they entered.
Meals, Ready-to-Eat sat on a steel-topped table. In the corner sat a stack of guns and magazines—the sum total of the contents of the weapons lockers on the Beagle. Adams had insisted that they empty them, depriving their enemy of ammunition.
Over the comm line, Lin said, “What’s next, Mr. Adams?”
“We’ve prepared the Beagle. Now we prep ourselves. We eat, sleep—in shifts—and stay ready.”
Lin said nothing, just moved to the table and took one of the MREs. She raised her visor and began eating.
Peyton did the same. Until the first bite reached her mouth, she didn’t realize how hungry she was.
She awoke to the sound of thunder.
The lab was dimly lit. Rodriguez sat with an automatic rifle in his lap, watching the choke point they had created.
There couldn’t be thunder down here, Peyton thought. It was from above. The surface. A bomb. Or missile.
&
nbsp; Yes. The surface had been attacked. The last survivors of the Arktika were dead.
She had no doubt the Citium soldiers would come for them next.
Chapter 10
Conner hated waiting, sitting in the van, doing nothing while his brother regained his memories. And when the curfew began, he’d have no choice but to stay put. He needed to stretch his legs. More than that: he needed to do something.
“I’m going in,” he muttered.
In the front seat, Goins turned back.
“To the office,” Conner clarified as he got out of the van. “Des may have hidden something for himself there.”
Conner had been to the building many times. He didn’t have a key, but Yuri did, and he had sent that key with him. He entered the building, climbed the stairs to the third floor, and pushed open the glass door to Desmond’s office. The Icarus Capital logo was emblazoned on the wall in routed aluminum letters. Below it was a directory of companies the firm had invested in, each company name written on a piece of paper slotted behind clear plastic.
Rapture Therapeutics, Phaethon Genetics, Rendition Games, Cedar Creek Entertainment, Rook Quantum Sciences, Extinction Parks, Labyrinth Reality, CityForge, Charter Antarctica
Conner remembered some of the investments. They were like Desmond’s children. He even incubated some right here in his office when they were getting started.
Desmond had expanded the office over the years, taking over adjacent suites and remodeling along the way. The place had been cared for, a source of pride. But now, it looked like a tornado had hit it. A Citium tactical team had searched it from top to bottom when Desmond went rogue, and they had left nothing unturned. The fabric of the office chairs had been cut open, and the foam ripped out; the round legs of the cheap IKEA desks had been unscrewed, searched, and tossed in a pile like gray metal matchsticks; even the tiles in the drop ceiling had been removed, exposing the air conditioning ducts and sprinkler lines. They had been thorough.
What do I know that they didn’t?
Conner’s eyes drifted back to the directory.
I know where Desmond hid his memories.
Conner walked past the reception desk and pulled out the piece of paper with Labyrinth Reality on it. There was nothing else written on the paper, but in the spot in the directory from which he had pulled it, there was a hole—right through the drywall.
Conner clicked on his flashlight and peered in. A small object was taped to a metal stud. A USB drive. He examined it closely, checking for signs of a trip wire or alarm. Then he took it out, placed it in his pocket, and returned to the van.
After running a thorough virus scan, Conner opened the drive. It contained only one file, titled Conner.mp4.
He thought about deleting it. That’s what Yuri would do. He would say, “stay focused.”
Conner took the earbuds out of his bag, plugged them into the laptop’s headphone jack, and hit play.
Desmond appeared on-screen. He was seated on a private jet, and seemed to be the only passenger. “If you’re not Conner,” he said, “please give this video to him.”
Desmond gazed out the window for a second as if gathering his thoughts. Then he turned back to face the camera. “I just left the Kentaro Maru. You should have trusted me. This isn’t the way I wanted to do this, but you left me no choice.” He stared at Conner through the screen. “I’m doing this for us. And a lot of other people. Trust me. Please, brother. I’m going to need your help before this is over.”
The video ended, and Conner ripped his earbuds out. He glanced over at Desmond, lying on the hospital bed, the monitor beeping, the screen showing his brain waves. What have you done, Des?
Desmond lost all sense of time. He slept, he ate, and he ran, mostly to clear his mind, but also to get some fresh air. He spent every second in between in the library overlooking San Francisco Bay, reading, taking notes, and thinking about Yuri’s riddle. He had answers, and he was anxious to tell Yuri.
The older man arrived around sunset, as he usually did, a placid expression on his face.
“Chess?”
“I’d rather talk,” Desmond said.
Yuri sat.
Jennifer, the receptionist, opened the stained-wood double doors and strode across the room, her heels first clicking on the hardwood floors, then falling silent on the antique rugs. “Coffee?” she asked. “Dinner?”
“No, thank you,” Desmond said.
Yuri shook his head.
When the doors closed behind her, Desmond pointed to a stack of books on the table, all volumes of the Archives of the Citium Conclaves. “It was in there,” he said. “The clues.”
Yuri raised his eyebrows.
“Evolution. Survival of the fittest. Fittest is a thoroughly misunderstood concept in the theory. Fitness is determined by the environment. It’s not about being the biggest or the baddest. It’s about being fit—the best adapted to the world you find yourself in.”
A grin curled at Yuri’s lips, as if he and Desmond now shared a secret. “That’s right.”
“That’s what’s different about Australia.”
“Go on.”
“It’s isolated. Sure, it took a monumental feat in the ancient world to reach it, but the living was good after. Plenty to eat. Plenty of room to spread out. The continent is getting warm now, but it was a paradise back then.”
Yuri made no reaction.
Desmond took a book from the stack. “Here’s another example—from one of the Beagle’s research expeditions. They found humanoid bones on the Indonesian island of Flores. This species—Homo floresiensis—is descended from a completely different branch of the human family tree. Our last shared ancestor lived 1.75 million years ago.
“Like the Australians, they were the innovators of their age. The Beagle researchers found stone tools on Flores that are 190,000 years old. And then there’s the mystery of how they even got there in the first place. The island of Flores is over six miles from the nearest landmass. These ancient humans must have made rafts or boats almost two hundred thousand years ago. Unless they crossed a land bridge that was wiped out at some subsequent point. Either way, it was adventurous, and would have taken some serious brain power.”
“Yes,” Yuri said, as if he knew where Desmond was going.
“So this species is isolated on the island of Flores, which is roughly five thousand square miles, about half the size of Massachusetts. There’s only so much plant and animal life on the island. And like Darwin observed, they adapt. They evolve to become the fittest humans for this microenvironment. That didn’t mean being big or fast, or even strong. On Flores, it meant being small. The Beagle researchers estimated, based on the bones they found, that these humans were about three and a half feet tall on average.”
“And you think that’s related to the Australians?”
“It’s the same phenomenon. Case studies of evolution in a vacuum—on two islands. Both populations adapted to their environments—environments that didn’t require them to innovate. So they reached equilibrium… and stagnated.”
“It could be said that Earth is an island. In space.”
“That will reach equilibrium,” Desmond said. “And stagnate. Then decline. Is that your plan? To leave Earth?”
Yuri paused. “In a sense.”
“What does that mean?”
“The universe beyond is dangerous, too.”
“Okay…”
“You’ve done good work, Desmond. But you’ve only scratched the surface of the truth.”
“Then that’s depressing, because I’ve dug through half the volumes in this library.”
“Your level of effort isn’t your problem.”
“All right, I’ll bite. What’s my problem?”
“You’re digging in the wrong place.”
“Clearly.”
Yuri smiled. It was a sympathetic, almost grandfatherly gesture. “You’re here to learn more than facts, Desmond.”
The younger man raised hi
s eyebrows.
“Patience. Our road is long and difficult. There are no shortcuts.” Yuri gestured at the stack of books that detailed the Citium conclaves. “It took them over two thousand years to discover the full truth. True knowledge is earned, not given.”
“Right.” Desmond opened his notebook. “So, you were going to give me a map, or a bigger shovel, or something?”
“A question. Humans who looked like us appeared roughly two hundred thousand years ago. For a long time, they were unremarkable. Just another human species, taking root in Africa and struggling to survive. But forty-five thousand years ago, something changed. Not physically—our ancestors still looked like you and me—but they behaved differently. Thought differently. We call that event the appearance of “behaviorally modern” humans. This revolution occurred at roughly the same time those intrepid explorers carved their boats, sailed the open sea, and landed on the shores of Australia. It’s a very peculiar development.”
Desmond nodded. “I agree.”
“What happened next is perhaps the greatest mystery of all time. Around the world, other human species all went extinct in the space of fifteen thousand years. Neanderthals. Denosivans. Floresiensis. Some of these human species were very advanced, not unlike us. They made tools, mastered fire. Hunted in groups and cared for their sick and elderly. They were, as you have noted, very fit for their environments. In Europe, the Neanderthals conquered the frigid climate hundreds of thousands of years ago. Our species, Homo sapiens, did so again, more recently. We were newcomers, adapted for the warm environment of Africa, with its savannas and open grassland—not the forests, and mountains, and long winters of Europe—yet we prevailed. And expanded. And eventually took over. For the first time since the emergence of the first proto-humans, there was only one human species on Earth. Us.”
“That’s your second mystery? Understanding why that happened?”
“That’s only half of it. At the same time the other human species disappeared, other primates survived. And they survive today. Chimpanzees, gorillas, and bonobos all still walk the Earth. Why? Why did we survive while the others went extinct? Why did the other primates survive as well? That is the mystery.”