‘A lot of what you see before you was created by Immortals before being introduced to the human world. But there are also many inventions and discoveries that can be attributed directly to the weaker race. Humans are clever and resourceful, attributes my father long exploited while he was building all of this for you.’
They came to a steel door. The kings observed him closely as he entered his biometric data into the security panel. It beeped and swung open.
‘This is one of our largest labs.’
Bastian slowed when they entered the cave-like chamber, blue eyes flaring slightly. Crovir stiffened beside him.
‘What is this place?’ the older king asked.
The man headed over to one of the tanks rising from the floor. At his bequest, the lab on the ninth floor had been vacated by the scientists and technicians who would normally have occupied it; he had not wanted their presence to distract the kings. He touched the thick, ballistic-resistant glass of the container and gazed upon the large shape floating within. As always, the sight of the super soldiers sent a thrill of excitement through him.
Of all of his and Jonah’s endeavors, this had been their most successful by far. Although they had lost a significant number of the sect of Immortal-human half-breeds the original Kronos had built, its replacement was even more impressive.
‘This is part of your army,’ the man said.
Bastian turned to face him. ‘What?’
The man indicated the hundreds of identical pods filling the room. ‘These are the men who will help you regain your rightful place in this world.’
The color drained from Bastian’s face.
Crovir’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘What do you mean, boy?’
The man told them about Jonah’s experiments. Of his attempts even as far back as the fourteenth century, when he had started looking for artifacts that he hoped could one day help resurrect the dead kings once he discovered the whereabouts of their tombs and seals. He had not known at that time of the fate of their hearts.
He spoke of Jonah’s alliance in the twentieth century with rogue governments who had wanted to breed superior races and his association with the US Army groups who had wished to advance their military’s combat skills at any cost. He explained how Jonah had used the knowledge and technologies his Immortal scientists had acquired through nearly a century of research to build what would be the ultimate troops for the Immortal kings.
‘You said—’ Bastian hesitated, ‘—Kronos—your father wanted us to take our place in this world once more?’
The man’s pulse sped up slightly as he gazed at the kings. ‘Jonah only ever wished for one thing. To help you reclaim what has always been yours. Your rightful thrones as the rulers of this world. He wanted you to be the living gods who reign over this realm.’ The man frowned. ‘Now that he is gone, it is my honor to accomplish his dream.’
Tense silence descended in the lab. The kings stared at him.
‘And these—these creatures are meant to help us achieve this?’ Bastian indicated the super soldiers in the closest pods.
‘Yes.’ The man touched the tank once more. ‘They are a new class of beings. Neither human nor Immortal nor half-breed. They were engineered to be the best warriors the world has ever seen.’ He glanced at Crovir. ‘The first successful one of their kind was killed by Alexa King, the reincarnated soul of your daughter Mila. These men are even stronger than the original prototype.’ He gazed fondly at the figure behind the glass. ‘They are the next generation of super soldiers, enhanced from the cellular level up.’
The kings remained quiet as he led them out of the lab and past another identical chamber. They entered a lift and went up two floors to another level.
‘This is one of our armories.’
This room occupied almost the entire length of the complex and was filled wall to wall with crates stacked on mobile pallets.
‘We have a weapons-making facility with testing ranges and arms depots a mile from here,’ the man explained. ‘That’s where we store most of our heavy artillery and hardware, along with our helicopters, tanks, and armored vehicles. We have a third base built inside a series of caves on the coastline five miles away. It harbors our underground port as well as our nuclear submarines and warships.’ The man stared out over the bright-lit space before them. ‘All our facilities, including this one, are powered by nuclear reactors.’
The kings observed the chamber for a while.
‘All of this,’ Bastian murmured, ‘all of this for us?’
‘It is no less than you deserve,’ the man said.
He saw the flash of approval in Crovir’s eyes. Bastian’s face grew shuttered.
‘Come, there is one more thing.’
This time, he took them back down to the tenth floor and the main lab, next to the rooms hosting hundreds more super soldiers in the final stages of maturation inside their tanks. It was empty bar a handful of technicians who left rapidly under his cool gaze.
The kings’ expressions grew uncomfortable when they saw the isolation chamber where they had been resurrected. Crovir paused when he spotted the room that held the tombs. He turned and headed toward it, Bastian following slowly in his steps. The man hit some keys on one of the lab computers. The sealed door opened ahead of the kings.
Crovir hesitated before crossing the threshold and walking over to the closest pedestal. He raised a hand and touched the granite tomb standing upon it.
‘This is where we were buried, all those hundreds of years?’ he said quietly.
‘Yes,’ the man replied as he came up behind him.
Bastian strolled to the table that held the two gold sun cross pendants under a glass case.
‘And these are the seals? The ones that Navia made?’
‘Indeed,’ the man murmured. ‘We believe it was Jared who fashioned them under her instruction.’
The kings lingered in the chamber for a while longer before following the man to one of the computer stations. He brought up the camera feeds from the cells on the thirteenth floor.
‘This is what I wanted to show you.’
The kings stared at the small figures seated on the beds.
‘Are those the ones you spoke of?’ Crovir said in an inscrutable voice. ‘The children whose blood brought us back to life?’
The man dipped his chin. ‘Their names are Lily and Tomas Soul. We believe they possess the combined abilities of your children.’
Bastian’s eyes widened. ‘What?’
The man’s gaze shifted to the figures on the screen. ‘They will likely be skilled warriors, like Mila and Alexa King, when they come of age. They can already manipulate the elements, like Jared and Ethan Storm. They can heal, like Rafael and Conrad Greene. And they are Seers, like Navia and Olivia Ashkarov. Even though they are only children, their skills are equal to and, in some instances, may have already surpassed those of their predecessors.’
‘How is this—how is this possible?’ Bastian said hoarsely. ‘The warning Romerus received from the one who gave us the gifts that turned us into Immortals forbade the mixing of the bloodlines.’
The man shrugged. ‘This I do not know.’ He indicated the children. ‘My chief scientist wishes to experiment on them. She wants to—figure out what makes them tick. Dissect them, even.’
Bastian frowned. ‘She wishes to cut their flesh?’
‘Even their brains, if I allow her,’ the man murmured.
Bastian’s face grew thunderous. ‘That—’
‘Would be a waste of resources,’ Crovir cut in sharply. The older king turned and eyed the man coldly. ‘Why would you want to harm your most valuable assets?’
The man watched him for a silent moment. ‘I’m listening.’
Crovir studied the children on the camera feeds with a calculating expression. ‘Imagine an army of them. They would be even more powerful than these—super soldiers you have shown us.’
The man grunted. ‘It might be hard to get them to switch t
heir allegiance to us. Especially after what we did to get them here.’
Crovir glanced at him. ‘There are ways and means to sway their minds. They are only children, after all.’
Horror dawned on Bastian’s face as he stared at his brother. ‘Surely you are not suggesting that we use these children as weapons?!’
Crovir twisted on his heels and faced the younger king.
‘Are you saying that you will not allow it, brother?’ he said softly. ‘Or are you saying that you will try and stop us?’ His expression darkened. ‘Will you betray me again, like you did on the battlefield at Eridug?’
The man startled at the animosity that filled the air between the two Immortals.
Bastian straightened to his full height. ‘I was right then and I am right now.’ His voice shook with outrage as he indicated the lab with a wave of his hand. ‘This, all this, is pure lunacy! It is the dream of a mad man, one who wished to resurrect a past that should have stayed buried. We do not belong in this world!’
Crovir gazed at Bastian for silent seconds.
‘Then you leave us no choice, brother,’ he murmured in a steely voice.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Madeleine rubbed her eyes and pinched her forehead before focusing on the lenses of the ultra-high-resolution electron microscope. A cup of steaming black coffee appeared on the workstation next to her hand.
She looked up at the man who had placed it there. ‘Thanks.’
‘No problem,’ Jordan murmured. He made for the exit. ‘I’m headed back down to the basement. Give Eva a yell if you need anything.’
‘Sure.’
Madeleine watched the lab door slide closed behind him. She took a sip of her coffee, stretched out the kinks in her neck, and returned to inspecting one of the tissue samples Anna had extracted from the super soldiers’ bodies.
It was gone midnight in Sumava. Six hours had passed since Asgard, Olivia, and Zachary had left the estate to travel to Mongolia. Victor had also flown back to Vienna, following a tense conversation with President James Westwood. The ramifications of the discovery Director Connelly had made about General Miller and his associates promised to be explosive if they didn’t get on top of it straightaway.
Dimitri’s research facility was currently deserted but for the guards who patrolled its corridors and perimeter, and Anna, Jordan, and herself.
Anna had remained in the primary lab that had been put together for their use to continue working on the dead men. With the best microscope in the facility on the third floor, Madeleine had brought the specimens they needed to examine upstairs.
She finished scanning the current sample, sighed, and swapped it for the next slide. She reached for her coffee as she started moving the dial on the microscope.
Her fingers froze on the cup a second later. ‘What the—?’
Madeleine stared wide-eyed into the lenses before looking at the high-resolution mirror image reflected on the computer attached to the microscope.
‘Eva, are you seeing this?’ she said shakily.
‘I am,’ the AI replied.
Madeleine’s pulse accelerated as she scrutinized the complex structure the microscope had revealed. ‘Eva, are you able to access Howard’s databases?’
‘Of course.’
Madeleine licked her suddenly dry lips. ‘Pull up the folders about Professor Ian Serle’s research at AuGenD.’
‘I’ll bring those up on the workstation beside you. Incidentally, Howard and I have cleaned and decrypted most of the corrupted files from Dr. Wu’s hard drives. I’m processing them right now.’
The computer to Madeleine’s left flashed into life. She wheeled her chair over to the desk. The folders she’d asked Eva to retrieve started to populate the brightly lit screen.
‘Eva, can you see any similarities between what’s in the AuGenD data and what’s on Jessica Wu’s computer?’
‘Give me a moment.’ There was a short silence. ‘Indeed I can,’ the AI said smoothly. ‘There’s a folder on Dr. Wu’s hard drive alluding to Professor Serle’s research. Here are the cleaned files.’
More folders popped up on the monitor. Madeleine opened them one at a time and scanned their contents. Her eyes grew round as she started to grasp what she was reading.
She glanced at the image of the sample she’d been examining, her heart thundering against her ribs. She moved back to the microscope and switched specimens with trembling hands.
It was another fifty minutes before she finished inspecting the rest of them.
‘Eva, send everything to the main computer lab downstairs,’ Madeleine said in a hard voice as she climbed off the chair and collected the samples. ‘I’m heading there now.’
Anna’s stomach twisted as she studied the readouts on the DNA sequencer once more. She’d run the samples three times already and still couldn’t believe what she was looking at. Her gaze shifted to the objects she’d extracted a short time ago from the dead soldiers’ brains and spinal cords, and which now lay under the lenses of two microscopes.
‘Dr. Godard, I’m sending some urgent data Dr. Black just obtained from the ultra-high-resolution scanning microscope to my main terminals,’ Eva said through the speakers in the ceiling. ‘I also have the files we managed to salvage from Dr. Wu’s computer.’
By the time Madeleine entered the computer lab, Anna was staring slack-jawed at the scientific information and images displayed on the three-foot-tall, flat-screen monitors stretching across the wall above Jordan’s primary workstation.
‘I know, right?’ Madeleine said with a grimace.
Anna swallowed. ‘This is—’
‘The stuff of nightmares?’
Anna nodded shakily.
Jordan made a face. ‘Would you ladies like to explain what we’re looking at exactly?’
Madeleine placed the box of samples carefully down on the workstation. ‘Eva, highlight the files from AuGenD.’
The documents expanded to fill one of the screens.
‘The data we obtained from Ian Serle’s computer four years ago revealed the broad elements of the super soldier program they were working on at Yuma,’ Madeleine started. ‘It consisted of four phases. Phase One involved the use of drugs and other chemicals derived from torturing Immortals to accelerate the physical development of the test subjects, as well as modify their behavior. Phase Two involved placing them in a coma during which their DNA was manipulated to incorporate Immortal genetic material; their bodies were constantly stimulated with electrical signals and drugs to help them adapt to the bioengineering taking place. They were then woken up in Phase Three.’
She paused, her face darkening. ‘A lot of test subjects were terminated during that phase. Many of the super soldiers developed extreme aggression and had psychotic episodes; some even killed their wardens. If they survived Phase Three, they entered Phase Four. Battle-condition testing and training.’
‘But the test subjects from Yuma were all volunteers, right?’ Anna said, her mouth dry. ‘Human soldiers who were manipulated into joining the program under false pretenses, and Immortals and half-breeds from Jonah Krondike’s sect?’
Madeleine nodded. ‘Yes.’ Her eyes reflected the sickening conclusion Anna had already arrived at. ‘Eva, bring up the information from Dr. Wu’s hard drives.’
Jordan glanced questioningly from them to the displays once more. ‘And this says what?’
‘It looks like the AuGenD data, and, hence, Yuma, was only a secondary program,’ Anna explained stiffly. ‘The primary one was already in play, somewhere else. And it seems Wu was the one spearheading all of it, probably as far back as the 1960s.’
Jordan sighed. ‘Okay, you guys are going to have to be more specific than that. I still don’t get—’
‘What Dr. Godard and Dr. Black mean is that Dr. Wu has been using even more advanced technologies in the primary super soldier program,’ Eva said. ‘The test subjects she’s using are different to the ones from the Yuma project. They were
bioengineered in vitro and grown using the accelerated development process Dr. Black has described.’
Jordan blinked. ‘Do you mean what I think you mean? That these soldiers are—test-tube babies?!’
Madeleine nodded grimly. ‘Yes. And likely grown in life pods similar to the ones we found at Yuma.’
Anna shuddered. She had seen pictures of the labs at Yuma before they had been shut down by the US government.
‘Eva, can you pull the readouts from the DNA sequencer?’ she said, the queasy feeling in her stomach intensifying.
Madeleine visibly paled when the genetic analyses came up on one of the displays. ‘Shit.’
Anna fisted her hands. ‘The super soldiers who attacked us on the island are the result of pure genetic engineering. Their DNA is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. They have far more of it than normal Immortals, in a stable matrix that looks like it was artificially engineered. Not only that, but there is evidence of nanotechnology all over their tissues. And the data suggests the same of the human and half-breed soldiers in the program.’
‘So that’s what I was seeing under the high-resolution microscope,’ Madeleine said grimly. She indicated the images from the samples she’d examined. ‘Those are nanoparticles incorporated into their cell membranes and organelles. And not just nanoparticles. I’m pretty damn sure those are dormant nanorobots we’re looking at.’
Jordan gaped. ‘What?’
‘It gets worse,’ Anna said dully. ‘Eva, show us the feeds from the microscopes I was just working on.’
Two new pictures populated a display on the right. They showed a pair of small, spider-like objects lying on examination slides. Slivers of flesh and clotted blood still clung to their appendages.
Jordan scowled. ‘What the hell are those ugly things?’
‘Closed-loop neural implants I just removed from our super soldiers’ brains and spines,’ Anna replied. Blood rushed in her ears as she stared at the tiny machines. ‘Wu’s neurotechnology work is the most advanced I have ever come across. This is brain-computer interface on an incredibly sophisticated level. If we examine them under the ultra-high-resolution microscope, I’m sure we’ll see they’re made up of nanorobots too.’
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