by A. G. Riddle
Lin’s voice was barely audible over the pounding footfalls. “Where are we going, Lieutenant?”
“Emergency evac, ma’am. Can’t say.”
“Whose orders?”
“CENTCOM direct, ma’am. Standing emergency orders for the deployment. You two are high value.”
At a ladder, Bromitt began climbing. Lin and Peyton followed, and Stockton brought up the rear. They didn’t stop until they reached the main deck. They stepped out of a hatch near the middle of the ship, on the opposite side from the submersible launch area. Around the deck, Russian sailors were untying lifeboats and placing their fallen comrades inside. An officer with a bullhorn was directing them in Russian.
Stockton gestured toward a rope that hung from the outer rail. “Up and over, ladies.”
Peyton peered over the rail. In a pocket carved out of the ice, roughly fifty feet below, sat a submersible slightly larger than the one tethered to the Arktika’s launch bay.
“Where are you operating from, Lieutenant?”
“Another icebreaker, ma’am. Close by. Now we really need to move.”
The ship jolted, like something had broken free below. A bulkhead maybe?
Peyton watched the water line. It was creeping up the hull. The massive icebreaker was sinking into the Arctic.
Stockton stepped closer to Lin. “I really must insist, Doctor.”
Lin motioned to the rope. “Fine. Have the chief descend first to test the line.”
Stockton shook his head. “Ladies first.”
“No, Lieutenant. The chief goes. When he’s halfway, I’ll go, Peyton will follow, and you will bring up the rear, just as we exited.” She stared at him a moment. “Or you can throw me off.”
Stockton smiled and nodded to the chief, who cartwheeled his legs over the rail, gripped the rope, and began rappelling down.
As Lin stepped over to the rail, she slipped her hand inside her suit pocket. Then she jerked toward the lieutenant with incredible speed. Her blow struck his lower abdomen, right under his body armor. Rapid electrical pops went off—the clack-clack-clack of a stun gun. Stockton convulsed and collapsed to the deck, his face hitting hard as he screamed out.
Lin drew a combat knife from the sheath on Stockton’s calf and slammed it into the rope. It didn’t slice through, but a vibration went through the line, making a sound like a violin holding a note.
Bromitt was thirty feet down. He instantly started climbing back up.
Peyton turned to run, but the drone of the knife being drawn across the rope continued. Her mother had flipped the weapon around and was sawing the rope with the serrated edge.
“Mom!”
Lin didn’t look up.
Bromitt was climbing fast, breathing hard, putting hand over hand. He was twenty feet away.
Strands of rope frayed. It would never break in time.
Overhead, signal flares went up—the Russian crew desperately calling for help.
Bromitt began running side to side, like a human pendulum swinging back and forth, trying to gain enough speed to reach the rail. He got closer with each run. He would grasp it on the next go.
“Mom!”
Lin shot Peyton a quick glance, spun the knife again, and hacked hard at the rope. It finally snapped, sending Bromitt plummeting to the ice below. He landed right where the massive twelve-foot thick sheet met the water, his bones cracking on contact. He cried out, flailed, then reached back and tried to gain purchase on the sloped ice. He was sliding down, toward the water.
Thirty feet away, the hatch on the submersible burst open. A man’s head popped out, and he spotted Bromitt. He watched with an expression of horror as his comrade slipped into the freezing water, barely able to move his broken bones, his last words only grunts and gurgles as the Arctic water flowed into his mouth.
The soldier in the submersible turned his gaze upward, hatred in his eyes. He drew his sidearm and fired. His first shot hit the rail beneath Lin, missing by only an inch.
She reeled back and yelled, “Intruders!”
Sailors from the aft deck poured onto the narrow gangway. They fired on the submersible, their bullets ricocheting off the hull as the man ducked down.
Stockton groaned, reached out a trembling hand, and grabbed the metal cord railing. His partially paralyzed limbs shook as he pulled himself toward the edge.
Lin lunged for him, but not fast enough; he slipped over the lip of the deck, face-first, sliding down the hull as if it were a giant water slide. He screamed as he hit the icy water.
Another figure popped up from the submersible, spraying automatic gunfire at the gangway. More Russians poured onto the deck and began firing. The submersible was in the crossfire now, with shots coming from both the foredeck and aft deck.
Lin grabbed Peyton and pulled her toward the ship’s hatch. “Run.”
“Mom.”
“Move, Peyton. Or we’re dead.”
Lin slammed the door shut behind them and turned the wheel to lock it. The two women snaked through the passageway, their way lit only by their helmet lamps.
They emerged onto the aft deck, which was still littered with bodies and debris from the helicopter’s explosion. A throng of people had crowded around the launch platform—biologists in arctic weather gear and archaeologists still in their white clean suits, shouting and waving their hands. Peyton realized then what her mother apparently had already realized: there were only two ways off the sinking ship—the lifeboats and the submersible. The lifeboats could be offloaded to the ice, but the survivors would be left to brave the elements in tents and cold weather gear. If help didn’t arrive soon, that would be a death sentence. She wasn’t sure the submersible was much better, but clearly her mother had opted for it.
Lin made a wedge with her hands and charged into the crowd.
At the launch controls, six SEALs were holding the mob back at gunpoint. But they waved Peyton and Lin forward, made an opening for them, and closed ranks the moment they passed. Nigel Greene stood behind them, clutching a messenger bag to his chest, his pudgy stomach protruding below.
“Lieutenant,” Lin said to a tall SEAL with two silver bars on his lapel.
“Ma’am,” he replied, not looking back. “Thought you might favor the submersible.”
“Assignments?” she said flatly.
“Adams and Rodriguez will accompany you, ma’am. They know the Beagle the best. We’ll cover your exit.”
Why do they need to know it the best, Peyton thought. And then she answered her own question: in case the wrecked sub was boarded by the men in the other submersible. In case they were pursued—and had to fight in the Beagle.
“You and your men will be remembered for your act of bravery here today, Lieutenant,” Lin said. “You have my word.” She turned to Nigel. “Doctor Greene, if you please.”
The biologist shuffled quickly to the submersible. As he boarded, the crowd surged forward, screaming at the sight of what might be their only chance of survival slipping away. The SEALs fired into the air, quieting the mob and forcing everyone back.
Peyton stared at the faces in the crowd, the looks of hopelessness and fear. They were expressions she knew well—had seen countless times during outbreaks around the world, in huts and ramshackle tenements and field hospitals. But this was different. As an epidemiologist, she had done everything she could to help the dying. She had even risked her life. Pandemics pit humanity against the forces of nature—every person was in it together, fighting to survive—and that was a fight she could get behind. But this… this was choosing her life over theirs, sentencing them to death. Her against them. It felt wrong to her.
She stopped. Watched the others board.
“Peyton.” Her mother’s voice was like a whip, but her eyes betrayed no emotion. “We have to go, Peyton. People are counting on you.” She stepped closer. “To survive.”
In her mind’s eye, Peyton saw Desmond’s face. Her brother, Andrew. Her sister, Madison.
As
if in a trance, she moved to the submersible, felt herself climb down the ladder. Heard her mother descending after her, then the two Navy SEALs. The hatch closing. The submersible sinking.
A single thought echoed in her mind. We left them there to die.
Her mother seemed to understand. She leaned forward and looked Peyton in the eyes. “Listen to me. We didn’t create this situation.” She motioned to the surface. “They did. Yuri did. They put us in this position. They sank the ship and killed those people. And that is only the beginning. You’ve seen what they’re capable of. We have to survive, if for only one reason: to stop them. If we allow our emotions to cloud our judgment, if we make the wrong call, if they capture or kill us, a lot more people are going to suffer.”
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, “Doctor 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.
Dr. 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 read 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.