by Meg Xuemei X
Smiling, Lucienne threw her keys to one of the saluting soldiers and ordered him to park the jeep. She ran into the castle in her white jogging outfit. Across the ward, several commandos kept watch as a handful of engineers and technicians sat around wooden tables outside the café, drinking their coffee.
Lucienne entered the west wing. The important labs were all set underground. At a private elevator, she stopped, pressing her palm on a bio-scanner. The elevator opened. Lucienne entered and hit B3.
Stepping out of the elevator, she strode down the hallway toward a steel door marked SX1. She placed her left palm inside a glass cipher box. The door slid open.
Lucienne strolled into a laboratory that was larger than a baseball field. Under artificial sunlight, the scientists—almost all of them young and proud—were monitoring readouts on broadband electromagnetic receivers, dark-matter detectors, and other quantum devices.
Excitement and nervousness were thick in the air. Lucienne darted her eyes toward Vladimir. A scar above his left brow added a dangerous allure to his masculine beauty. The scar forever reminded her of how her kiss had made him fall from the horse. Her gaze quickly moved down to his well-muscled chest under his designer black shirt.
Lucienne tore her gaze away, but not before she caught a ghost of a smile on the corner of his lips. She knew his smile was for the brilliant hacker, Ziyi Wen, and not for her. She and Vladimir were keeping their distance now, ever since that second kiss rendered him unconscious for two days. There couldn’t be a third. They both knew that.
Finding the Eye of Time was like chasing the moon in the lake. She had offered Vladimir a way out; he’d refused to leave her, but the golden boy laughed less these days. Over time, he had started to develop a dark, sullen expression, as if the world had done him a great wrong.
When he thought she wasn’t looking, Lucienne watched pain bleed him dry. And no one knew how much his pain affected her. She swept her gaze over her scientists and settled on Ziyi. The petite beauty’s purple-streaked hair was down to her chin with heavy bangs. Ziyi was seventeen days older than Lucienne. The girl wore a yellow flowery Chinese qipao and high heels. A thin gold chain clung around her slender ankle.
Lucienne’s old nanny, who had followed Lucienne to Sphinxes, had warned her, “If I were you, I would watch that foxy girl. I don’t like the way she flings her eyes at your Vlad.”
“Ziyi flirts with every guy,” Lucienne had answered crossly. “And Vladimir isn’t mine.”
Although Lucienne knew there was nothing between Ziyi and Vladimir, a stab of jealousy still lashed through her. Vladimir had stopped his flirtatious teasing with her after their second near-fatal kiss, saving all his jokes for others, particularly Ziyi. Lucienne quelled an acid feeling in her stomach.
“Speak, people,” she said. “You paged me.”
“We intercepted signals! I bet on one of my pinkies it’s not a false alarm this time.” Unable to contain her exhilaration, Ziyi jumped up from her seat and rushed to Lucienne’s side.
“The strongest outburst of high-energy particles ever,” another physicist confirmed.
“We wouldn’t release the lightning in the bottle until you got here,” Vladimir said. He had finally given up ignoring her and left his post beside a copy of the ancient map they had taken from the monastery the year before. The map marked a civilization surrounded by a ring of mountains. The Dragonfly satellite failed to find a match since the map was made before the continents moved. Vladimir had been obsessed with the map ever since Lucienne told him that her curse was tied to finding Eterne.
“Play it, Ziyi,” Vladimir ordered and moved to Lucienne’s other side. His shoulder almost brushed hers. His body heat passed onto her, and his scent entered her space. Lucienne forced herself to step aside casually.
Ziyi clicked a remote control.
On a wall-mounted screen, a cluster of dark dots fired like lava out of a three-dimensional black hole.
“Make sure there’s no breach.” Lucienne studied the running dots. “I don’t want anyone outside the Sphinxes getting wind of this.”
“Already checked,” Vladimir said. “As soon as the particle outburst happened, we jammed the signal from the source.”
Lucienne nodded in appreciation. Vladimir was like Kian. They always thought three steps ahead.
“I also hacked into other networks, browsing classified databanks, searching for any sensitive keywords,” Ziyi said. “You have me guarding our network, so we’re solid.”
“And we’re exclusive.” Vladimir winked at the girl.
Ziyi giggled.
They were totally flirting. Was Vladimir trying to make her jealous? If so, then he was making a mistake. The Siren wasn’t known to be forgiving.
“Good.” Lucienne kept her tone flat.
Vladimir’s gaze flickered to her face, but Lucienne kept her blank stare on the screen.
The dark dots shifted to an array of numbers, strange symbols, and glyphs.
It’s happening just as the first scroll foretold: A burst of dark energy, then an indecipherable code. Lucienne’s eyes glistened brightly before they dimmed. The phenomena should happen only after she activated the Eye of Time, but she hadn’t. Something was wrong.
“Record the numbers,” she ordered.
The numbers and symbols flickered, then disappeared.
Lucienne’s sharp stare snapped to Ziyi.
Ziyi ran her fingers frantically over the keyboard, typing a sequence of commands. “I . . . I don’t know what happened,” she said, breaking a sweat. “I’m working on it . . . C’mon!”
“Track the source,” Lucienne said.
“Tracking,” Ziyi answered. A second later, she pulled up a map on the screen and zoomed in on the spot. “I have the coordinates. 71°23′20″N 156°28′45″W71.38889°N 156.47917°W.”
“Where is it?” Lucienne asked.
“The islands of Alaska,” Vladimir said.
“Precisely,” Ziyi said. “It’s Attu Island, the westernmost island in the Near Islands group of the Aleutians.”
“That territory is the only World War II battlefield on United States soil,” said Vladimir, positioning himself behind a desk computer. “I’m checking if it’s the Attu Station, which is the only inhabited area.”
Ziyi pulled another screen and started reading from it. “High-speed winds, lots of sulfur, more than 300 small volcanoes form a volcanic arc occupying an area of 6,821 square miles and extending about seven—whatever. Can people really survive there?”
“Twenty-one native Aleuts still live there,” Vladimir said. “The signal came from the center of the island—Attu Mountain.”
“Show me the map,” Lucienne said.
A map of Attu Island zoomed in on the coordinates until a detailed framework of Attu Mountain formed. Lucienne felt her heart skip a beat. It shared the same rough outline as the drawings on the ancient map.
“The map detailed lakes, mountains, and a village, but this satellite map labels the region as a multitude of mountains,” Vladimir said.
“The land must have been cloaked,” Lucienne said, “impenetrable by the satellite—”
“Until a high-particle outburst blew its cover,” Vladimir finished her sentence.
Lucienne turned to her crew. “We might have found the lost city.”
Her crew rose, cheering and applauding. Vladimir whistled loudly. He came back to Lucienne’s side. His warm hand reached for hers. “Lucia,” he said, eyes shimmering golden light. “It exists! A civilization hides itself in plain sight.”
“You should never have doubted me.”
“I didn’t doubt you.” Vladimir swallowed. “I just—”
A thin smile at the corner of her mouth, Lucienne subtly slid her hand out of Vladimir’s and returned her gaze to the screen. “Dragonfly on the coordinates,” she ordered.
Ziyi scurried after Lucienne and Vladimir to the adjacent satellite lab. Other crews continued to monitor the dark matter in acti
on as Ziyi took over the operations from a technician, maneuvering the control panels.
“Satellite coordination enabled. Uplink established,” Ziyi reported.
On the wall-sized glass screen, a silvery, metallic gate stretched high into the sky. The gate looked ancient, yet futuristic. Can it be a gateway to a higher civilization? Lucienne’s heart raced. Her mouth went dry.
“Dragonfly searched the area,” Ziyi said. “I swear to God: the gate wasn’t there before.”
“Scan the gate,” Lucienne said.
Dragonfly’s high-resolution camera roved over the gate until an eye-shaped, thumb-sized chip loomed into view.
“On the eye,” Lucienne said, her voice shuddering.
Vladimir moved closer to her, protective.
The frame of the camera froze on the metallic eye as it discharged faint static bursts.
Lucienne held her breath, until Vladimir broke the spell. “The coordinates are three hours away if we take the Apache Longbow; less than half an hour if I fly BL7.”
“Will you ever get tired of finding any excuse to fly BL7?” Ziyi asked.
“It does feel like you’re a god flying the Black Lightning,” Lucienne said. A smile sparkled in her eyes. “You’re allowed to be a god today, Blazek.” She then turned to Ziyi. “Page Kian. I need him back to Sphinxes.”
CHAPTER 8
Black Lightning Seven looked like three triangular lightning bolts slammed together. It was one of the best combat aircrafts on Earth. Upgraded from the F-22 Raptor, BL7 could break the sound barrier, shoot down eight types of missiles, disrupt radar and jam an enemy communication system with electromagnetic radiation and directed-energy weapons. Vladimir fell in love with the black beauty at first sight, but when he flew it, he never really came down again. Speed did such wonders to men.
Lucienne settled in at the co-pilot seat, a code-secured briefcase at her feet. She’d changed her attire to an ultra-sleek, black leather jacket and a pair of stretch leather pants that embraced every curve. A combat knife fastened to her leather boots added a dangerous air to her sexy ensemble that Vladimir couldn’t ignore.
He discreetly checked her out when he thought she wasn’t watching. She was talking to Orlando and the commandos in their form-fitting black suits. They evidently appreciated the new nanotechnology that provided the warriors the advantage of blending into any environment like chameleons.
Her warriors talked to her casually. She knew they regarded her as one of them and Sphinxes as a home. Jed had been strict on rank. Everyone addressed him as Master Lam. Lucienne took a different approach, but her men respected her no less. As a mind reader, she knew they’d walk into a sea of fire for her. She firmly believed that congeniality and warmth weren’t weaknesses, even in a ruler.
“But your grandfather never had so many enemies,” Kian had once said in dismay.
“His enemies came from the outside; mine are family.”
“You represent change,” Kian said, no longer troubled. “You’ll make history.”
“We will, Kian McQuillen,” she said. “Together.”
* * *
“We’ll arrive in twenty minutes,” Vladimir announced, his hand on the joystick.
Lucienne watched BL7 pierce the sunlight-dotted clouds like a god’s arrow above the Pacific Ocean. Ziyi’s voice buzzed through the communication link. “Dragonfly spotted strange life forms heading toward the coordinates.”
Vladimir touched screen next to the control panel. “Link.”
The screen swirled to life—the strange life forms turned out to be a small group of mismatched individuals. Among them was a beautiful redhead about Lucienne’s age. A timid-looking farmer couple in their thirties shivered beside her. Following them were a stocky king, wearing a golden crown and royal purple, and his small-eyed queen. Stomping beside the queen was a big, blond boy, about the same age as Vladimir. Nine guards, all brawny and menacing and armed with daggers, flanked the royal family.
The islanders dressed in period costumes and skirts.
“The Aleuts don’t wear thin skirts in the winter,” Vladimir said. “Look at their features. They’re obviously a mixed race. They’re not Aleuts. And the guards are carrying Misericorde daggers.”
“Have Research Team Nova investigate their costumes, Ziyi,” Lucienne said.
Five minutes later, Ziyi’s voice came back. “The team can’t pinpoint the exact period. Their costumes are mixed from different times and different cultures.”
“What about the skirts? Are they Scottish kilts?” Orlando cut in.
Lucienne laughed. “Orlando is half Scott.”
“And half Latino,” Vladimir said.
“You have a problem with that?” Orlando challenged.
“No.” Vladimir shrugged. “Should I?”
Lucienne smiled. “Vladimir, learn to get along with people, so no one will suspect your agenda when you actually don’t have one.”
“Whatever,” Vladimir said. “This lot seems to have interbred for generations.”
As an explorer, Vladimir had lived for short periods with different ethnic groups—an experience his uncle insisted he have. The man wanted his heir to influence the world and reignite the flame of Czech royal blood. He couldn’t fathom the thought of the world passing them by, leaving the monarch and traditions behind. Lucienne believed the old man suffered much worse blow than that when he watched his ambitions, visions, and money disappear as his heir prepared to serve the Siren of the Lams. In his rage, the old Blazek officially renounced Vladimir as a family traitor.
“I’m penniless and homeless now.” Vladimir grinned after receiving the news. “I’m all yours, if you still want me.”
Lucienne embraced him. “But I won’t be buying you any designer clothes from Saks.”
“You mean my wages will be meager?” Vladimir asked, widening his beautiful hazel eyes into mock despair. “I’ll have to shop at Macys?”
“You could do worse, Blazek,” Lucienne said coolly.
That was right before she and Vladimir had their second disastrous kiss. He lost his title and inheritance for her sake and received nothing in return. Lucienne’s eyes drifted to him, and he gazed back at her, eyes brightened with renewed hope.
Lucienne’s throat tightened. This was the last straw for her and Vladimir. She turned back to the mixed-race group on the screen. “Scout the area within a ten-mile radius, Ziyi,” she said. “Let’s see what is terrifying them.”
“Check to see if there’s a civilization around,” Vladimir added.
Ziyi’s voice sounded stunned over the comlink. “Dragonfly located a climate-controlled town three miles from the gate.”
“What is the town’s name?” Lucienne asked.
“There’s no record.”
Could it be Eterne? Lucienne felt her heart skip a beat before hammering her ribcage. The inscription on the scroll said the Destined One, descendent of the rightful bloodline, would activate the Eye of Time. Only when that happened could they find the path to Eterne. The unnamed village can’t be the quantum realm, merely one of the lost cities. “If the lost city exists, then the scroll is accurate. Eterne is real.” Lucienne gazed at Vladimir. Her eyes reflected the sunlight, turning the color of champagne.
“We’re getting there, Lucia,” Vladimir said. His callused hand reached out and for the first time in months, their fingers interlocked.
“Visual on the town,” Vladimir said.
A futuristic town, embedded in an evergreen garden with lovely blossoms, came to light on the screen. The camera lens continued to pan, pulling in a long shot of snow-covered Alaskan islands, and then a bird’s-eye view of silvery mountains encircling the sparkling town.
“A paradise on Earth,” Orlando murmured from the back of BL7 amid the humming of the machine.
“How is it possible to hide a place like that for centuries?” Vladimir rasped.
“A membrane.” Lucienne drew a shaky breath. “Forget about the town. We must se
cure the Eye on the gate.”
The screen switched back to the bleak wilderness, where the gate had materialized. As the lens of the Dragonfly zoomed in on the Eye, the blazing Eye stared back, as if sensing it was being watched.
“What are those people doing at these coordinates?” Lucienne scowled. “Pan on them.”
The lens swept in an arc, catching sight of the group as the howling wind assaulted them, their thin outfits clinging to their trembling bodies. As the wind passed by, an empty wheelchair rolled toward the group out of nowhere.
The blond boy stared at the wheelchair and cursed, and the redhead lunged at him. Three guards shoved the girl away. She fell, her back hitting the wheel of the wheelchair. Her head slammed against a button. A stream of blood mixed with sand shot straight out at the blond boy from the chair’s handle. Lucienne wondered why anyone would equip a wheelchair with homemade weapons.
The queen rushed to the screaming boy, frantically wiping the blood off his face with her sleeves, saying something and looking daggers at the girl.
“Can Dragonfly pick up sound, Ziyi?” Lucienne asked.
“Sorry, there’s no audio sensor at the coordinates.”
“Then close in on whoever speaks.” Lucienne leaned toward the screen to read the queen’s lips, but the queen’s words were beyond her understanding, even though she spoke seven languages fluently and could identify many others. “I’ve never heard a language like this before,” she said. But to her surprise, the boy answered in English mixed with Spanish. “Mother,” he wiped his face and stared at the blood on his fingers, “Ashburn Fury has been planning to murder me. He might have just done that!”
“It’s not your blood, heart,” Lucienne lip-read the queen’s Spanish.
“Then whose blood is it?” the prince demanded.
“It’s . . . pig’s blood,” the male farmer said sheepishly, also in Spanish. “A few nights ago I saw him mixing the blood with sand. He was only experimenting. He didn’t mean harm—”
“Didn’t?” the prince yelled in English. “He’s built many nasty things trying to get to me, the Crown Prince!”