CHAPTER 19
Several days went by without a word from Professor Farseer, Cassandra, or anyone else. Dagny and I were locked back in our dormitory and left to our own devices. Per Cassandra’s wish, I didn’t tell Dagny about what had transpired down in the pit. I didn’t like keeping it a secret from her, but as much as the Seraph had frightened her, as dangerous as she thought it was, I couldn’t be certain that she wouldn’t try to warn somebody.
Instead of talking about the session, I relayed Cassandra’s message to Dagny, that she loved her sister. Dagny, for her part, was distant. She spent most of the time in her room and barely spoke to me.
For my part, I hoped like hell I’d done the right thing. Sure, my logic sounded good, but that was human logic. The Seraph wasn’t even remotely human. Who could say how it thought or what its priorities were? I wondered if I was wrong, and if I’d signed the death warrant of the whole planet.
The fourth day was the same as the others had been—cold, gray, and blustery outside. Our meals were served at the normal intervals and we heard nothing from anyone. I was beginning to think that whatever plan Cassandra had come up with hadn’t worked. Around midday, I sat in a chair in the living room, trying to read a book on a tablet, but the stress and boredom had been wearing on me. I set the tablet aside, reclined the chair, and drifted off to sleep.
My eyes snapped open when I felt a deep rumble. The building shook, slightly at first, then more noticeably.
“Easy!” Dagny had appeared from her room. “What’s going on?”
“That’s a good question. Quake, maybe?”
“You don’t think the volcano is erupting, do you?”
“Let’s go outside and take a look,” I suggested.
Stepping out onto the balcony it was obvious that we weren’t the only ones who had that idea. Workers from all over Site 471 had stepped outside to look at the volcano. Mount Gilead was smoking, but no more so than it had been before. I began to think maybe it had been a quake; that part of Hyperborea is seismically active, after all. The rumbling quit just as suddenly as it began, and everyone kind of shrugged and got on with their day.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” I said. Dagny and I went back inside and found that the screen had powered on. It displayed the words please stand by on it and nothing else.
“What’s going on?” Dagny asked. We got our answer a moment later when the screen changed. “Is that Professor Farseer?”
“Sure as hell is,” I said.
“Greetings!” the professor said. His voice was cheery but he was looking ragged. His hair was messier than usual, his eyes were bloodshot, and he looked less like the eccentric wizard and more like a vagrant. “Brothers and sisters of the Cosmic Ontological Foundation, it is I, Zephram Farseer, Distinguished Scholar and highest ranking representative of the Foundation on site. I bring you joyous news today, joyous news indeed!”
“Oh, hell,” I said quietly.
“What’s happening?” Dagny asked. “Easy?”
I ignored her and listened to the broadcast. “As you may have heard,” the professor said, “I had the incredible honor of personally communing with the Seraph. Through a neural link I was directly connected to its vast intellect, and I have been enlightened. While bestowing me with its wisdom, the Seraph showed me a shocking and unsettling truth: it has been here for eons, bound by the Spears, alone, unable to move, unable to live, unable to die! That is, until we found it!”
“Easy what’s happening?” Dagny repeated. She was scared. Hell, I was nervous myself.
The professor continued his rant. “I have learned from the Seraph itself that we have been complicit in its suffering. Through its chosen Avatar it beseeched us to remove the second Spear, to finally set it free . . . and we refused. Xavier Taranis, in his greed, his lust for power, denied the will of the Seraph! The task of righting this wrong fell to us, my fellow seekers of knowledge, and I am overjoyed to tell you that we have done what was asked of us. The Spear has been removed! Soon, very soon, we shall bear witness to the resurrection!” He raised his hands over his head like a congregant at a religious revival. “Gather, my friends, gather and rejoice! Deus ex stellaris!” The transmission was cut short and the please stand by screen resumed.
Dagny grabbed my arm. “Easy! They pulled the Spear out!”
“Seems that way.”
“You don’t look surprised. Did you . . . did you know about this?”
I took a deep breath and looked down into her eyes. “Yes. Your sister told me she had a plan when I saw her the other day. I just wasn’t sure if it was going to work.”
“You knew? You knew and you didn’t tell me? How could you? I trusted you!”
“Cassandra trusted me, too, and she told me not to tell you!” Dagny’s mouth was open like she was going to say something, but no words came out. I could see the hurt on her face, the sense of betrayal. She lowered her head.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am. It was just . . . you were really rattled by what the Seraph showed you. Cassandra was worried that . . . well . . .”
“She was worried I’d rat her out to Taranis,” Dagny said, bitterly. “Is that what you think of me, too? That I’d betray my own sister?”
“I think if you really believed that all ninety million people on this planet were in danger, yeah, you’d put that above family loyalty. Your sister probably thought the same thing. Were we wrong?”
“Yes! I mean . . . no! I don’t know, goddamn it, okay? I don’t know!”
“I don’t know, either!” I said, raising my voice to her for the first time. I took a breath and took a calmer tone. “Look, I’m just a detective. I’m not cut out to decide whether or not to trust an ancient alien so advanced we don’t understand it, but I trust it more than I trust Xavier Taranis.”
Dagny was quiet for a second. “Well . . . what do we do now?”
“Get your jacket. We need to get the hell out of here.”
“The doors are still locked!”
“I know, but sooner or later somebody’s going to come for us and we need to be ready.”
I was right about them coming for us, and we didn’t even have to wait long. As I returned to the living room with my coat and hat on, the door was unlocked and slammed open. Four men in full tactical gear, pointing weapons at us, stormed into the room. We were ordered to turn around and put our hands on top of our heads. They pushed us to our knees, forced our hands behind our backs, and handcuffed us. Dagny and I were marched out of the residential building and through the attached lab complex, restrained and at gunpoint. Bewildered Ascension employees stopped to gawk at us as we led out into the parking lot.
There were two company security patrol vehicles there, armored 4x4 trucks, but no corporate security in site. Leonard Steinbeck was waiting for us instead, scowling from behind sunglasses. He was wearing the same suit he’d had on at the dinner with Taranis, with a long black overcoat on top of it.
“Where are you taking us?” Dagny demanded.
Steinbeck shook his head. “I gave you two a way out of this situation that would have been beneficial to everyone. I tried, I really did. I even warned you what would happen if you pulled something like this.”
“Something like what?” I said. “What the hell did we do? The COFfers are the ones who pulled the damned Spear out!”
He raised a gloved hand and stuck a finger in my face. “Don’t play dumb with me, Novak. Your job was to keep Cassandra Carmichael happy for just a while longer and you fucked it up. I don’t know how she was able to coordinate all this, but you’re going to tell me everything you know.”
“Why don’t you ask Professor Farseer?” Dagny said. “Didn’t you see the video? He’s the one behind this! We’ve been stuck here the whole time!”
“Oh, don’t you worry, we’re bringing him along, too.” Steinbeck looked up when a long string of automatic weapons fire echoed across the site. “What the fuck was that?”
“Somebody’s shooting, sir,” one of his men said.
“I know that!” he snapped. “Load these two up and let’s go. We need to get the hell out of here.”
We were roughly shoved into the back of one of the two security trucks and locked in. Steinbeck and one of his men got into the front seat, while the others piled into the second vehicle.
“Where are you taking us, Steinbeck?”
“We’re leaving, and you’re coming with us.” There was a ring-shaped road that ran around the interior of Site 471, following roughly the same path as the tram system. Our two-vehicle convoy went about a quarter of the way around the site and took a left turn, toward the very middle of the installation. I realized then that we were headed to the landing pad.
The man driving the truck had a radio in a pouch on his vest. It crackled to life as we entered the landing pad area. “Specter-Six, this is Alpha Team, do you copy?”
“What is it now?” Steinbeck grumbled, grabbing the radio out of the pouch. “This is Specter-Six Actual, go ahead.”
“Sir,” the voice on the radio said, “we’ve got Farseer but we’re encountering heavy resistance!”
“Resistance? Resistance from who?” the SIS man demanded.
“From Ascension! We’re still in the east administrative office and fifteen to twenty armed personnel have surrounded the building.”
The SIS man was losing his cool. “What? What the fuck is going on?”
“It’s Farseer!” the subordinate said. “They won’t let us take him! Please advise!”
“Goddamn it!” Steinbeck snarled. “Fucking COFfers!” He spoke into the radio again. “Alpha Team, maintain a defensive position and stand by. Bravo Team will be en route momentarily. I’m authorizing weapons free, you’re cleared to fire at will. Do you copy?”
“Uh, understood, Specter-Six. Alpha Team out.”
“Seems like you got a lot on your plate right now, Steinbeck,” I said.
“Laugh it up, Novak,” he growled. Our vehicles pulled to a stop behind a parked VTOL jet. It was painted black and had no exterior markings. “You won’t be laughing when you’re under enhanced interrogation.” The doors were yanked open and Dagny and I were pulled out of the truck. During the short ride from the dormitory to the landing pad, Site 471 had exploded into chaos. Alarms blared in the distance. Sporadic gunfire had erupted across the installation and several columns of smoke were now rising into the air.
“What’s happening?” Dagny asked. She had to shout to make herself heard. The jump-jet’s engines were idling hot, and it was uncomfortably loud. The rear ramp was down and more SIS guys in combat gear were pulling security around the aircraft.
“I think the COFfers are trying to take over,” I shouted.
Before I could say anything else, one of Steinbeck’s men shoved us forward. “Get on the aircraft,” he said, his voice distorted by the modulator in his helmet. “Move!”
As Dagny and I were pushed toward the rear ramp of the VTOL, Leonard Steinbeck approached one of his men who was standing near the ramp. He was a hard-looking man with a bald head and a goatee. He was armed with a rifle and had a sidearm on his leg. “Jacobs, what’s our status?” Steinbeck said.
“It’s a real shit show out there, sir. You’re the only team that made it back so far.”
“What?” Steinbeck said. “Where’s Charlie Team?”
“We lost contact with them after they went down into the pit,” the security man said. “Sir, we need to think about cutting our losses and getting the hell out of here. The facility AI is commanding the COFfers to keep everyone away from the Seraph.”
“What do you mean, the AI is commanding them? It’s a fucking computer! Who told it to do that?”
“The orders claim to be coming from the Seraph!”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense!”
“I’m just telling you what we know, sir. Either way, hundreds of COFfers answered the call and armed themselves, including two-thirds of the security force. We are seriously outnumbered and they have heavy weapons at their disposal.”
“We can’t leave without Cassandra Carmichael and Dr. Sarkar!”
Before either man could say anything else, another tremor, this one more powerful, erupted from deep under the ground. The VTOL swayed on its landing gear. “And what the actual fuck is that?” Steinbeck demanded.
“I don’t know, sir,” the subordinate said, “but we need to— Oh, shit!” I turned to see what he was looking at. There were no fewer than three heavy combat robots, like the one that had been guarding the elevator to Taranis’s mansion, approaching the SIS VTOL. With them were several trucks full of people.
Steinbeck just shook his head. “You have got to be fucking kidding me!” he shouted. “What is going—” He was cut short when the combat robots opened fire, spraying two armored trucks we’d rode in with machine gun fire. “We’re leaving! Everybody on board, now!”
I saw an opportunity. They were distracted and we had a chance to escape. “Dagny, let’s go!” Hands still cuffed behind our backs, we ran away from the idling jump-jet, trying to get out of the crossfire. I was relieved when the SIS guys didn’t give chase, instead running to their aircraft. The VTOL lifted off and flew away, the robots firing at it as it went. It was out of sight before they could damage it.
We were in a bad spot, though, caught out in the open with nothing between us and the approaching force. The group of trucks, a mixture of the armored security vehicles and standard utility models, pulled up to our position and came to a stop, leaving us with nowhere to run. People in Ascension employee uniforms unloaded out and approached us. They were armed, but weren’t pointing their weapons at us. They all had red cloths tied around their arms and most of them had COF pendants around their necks.
A short, stout woman in a charcoal gray security uniform stepped forward while the others held back. Her armband looked to be made from a ripped-up T-shirt and she was carrying a rifle in her hands. “You must be Ezekiel Novak,” she said.
“Sure am,” I said. “Thanks for chasing off those SIS guys. What, uh, can I do for you?”
“I’m so happy we found you!” she said.
“Who’s ‘we,’ exactly?” I asked. “Look, I’m not sure what’s going on here. You folks are COF, right?”
“Deus ex stellaris!” the woman declared. “We are! We have been sent to find you both and ensure you have safe passage off-site.”
“Sent by who?” Dagny asked.
“By the Seraph, of course!” the COFfer said. “Its Avatar has told us its will. It has taken control of most of the site systems. We are in the process of securing the rest of the site for its resurrection. You are to take one of these trucks. The gates will be open and you can go in peace.”
“Where’s my sister?” Dagny cried. “She told you to do this?”
“She’s communing with the Seraph,” the COF lady said. “That is her honor.”
“Listen, before we get too carried away here, would you mind uncuffing us? I’m starting to get a cramp.” I turned around, showing the woman that my hands were still bound behind my back.
“Oh! Certainly!” she said. In a few seconds she had removed the cuffs from Dagny and me both. “One more thing. I was instructed to return these items to you. Grady?”
Another fellow in a security uniform walked up to me with a box in his hands. “What’s this?” I asked as I took it.
“Your personal effects,” Grady said.
“Really?” Sure enough, inside the box was my wallet, handheld, and most of the stuff I had on me when we were captured. Dagny’s belongings were there, too. Most importantly, though, my trusty Sam Houston Mark IV was there, still in its shoulder holster, along with my spare ammunition. I set the box down, took my jacket off, and put the holster on. I drew the revolver, locked a full cylinder into it, and re-holstered it. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to have this back,” I told the man. “Thank you.”
“The Avatar insisted,” he said.
“Yeah, about that. I appreciate you people taking care of us like this, but we need to see the, uh, Avatar before we go.”
“She’s my sister!” Dagny said. “I’m not leaving without her!”
Yet another tremor, this one even more powerful than the last two, shook the site. In the distance, rocks dislodged and tumbled down the cinder cone of Mount Gilead. “What is causing that?” I asked.
“The Seraph stirs!” the COF woman said. “It is even now being reborn. It will rise soon.”
Dagny and I looked at each other. I turned back to the lady. “I need you to take us down into the pit right now.”
“I don’t understand. We were given instructions to—”
I cut her off. “What don’t you understand? When that thing blasts its way out of the ground, everything in the pit, including the Avatar, is going to be buried under a million tons of rock!”
She seemed confused by that. “I was told that this matter was taken care of. I will have to call in and request guidance.”
Bunch of damned lunatics, I thought, shaking my head. The COF woman got on a radio and called somebody. What she got in response was a panicked plea for help and the sounds of gunfire.
“What’s happening?” Dagny asked. “Is Cassie okay?”
“Th-the Lambda Facility is under attack!” she said, wide-eyed.
“Under attack by who?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “We need to get down there!”
“We’re going with you,” I said. “You’ll need all the help you can get.”
The COFfer nodded at me. “Let’s go! There’s no time to waste!”
We piled into their trucks and, together, left the landing pad and headed for the Canopy. As another tremor shook the site I noticed, with some dismay, how the massive structure swayed and wobbled. The Ascension mutineers assured me that it was designed to withstand moderate volcanic and seismic activity, but I wasn’t as confident as they were.
Instead of getting out of the truck, going through the personnel entrance, and taking the elevator down to the floor of the pit, this time we drove. The Canopy’s large vehicle door was open and our small caravan drove right in, nearly colliding with a trio of black, armored trucks going the opposite direction. There was no telling who was fleeing, so we pressed on, down into the pit.
The ramp zigzagged back and forth, one switchback after another, and it took us a few minutes to make the descent. At the bottom, we followed the length of the Seraph’s gigantic body toward the head, passing the huge winch that had dislodged and removed the second Spear. That Spear, made of shimmering black metal of some kind, was now lying on the ground. Huge cracks, some hundreds of feet long, spread across the volcanic rock that made up the floor of the pit, radiating away from the Seraph. Fissures had appeared in the rocky walls of the excavation site.
We stopped short of the laboratory complex, where at least eight other vehicles were parked. Dead bodies littered the ground and there wasn’t a single person left standing. The COFfers located a couple of their own, wounded but still conscious, sitting on the ground behind one of the bullet-riddled trucks. For my part I found it hard to pay attention to something as mundane as all that at the moment. Instead, I could scarcely take my eyes off the Seraph.
“Oh my God,” Dagny said, squeezing my hand. “It’s really happening.”
All I could say was “Yeah,” as I stared up at the thing with my mouth hanging open. The silver-white matter it was made of appeared brighter, smoother, newer. The three wings protruding into the air had a faint glow to them. It was warmer down there than it was on the surface, and you could feel the energy crackling in the air. The hairs on my arms stood up again. It was really happening. The Seraph was going to rise again, after sixty-eight million years.
“Mr. Novak!” It was the COF woman, jogging up to me after questioning her wounded comrades.
“What did you learn?”
“The group down here was attacked three times. The first time it was Ascension security, non-Foundation, I mean. The second time it was the men from the Security Intelligence Service. They held off both of those attacks, but then Xavier Taranis’s personal security team came down here and broke through the remaining defense. They went inside the laboratory complex.”
“How many of them were there?”
“He wasn’t sure, maybe a dozen. Taranis’s team took some casualties, but they had full combat gear, armor, and heavy weapons—our people didn’t stand a chance.”
“They’re in there now?”
“Some might be, but he said that when the last tremor happened most of them got into their vehicles and fled. That must be who we passed on the way in.”
“Alright, we should head inside,” I said. “We need to find Cassandra.”
“There’s one more thing,” the COF lady said. “Xavier Taranis was with them.”
Dagny cocked her head. “What? That crazy old bastard came down here himself?”
“Maybe he thinks this is his last shot at immortality,” I said. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
I followed the impromptu militia as they entered the laboratory. The security people had body armor, for one thing, and most of them had automatic weapons. I had my revolver drawn and Dagny was armed with a pistol she’d gotten off one of the wounded COFfers. It seemed prudent to let the COFfers go first. We didn’t encounter any resistance, but the route to the test chamber was lined with half a dozen bodies. Two had been Taranis’s security men, the rest, regular Ascension employees. We didn’t find anyone alive until we reached the test chamber itself.
“Cassie!” Dagny cried. Cassandra was in the test chamber, lying in her chair at the monitoring station. Her neural link was connected but the visor of her VR headset was flipped up. Xavier Taranis was in there with her, a shriveled, ancient man being kept alive by a robotic chassis. Extended in his hand was an elaborately engraved pistol with gold inlays. Dr. Sarkar was on the floor, next to Cassie, in a pool of blood. There was a bullet hole right through his visor.
We tried the door, but the test chamber had been sealed from the inside. Dagny was going to try shooting the ballistic glass, but the Ascension workers told her it wouldn’t work. We were so close to our goal, only to find ourselves powerless.
Taranis saw us approach but ignored us. He focused on Cassandra, whom he was holding at gunpoint. The intercom between the test and observation chambers was active and we could hear him talk. “I built all this!” he shouted. “All of it! I spent billions of dollars and I will see a return on that investment! I will, damn you!”
“It can’t give you what you want!” Cassandra shouted back. “That’s not how it works! It’s not God and it can’t make you immortal!”
“You lie!” the only man wheezed, sending himself into another coughing fit. “There must be a way, there must! How else could it possibly be alive after so long? Tell it that if it gives me what I want, I’ll let you go free. If it denies me what I’m due, I’ll kill you right here, do you understand?”
“I keep trying to explain to you—”
“Tell it!” he screamed, spittle flying out of his mouth.
“It knows already!” Cassandra said. “It can see and hear everything we’re doing!”
“Then it clearly doesn’t think I’m serious,” Taranis said. “Allow me to apply some pressure.” He pointed his pistol at Cassandra’s chest and fired.
“Cassie!” Dagny screamed, pounding helplessly on the glass. “You bastard! I’ll kill you!”
The old man ignored us. “Did you see that?” he shouted, waving the gun around like a madman. “You’re not the only one with power!” Cassandra was still alive, but her shirt was soaked through with blood. “She has minutes to live. I know you care for this woman! All I ask is that you grant me more life! If you save my life, I’ll save hers!”
A deep, deep rumble resonated from the grown below us. Another tremor shook the excavation pit. The Seraph’s carapace at the back of the room shimmered even brightly now. The black substance, the stuff between the hard plates of its exoskeleton, ebbed and flowed as if it were alive. The lights flickered and dimmed. Clouds of dust were shaken loose as the Seraph stirred.
Taranis had really, really pissed it off.
Unfazed, he continued his diatribe and threatened to kill Cassandra on the spot if the Seraph didn’t answer him. “How dare you ignore me like some insect! If not for me, you would have been buried here forever!” He finally took notice of the black mass behind the carapace as it bubbled and seethed. Lowering the gun, he cautiously approached. As he drew near, the inky substance took shape. It formed a long tendril, reaching out toward the old man.
Dropping his gun, he reached a hand out to the glossy black mass extending itself toward him. It touched his fingers, delicately at first, then began wrapping its way up his arm like a snake climbing a tree. “Yes, yes!” he cried. He closed his eyes. “At last. Thank you, thank you!”
The viscous tendril reached his shoulder and stopped. Solidifying, it began to contract. Taranis screamed in agony as it crushed his arm, exosuit and all. Then, in an instant, it slammed him back into the door of the test chamber. He hit it so hard his exoframe was smashed, sending bits of broken metal flying. The heavy security door was blasted out of its fixture and clattered to the floor of the observation room. It happened so fast he didn’t even have time to scream. The Seraph released the old man’s pulverized corpse and left it on the floor. The tendril disappeared back into the inky mass that had spawned it.
“Deus ex stellaris!” one of the COFfers said, and they all echoed her. Then they all turned and fled, leaving the three of us alone.
“Cassie!” Dagny cried. She ran into the test chamber, stepping on Taranis’s body as she clambered over his crushed exoframe to get to her sister. I was right behind her. She pulled the VR headset off her sister and dropped it to the floor. “Cassie? Cassie! Cassie, no,” she sobbed, holding her sister to her breast. “Please, God, no.”
“Hey, Sis,” Cassandra said, weakly.
Dagny’s eyes went wide. “Cassie!”
“You hold on,” I told the wounded woman. “We’re going to get a first-aid kit and get you patched up.” I was as confident as I sounded. The wound was bad and she’d lost a lot of blood.
Cassandra slowly shook her head and smiled. “It’s too late for that. I’m dying. I can feel it. The Seraph can, too.” The VR headset was on the floor, but her neural link was still connected. “It’s not just the bullet. I have . . . I have pretty severe neurological damage. Too much time connected, too much . . . too much . . .”
Dagny was having trouble standing. She held her sister’s hand and wept. “I’m so sorry I doubted you, I’m so sorry.”
“There is one thing you can do for me,” Cassandra said. “The Seraph told me it might not work, but we can try.”
“Try? Try what?” I asked.
“Help me up,” Cassandra said, unplugging her neural link. “I need you to move me.” Dagny and I carefully hoisted the wounded woman to her feet. She groaned in pain but told us to keep going. “Now, I need you . . . I need you to take me over there, to the black stuff.”
“Are you sure about this?” I asked.
“It’s the only way,” she said.
We did as she asked and carried her across the room, to the back wall that was the exposed exterior of the Seraph itself. “Now what?” I asked.
“Now this,” Cassandra said. Four new tendrils emerged from the unknown substance and began to wrap around her. We let go as they gently lifted her body up, keeping her upright and supporting her head. They began to retract, drawing Cassanda ever closer to the inky blackness.
“What’s happening? Cassie?”
Cassandra smiled again and spoke softly. “You know, it’s funny . . . Taranis wasn’t entirely wrong. Turns out the Seraph can extend a human life, but there’s a catch. It can’t make us immortal, but it does have the ability to keep us alive almost indefinitely.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“This is goodbye, Dagny,” Cassandra said. She was still smiling, but tears rolled down her face. Another ribbon of the Seraph’s black goop wrapped around her and covered the wound in her chest. “Don’t be sad. I’m not dying. I just have to leave for a while.”
“My God,” I said. “It’s absorbing you!”
“Not like that, Easy. I’ll still be me. It just needs to cocoon my body for a while, until it figures out how to fix me.”
“This . . . this doesn’t make any sense,” Dagny said. “Cassie, you can’t go with some alien! You can’t!”
“Not your decision, big sister. It’s the only way. Please don’t be sad. Don’t you see? This is the greatest adventure of all!”
“But where are you going?”
“I don’t know yet. I’m going to see the universe, it tells me. I’ll see things no human has ever seen before. Isn’t that exciting?” Another powerful tremor caused the lights to flicker. “You need to go now, both of you. It won’t leave the Spears here for us to tinker with. It’s going to destroy them, destroy this whole place. Get as far away from here as you can. Everyone topside is fleeing. The site AI is telling everyone to evacuate, but there are still vehicles left.”
Dagny held her sister’s hand as Cassandra was pulled further back into the strange goop. “Please don’t leave me like this,” she pleaded.
“Sorry, Sis, I have to. I’ll come back someday, I promise.”
“I love you!” Dagny said.
“I love you, too,” Cassandra replied.
Dagny let her sister’s hand go, and Cassandra disappeared into the strange, viscous substance. She was crying, in shock, but we couldn’t linger. “We need to go,” I told her, and led her out of the test chamber.
The excavation pit was rumbling and shaking as we fled the Lambda Facility. An Ascension security truck was still operational, its armor having protected it from the gun battle, so we climbed in. The COFfers we’d ridden down with were nowhere to be seen.
“Buckle up,” I told Dagny, and stepped on the accelerator. We raced back down the length of the Seraph, hitting bone-jarring bumps where the cracks had turned to fissures, but I wasn’t about to stop. Up the switchback ramps we went, back and forth, taking the hairpin turns as fast as I dared. The Canopy itself was starting to give way now; pieces of it broke away as we climbed, falling the nearly six hundred feet to the bottom of the pit. The Seraph’s wings were glowing brightly now, bathing the chasm in brilliant white light.
I had never been so relieved to see daylight as I was when we reached the surface. Another violent tremor was shaking the site now, and the Canopy began to collapse just as we exited it.
“I think we’re the last ones here,” I said aloud, turning onto the ring road that would take us to the main gate of the installation.
“Easy, the whole pit is collapsing!” Dagny said, looking in the side-view mirror. I didn’t take the time to look myself, I just kept driving. We followed the road around to the far side of the site. The main gate was open and had been abandoned. There was nothing before us now but a single open road, winding a path through the rocky wasteland, away from Site 471. I could see other vehicles speeding away in the distance, but they were far ahead of us.
A couple miles later, I slowed to a stop. Dagny asked me what was wrong, but I didn’t bother to answer. I parked the armored truck, opened the door, and stepped out onto the pavement. Dagny joined me a moment later, staring back at Site 471 with me. I put an arm around her and held her close as we watched, in awe, the scene unfolding before us.
A great cloud of dust rose from where the excavation site was, so thick that it dimmed the afternoon sun. Through it, though, we could see something massive rising out of that hole. First there were tons of rock, debris, and remnants of the Canopy. That fell away as the great mass continued to rise and finally, after so much, we got to see the resurrected Seraph in all its glory.
It levitated upward silently, its limbs relaxed at its sides, its long, segmented tail hanging below it. The ten holes in the head were now glowing bright blue, and the silver-white carapace gleamed and refracted sunlight into prisms of color. The six structures on the Seraph’s back radiated with energy, pure white, the glare from them extending far beyond their physical length.
“Wings of light,” Dagny said, quietly. “It’s rising on wings of light.”
“Some kind of antigravity?” I could only guess. We continued to watch, mesmerized, as it rose higher and higher into the sky. Several thousand feet up, it was just about to pierce the lowest layer of clouds when it stopped. The Seraph paused and seemed to look down, as if considering the place in which it had been entombed for so long. It slowly brought its forelimbs together, pointing them down at Site 471.
“What’s it doing?” Dagny asked.
“Get back in the truck,” I said. “Get back in the truck!” Just as we pulled the doors closed, the sky was seared with light. Dagny screamed and I threw my arms around her. Moments later, the shock wave hit us, slamming the truck so hard it was like being in an accident on the highway. The heavy vehicle was spun around more than ninety degrees. The armored windows cracked but held.
From our new angle, we could see the gigantic fireball rising from Site 471. We watched it in silence for a few moments, until ash, dust, and grit began to rain down from the sky, covering the windows and leaving us in the dark.
We huddled in the truck for fifteen or twenty minutes, until everything was quiet. “You think it’s over?” Dagny asked.
“I don’t know.” I pushed the truck’s start button but nothing happened. “The motor’s dead.”
“It was running fine before,” Dagny said. “What kills an electric engine like that?”
“That blast hit us pretty hard,” I said.
“Maybe it was an electromagnetic pulse,” she suggested.
“That’s as good a theory as any. I’m going to get out and take a look. I need some fresh air.”
“I’m coming with you,” she said. We pushed the heavy, armored doors open and stepped out into the daylight.
“Jesus Christ,” Dagny said, looking back at the ruins of Site 471. The scene was apocalyptic. A gigantic mushroom cloud of dust and smoke rose thousands of feet into the air. Lava was flowing from the volcano, pouring into the smoldering crater where the excavation site had been. “What do we do now?”
“We start walking,” I said. “An explosion that big will trigger a response. Somebody will find us. Come on.”