“Fine. So, the tranquilizer… it’ll keep them knocked out for about an hour.”
“Your point?”
“Well, the detonators… You’re really just going to leave these two here?”
Silence.
Phoebe could almost feel Hiltmeyer shrinking away from whatever look the woman was giving him. “You know our orders. If you have a problem with them, you can stay here as well.”
“No problem, I just-”
“Then go.”
The door opened. The colonel followed his team out, and over the wind Phoebe could now hear the thrumming of the helicopter engine.
The woman turned and leaned over the desk. Phoebe inched around the leg of the table so she could get a better view, but could only see a head of short dark hair over the woman’s face as she spoke into the microphone.
Caleb stared at the red puddle steaming on the ice under Ben Tillman-Ben, the man Caleb had recruited directly from a seminar in Virginia. He had shown great promise, scoring high marks on the remote-visualization card tests, and once during a linked video conference call from over two hundred miles away he had drawn the exact sequence of symbols that Caleb had placed in a sealed envelope.
“Tarn! What are you doing?” He spread his arms, holding one hand out to Andy Bellows, warning him back. Andy was a hot-head, always impatient and full of Hollywood-like visions of tomb raiding and treasure hunting, never quite appreciating the hard work and finer points of the Morpheus Initiative’s process.
“This whole time, you and Hiltmeyer buried this thing to get us down here…” Caleb fumed. He closed his eyes, cursing his stupidity. I wasn’t asking the right questions. “You’ve got someone in our group. Or you’ve hacked our servers. Found what we were drawing, the exact image and specifications of the colossal head, and then you built it and buried it where you knew it would send us running in a hurry.”
“Sorry,” said Andy Bellows, shrugging and then lowering his hands. He slid closer to Tarn, and in a forced Italian accent said, “But they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
Caleb stared weakly at Andy, then shook his head. “Damn it, kid. You don’t know what you’ve done. You don’t know who these people are.”
Then his earpiece crackled. “Hello down there, and hello Caleb. It’s been a long time, but I wonder, did you miss me?”
Under all his layers, Caleb broke out in a feverish sweat. He recalled a steamy night in Alexandria, entwined around a woman with olive skin and burning green eyes. “Nina?”
“Hi, honey.”
The air chilled, as if the wind and the cold had found a crack in the ice and rushed through to find him.
“Caleb, Caleb. How is it that you never tried to RV me after the disaster under the Pharos Lighthouse? Not even a glimpse, after all we meant to each other? Surely, with your vast abilities you would have seen me in a coma suffering the worst dreams you could possibly imagine. All the while, a part of me hoping, praying, believing that maybe you’d be my prince, that you’d come to my rescue and wake me with love’s true kiss.”
Caleb clenched his eyes shut, shaking his head. “You were in league with him, with George Waxman, all along. You killed so many of the Keepers.”
“Bygones, Caleb. Besides, I’ve watched you since then, you don’t trust your new friends either. None of the other Keepers. Even your wife.”
That point chilled his blood. His eyes snapped open. Does she know about the tablet? She had to have RV’d him, and would have seen the vault where he’d hid it away.
She knows, damn it, she knows!
“I tried to see you.” He had to stall her, think of a way out of this. “But-”
“You didn’t try, lover. Admit it. You forgot all about little old me. Let your gift languish, too wrapped up in guilt over the things it kept showing you. You let it wither until that Keeper tramp Lydia came along and fired you up again. Tell me, who was better at freeing your powers? Me, or the little missus?”
Caleb tried not to look at the gun pointed at his heart. His mind reeled. How did she survive? The first trap under the Pharos Lighthouse had released a torrential wave of water that had smashed her against a pillar, and she fell and was sucked out into the Alexandrian harbor, her body never found.
A sudden flash appeared in Caleb’s head, like the lifting of a veil, and he saw…
… a recompression chamber, a familiar one, the same he had once spent a day in. On board Waxman’s boat, only in this vision Nina was inside, motionless.
And then he was back in the icy cave with Tarn pointing the gun at him and Andy Bellows grinning. “Fine,” Caleb said. “You got me, Nina. Got us. The Morpheus Initiative. Played us, but for what? We’re here.”
“That’s it, Caleb. That’s all there is. I just wanted you to know who it was, wanted you to know that back then you shouldn’t have dropped me.”
“Nina,” he said, slumping over, “I couldn’t-”
“Goodbye, Caleb. Mr. Tarn, Mr. Bellows, thank you for your service.”
Andy looked up. “What?”
Tarn lowered the gun, said, “NO!” and in a burst of surprising speed, ran for the cave’s exit just as an enormous explosion rocked the tunnel-followed by a series of detonations above them.
Caleb looked up and didn’t even have time to cry out as the ceiling collapsed.
Phoebe held her breath. What just happened? She heard the name and remembered. Nina Osseni. A beautiful European, one of George Waxman’s first recruits for the Morpheus Initiative. She was exotic and cat-like, always seemed a little dark and mysterious around Phoebe, but she had never had much contact with the woman, especially since Phoebe was confined to that relic of a wheelchair and couldn’t go on any more globe-trotting expeditions with the team.
But then the tragedy under the Pharos. Nina and Waxman going in too strong, believing they had decoded the symbols on the door, but having them all wrong, releasing the first trap, which killed everyone in their group except for Caleb, Waxman and their mother.
And apparently, Nina.
Somehow she had survived, and then what? She had tracked Caleb ever since, hoping for some misguided revenge? Maybe revenge for Waxman, or for Caleb’s inability to save her?
After taunting Caleb and the others, Nina shut the laptop, unplugged the microphone, and pressed a button on a small device.
A distant rumbling vibrated the station, overpowering even the chopper blades. Phoebe felt the trembling under her body and she realized what Nina had done.
Nina turned and left through the door without so much as a look behind her.
Then Phoebe sprang up and looked around frantically for the explosive charges. In another moment, she heard the chopper ascending and then it was quiet outside, except for the screeching wind.
Thoughts of Caleb blown to bits No, can’t think that yet.
She continued looking around the room, then stuck her head under the desk. There was something there, a round device like a hockey puck, with a blinking red light. She took hold of it, but it was stuck. She was about to kick it free when she thought better of that idea.
Could she move the whole table out? No, not without disassembling it. And there had to be at least one more of these things.
Damn!
She went back, judged Orlando’s weight, and then bent down. She lifted him, grunting. “Gotta get to the gym more often.” She dragged him toward the door, then stopped to grab two heavy parkas, and, from the table, the keys to the remaining Sno-Cat.
At least we won’t freeze.
Outside, assaulted at once by the icy wind, she hauled Orlando by the ankles, the job a little easier on the slick surface. She tugged him toward the isolated garage that was only ten yards away but seemed like a mile, fell, got up and stared into the stinging blizzard, into the night’s black swirling face, to see the flickering lights of the
