world.’
‘Remove your clothing.’
She strips down, then allows the male to assist her into the pod. He connects the seven neural chakra links, then attaches a dime-sized anaesthetic patch to the back of her neck. ‘This will help you to sleep.’
Dominique tastes a metallic bitterness in the back of her throat. She looks up at the Guardian elder, swallowing hard. ‘I’m cold.’
‘You’ll feel comfortable in a few moments.’
The female leans over her and smiles. ‘Pleasant dreams, my dear…
My dear…
My dear…
My dear…
The male checks Dominique’s vital signs. She’s stable. We must hurry, before the star goes supernova.
The male Guardian quickly connects a tracheal tube, intravenous tubes, and elimination hoses to Mick and Dominique while the female fits plugs into Dominique’s nostrils and ear canals. Is cryogenic suspension really necessary?
This was all discussed. One Hunahpu’s mind is in chaos, but it is still quite powerful, and it still has access to the nexus. If left unbridled, it could potentially affect the ship’s trajectory through the wormhole. Placing him in cryogenic suspension is the only way we can shield his mind from the higher dimensions.
I was referring to First-Mother. I don’t like lying to her.
She would have fought us if we revealed everything. She would have delayed the therapy, potentially risking One Hunahpu’s life.
I disagree.
As is your right. Computer, seal both pods. Begin preservation process.
A clear gel-like liquid flows out the bottom of each pod, lifting the two inert bodies as it rises to fill the tank. The Plexiglas frosts, then crystallizes.
The male elder enters the ship’s control room, his mind instantly updated telepathically with multiple status reports from the four Guardian elders inside.
The Balam?
Long gone. It disappeared through the wormhole hours ago.
Most distressing.
Is it possible that One Hunahpu is controlling it?
Impossible to say. The origins of the Balam remain a mystery.
Preparing to enter wormhole.
Appearing on the forward viewport is the wormhole’s glowing emerald green orifice, beckoning them in.
The mammoth oblong transport ship accelerates, entering the time-space conduit.
A moment later, Sirius-B goes supernova, the titanic explosion rattling time and space with the energy of 100 million suns.
A male voice… his screams echoing in the dank, dungeonlike basement.
Dominique’s consciousness moves through the antiquated concrete-block corridor of the Massachusetts asylum, following the guttural sounds to a row of cell doors. She stops at a cell marked SOLITARY CONFINEMENT. Tries the door.
Locked.
Remember, you’re in control.
‘Open, please.’
The bolt unlocks, the door swinging open.
Inside is an eight-foot-by-ten-foot cell, its bare cement floor and walls damp with mildew. A broken toilet and sink. A bare bulb, no windows.
Scratched into the far wall is a map of the world, a half dozen points X’d off in dried blood.
Mick is curled up on a wafer-thin mattress on the floor. He turns and gazes up at her, his ebony eyes so dark, it is difficult to tell where the irises begin.
‘Who… who are you?’
She smiles. ‘A friend.’
Mick sits up. ‘Dr. Foletta won’t let me have visitors.’
‘Dr. Foletta’s been transferred. I’m in charge now.’ She holds out her hand. ‘My name’s Dominique, and I’m here to help you.’
The transport soars through the wormhole like a pebble flowing through a garden hose, the effects of the supernova twisting and turning the currents of energy, until the massive spaceship is forcibly spit out the other side.
The blackness of space returns.
They soar toward a yellow sun and familiar star patterns. Up ahead, a bright blue world.
Home.
The asteroid-sized transport slows, establishing orbit around the watery planet.
The elder male Guardian paces the conn, his transhuman blood simmering. What happened? Every calculation was accounted for!
Apparently not every calculation. The younger male Guardian’s telepathy burns in his superior’s mind. The Balam entered the wormhole before us. Its presence apparently altered the wormhole’s trajectory.
The female, positioned within a comm link station, opens her eyes. Cartography confirms we overshot both third and fourth dimensional coordinates. She activates the viewport, the image of the blue world they are orbiting appearing below. The planet we are now orbiting is not Earth, it is Mars. Ancient Mars. The computer positively identified the planet’s moon as Deimos.
Mars has two moons, not one. Where’s Phobos?
I believe we are Phobos.
The elder male stares hard at her. How far into our past have we traveled?
She looks up at him. The time period equates to 127 million years before the time of Osiris.
And the wormhole?
Gone. We are stranded in this time period.
Warning lights and a telepathic siren blare throughout the vessel.
WARNING: TACHYON DRIVE OVERHEATING. PRIMARY AND BACKUP COOLING SYSTEMS OFF-LINE. EXPLOSION IMMINENT.
The female works her control. The ship’s engines have seized, so have our shields!
The gargantuan internal explosion violates the hull, igniting a flash fire that races through the vessel, consuming everything in its path. Sections of infrastructure melt and collapse, the Guardian crying out in agony as the intense heat bursts their hairless elongated skulls into flames, melting their eyeballs, peeling their charred skin away from their bones.
Steam fills the corridors as rows of cryogenic pods begin to melt. Glass fractures, a river of gel pouring from the shattered vessels percolating along the gridded floor.
It is over almost as quickly as it began. Within seconds, the vacuum of space inhales the ship’s air supply, dousing the flames, leaving death and destruction in its wake.
The damaged iridium-and-iron satellite continues orbiting Mars, its interior hull now lifeless – save for two isolated souls.
An azure lagoon, surrounded by lush tropical foliage. A cool breeze stirs the palm fronds.
Dominique lies naked on the cool pink sand, watching in delight as Mick climbs to the top of a twenty-two- foot waterfall.
‘Dom, watch!’
‘I’m watching, but you’d better hold on to your you-know-what.’
With boyish charm, Mick leaps from the rock, executing an awkward somersault.
Dominique waits until he surfaces before applauding. ‘That was really… awful.’
‘Thank you.’ He swims closer, his bronze body as naked as hers. ‘Come here.’
