the scientific trail here…and the source of the Judas Strain below.”
Gray slipped his arm from Lisa and stepped forward. “You may still need our help!” he called up, knowing it was a wasted breath.
“I’m sure we’ll manage. The Guild has abundant resources to fit these last pieces together. We’ve managed to reach this point, starting with only a few words in an ancient text. A text, I understand, that came into our possession because of your actions, Commander.”
Gray’s fist tightened. He should have burned the Dragon Court’s library when he’d had the chance.
“Of course, it was the Guild’s efforts afterward — through the employment of marine archaeologists and satellite imagery — that uncovered one of Marco’s sunken ships off the coast of Sumatra.”
It took Gray a moment to realize what Nasser was implying. “You found one of Polo’s ships?”
“And we were lucky. One of the keel beams, encased in insulating clay, still contained biological activity. But we couldn’t understand its full capacity without an in vitro trial, a real-world scenario.”
Gray felt his blood go cold. If Nasser was telling the truth, the outbreak at Christmas Island hadn’t been a matter of chance exposure. “You…you purposely contaminated Christmas Island.”
He glanced to Seichan for confirmation.
She would not meet his eyes.
Nasser continued. “From the study of sea currents and tidal patterns, it required just planting the beam off the coast and observing what happened. In fact, we were monitoring and collecting samples when our patient here stumbled onto the scene. She and her party. The first human subjects. Of course, the currents eventually carried the tide to the island. As planned. A perfect localized and contained scenario.”
Lisa mumbled, “Then with the cruise ship, the Guild saw the opportunity to reap what they’d sown.”
Gray sank back.
Seichan mumbled behind him. “Now you know why I had to stop them.”
Gray glanced to her.
But she had failed…they’d all failed.
Susan drifted in a haze, as if in a waking dream.
Fire danced across her brain.
Since baring herself to the raw sunlight, she had passed beyond an edge. She felt it inside her skull. She was no longer fully herself — or maybe more herself than ever before.
She had become unmoored as a lifetime of memories rebuilt inside her. Her past swelled up out of recesses long thought lost and inaccessible. They knit together, one day to another, one hour to the next, blending into a seamless whole. Her past came alive again, not just bits and pieces, but the full spread and panorama of it all.
And she could remember it all as a single moment: from the crush of her skull as she was squeezed out of her mother’s womb…to the beat of her heart now. She sensed the traces of air over her naked skin, every current, scribed into memory, indelible, adding to the whole.
It was all held in a suspended, shimmering bubble.
And beyond that thin surface…more.
But she wasn’t ready to venture there.
She knew there were steps still to be taken.
Below.
With the fiery eyes closed, the panic inside her subsided to a dull glow.
Floating between past and present, adding moments with every breath, new words slowly dropped into the pool that was her life, overheard from a step away.
NO.
The single note rang through her.
With her life held in that endless moment between one breath and the next, she was again underwater, weightless. She saw the finger of age-blackened wood protruding from the sand. Her thoughts from then returned, as if she were still in those waters. At the time, she had supposed earthquakes had shaken the keel beam free, or perhaps the recent tsunami had stripped away the sand, exposing it.
Now she knew the truth.
The beam had been planted there.
Purposefully.
To kill.
She remembered how excited she had been to tell her husband, who loved diving wrecks. Just the memory of him filled her senses.
Gregg.
Now she knew the truth.
Why he had died.
And the truth was fire.
Lisa leaned against Gray, his arm over her shoulders. She stared up at the rifles. Nasser was saying something, but she didn’t hear, lost in her own guilt.
Gray suddenly flinched.
Though she hadn’t moved, she snapped back to the moment.
At the rim of the well, Susan’s head slowly lifted, her blond hair parting from a face lost in fury. The guards’ attentions remained focused on Nasser. Past Nasser’s shoulder, Lisa watched the soft glow of Susan’s skin flush fiercer.
Her eyes burned with an inner fire.
Nasser must have sensed something and had begun to turn.
Lisa did not see Susan move.
One moment the woman was seated on the crumbled bit of altar — the next she was latched around Nasser, hugging tight to him, cheek to cheek in an intimate embrace.
He screamed — a wail that tore from his throat.
Smoke curled between them.
One of the guards reacted, clubbing Susan from behind.
She dropped loose, head lolling.
Still screaming, Nasser shoved her away.
Over the edge of the pit.
“Susan!” Lisa called up.
She tumbled in a tangle with one of the loading ropes used by the demolition team. A hand snatched out, instinctively catching herself. But she had no strength. She slid down the rope, too fast. The caustic acid of her skin flared in the shaft’s direct sunlight, triggering some chemical reaction in the synthetic rope. It smoked and melted as she slid along it. Susan twirled as she plummeted, almost in free fall.
No one dared catch her.
Gray swung to the side and dragged the cloth tarp from the stone face. He whipped one end to Kowalski. His partner understood.
Overhead, the rope snapped, burned through where Susan had grabbed.
She dropped in a limp, boneless fall.
Unconscious.
Gray and his partner caught her, but her weight still ripped the tarp from their hands and she struck the floor hard. Using the tarp, Gray swung her out of direct sight, only her legs visible from above. He dropped beside her.
Nasser screamed down to them. On hands and knees. His cheek still smoked, flesh blackened. His bare arms looked like seared steak, weeping and bleeding. “I want that bitch!”
Gray stumbled back into view. “Neck’s broken! She’s dead!”
A war of emotions played across Nasser’s face. It settled on a near-mindless rage. “Then you’ll all burn!” He
