The Cydonia Objective

Phoebe woke with a start. Something wasn’t right.

She stifled a yawn then lifted up the window shade, expecting to see they were still over the desert. Instead she was greeted with a majestic view of snow-peaked mountains, one in particular: a massive peak, level with their plane, appearing to be their destination.

Someone was in the seat next to her, and it took a moment for Phoebe to clear out the debris of her cluttered dreams and remember the events of the last day. The girl, the Hummingbird. Aria was sitting on her knees beside her, big blue eyes wide open and trembling.

“Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, laying a hand on Phoebe’s arm. Behind her, Orlando’s neck was bent awkwardly, his forehead pressed into a flight pillow and a little blanket bunched up around his ear.

“What’s wrong?” Phoebe’s heart fluttered. Pieces of the dream came back to her: The night sky was falling, the stars tumbling down upon her. And books, thousands of books, millions, crying out in pain…

“Your brother is safe.”

Phoebe put a finger to her lips. “Alexander too?”

Aria nodded, just as the cabin door opened and Temple emerged. His ashen face told a story Phoebe didn’t want to read.

He reached for the TV’s power button. “No easy way to say this.” On the screen emerged a scene of devastation. Phoebe leaned over and shook Orlando, who only grunted and pressed his face farther into the pillow.

“Alexandria was hit today with a seismic event.”

“An earthquake?” Phoebe whispered.

“Seven-point-three magnitude. But…” Temple muted the TV as the camera zoomed in on a section of twisted iron framework that had once supported part of the glass dome. “…it only hit the library complex. Concentrated in that one area… Destroying it completely.”

“Oh my God.”

“Over a hundred dead, so far. Three hundred more injured. Some buried and calling for help. Some…”

“…farther down.” Phoebe was only dimly aware that Aria was holding her hand, squeezing it and whispering, “They’re okay.”

“We need to RV them, see if Caleb and Alexander were there!”

“Already done,” Temple said. “As soon as we got the news. My team relayed information quickly back here that they saw the vault. It’s damaged badly. And several of the Keepers are dead, but your brother and your nephew appear to be unhurt. Although trapped.”

“We’ve got to get to them.” She scowled over at Orlando, who still hadn’t stirred.

Temple shook his head. “Won’t make it before they do.”

“What? Why not? Can’t you get the Egyptian authorities to control the site, keep out Calderon’s people?”

“Sorry, Calderon’s inserted himself and his people into high-level positions at major disaster-relief agencies. We’d been puzzled by that for several months, trying to work out his motives. But now it’s obvious. If they’re testing some sort of weapon, then they need to have control, feet on the ground so to speak. Believe me, if this was him, and we’re ninety-nine percent sure, then it’s too late. They’re already tunneling down there. They’ve got their own psychics–”

“The twins.”

“–who will tell them where to dig, and how to retrieve the artifacts they need.” Temple let the news run a few more seconds, before the feed shifted from scenes of destruction and tragedy to interviews with survivors.

Phoebe squeezed the girl’s hand gently. “So there’s no hope?”

Aria squeezed back and answered first. “Always hope.”

“She’s right,” Temple agreed. “And right now, I hate to say it, but we need you focused on the bigger picture.”

“Which is?”

“Mars,” said another voice. Orlando, his eyes still closed, but flickering rapidly. “And… something else…” His eyes flashed open and he sat up straight. And Phoebe realized he hadn’t been sleeping, not exactly. Dreaming, deep in a trance, focusing his inner sight on what Temple intended for them.

“Damn,” said the colonel. “This is why it’s so hard to work with psychics. I can never do things according to my own timeline.”

“Stow it,” Orlando said, almost under his breath. “We need to know what this is about, now. What’s up there? How much do you guys really know, and why is it you need us to remote-view something on…” he cocked his head, squinting, trying to recapture the vision.

“…the dark side of the Moon?”

2.

After wandering in the darkness, a black so pervasive he couldn’t see anything in front of his face, not even knowing which direction was up, Alexander shifted his perspective. Looking in a direction he at first insisted was down, his brain finally perceived the tiny lights above as stars and not reflective coins in the depths of some bottomless sea. A moment later, realization set in and he understood he was either dreaming or remote viewing.

This wasn’t the vault in Alexandria, where he was surely still pinned beneath that table and the body of one of the Keepers—Rashi, who had thrown herself over him at the last instant before the ceiling collapsed.

This was somewhere else. A vast, black surface that suddenly wasn’t so perfectly dark, as if his eyes were adjusting, filtering and refining the starlight so he could see…

He was standing inside a shallow crater. Impossibly shallow, and more like a trench ripped through the shale, and in every direction he could see the rough outlines of bizarre geology: ridges sharply- protruding peaks, rocky hills thrust out of the land, dust and debris laying in their ancient poses, and suddenly…

His consciousness shot upward, and then skidded around the horizon, until the darkness abruptly merged with light, and around the lip of the orb—the familiar cratered surface—he was greeted with the gleaming blue-green hues of the Earth.

#

“Alexander…”

His dad’s voice. Weak, like it was spoken from the other end of a massive tunnel. Alexander shook his head, and was relieved to find he could do it. No broken neck or spine at least. But everything was dark, so dark…

He tried to sit up, but found someone was laying on top of him.

At first, with a choking sob, he thought: Mom? But then memories flitted back, descending into their respective pockets where they belonged, and everything fit right once again. The cave-in. The earthquake or whatever it was. Rashi… oh, Rashi…

He felt around her back, but could only move his hands so far before reaching something hard and cold like steel. Then he felt something wet and warm over her back.

“Rashi?”

Nothing.

Then again he thought he heard his father calling his name, but he shut it out for a minute, trying to see, really see. He relaxed, willed his mind to focus, and slipped back-

-to this very room, only minutes ago. Rashi looking up, alarm on her face as dust fell. Dad yelling, reaching for him, and then the ceiling dropping, the dome shattering down the middle. Huge chunks of masonry shorn into pieces, tumbling, crashing onto the table, pummeling the servers, an enormous beam, trailing