As Cassie was about to ascend, Maddie laid a hand on her arm. “You did good, kiddo. The Nephilim fell for it completely.”
The pythia paused and faced the chatelaine. “I don’t mind lying to the bad guys, but I hate lying to my friends. At some point, we have to tell Daniel that nothing he saw was real.”
“Agreed.” Maddie nodded. “At some point but not right now. This day has already been long enough, and it’s only noon.”
Cassie gazed off pensively toward the seide stone. “It’s funny that Metcalf would be the one to insist it was all an illusion.”
The chatelaine gave a short laugh. “Not the illusion he had in mind, but the diviner actually divined the truth for once.”
They exchanged a rueful glance before climbing aboard the helicopter.
As soon as the two were settled, the aircraft lifted off cleanly and rose above the crest of the mountain. Erik and Lars administered first aid to Griffin’s injury which turned out to be less serious than they’d all feared. Hannah and Zach clung to one another, seeking mute reassurance that their nightmare was really over.
The pilot came on the intercom, interrupting their torpid silence. “Maddie, a message just came through for you from the vault. The memory guardian is awake. She wants to know where everybody is.”
Chapter 53—The Last Detail
An Arkana agent named Darryl leaned back in his chair and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. He glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was six in the morning. He’d been at his desk for the past twenty hours straight—ever since the first urgent call came through from Tokyo at dawn. Of course, the local time in Chicago had only been mid-afternoon of the previous day. From that moment, the vault security division had worked feverishly to log in captures and coordinate the activities of its teams in the remaining strike zones.
“That was the last one.” An agent named Hector announced from the next cubicle. “The final Argus agent was intercepted before he got to the Atlanta airport. We did it! We snagged all one hundred and fifty canisters.”
Cheers rose from the exhausted office staff.
Darryl let out a sigh of relief and put his head down on his desk.
The security director strode into the room. “Good work, folks. Those Argus agents never knew what hit them. Everybody go home and get some rest. As of this moment, you’re all off the clock.”
“I’m outta here.” Darryl rose to leave.
“Hang on,” the security director laid a hand on his shoulder. “I have one more assignment for you and Hector.”
***
“This is crazy,” Darryl protested as he descended the steps of the schoolhouse.
“Orders is orders, man,” Hector reminded him laconically.
“I don’t know what we’ve got to worry about,” Darryl countered. “All the weaponized plague has been bagged. The world is safe, at least from the Nephilim. So, I don’t understand why we have to go out and patrol our own backyard. The vault was never on their hit list to begin with. I’ll bet the Nephilim didn’t even know about this location.”
“I don’t care,” Hector asserted. “The memory guardian said we should do this.”
“And that’s another thing. Faye wakes up from her coma, and the first thing she says is ‘check the grounds around the schoolhouse’?”
“Maybe there really is something out there.”
“And maybe she’s still got a concussion from that fall down the stairs!”
“Look, she didn’t get to be memory guardian because she’s got an overactive imagination.”
Darryl groaned. “I’m just saying somebody should clear this with Maddie.”
“We can’t clear this with Maddie,” Hector pointed out. “She’s stranded on a mountain in Sweden with the rest of the A-Team. They’re in a dead zone, and nobody’s been able to reach them for hours. So, I think we should do like Faye wants and sweep the perimeter.”
“For what exactly?”
“Beats me.
“I still say it’s a concussion.”
Both agents checked their pistol magazines and headed off into the woods.
***
Brothers Shem and Paul crept through the thicket surrounding the schoolhouse. The dawn sky was already too bright to provide much cover. Both men wore camo fatigues to better blend into the woodland setting while they searched for the exact location of their target. They carefully scanned the ground around them.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Shem scratched his head.
“Yes,” Paul answered confidently. “Leroy Hunt gave the diviner the exact coordinates. There should be an air intake vent close by.”
They combed the ground carefully, seeing nothing in the underbrush until Shem tripped over the object they were searching for—a wide metal pipe protruding three feet from the earth with its top curved downward like a faucet. The two men crouched beside it.
“It has a grille covering the vent,” Shem observed. “We’ll have to take it off.”
“I don’t think so.” Paul took a few moments to study the design. “The opening is big enough.” He removed his backpack and began sorting through its contents.
“We’re very lucky the diviner trusted us with a task as important as this,” Shem said. “After what we almost did.”
“Thank God, we repented in time,” Paul agreed. “Killing the diviner, his favorite wife, and the scion are crimes which the Lord would never forgive. It’s too bad our traitor-brothers died in their sins. Even though everybody says that Enoch and Lemuel were banished, I know better. They were executed just like Brother Joshua, who is surely burning in hell right now.”
“He should be, for leading us astray. It’s a wonder we weren’t condemned too.”
“We will be if we fail in this mission,” Paul cautioned. “This is our only chance to make amends.” He went back to pulling objects from his pack.
Shem watched the operation, periodically turning to scan the woods for any sign of human activity.
“We’re ready,” Paul announced. He held up a metal canister of pressurized gas and then fitted a long segment of flexible plastic tubing to the nozzle.
“How many people
