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you really put the fear of God into the former president. A hundred billion a year since 2032, secretly diverted from the bottomless money pit over at the Pentagon into H.O.P.E.’s Mars Colony project. Sweetheart leasing deals at Cape Canaveral and Houston … even access to Golden Fleece. All that support and you still fell behind.”
    Mulder jumps in, as rehearsed. “The problem, Madam President, is that Lilith was relying on Golden Fleece to equip her shuttles with zero-point energy.” The chief of staff shakes his head. “It was a risky gamble, Lilith. The geeks over at Majestic-12 have been vying for the same breakthrough for a century now; in fact, it was at their insistence that the moratorium on the Large Hadron Collider was lifted during President Stuart’s first term in office.”
    Lilith remains silent, her internal thoughts whirring at light speed.
    “Face the facts,” Mulder continues. “Engineering mistakes delayed the first Mars supply shuttles by three full years. Four weeks ago, only days after the caldera collapse, H.O.P.E. took on new investment partners in Moscow and Beijing. Coincidence? Maybe. More likely another cash shortage, caused by the sudden escalation in raw materials and astro-engineers. After fifteen years you’ve only managed to complete two bio-dorms on Mars and three agricultural pods, reducing your capacity to sustain a populace from nine thousand to just over fifteen hundred. Compounding the problem is that you only have a dozen operational shuttles, each one capped out at fifty-two passengers.”
    “Twelve shuttles,” reiterates the president. “It takes a minimum of six months to get to Mars, another six months to return. That’s a full year to transport the first eight hundred or so prepaid VIPs while you finish the fleet, only Yellowstone’s temperamental volcanic residents have determined there won’t be any more shuttles to launch. That means, from the roughly nine thousand investors who coughed up more than a trillion dollars, less than ten percent actually get to make the trip off our doomed planet.”
    “If word leaked out …” Mulder raises an eyebrow. “You’re messing with some very powerful people, Lilith—world leaders and bankers who could shut you down long before those twelve shuttles are set to take off down H.O.P.E.’s runway in twenty-eight days.”
    “Of course, we could do that, too,” Engle chimes in. “Health inspections, safety code violations. It could cause some unfortunate delays.”
    “Now, Donald, everything’s negotiable.” President Stuart sits back, propping her flat-heeled shoes on the coffee table, mimicking her host.
    Lilith smiles coldly. “Is that what this is, a negotiation?”
    “More like a partnership guaranteeing our mutual survival. My terms are simple: I want passage and accommodations for two hundred of my top aides and their families. Do that, and you’ll have no worries come the twenty-ninth.”
    Lilith’s grin conflicts with the malice in her eyes. Standing, she saunters barefoot around the sitting area until she’s standing behind the president. Leaning over, she whispers into the commander-in-chief’s ear. “Darling Heather, you really have no idea who or what I am, do you?”
    President Stuart is about to respond when something moves across her peripheral vision, a white blur that leaves her with a sense of vertigo and something more bizarre—a sensation that feels as if the aura in the room has suddenly changed.
    Devlin Mabus gazes at the president and her entourage from across the chamber. The fair-skinned fourteen-year-old’s hair is silky white and shoulder-length, drawn into a tight ponytail. His high cheekbones and thick lips match his mother’s features, but the adolescent’s Hunahpu eyes are far different. Each sclera features a jagged patchwork of thick choroid blood vessels, turning the normal white of the eye bloodred. Devlin’s irises are pitchblack, making his matching ebony pupils