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no way it could have gone down like that, sir.”
    “Not unless he was ordered to do it.” Since they entered the caverns, Nathan had been filled with the uneasy notion that they were desecrating a tomb—and now he understood why. These men were like Egyptian slaves, executed after digging the Pharaohs’ graves to keep them from revealing the location of secret burial chambers. It was the only way to ensure total security—the only way to make sure that all those treasures followed kings into the afterlife.
    “He was protecting something,” Nathan said, and tore away from the others.
    He moved as fast as his bulky suit would allow, Pitch and Kellean struggling to catch up. He heard them calling out over the comm link, but dared not answer them lest he lose his resolve. Stumbling over more remains, he left a sepulchral ripple in his wake. Labored breaths echoed within the confines of his helmet, abruptly halting when Nathan finally came across a blind turn. There he stood, waiting for his crewmates—aware of their presence as he was aware of the scanner, which screamed at him in a nonstop deluge of readings.
    But it was the light that penetrated his senses, to the exclusion of all else. Nathan had seen it from a distance, spilling out from around that corner, growing more intense as he drew closer.
    “Do you see it?” he asked the others, hoping that it wasn’t real.
    Kellean mouthed the words, but couldn’t speak.
    “Can you feel that?” Nathan added, seeing from their expressions that they did. So much more than a surge of power, it was the same thing he had seen from orbit: energy personified, touching his every nerve ending with a static charge.
    The three of them moved together toward it. As they rounded the turn, the pummeling sensation decreased—so quickly that Nathan believed that he had imagined it and merely shared his illusion with the others. That was when the tangible came into focus, and the tunnel opened up into a large inner chamber. The space was astonishing at first glance—even more so as Nathan took in its scale. At least thirty meters deep and twelve meters high, it was stacked floor to ceiling with a trove of equipment. Most of it was for light excavation, probably the stuff used to dig out this bunker; but there were also rows of computers, still active and functional after all these years, as well as a huge weapons cache. Explosives, pulse rifles, pistols, tactical missile launchers—all of them were scattered throughout the bunker, as if they had been assembled here in a hurry.
    In total, the find was worth a fortune.
    But that wasn’t what caught Nathan’s attention.
    At the center of it all, placed with reverent care, were six silver tubes. Arranged in a horizontal spoke formation, each unit pointed in a different direction, meeting at the center. It was from there that the power originated, a low thrum that pulsed with the consistency of a slow heartbeat. A blue glow emanated from the head of each tube, filling the space with the ethereal light they had seen from outside.
    “What are those?” Kellean asked.
    Nathan already knew—but still, he had to see for himself. Walking toward the tubes, he stepped through a thick haze of frost particles that hovered above the floor. He hesitated for a moment as the others watched, then slowly moved toward the center, where tiny windows offered a view into each tube.
    And within each one, a human face stared back at him.
    Nathan checked the cryogenic readings, which told him exactly what he feared.
    “They’re alive,” he said.

 

 

    Lea Prism took measure of herself the way she always did—in fleeting glimpses, caught by accident, off some reflective surface that obscured her face in shadow. Tonight it was a window, her face flanked by pinpoint stars and glowing LEDs, the flood of virtual monitors elongating her features in a trick of the light. It was a mission ritual: a pause followed by a sideways glance, just to see how much