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ghosts or I was delirious.
    That was possible too.
    Mikel ached in every part of his body, having climbed through lava tubes and flown vast distances through a wind tunnel, which was where he broke his wrist, not to mention being thrown from a truck that was hauling a module. He had struck his head numerous times, so many times, in fact, that anything was possible.
    But there is no disputing this , he thought as he typed. Since touching those luminous olivine stones that lined sections of the tunnel and its towers, I have felt different. Not alert, because I’m still tired as hell . . . but more intuitive, I guess you’d call it. He went back and erased that; it wasn’t true.He didn’t know when someone was coming or what was being served for a meal. He wrote: . . . but more aware of the lives that were lived here.
    Whether they were ghosts or angels in any real sense did not matter. Mikel felt as though, through the tiles, he had touched the past . . . that the past was still out there, somewhere, not dead but alive, not gone but eternal.
    He didn’t write any of that. The data wasn’t there to support a living past, and the answers were elusive. He hoped, while he was still down here, he could learn more. However, he did add this:
    I’m still at a loss to explain exactly what precipitated the pillar of fire that erupted perhaps fifty kilometers from where I found the Galderkhaan power center, the Source—whose early activation apparently precipitated the destruction of that civilization.
    That wasn’t entirely true. It could be explained.
    Pao and Rensat had sought an American woman, Caitlin O’Hara, someone with experience in spiritual matters and Galderkhaani artifacts. They wanted her to help them save Galderkhaan from destruction by shutting down the Source in the past. Perhaps they had found Caitlin and she had done just the opposite—activated it here and now, or at least part of it, to obliterate the possibility of rewriting history. Or perhaps she made it burn hotter in the past somehow, and there was blowback in the present. Those details are the ones he lacked.
    But he had no explanation to fit the geology and the narrative that had been unfolding. The deep, deep magma would have required a reason to suddenly “burp” at that location.
    In any case, Pao and Rensat clearly had not succeeded. Otherwise, he would not be here. If Galderkhaan had survived, it would still be here. The concept of multiple timelines, of alternative histories, of parallel worlds was not something he was willing to consider . . . yet.
    But then, a few days ago, the spirit world was not something in which you put much credence either , he thought.
    He flexed his index finger, which he had been typing with. Below him, the module was not quiet. There was the ever-present hum ofgenerators, the occasional hammering shriek of wind, and the creak of the structure as it endured those winds. Yet that was all background noise and Mikel started when his phone chimed.
    â€œFinally!” he said as he saw Flora’s personal number. He pressed the device to his ear and plugged a finger in the other to drown out the noise. “Hello—Flora?”
    â€œNo,” the male voice said from the other end. “It’s Casey Skett.”
    Mikel was instantly alert. For the last ten years Skett had worked with the Group disposing of biological “accidents” that occasionally resulted from their research. He worked for the New York City Department of Sanitation’s “DAR” division—dead animal removal. That was the only reason he ever came to the mansion. Skett should not be using Flora’s phone.
    â€œCasey, what’s going on over there?” Mikel asked with an unprecedented sense of foreboding.
    â€œI want you to talk to Flora,” he said, his voice crackling through the bad connection. “And then I want you to do me a