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  Its plan was proceeding perfectly. It would continue to control their progress until its master was ready to enter this world with Hell’s full army at his command and then they would begin to take back what was theirs, the highest throne in existence. Indeed, they would destroy the Old One’s plan. They would take back what they had lost. And when it was over the galaxy would run red with the blood of stars.

  It laughed.

  Then it threw on the breaker to connect the current.

  ***

  A magenta light installed in the wall abruptly began spinning and a voice echoed clearly over the speakers, “Alert! Alert! Alert!”

  Francois calmly raised his head. “It appears your presence is required, William.”

  Blanchard was out the door knocking personnel from his path as he quickly fled down the corridor analyzing a dozen scenarios. Fortunately, the elevator was free. He descended and ran a quarter mile to charge into the Observation Room.

  The ATLAS was engulfed in what appeared to be blue liquid lava.

  “What the hell!” gasped Blanchard. “I told you to leave the collider down until we finished maintenance!”

  “We didn’t do anything!” a woman cried.

  “What do you mean!”

  “I mean that it turned itself on!” the woman shouted. “I mean that we didn’t turn on the damn power! It turned on the power!”

  “Shut it down!” Blanchard cried and didn’t wait for anyone to obey his command as he leaped to a huge complex of switches and began to throw every breaker and push every red emergency shutdown button. Then he jumped to another console that was lit with blue sparks and began smashing down levers and suddenly …

  The image of lava vanished.

  For a long time nobody moved.

  Blanchard found himself breathless. Then he somehow, surprisingly, found the strength to ask, “Did … did anything register on the neutrino detectors? And I mean on any of them? Even in the pipes?”

  The female physicist took a moment to rake hair from her brow, then brushed sweat from her eyes and face. “I don’t know,” she whispered shakily, head bowed, breathing heavily. “Give me a minute.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Blanchard moaned, raising a hand to his forehead. He looked toward the woman again. “Listen, Margaret, I want to be clear on this. Are you telling me the damn thing just turned on the power all by itself?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying, Bill!”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “I was standing right here, Bill!” Margaret slammed a hand on the desk. “We had no breakers on at the substations! No power in the pipes! Nothing! We had a dead ATLAS! Then everything came on at the same time! And before I could even read what was happening that damn blue lava crap surrounded the ATLAS and all hell broke loose! All the alarms went off! I’ll be surprised if somebody didn’t get shot by security! I know those cowboys panicked! They’ve been in a panic for weeks!”

  “Are you sure the electricians didn’t accidentally turn on one of the substations? I mean …” Blanchard gestured to the Observation Room window, “… those monkeys are still working on the insulation, right?”

  Momentarily closing her eyes, Margaret replied, “I’m positive, Bill. Whoever or whatever turned the power on …” She shook her head, “is not on the payroll. And no unauthorized activity was recorded on a monitor. Also, we know exactly where everyone was and what they were doing. You know that everyone is accounted for at all times and there was nobody but guards close to any substation.”

  Blanchard found himself staring at the ATLAS.

  Closing his eyes, he shook his head.

  “God help us,” he whispered.

  ***

  It was late in the afternoon when Isaiah and Amanda were escorted out of the CERN main office building, which was located a good quarter mile from the laboratory and the particle collider.

  Although it was all included on the same campus with apartment complexes, shops, grocery stores, everything a small town needed; the entire facility was classified as a laboratory and the perimeter was continually monitored by Switzerland’s military.

  William Blanchard had broken the tragic news of Cynthia’s death to Amanda with appropriate gravity. Then he presented Amanda with a death certificate confirming cause and a letter authorizing her to collect five million dollars from CERN’s self-financed life insurance company. Nor did Blanchard fail to mention that the amount of five million dollars was standard for all personnel and it was a matter of proper procedure that Amanda accepts the payment on her sister’s behalf.

  Isaiah said nothing through the discussion. And as they strolled down the long walkway toward the parking lot, Amanda asked, “Why am I the only one who doesn’t believe a word these people are telling us? The other families just took the money. But I don’t buy it. I won’t. I can’t. I mean, do you believe him?”

  Isaiah walked in silence, casually scanning the surroundings.

  “Isaiah?” Amanda looked over. “Did you believe him?”

  “Let’s not talk about it,” he said.

  Amanda glanced to each side. “Somebody listening?”

  He shrugged.

  “You want to talk in the car?”

  “I don’t have anything to say right now.”

  “So you’re not talking to me now? At all? What the hell, Isaiah?”

  Isaiah glanced at her without expression. “We’ll take the car back to town. Then we’re ditching it. We’ll talk later.”

  After a moment Amanda softly said, “I don’t think I like the sound of that.”

  Isaiah casually took another step.

  Without a word.

  ***

  “There’s just no damn way into this collider,” said Roy Burris as he leaned back from the blueprints. “Even if we can put the security system offline for a few minutes, we still need a way in that’s relatively unguarded.”

  Angrily he swept the sheets from the table. “This freaking thing is built like Fort Knox inside the Federal Reserve.” He grunted. “Nuclear missile silos don’t have this kind of security. It must have cost a hundred bazillion bucks just to build the freaking place. And they must have cornered the titanium market. A thousand Virginia-class subs wouldn’t have this much titanium.”

  Janet sighed, “Relax, Roy. I have an idea.”

  “What’s your idea?”

  “Okay, hear me out. This place is built on the context of a nuclear reactor, so there’s lots of fire exits, right?”

  Suspicion narrowed Roy’s eyes. “Yeah. Okay. I see where you’re going. What’s the downside?”

  “The downside is that we can’t just shut off the alarm to a single fire exit.”

  Jackman scowled, “What the hell? Do you have an idea or not?”

  “Yes,” answered Janet, “I have an idea and it will work. But Susan and I will have to shut down every single security, fire, and gas alarm in the corridor at the same time in order to get you inside a tunnel. And something that radical is going to initiate a system-wide response that … I can’t even guess what will happen. But I’m fairly certain it will rise to banana-balls and we might be imprisoned in that Observation Room until the computers are back online. And then they’re going to see that one of the tunnels has been compromised and they’ll be coming after you.” She scrunched her face. “After they kill Susan and me.”

  “That’s the only way?” asked Roy.

  “Yeah,” Janet nodded curtly, “that’s the only way.”

  A moment.

  Roy finally said, “All right. Then this is how we’re going to play it. Both of you go to work tomorrow in the Observation Room. At exactly nine o’clock you reboot the computer and put security offline. Then we’ll slip inside an escape tunnel and cowboy it.”

  Jackman: “Why do we have to cowboy it?”

  �
��Because, sir, the corridor where these nitrogen and helium containers are located has rotating shifts. It’s always filled with guards and electricians and mechanics, so the son of a bitch is never empty. I’d say there’s at least a hundred people in that tunnel at any time, day or night. So we’ll probably have to neutralize a few.”

  “No,” Susan shook her head. “There won’t be any personnel in the corridor tomorrow morning.”

  “Why not?” asked Jackman.

  “Because they plan to start up the collider tomorrow morning. By eight-thirty the collider corridor will be empty.”

  Roy placed a hand over his face for a second, then removed it to say, “Well, if that corridor is empty when the Semtex blows, nobody should get killed except everybody in the Observation Room.”

  “Like us?” asked Susan.

  “You two won’t be there.”

  Susan glanced to Janet. “Where will we be?”

  “Outside,” said Roy. “After you set security offline, we make entry and set the charges. Then we’ll come to you, neutralize the guards at the Observation Room, and get you out. When the satchels blow, you’ll be with us.”

  Janet: “Won’t some shot-dead guards be evidence that we, meaning the United States, did something to this thing and then they’ll blame us? And isn’t this supposed to be a ‘secret mission?’”

  “Nobody can trace what country fires a nine-millimeter round into some slow-moving guard. Lead is universal.” Roy reached out to tap the blueprint. “Plus that, this tunnel is three hundred feet underground. Some parts are six hundred feet underground. It’s insulated from the inside, insulated from the outside. If these liquid helium and liquid nitrogen tanks blow, there’s no heat source, no reason for that nitrogen and helium, which is frozen at something like minus four hundred degrees, to even begin thawing out. I wouldn’t doubt that they won’t be able to open that tunnel for ten years. Maybe more. And, by then, any haphazard bodies they find won’t matter.” He paused. “Yeah, this should work unless …”

  Susan leaned forward. “Unless?”

  “Unless we have to change the plan at the last second,” finished Roy.

  “Yeah. That would absolutely suck, dude. For real.”

  “Well,” Roy allowed, “plans do have a tragic way of going south. And, if it does, I’ll have to notify the two of you or you’ll die horribly.”

  Susan asked, “Radios don’t work down there, Roy. How are you going to notify us of a change of plans?”

  “With one of the corridor telephones,” muttered Janet, chin on fist.

  Roy nodded, “Exactly. They have hard-wired phone systems in the corridor in case of emergencies. And they’re all wired to the Observation Room just like a nuclear plant. So in a worst-case scenario I’ll raise you on the phone and Tanto will come for you early because I have to guarantee the charges.” He released a deep breath. “I swear to God, they’re gonna make me a colonel for this. This is a suicide mission no sane person would accept. We have no delivery, no backup, no extraction. We live or die and it’s up to us whether we execute the perfect plan perfectly. The only thing missing is that they won’t hang us if we get caught. We’ll be frozen in a manmade glacier for a thousand years.”

  “You’ll need me to help with the charges,” said General Jackman. “And Tanto might need backup, so I’ll go with him. We’ll get the girls and meet you at the escape tunnel and we’ll make tracks. That work for you guys?”

  Janet laughed, “Always with a backup plan. That’s why you make the big bucks, general.”

  Roy: “Works for me, sir.”

  Susan looked at Roy. “Are you guys gonna have enough time to set all seven satchels on the collider?”

  “Yeah, but it’s really all about placement,” Roy answered. “These tanks are interconnected. If you blow them at a juncture, you blow all of them. It’s like making a tiny pinprick in one balloon that feeds the air to twenty additional balloons. And it will be impossible to seal seven blown-to-Hell helium and nitrogen tanks before these people get seventeen miles of frozen corridor.”

  Janet murmured, “Then we’d better be ready to run when you get to us. Pick ’em up and put ’em down. Fleet of foot. Like the wind.”

  “Sounds good.” Roy focused on Jackman. “Sir? With all respect, are you certain that we don’t have to clear this plan?”

  “Are you crazy, Burris?” grunted Jackman. “No sane person would put his name on this. Hell, even I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t gotten volunteered for it.”

  Silence.

  “Well,” said Janet, “we do have one thing going for us.”

  “We do?” asked Tanto blandly. “I’d love to hear it.”

  “I’m almost certain that these maniacs at the Hadron Supercollider haven’t succeeded yet.”

  “Succeeded in what?”

  “Succeeded in their ultimate goal, Tanto.”

  “What the hell is their ultimate goal?” Tanto stared. “Look, I’m just a gunfighter. I just snatch and grab. Shoot and loot. What do you mean?”

  Janet sighed, then, “The ultimate goal of these physicists was not just to open this portal and turn these demons into slaves, Tanto.” She leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Think about it. This supercollider propels neutrinos and elemental particles to ninety-nine percent of the speed of light, and Einstein proved you cannot surpass the speed of light or gravity will basically vaporize you. In other words, you die. But if these creatures on the other side of this portal know how to enhance the collider so that it can go around the speed of light, then these physicists will be able to travel backward or forward in time. But since nobody hostile to us is here—and I mean here in this room at this moment—to stop what we’re planning to do, then they don’t know we’re here, which means they can’t read the future. And if they can’t read the future, they can’t change the past or we wouldn’t be here. We’d be dead somewhere along the highway and that means we don’t have to worry about human intervention. But we do have to worry about alien intervention.”

  Roy leaned back. “Alien intervention?”

  “Yes,” Janet nodded. “These aliens or interdimensional beings or demons or Nephilim are not helping these people for the good of all mankind. These creatures have their own insidious reasons for telling these fools how to strengthen the supercollider and they are infinitely more intelligent and infinitely more savage than any human being ever was or ever will be. And when these monsters realize what we’re doing, and I bet you that some of them are already here, they’ll fight to the death. And they only know one level of violence—the absolute annihilation of whatever gets in their way.”

  Tanto muttered moodily, “I guess we can forget rules of engagement.”

  Roy lowered his gaze, staring into his empty glass.

  “I’d say we’re already engaged.”

  ***

  It was evening before Isaiah finally found a hovel of a restaurant that he deemed safe and Amanda dropped her new baggage on the floor beside a rather rickety-looking wooden chair. She tiredly took a seat. “Okay,” she began, brushing away a widespread handful of wind tousled hair, “tell me again why we had to leave everything at the hostel? And why did we change cars so fast?”

  “Because they know you’re not satisfied with their explanation about what happened to Cynthia,” Isaiah responded a bit obliquely. “And that means they’ve already bugged our clothes, our car, and our room at the hostel. They’ve also been re-tasking satellites, which ain’t no piece of cake, to keep a visual on us. And within a half-hour they’ll have a laser pointed at this room to listen in on what we have to say.” He eased back the curtain, peering. “So, in a way, half of this is futile. You can’t hide from these people. It all depends on how much interest they take in you. Right now I’d say we’re in the middle of the road. But changing cars peaked their interest.”

  “Why all the caution?�
�� Amanda leaned forward, elbows on her thighs, hands dangling. “We didn’t do anything but ask a few harmless questions.”

  “There’s no such thing as harmless with these people,” said Isaiah. “They don’t like questions, harmless or otherwise. And I’ve finally decided that your sister isn’t missing because of some freak accident. If it was a legitimate accident it would have been explained in more detail. When those helium tanks exploded a few years back, it was all you read about for months. No,” he shook his head, “they don’t want anyone to know what happened.”

  Amanda squinted. “So you’re back to your theory about Cynthia being snatched up by something?” She paused. “Like, something from the other side? And that’s where she is now? Lost in space?”

  “I’m not sure. But I believe that there was a very serious accident and something tragic happened to Cynthia and maybe a few more. It was something nobody in that place anticipated and something they don’t know how to explain and that’s why they’re trying to buy our silence.” Isaiah leaned back. “Do you still want to stay or take the money and run? Taking the money is the only safe option because after this I can’t make any promises.”

  “Of course I want to stay!” Amanda slapped the table. “I want to know what happened to Cynthia! My sister! Jesus! What a stupid question! Do you think I’m made of snowflakes? I can take a few hits!”

  It was the first true anger Isiah had witnessed in her. He eased back the curtain, glancing out, before he said, “I’m only sure of one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m sure they did something big, and probably outrageously illegal, but it went bad and now they’re trying to cover it up because they lost people to something that worries them even more than another scandal. If they could explain what happened, they wouldn’t be so scared. But they are scared and that means they don’t have a clue about what happened to that machine or your sister or anyone else.”