EPTEMBER 7, 11:00 A.M.

SOUTHERN URAL MOUNTAINS

With a rifle over his shoulder, Monk climbed the last switchback of the road. Ahead, the mining complex clustered in front of a granite cliff face. The metal outbuildings and old powerhouse had all oxidized. Roofs and gutters dripped icicles of rust, windows were broken or shuttered, and corroded equipment lay where they’d been dropped decades ago: shovels, picks, wheelbarrows.

Off by the cliffs rose tall mounds of old mine tailings and waste rock dumps. Amid the stone piles rose the tower of a tipple, with its loading booms, hoists, and various chutes used to tip ore ears and unload them into trucks.

As Monk limped on his hastily bandaged leg, he wondered how he knew so much about a mining operation. Had his family been involved—

His head suddenly jangled through a series of flashbulb-popping images: an older man in coveralls, coated in coal dust…the same man in a coffin…a woman crying…

An electrical stab of pain ended the flickering bits of memory.

Wincing, he led the children and Marta through a maze of conveyor belts, ore car tracks, and dump chutes toward their goal. A pair of rails led to a gaping opening in a cliff face. It was the main entrance to the mine.

As they crossed, Monk looked over his shoulder.

Lake Karachay spread below. Monk estimated it was two miles across the width here, and three times as long. He searched the forested mountains on the far side, looking for any evidence of where they’d started this journey.

“We must hurry,” Konstantin reminded him.

Monk nodded. The older boy walked between the two younger children. Marta trailed. He led them toward the opening.

As he neared, he discovered a problem. A large wooden barrier, constructed of stacked and mortared wooden logs, blocked the mine shaft from floor to roof.

From the condition of the complex outside, it looked as if no one had been here in ages. But Monk spotted a pile of cigarette butts and empty vodka bottles at the foot of the barrier. Fresh boot prints covered the sandy floor. The mine below was not as abandoned as it appeared. Someone had been taking a break here recently.

Monk glanced behind him. There were no parked trucks or recent tire tracks crossing the complex, so whoever had been lounging here had left by another means. Konstantin had already described that means.

An underground train crossed under the lake from Mine Complex 337 below to Chelyabinsk 88. Whoever labored in the mines must ordinarily exit out the other side.

Monk prayed they would not be expecting visitors at their back door.

He crossed to the rectangle of riveted steel set into the barrier.

“What do we do?” Monk asked. “Knock?”

Konstantin frowned and crossed to the door. He lifted the latch and pushed. The door swung open, unlocked.

Monk fumbled his rifle around and pointed it through the door. “Warn a guy before you do that!” he whispered.

“No one comes here,” Konstantin said. “Too dangerous. So no need for keys. Only sealed to keep bears and wolves away.”

“And the stray tiger,” Monk mumbled.

Konstantin dropped his pack, opened it, and fished out their flashlight. He passed it to Monk, who shouldered his rifle.

Ducking through the door in the main tunnel, Monk pointed his flashlight. Massive wooden beams shored up the passageway as it slanted into the mountain. A set of steel tracks headed into the darkness, extending beyond the reach of the flashlight’s glow. Closer at hand, a pair of ore cars rested on the tracks near the barrier.

Down the way, Monk noted shadowy branching tunnels. He suspected the mountain was honeycombed with shafts and tunnels. No wonder the current miners occasionally wandered up out of the Stygian darkness for a little light, even if it was in the shadow of a poisonous lake.

Monk asked for directions as they headed out. “So where to?”

Konstantin kept silent.

Monk turned to him.

The boy shrugged. “I do not know. All I know is down.”

Monk sighed. Well, that was a direction.

Flashlight in hand, he descended into the darkness.

Savina noted all the smiling faces. Excited chatter spread among the older children, while the younger ones scurried around, trying to dispense nervous energy. They were in direct contrast to the very youngest among them, those under five and too immature for their implants. Those few remained quiet and detached, demonstrating varying levels of untreated autism: sitting silently, staring vacantly, plagued by repetitive gestures.

Four teachers sought to organize their sixty or so charges.

“Stay in your groups!”

The train waited beyond the open blast doors at the back of Chelyabinsk 88. It would be transporting the children for a short pleasure ride. The young ones were occasionally allowed such a luxury, but today the train was on a one-way trip. It would not be returning, coming to a dead stop at the heart of Operation Saturn.

Behind Savina’s shoulders, the old Soviet-era industrial apartments stared down at the children with hollow eyes. The teachers also had the same haunted look despite their bright words.

“Did all of you take your medicine?” a matronly woman called out.

The medicine was a sedative combined with a radiosensitive compound. While excited now, in another hour the children would be drifting into a disassociated slumber. It would ease any anxiety when the charges blew at the far end of the tunnel and initiated Operation Saturn. The first dump of lake water through the heart of the tunnel and its subsequent blast of radiation would transform the radiosensitive compound in the children’s bloodstream into a deadly nerve toxin, killing them instantly.

The group had considered simply euthanizing the children via lethal injection, but such an intimate act of killing strained even the most professional detachment. Plus afterward, all the small limp bodies would have had to been hauled, loaded, and transported to the heart of Operation Saturn. The plan was for the radiation, blasting for weeks as the lake drained, to burn the bodies and denature the DNA beyond examination—that is, if anyone ever dared approach the bodies. The radiation levels in the tunnel would defy penetration for decades.

So in the end, the current plan was deemed efficient, minimally cruel, and offered the children one last bit of joy and frivolity.

Still, Savina stood with her arms behind her back. Her hands were clenched together in a white-knuckled grip, necessary to keep from grabbing children and pulling them from the train.

But she had saved ten.

She had to console herself with this reality.

The ten best.

They remained in the apartment building behind her, where the control station for Operation Saturn was located. Once done here, the ten Omega subjects would be transported to the new facility in Moscow. It was time for the project to climb out of the darkness and into the sun.

It would be her legacy.

But such a rise had a cost.

Bright laughter and merry calls trailed behind the last of the children. They argued over who would get to ride in the open ore cars and who would be in the front or rear cabs. Only a few older voices wondered why they were going without any of the adults, but even these sounded more excited than concerned.

With the last of the children loaded, the train hissed, hydraulic brakes sighed, and with a snap of electricity, it rolled off down the tunnel. Laughter and shouts trailed back to them. A moment later the blast doors slowly sealed over the end of the tunnel, cutting off their happy voices.

The four teachers headed away. No one spoke to anyone. They barely made contact. Except for a thick-waisted matron in an ankle-length apron. As she passed, she lifted a consoling hand toward Savina, then thought better of it and lowered it again.

“You didn’t have to come,” the woman mumbled.

Savina turned away without a word, not trusting her voice.

Yes…Yes, I did.

11:16 A.M.

Pripyat, Ukraine

Gray sat in the back of the limousine. Up front, Rosauro drove, with Luca in the passenger seat. They rocketed past the first checkpoint on their flight out of the city. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone stretched in a thirty-kilometer radius out from the reactor complex. It had two checkpoints, one at the ten-kilometer mark and one at the thirty.

Gray wanted to be outside that second gate before anyone realized something was amiss at the reactor. It would not take long for the dead bodies to be discovered and for the place to be locked down.

Earlier, as Gray and Kowalski had fled overland back to Pripyat from the site of the ceremony, he had called Rosauro on the walkie-talkie that Masterson had supplied him. She had reported an inability to reach Sigma command. He had instructed her to keep trying. By the time Gray arrived at the hotel, lines of communication with Washington had reopened. Rosauro had commandeered one of the limousines. She had also stolen the driver’s mobile phone.

Gray clutched the phone now, awaiting a call from Director Crowe. Painter had his hands full over in Washington, but at least Mapplethorpe was out of commission and Sasha was safe.

Gray shared the back of the limousine with Elizabeth and Kowalski. His partner sat bare-chested as Elizabeth treated the gunshot wound to his shoulder.

“Quit wiggling!”

“Well, it goddamn hurts.”

“It’s just iodine.”

“Sooo, it still stings like a son of a—”

The woman’s scowl silenced any further expletive.

Gray had to give the man credit. Kowalski had saved his life at the hangar by dropping that half-ton steel hook. Though Elena might have done the deed, it had been Kowalski’s sharp eyes that had noted the threat and saved him.

Still, they weren’t out of danger yet.

Gray turned and stared out at the roll of passing hills, dotted with copses of birches. His heart continued to pound. His mind spun through a hundred different scenarios. As they raced away from Chernobyl, he knew they should be heading somewhere.

Nicolas’s last words plagued him: You’ve not won…millions will still die.

What did he mean? Gray knew it had not been an idle threat. Something else was scheduled to happen. Even the name of Nicolas’s plan—Operation Uranus—had bothered Gray before. The name was taken from an old Soviet victory during World War II against the Germans. But the victory was not won by the single operation alone. It was accomplished via a perfectly executed tandem of strategies. Two operations: Uranus followed by Saturn.

As Gray fled the hangar, Nicolas had hinted as much. Another operation was set to commence, but where and in what form?

The phone finally rang.

Gray flipped it open and pressed it to his ear. “Director Crowe?”

“How are you doing out there?” Painter asked.

“As well as can be expected.”

“I’ve got transportation arranged for you. There’s a private airstrip a few miles outside the Exclusion Zone, used to accommodate the ceremony’s VIP guests. British intelligence has offered the use of one of their jets. They’re apparently trying to save face for not listening close enough to Professor Masterson, one of their own former agents. By the way, I’ve gone ahead and sounded the alarm. Word is spreading like wildfire through intelligence channels about the aborted attack at Chernobyl. For safety’s sake, evacuations are already under way, but so far you’re ahead of that chaos.”

“Very good.” Gray could not discount that the director’s firm voice had helped take the edge off his anxiety. He wasn’t alone in this.

“You’ve certainly had a busy day, Commander.”

“As have you…but I don’t think it’s over.”

“How do you mean?”

Gray related what the Russian senator had said and about his own misgivings.

“Hold on,” Painter said. “I’ve got Kat Bryant and Malcolm Jennings here. I’m putting you on speaker.”

Gray continued, explaining his fears of a second operation, something aimed at a larger number of casualties.

Kowalski also listened as Elizabeth packed a bandage over his wound. “Tell them about the jelly beans,” he called over.

Gray frowned at him. Back at the hangar, Elena had attempted to warn Kowalski about something before she’d departed to Nicolas’s side, but the man had clearly misunderstood, losing something in the translation.

“You know,” Kowalski pressed. “The eighty-eight jelly beans.”

Kat’s voice whispered faintly from the phone. “What did he say?”

“I don’t think he understood what—”

“Did he say chella-bins?”

“No, jelly beans!”

Kowalski nodded, satisfied. Gray mentally shook his head. He could not believe he was having this conversation.

A confusing bit of chatter followed as Painter, Kat, and Malcolm discussed some matter. Gray didn’t follow all of it. He heard Kat say something about the number eighty-eight drawn in blood.

Malcolm’s voice spoke louder, excited, directed at both Gray and Kat. “Could what you both have heard been the word Chelyabinsk?”

“Chelyabinsk?” Gray asked aloud.

Kowalski perked up.

Gray rolled his eyes. “That might be it.”

Kat agreed.

Malcolm spoke quickly, a sure sign the pathologist was excited. “I’ve come across that name. During all the tumult here, I hadn’t had a chance to contemplate its significance.”

“What?” Painter pressed.

“Dr. Polk’s body. The radiation signature from samples in his lungs matched the specific isotope content of the uranium and plutonium used at Chernobyl. But as you know, subsequent tests clouded this assessment. It wasn’t as clear as I’d initially thought. It was more like his body had been polluted by a mix of radioactive sources, though the strongest still appeared to be the fuel source at Chernobyl.”

“Where are you going with all this?” Kat asked.

“I based my findings on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s database of hot zones. But one region of the world is so polluted by radioactivity that it’s impossible to define one signature to it. That region is Chelyabinsk, in central Russia. The Soviet Union hid the heart of its uranium mining and plutonium production in the Ural Mountains there. For five decades, the region was off-limits to everyone. Only in the last couple of years has the restriction been lifted.” He paused for emphasis. “It was in Chelyabinsk that the fuel for Chernobyl was mined and stored.”

Gray sat straighter. “And you think it was there that Dr. Polk was poisoned—not at the reactor, but where its fuel was produced. In Chelyabinsk.”

“I believe so. Even the number eighty-eight. The Soviets built underground mining cities in the Ural Mountains and named them after the local postal codes. Chelyabinsk forty, Chelyabinsk seventy-five.”

And Chelyabinsk 88.

Gray’s heart pounded harder again. He now knew where they had to go. Even had the postal code.

Painter understood, too. “I’ll alert British intelligence. Let them know you’ll be going on a little detour. They should be able to get you to the Ural Mountains in a little over an hour.”

Gray prayed they still had enough time.

Millions will die.

As the limousine reached the second checkpoint and was waved through by a bored-looking guard, Painter continued. “But, Commander, in such a short time, I can’t get you any ground support out there.”

Gray spoke as the limousine sailed out of the Exclusion Zone and into the open country. “I think we’ve got that covered.”

To either side of the road, older-model trucks had parked in low ditches or pulled into turnouts. A good dozen of them. Men sat in the open beds and crowded the cabs.

In the front seat, Luca leaned over to Rosauro and spoke in a rush. She slowed the limousine, and Luca straightened and waved an arm out the passenger window.

The signal was plain to read.

Follow us.

As the limousine continued, the trucks pulled out and trailed after them. Like Director Crowe, Luca Hearn had sounded his own alarm, using the phones back at the hotel after they’d initially failed to raise central command.

Gray recalled the man’s words in describing the Romani: We are everywhere. Luca was proven right as his clarion call was answered.

Behind the limousine, a Gypsy army gathered.

11:38 A.M.

SOUTHERN URAL MOUNTAINS

The farther Monk descended into the mine, the more he became convinced the place was deserted. He heard no echo of voices or thrum of distant machinery. And while this eased his mind that they’d not be discovered, it was also disconcerting. With the silence, it was as if the place were holding its breath.

Monk headed down a steeply slanted access tunnel, his wounded leg burning and painful. Without a map, Monk had to follow the trail of whoever left the cigarette butts and bottles at the front gate to the mine. It wasn’t a hard track to discern. The sandy bed of the floor showed clear boot prints. The miner took a direct route back, crossing down some steep access chutes.

And though the place seemed deserted now, Monk had found plenty of evidence of past activity: fresh tailings dumped into shafts, shiny new gear leaning on walls, even an abandoned ice chest half filled with water and floating cans of beer.

Konstantin trailed with his sister, while Pyotr remained glued to Monk’s hip. The child’s eyes were huge upon the dark passages. Monk felt the fever of his terror as Pyotr clutched to him. It wasn’t the cramped spaces that scared him, but the darkness. Monk had occasionally clicked the lamp off to search for any telltale evidence of light.

At those moments, Pyotr would wrap tight to him.

Marta also closed upon the boy, protective, but even the chimpanzee trembled in those moments of pitch darkness, as if she shared Pyotr’s terror.

Monk reached the bottom of the chute. It dumped into another long passageway with a railway track and an idle conveyor belt. As he searched for boot prints, he noted a slight graying to the darkness at the end of the tunnel. He crouched, pulled Pyotr to his side in the crook of his stumped arm, and clicked off his flashlight.

Darkness dropped over them like a shroud. But at the far end of the passage, a faint glow was evident.

Konstantin moved next to Monk.

“No more light,” Monk whispered and passed the boy the darkened flashlight. If he was wrong about the place being deserted, he didn’t want to announce their approach with a blaze of light.

Monk swung up the rifle he had confiscated from the dead Russian sniper. “Quietly now,” he warned.

Monk edged down the tunnel. He walked on the ends of the railroad ties, avoiding the crunch of the gravel bed. The children followed in his footsteps. Marta balanced along one of the rails. As they continued, Monk strained for any voices, any sign of habitation. All he heard was an echoing drip of water. It was a noise that had grown louder the deeper they descended. Monk was all too conscious of the neighboring presence of Lake Karachay.

He also became aware of a growing odor, a mix of oil, grease, and diesel smoke. But as they reached the bend, Monk’s keen nose detected another scent under the industrial smells. It was fetid, organic, foul.

Cautiously rounding the turn, Monk discovered the passage ended in a central cavern, blasted out of the rock. It was only a hundredth the size of Chelyabinsk 88, but it still rose three stories high and stretched half the size of a football field.

Most of the floor was covered in parked equipment and piles of construction material: coiled conduit, stacks of wooden beams, a half-dismantled column of scaffolding, piles of rock. Off to one side rose a tall drill rig, mounted on the back of a truck. The place looked as if it had been hurriedly evacuated. There was no order to it, like someone packing a moving van in a hurry, just dumping things haphazardly.

At least they’d left the lights on.

Several sodium lamps glowed at the opposite side of the room.

“Careful,” Monk said. He motioned the children to hang back, to be ready to bolt and hide among the debris if necessary.

Monk crept forward, staying low, rifle ready at his shoulder. He zigzagged across the space, holding his breath, cautious of his footing. Reaching the far side, he discovered a tall set of steel blast doors, sealed and reflecting the lamplight. They looked newer than the mine works. To the right stood a small shack, about the size of a tollbooth. Through its open door, Monk spotted a few dark monitors, a keyboard, and rows of switches.

Nobody was here.

Monk noted the tremble in his rifle. He was wired and edgy. He took a deep settling breath. The fetid reek was much stronger. Off to the left, Monk noted black oil pooled beyond a stack of equipment. He crept out and peeked around the corner.

Not oil. Blood.

He found the source of the smell. A tumble of bodies draped the back wall, tangled in a heap, outfitted in mining gear or white laboratory coats. Blood and gore spattered the walls behind them.

Death by firing squad.

Someone had been cleaning house.

Behind him, Konstantin appeared, creeping out into the open. Monk returned, shook his head, and pointed to the computer shack. He didn’t want the children to see the slaughter. He motioned to Pyotr and Kiska to remain where they were.

Konstantin joined Monk as he strode toward the blast doors. “I’ve been here before,” the boy said. “We’re allowed to ride the train sometimes. These are the substation controls.”

“Show me,” Monk said.

Konstantin had already highlighted what General-Major Savina Martov was planning, nicknamed Operation Saturn. It lay beyond these doors.

The two crammed into the shack, and Konstantin studied the substation’s controls, his eyes flickering over the Cyrillic lettering. Monk could almost hear his mind flying at speeds beyond normal mentation. After a moment of study, his hands flew over the board, flipping switches with deft assuredness, as if he’d done this a thousand times before.

As he worked, Monk asked, “How did you learn about Operation Saturn?”

Konstantin glanced to him with a wincing look of embarrassment. “My skill is rapid calculation and derivative analysis. I work often in the Warren’s computer laboratory.” He shrugged.

Monk understood. You could turn a boy into a savant but he was still a boy: curious, mischievous, pushing boundaries.

“You hacked into her files.”

He shrugged again. “A week ago, Sasha—Pyotr’s sister—she drew me a picture. Gave it to me in the middle of the night. When we were all woken by one of Pyotr’s nightmares.”

“What picture?”

“The train here, with many children on board, all dead and burning. It also showed the mining site just past the blast doors here. So…so the next day, I broke into the files about the operation. I learned what was planned and when it was scheduled to happen. I didn’t know what to do. Whom to trust. Sasha left with Dr. Raev for America, so I talked to Pyotr.” Konstantin shook his head. “I don’t know how Pyotr knew…maybe he doesn’t even know…it’s sometimes like that.”

Konstantin stared up at Monk for understanding.

Though he didn’t completely, Monk still nodded. “What did Pyotr know?” he pressed.

“He is a strong empath. He sensed you would help us. He even knew your name. Said his sister whispered it to him in a dream. They are very strange, those two, very powerful.”

Monk heard a trace of fear in the boy’s voice.

Konstantin even glanced warily back toward Pyotr, then set back to work. “So we came for you.”

With a final flick of a switch, a row of monitors glowed to life across the top of the control board. They showed black-and-white images, views from different angles of a small cavern, rigged with scaffolding. On the floor was bolted a large steel iris.

The heart of Operation Saturn.

Motion drew Monk’s eye to the centermost screen. It showed a train rested outside the mining site. Open ore cars were loaded with children. Some had climbed out and stood around in confusion. Others appeared to be laughing and playing.

Konstantin clutched Monk’s sleeve. “They…they’re already here.”

Savina sat in the brightly lit control station, flanked by two technicians. They were running final diagnostics on two computers. The station was in a converted subbasement bunker beneath one of the abandoned apartment buildings. There were no windows. Their eyes on the world came from seven LCD screens wired into the walls. They displayed video feed from the cameras in the tunnel and at the operation site.

She stared at the parked train for another breath, then stood up, unable to remain seated. She felt a familiar crick in her back. She had failed to take her steroid injection, too busy with all the final preparations. She turned away from the view of the train. Not because it hurt to look—which it did—but because anxiety ran through her.

She checked her wristwatch. It was more than half past eleven o’clock, and she had still not heard from Nicolas. She exited the control room, so the others did not see her wring her hands. It was a weak matronly gesture, and she forced herself to stop. She headed to the stairs and climbed toward the level above. Not with any destination in mind, only to keep moving.

From her contacts in the intelligence community, she had already heard the rumblings of an “accident” at Chernobyl. A radiation leak. Dead bodies. The place was being evacuated. And if Nicolas had been successful, such a mass departure was too late. Perhaps her son had been caught up in the resultant chaos and had been unable to report to her yet. Her operation was set to commence in another forty-five minutes, once she heard confirmation from Nicolas.

As she climbed the stairs, she imagined him gloating in his success, possibly even enjoying a secret tryst with little Elena. It would not be unlike Nicolas to celebrate first and attend to business afterward. Anger tempered her anxiety.

She finally reached the floor above the control station. It had been converted into a domicile for the technicians: bedrooms, exercise space, and a central communal area full of sofas and dining tables. The only occupants at the moment were ten children. She knew each by name.

They turned to stare at her, their heads swiveling all at once, like a flock of birds turning in midflight. Savina felt a flicker of apprehension, a recognition of the foreignness of their minds. The Omega subjects were savants so talented that their skills crossed the threshold of the physical to a realm where Savina could not travel.

Boris, a thirteen-year-old with eyes so blue they appeared frosted, seemed almost to be studying her. His talent was an eidetic memory coupled with a retention that frightened. He even remembered his own birth.

“Why were we not allowed to go with the others?” he asked.

More heads nodded.

Savina swallowed before answering. “There is another path for all of you. Do you have your bags packed?”

They just stared. No answer was necessary. Of course their bags were packed. The question displayed the level of her own nervousness. Before her lay the power that would fuel the Motherland into a new era. And deep down, Savina knew such a power remained beyond her full comprehension.

“We will be leaving in an hour,” Savina said.

Those ten pairs of blue eyes stared back at her.

Footsteps sounded behind her. She turned as one of the technicians joined her.

“General-Major,” he said, “we’re having some glitch with the blast doors on the other side of the tunnel. If you could advise us how to proceed.”

She nodded, glad to focus her mind upon a problem.

She followed the technician back to the staircase. Still, she felt those ten pairs of eyes tracking her, cold and dispassionate, icy in their regard. To escape their judgment, she hurried down the stairs.

“Open the doors!” Monk called to Konstantin.

From inside the control station, the boy nodded. Electric motors sounded, and large steel gears began rolling the blast doors out of the way, splitting down the middle.

Konstantin came running over to him, out of breath. “Five minutes,” the boy warned.

Monk understood. Konstantin had sent the tunnel’s digital camera system into a diagnostic shutdown and reboot. The clever kid had engineered a five-minute blackout. They had that long to evacuate the children from the train before the cameras were back online.

There was little else he could do. The master control station lay at the other end of the tunnel. Once the subterfuge was detected, the other station would kill the power to Konstantin’s shack.

They had only this one shot.

As the doors parted, Monk squeezed through, followed by Konstantin. Marta also loped after them. The old chimpanzee wheezed with exhaustion, but she didn’t slow, even passing Monk.

The old girl knew they had to hurry.

A hundred yards away, the train rested on the tracks.

Monk ran toward it, hopping a bit on his wounded leg. Konstantin called out in Russian, yelling at them to get off the train and out the blast door. The boy waved both his arms.

“Just clear the train,” Monk said. “I must get moving as quickly as possible.”

Monk jangled alongside the train as he ran. He carried two assault rifles over his shoulders, each with sixty-round magazines. Konstantin had already given him a lesson on the manual drive mechanism for the train. It wasn’t much.

Get in the front cab, shove the lever up.

Reaching the train, Monk trotted along one side, Konstantin along the other. “Everyone off the train!” Monk shouted. “Out the doors!”

Konstantin echoed his orders in Russian.

Still, chaos ruled for a full half minute. Children yelled or cried. Hands grabbed at him, milling and jostling. But the kids were also well trained to follow orders. Slowly the tide shifted, and the children began to drift down the tunnel toward the doors.

No longer crowded underfoot, Monk reached the last car, a covered cab. He leaped through the open door and went to the front end. A small driver’s seat was flanked by a green and red stick. Green for go. Red for the brakes. A small dashboard displayed gauges and voltage readings.

Monk did not have time for finesse. He leaned out the window. “Konstantin!”

The boy’s voice echoed to him. “Clear! Go!”

Good enough.

Monk shoved the green lever forward. Electricity popped, casting a few sparks into the darkness ahead. The train lurched forward, then began to roll off down the tunnel.

Four minutes.

He had to get this train to the other end of the tunnel before the camera system rebooted. It was up to Konstantin to herd the children out of the tunnel and close the blast doors. Monk had instructed the boy how to jam the gears so that the doors would remain closed.

Konstantin also had one other task.

Monk had confiscated a pair of the miners’ radios. Once Monk reached the far doors, he would signal Konstantin to open them. If all went according to plan, Monk would have the advantage of surprise—and two fully loaded assault rifles. While likely a suicide mission, what choice did he have? The children were safe for the moment, but if Operation Saturn succeeded, how many millions more would die? Monk had no choice but to storm the master control station, guns blazing.

Initially, he had considered sabotaging the mine site, but Konstantin had paled at that suggestion. The charges—fifty of them—were primed with radio detonators. Even if he could scale the half kilometer of shaft in four minutes to reach them, any mishandling of the explosives risked setting them off.

So the matter was settled.

With a rattle of wheels, the train sailed down the dark tunnel, lit by occasional bare bulbs. The front cab also had a single headlamp, which cast a glow ahead of him. As the train trundled faster and faster, Monk noted kilometer markers on the wall. According to Konstantin, the tunnel ran four kilometers long.

Monk found himself holding his breath, counting off a full minute in his head. Along the right side, he saw the number 2 stenciled into the wall.

Halfway there.

At best, he would have less than thirty seconds to spare.

Not great, but not bad.

Then the lights went out, as if the hand of God had clapped.

Under Monk, the train sighed, as if echoing his despair. Without electricity, the train rolled to a stop in the pitch darkness.

Behind him, from the back of the train, a child screamed in raw terror. Monk’s body clenched. He knew that voice.

Pyotr.

Savina stared at the bank of darkened monitors in the control station. She shook her head. Minutes before, one of the technicians had summoned her down here, worried about a glitch in the system, something to do with the blast doors at the far end of the tunnel. By the time she’d got down here, the cameras were off-line, running a diagnostic subroutine.

No one had ordered it.

Suspicions hardened her veins. Something was wrong. Rather than sit idle, she took a preemptive move and cut all power to the tunnel.

“M.C. three thirty-seven,” Savina said. “There’s a substation over at the mining complex.”

One of the technicians, an electrical engineer, nodded to her.

“And as I recall, there’s a camera built into the control shack over there. To allow you to communicate with technicians on the other side.”

The man nodded again—then his eyes widened. “It’s on a system independent from the tunnel.”

It was a precaution engineered in case of breakdowns like now, leaving the two stations still able to communicate.

“Bring up that camera.” She tapped one of the monitors.

The engineer typed rapidly at his computer. A few moments later, the screen snapped to life in grainy black-and-white. The camera was small and utilitarian, angled above the control board of the shack to give a good view of the operator on that side.

Savina leaned closer. Out the shack’s open door, the camera caught a milling of children in the cavern beyond. Many children. The ones who had boarded the train.

Savina struggled to comprehend, when a taller boy stepped into view of the camera. He was tall, dark-haired, with a long, angular face. Her fingers tightened. She knew that boy.

Konstantin.

What was going on?

With all that had happened this morning, she’d had no time to follow up on Lieutenant Borsakov’s hunt for the American and the three children. She watched Konstantin wave an arm and call silently to the crowd of children. Borsakov had obviously failed.

But what were they doing over there?

She searched the crowd, looking for the American and the other two children. She sought one child in particular, the one she wanted back.

Pyotr screamed as the blackness smothered him. His eyelids stretched wide searching for any light, Marta held him in her strong arms. The two had used the confusion at the other end of the tunnel to sneak aboard the last car and hide.

Pyotr knew he had to stay with the man.

But the darkness…

Pyotr gasped, drowning in the black sea. He rocked and rocked while Marta tried to hold him. It was his nightmare come true. He’d had the same dream often: where his shadow rose up and consumed him, smothered him until there was only darkness. The only way to defend against it was to set himself on fire, to burn like a torch against that darkness—then he would wake screaming.

Other children said they saw him on fire in their own dreams. At first he thought they were making fun of him, but after the first few times, they all started looking strangely at him, seldom talked to him, rarely played with him. Teachers grew angry, too. They scolded, didn’t let him have sweetcakes with honey, said he upset the other children to the point that no one did well on their tests for days afterward. They blamed him for scaring everyone.

And it scared him, too, down to the bones—and that was only a dream. This darkness now was no dream.

Panicked, he strained to escape it, but it was everywhere. He sought light where there was none. Even that path terrified him, but it was better than the smothering inkiness.

Out of the darkness, pinpricks of light appeared like fiery needles punched through black cloth, willed into being by his terror. Just a few, then more and more. He stared upward as the starry landscape spread and pushed back the darkness.

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But he knew the truth. These were no stars.

As Pyotr strained, his heart fluttered like a trapped bird. He stared upward as the stars grew brighter, swelling larger as they fell closer. He knew he should turn away. But his eyes opened wider…as did the darkness inside him. It also sought the light, howling out of the dark pit, needing to be fed.

Stars began to fall faster and faster, a few at first, then others followed. From all directions, they swept down upon him, crashing toward him.

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He heard the cries and felt the hammering hearts. They filled him with their light. He fell backward as the night sky collapsed upon him and lit his core on fire.

Distantly, he heard a simian howl of warning.

Because Marta knew his secret.

In those waking moments after his nightmares, when he woke screaming, it wasn’t just fear—it was also exhilaration.

Something was dreadfully wrong with the children.

After cutting the power, Savina had continued to study the camera feed from M.C. 337. Though she had no audio, it was plain the children remained agitated, milling in confusion, some crying, most walking or standing shell-shocked. The only one who appeared in control was Konstantin. He moved among them, appearing into view, then disappearing again.

Savina kept a watch to see if Pyotr was among them.

Though she had ten Omega subjects, if the boy was there—

Then one of the children in view dropped to the floor. A neighboring child turned to the slumped child, then she also fell, as if clubbed. More and more children collapsed. Panicked, one boy ran past—then he, too, succumbed.

The technical engineer also noted the same. “Is it the neurotoxin?”

Savina stared, unsure. The radiosensitive compound was inert unless exposed to high doses of radiation. The readings at M.C. 337 had never been that high. A moment later, Konstantin reappeared. He carried a limp girl in his arms. It was his sister Kiska. He turned straight at the camera. His eyes full of terror.

Then Savina saw it—like a light snapped off in his eyes. The fear vanished to a dullness and down he went.

It wasn’t the neurotoxin.

Konstantin and Kiska hadn’t consumed the medication.

A thump sounded from overhead. Then another and another.

Savina stared up.

Oh, no…

Turning, she ran for the stairs. She flew up them two at a time. Her back cramped, and her heart pounded with a lance of pain. She burst into the room where the ten children had been waiting for her.

They had all collapsed, in chairs, on the floor, heads lolling, limbs slack. She rushed to Boris, knelt beside him, and checked the pulse at his throat. She felt a weak beat under her fingertips.

Still alive.

She rolled him over and lifted his eyelids, which hung at half-mast. The boy’s pupils were dilated wide and nonresponsive to light.

She climbed back to her feet and stared around the room.

What was happening?