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The world will burn unless the many become one.
It was a warning. The mosaic foretold what must come to pass or the world would be destroyed in some great fire. Elizabeth remembered Gray's concern that whatever operation was at work in these mountains would kill millions and most likely involved a nuclear or radiological event.
She pictured a mushroom cloud, burning and smoking with hellfire.
It was not unlike the billowing smoke from the mosaic.
unless the many become one.
She scrolled down to the bottom of the image, below the newly translated warning. She touched a finger to what lay there.
A chakra wheel.
Her fingertip traced a petal to the center. The chakra wheel represented the same warning. The numerous petals all led to one center.
The many become one.
She stared again at the five women, lifting a boy high.
Certainty grew in her not only about the accuracy of her translation, but also about its importance. Elizabeth's body trembled with dread. She had to get word out to someone. She crossed to the satellite phone Gray had left her. He had instructed her to call Director Crowe if there were any problems.
Still, she hesitated. What if she was wrong? What if she caused more of a mess?
She considered keeping silent. But she remembered her father, and all his secrets. Of Masterson and his. She was done with secrets and half-truths, of words not spoken.
No more.
She would not be her father.
Knowing her discovery was important, she raised the handset and tapped in the number Gray had left.
3:18 A. M.
Washington, D. C.
Painter watched as the child was prepped for the operation. He stood with Kat
Bryant in a neighboring observation room off Sigma's small surgical suite.
Sterile-wrapped equipment waited to be employed for the delicate operation: ultrasonic aspirators, laser scalpels, stereotactic localizers. Trays of steel tools and drills with various burrs lined tables. Inside the room, Lisa,
Malcolm, and a neurosurgical team from George Washington University Hospital continued the final preparations.
In the middle, Sasha lay under a thin surgical drape. All that was visible was the side of her head, shaved, coated in orange antiseptic, and trapped in a rigid frame attached to a sca
Kat, pale and worried, stood with one hand on the window.
Over the course of the past hour, a series of EEG results and CT scans had shown progressive brain damage in the child. Whatever was happening to Sasha, it was slowly burning out her brain. It was decided, while the child was still strong, to remove the implant. It seemed to be the focus around which the storm of neurological hyperactivity centered.
Lisa had used the term lightning rod.
The only way to save her was to remove it. The neurosurgeon had studied all the scans and X-rays. He believed the device could be removed safely. It would be a delicate procedure, but not beyond his abilities.
That had been the first good news all night.
Painter's phone jangled in his pocket. He considered not answering it, but he tugged it out and checked the I. D. From Kyshtym, Russia. He turned his back on the window, flipped open the phone, and answered it.
Painter Crowe here.
Director, a woman spoke, sounding greatly relieved. It was Elizabeth Polk.
Gray left this number.
He heard the anxiety in her rushed voice. What's wrong, Elizabeth?
I'm not sure. Something I discovered, translated anyway
Painter listened as she stated her case, her fears, what she believed was the message buried in an ancient mosaic.
The oracles were all slumped in their chairs, unconscious, drugged, drained.
Their sole reason for existing was to support the one who could save the world from destruction. I know this sounds crazy, but I think it's co
As she talked, Painter had swung back to the window overlooking the surgical suite. Her words resonated through him. Slumped, unconscious, drugged
Like Sasha's collapse.
He remembered Kat reporting the girl called out her brother's name just before she collapsed.
Their sole reason for existing was to support the one who could save the world from destruction.
Painter saw the surgeon lift his scalpel, ready to begin the operation.
No.
He bolted for the door.
Kat called to him. What's wrong?
Painter had no time. He burst through the sterile prep area and into the operating room. Stop! No one move!
1:14 P. M.
Southern Ural Mountains
General-Major, you should head downstairs to the bunker, the soldier warned.
He stood a head taller than her, thick with muscle. We shall make a stand here.
Another soldier dragged Dr. Petrov's screaming form into the room from the hallway. His leg had been blown off at the knee. Blood poured. Other soldiers ran in with the children carried over their shoulders. The group had been chased back to the apartment by the collapse of the Russian forces, retreating before the guerrilla assault.
The large soldier pointed a beefy arm toward the stairwell. Please,
General-Major. We will hold off as long as we can.
The children Savina said, knowing her plan was crumbling around her. She could not let anyone else steal what she had started. Shoot them all.
The man's eyes grew large, but he was a soldier.
He nodded.
Savina retreated down the stairs. She could not watch. Her legs stumbled under her as she reached the bottom of the stairs. The door to the room was four-inch steel. Barricaded inside, she would wait out the war above. Ahead, she noted the flicker of the screens beyond the doorway. In the center screen, water flooded poison into the earth. As she holed up here, she would take solace as she watched.
Gunfire erupted overhead.
The children
Cringing, she headed for the room.
But a shape stepped into view in the open doorway, blocking her.
A boy.
Pyotr.
Pyotr stood in the doorway and stared up at the woman. She was darkness and shadow in the gloom of the stairwell. He did not truly see her, but he knew her.
He focused on the flame of her heart, aglow at the foot of the stairs.
Pyotr, she called to him, with a shining note of hope in her voice.
As she stepped toward him, he lifted his arms and reached out not with flesh but with his fiery spirit. He cupped the flame of her heart between his open palms, holding it like a frightened bird. Then he gently squeezed, smothering her flame.
The woman dropped to her knees with a cry, a fist clutched to her heart. Pyotr, what are you ?
Hope turned to terror as she screamed.
He was not done.
There was another facet to Pyotr's talent of empathy. He could certainly sense others' emotions, but with the force of a hundred behind him, he could do more.
As a hundred eyes stared out of his, he drew from the other children: all the agony of the scalpel, the ache of loneliness, the coldness of neglect, the pain of secret abuse at night. He reached farther back, to a blue-eyed child in a dark church, watching a woman and a man approach. He stole all that fear out of the past and thrust it like a dagger into her heart.
The woman shrieked, arched back, racked and locked in a pain without end.
Yet, likewise, as the dark emotions ran through Pyotr, the same fire grazed him.
Hot tears flowed for all the lost i
He barely registered the pistol as it lifted toward him.
The woman sought to blindly kill what tortured her.
While he did the same to her.
The pistol blast shattered the silence.
Pyotr fell back when the woman's flame suddenly snuffed out between his palms.