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  Fiona ignored him, but when King glanced up, he saw a strange fury building in the other man’s eyes.

  He wouldn’t…

  There wasn’t time for King to finish the thought. He threw his right arm out and embraced Fiona and Sara just as Alexander’s grip failed.

  There was simply no way he could hope to hang onto their combined weight or arrest their slide into the crater, but that didn’t stop him from trying.

  He shoved his free hand into a crack, braced his feet against protrusions on the cave wall, and pulled back with all his might.

  It was like trying to pull a locomotive uphill. The shoulder of the arm that held the falling women burned; the muscles and tendons taut like a wire about to snap.

  He felt his feet slip from their perch, then his hand was torn free and they were all sliding down the slope. It was not a free fall, not like it had been with Brown. The slope was about forty-five degrees but there were plenty of protruding surfaces to provide a little resistance in the form of painful friction. Nevertheless, the end result would be the same. Gravity owned them now, and the journey would not end until they reached the event horizon, where time would stand still and they would spend an eternity on the cusp of oblivion.

  Through it all, Fiona kept singing, as did King.

  After a few seconds passed, King realized that they were no longer sliding toward the event horizon. His efforts to find a handhold had paid off; the fingers of his left hand had wrapped around a protruding horn of rock. What surprised him though was that he had been able to maintain the grip, and he understood that the tidal force of gravity had, if only momentarily, abated.

  Whatever Fiona was doing was working.

  He noticed a change in her song, new and unfamiliar phrases issued from her mouth, and when he glanced down, he saw that she had stopped clapping out the rhythm and in fact had gone almost completely limp. Her eyes had rolled back in her head and the words that burbled from her lips were the mumblings of someone in a trance state.

  King listened for a moment, trying to learn the refrain of this new mantra-it didn’t sound like a Native American language anymore-but then a movement at the bottom of the crater arrested his attention.

  Something was emerging from the event horizon.

  King knew that what he was seeing could not really be happening. Nothing material could escape from the event horizon of a black hole. To do so would require acceleration to faster-than-light speeds-a physical impossibility-and would require more energy than existed in the entire universe. Impossibilities notwithstanding, there was a definite bulge in the visual distortion at the center of the crater.

  The basilisk! King thought in a sudden panic. Maybe the explosion hadn’t killed it after all. Maybe he’d failed to destroy the quantum computer network with the IED.

  Suddenly, the event horizon erupted. It was not the black mass of the basilisk that burst forth, but rather a gray-brown column that shot like a geyser into the air above the crater. The crown of the plume was lost in the dark night, but in the space of a few seconds, King saw particles of fine dust precipitating from the cloud.

  As the fallout intensified into a choking miasma, he hastily tugged free a shirttail and fashioned an impromptu mask as the gritty rain began to cloud his vision.

  In the darkness that followed, he heard Fiona’s voice, still speaking the strange language. Then, after a few minutes, she stopped, coughed twice, and fell silent.

  50

  King pulled Fiona and Sara close. He could see them now, though just barely. It had taken nearly twenty minutes for most of the dust to settle, but the finest particulate would probably remain suspended in the air for hours. King didn’t need to see the aftermath to know that the threat of the black hole was gone. The Earth had stopped shaking, there was no longer the sound of matter from the accretion disk being crushed into the event horizon, and the sense of disorientation and heaviness that had accompanied the alteration in gravity was gone.

  King’s mind burned with questions about what had happened, but for a few minutes, he was content to simply hug the pair-his family.

  Twenty feet above them, Alexander gave a tremendous roar as he lifted the section of wall that had pinned him, and shoved it aside. Then, as if merely recovering from a stumble on the sidewalk, he brushed himself off and glissaded down into the crater where he greeted Fiona like she were a long lost relative.

  “You did it, child!” He exclaimed. “When my grip failed, I feared all was lost, but you succeeded.”

  King managed to keep his expression neutral as he regarded the big man. There was something disingenuous about Alexander’s praise.

  He let them fall…but why? King shook his head. That didn’t make any sense. He was allowing his natural distrust of Alexander Diotrophes make him paranoid.

  “Tell me,” Alexander continued. “How did you accomplish it? The language you were speaking…that was the Siletz dialect, was it not?”

  Fiona nodded. “Dad told me to just start talking, and it came to me. I thought, if anything can stop this thing from destroying the world, it would be the story of the creation of the world. My grandmother taught it to me. Then I sang the healing blessing. As I said the words, I just kept telling myself to believe that everything would be fixed. That we would all be okay.”

  Alexander nodded approvingly and King detected no trace of deception in his dust-streaked face. King saw that Julia had also joined them on the side of the pit, and at the mention of ‘healing,’ she took something from her pocket and inspected it in the dim light. King saw that it was a film badge dosimeter, similar to the kind used on nuclear submarines to alert the wearer to possible exposure to dangerous levels of radiation.

  The disk was uniformly white.

  That surprised King. The destruction of matter at the event horizon of a black hole released intense gamma ray bursts, and it was believed that the effect would be even more pronounced with micro black holes. But the dosimeter had not changed color; apparently, they had dodged that bullet. Julia must have been thinking the same thing, because as she held the badge up for the others to see, they all broke into unfettered laughter.

  The triumphant moment soon passed and King finally asked the question that was foremost in his mind. “Sara, what in God’s name are you and Fi doing here?”

  Sara’s story was only part of the greater chronicle of the night’s events, and before long, Fiona and Julia…and even King himself, added to the narrative. Alexander offered a few insights, but discreetly avoided mentioning anything that might reveal his immortal nature to Julia. King however didn’t bother with secrets. Julia had questions about Suvorov, and he felt the best way to honor the man’s sacrifice was to tell her the truth.

  “So what happened to the black hole?” King asked when all the stories were told. He directed this inquiry to Alexander who was inspecting the center of the crater.

  Alexander blew grit away from a gritty stone-just another chunk of debris that had settled at the bottom of the crater. He held up the dark chunk of rubble, inspecting it. His face soured and then he seemed to notice that all eyes were on him. After a quick search of his memory, he shrugged and looked to Fiona for the answer. “Ask her.”

  The girl seemed surprised by the question and spread her hands in a gesture of ignorance. “How should I know?”

  “It responded to you,” Alexander supplied, brushing off his hands and standing up. “You took control of it. What did you tell it to do?”

  “I don’t remember telling it anything,” Fiona said, but a thoughtful look came over her. “I remember though, when I was singing the creation story, I kept thinking how the black hole was the opposite of creation, and what the universe must have been like before the Old-Man-in-the-Sky made everything.

  “I think maybe I told it to un-create itself,” she finished, saying it almost like a question.

  King recalled how Fiona had slipped into a trance-like state; whatever she had been saying during that time, it h
adn’t been her native Siletz language. “Well, it’s gone now,” he said, giving her another hug.

  “It may be gone, but there’s going to be a hell of a mess to clean up,” Julia intoned. “How are we going to explain all this?”

  “An earthquake,” Alexander said. “Rare for this part of the world, but not unheard of. The seismological record will confirm that. As to the exact nature of the damage…” He shrugged.

  “Why not just tell the truth?” Sara asked, matter-of-factly.

  “That a crazy man managed to figure out a way to turn on a black hole?” King replied, a hint of good-natured sarcasm in his words. “And a teenaged girl sang it a lullaby, and saved the world.”

  “Well, when you put it that way…”

  “An earthquake then,” Julia agreed. “But how will we explain those?”

  She pointed to the two towering objects that dominated the center of the crater. King had never seen these massive carvings, hadn’t even seen pictures of them, but he had no trouble recognizing them.

  Emerging from the spot that once been obscured by the event horizon of the black hole, and rising more than a hundred feet into the Parisian night above the ruins of the Louvre, untouched by the ravages of time and the intolerance of terrorists, stood the Bamiyan Buddhas.

  EPILOGUE

  Two days later

  King stretched his legs out on the plush hotel bed-appropriately, a king-sized mattress-and propped his head up on a double-thickness of pillows. He could just make out the sound of water running in the suite’s bathroom, and while Sara was showering, he decided to catch up on the latest news out of Paris. She had firmly forbidden him from watching the nearly constant coverage of the situation there, especially in Fiona’s presence, and King understood her reasoning. Fiona probably felt a little like the biblical prophet Jonah-an unlucky magnet for trouble on an epic scale-and the last thing she needed was to be reminded of what they had gone through.

  While the quake had rocked every corner of the city, most of the structural damage was confined to the area around the Louvre, and thankfully, the loss of life was minimal. And while the former palace-turned-museum had suffered catastrophic damage, only a few of the irreplaceable works of art had been damaged beyond repair. Julia Preston would certainly be busy. As curator-at-large for the Global Heritage Commission, she would be instrumental in the effort to repair the damage done to the Louvre. Restoration of the museum and the artwork, like the rebuilding of the city itself, would bring Parisians together in a unified effort, at least in the near term, just as the international relief effort-which had almost immediately been launched on various social networking platforms-was unifying the globe.

  It’s too bad, King thought, that it always takes a tragedy to get people to work together.

  What was still not understood was the cause of the city-wide power outage, though some experts now believed that the quake had been part of an electro-magnetic event-not a full-blown magnetic pole reversal, but a definite polar hiccup. That theory was gaining popularity, particularly as it offered an explanation for the fact that almost all radio communications had been interrupted at the time of the quake. The phenomenon would also account for the fact that several helicopters and small planes had been knocked out of the sky. Nothing of course could explain the appearance of the fully formed Buddha statues, but that story was being kept out of the news.

  King switched off the television. The real story would probably never become public knowledge, and he was just fine with that.

  He was still troubled by the role Alexander Diotrophes had played in the events of that night. There was no question that the man’s awareness of the micro black hole’s existence and his knowledge of how it might be stopped had been pivotal in preventing a global cataclysm, but the very fact of his presence-right place, right time-made the hairs on the back of King’s neck bristle with suspicion. It was almost as if the man had known that something was going to happen…as if he’d been waiting for it to happen.

  And had he really let Fiona and Sara fall? Had that been intentional?

  He shook his head, certain that he had misinterpreted the look in Alexander’s eyes. The big man had said all along that Fiona was the only one who could stop the black hole; what possible reason could he have had for letting her die?

  He swung his legs off the bed and stood, crossing to the desk where he picked up the telephone and dialed a number. When an anonymous computerized switchboard began reciting a menu of options, he keyed in the code that would immediately connect him with Deep Blue.

  “King!” The voice in his ear was both relieved and irritated. “Where have you been?”

  “My phone got knocked out by whatever it was that hit Paris. This is the first chance I’ve had to check in.” That was mostly true. He probably could have called sooner, but his first priority had been to get Fiona and Sara away from Paris. Given the disruption of infrastructure and communications in the region, that had been no mean feat.

  “What exactly did happen?” Deep Blue asked. “Was it related to Brown’s quantum computer scheme?”

  “There’s a lot I’m still trying to piece together, but I can assure you that Brown won’t be a problem anymore.”

  There was a brief silence on the line, then the other man said simply: “Understood. Hold on.” Deep Blue’s muffled voice could be heard speaking to someone else for a moment. Then he came back on the line. “Lew is here. Has some intel you might find interesting. I’m putting you on speaker.”

  The phone crackled and then Aleman spoke. “Can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear,” King said.

  “I’ve been looking into Pradesh and it turns out even the mighty Shiva’s security-and his bank-can’t keep me out. He received several payments from Jovian Technologies, who it turns out, also designed the quantum phones for Brown. The root of Jovian is Jove, better known as Zeus, father of Hercules. Its speculation, but we all know how Alexander likes to name things, including himself, for the ancient Greek myths, many of which he created.”

  “Carutius,” King said. “That’s what he was calling himself this time. The same name he used when he married Acca Larentia, before the formation of Rome on the land he owned.” The idea that Alexander owned the very land Rome was founded on never ceased to amaze King. They’d found an underground citadel belonging to Alexander, hidden beneath the ruins of the Roman Forum, but how much more of the city still belonged to him?

  He turned his thoughts back to Pradesh. If the man was working for Jovian, did Alexander know the man was a cult member? Of course he did. Alexander wouldn’t care if Pradesh threw himself into the singularity. What difference would the man’s death make? As long as the man achieved his goal-to control the black hole somehow. Maybe direct it’s path. What Alexander didn’t know was that the quantum phones would grant the black hole sentient thought and allow it to chose its own path. That’s when things got away from him. So the lingering question was, “What did Alexander want with a black hole?”

  “That, I can’t tell you,” Aleman said. “But he was definitely working behind the scenes on this thing.”

  King looked up as Sara came out of the bathroom, one towel wrapped around her torso, another turban-like on her head, and he flashed her a smile. Alexander and his motives could wait. The man’s secrets wouldn’t be uncovered by dwelling on them. “Oh, I did meet up with Sara and Fiona. They’re fine.”

  “I had no idea that I’d be putting them in danger,” Deep Blue said, guiltily.

  “Actually, I appreciate the gesture. And now that Brainstorm is finally kaput and Alexander has disappeared again, I think that family vacation you proposed is definitely in order.”

  Deep Blue paused, and then said, “King, as much as it pains me to have to say this…”

  King tensed. If it had been anyone on the other end of the line, he’d have already hung up, but if Deep Blue needed him for something, it most likely couldn’t wait. “What is it?”

  “Ca
n you pick up one of those ear hats? I think I’m going to make Rook wear one for a year when-if-when we find him.”

  King laughed, said he’d pick up a few for all the new recruits, and hung up the phone.

  Sara leaned against him. “All quiet on the home front?”

  “For now.” King leaned over and kissed her forehead, then he left the suite’s master bedroom and knocked lightly on the door to Fiona’s bedroom. He eased the door open and found the girl nestled in a cocoon of blankets, a pillow covering her eyes.

  “Fi,” he called out. “Up and at’em, lazybones. Let’s go see what kind of trouble we can get into today.”

  The pillow fell away as Fiona sat up, her eyes wide with apprehension. “You’re kidding, right?”

  King was taken aback by her response. Fiona’s sense of humor had yet to make a full recovery.

  “Of course I’m kidding, kiddo.” He gave her gentle smile. “It’s Disney World. What could possibly happen?”

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