Boyd couldn't believe his ears. Did the cube ever run out of surprises?

"As I was saying," continued Kelly, "Otto Richter found himself in Spokane, with the cube, without knowing how he had gotten there. Months had passed since he had prepared to put his plan into effect, but somehow his memory of carrying it out was gone. Along with everything that happened since."

She paused. "Given that he was in Washington State, which bordered Canada, and which would be an obvious place for him to journey to after taking the cube, it was clear to him he had carried out his plan. He chalked his loss of memory up to some strange effect caused by prolonged contact with the cube."

"Incredible," said Boyd to his companion in the back seat. "So your grandfather stole the immovable cube from the Nazis. And you decided to follow suit by stealing the very same cube from us."

Kelly sighed. "And I'm getting to my reasons for that," she said. "But do you want to hear the rest, or not?"

"By all means. Please continue."

Kelly took a moment to gather her thoughts. "Otto was eighteen years old when he found himself in Spokane. In his pocket, he found a diagram of the cube and the results of extensive experiments he had done with it, in tiny print. In his handwriting.

"The experiments he had performed in the Nazi camp had been necessarily limited, so he must have done these on his way to Spokane. Experiments such as using the cube to crush a boulder the size of a car. Or using it to levitate a thirty-foot tree. Or having the cube increase gravity in a circle around him, while leaving his own gravity untouched. He had apparently learned to use the eight controls surrounding the glyph I told you about with exquisite accuracy, sensitivity, and versatility. He had been able to wield the cube to carry out his will like a veritable magic wand."

Boyd nodded, spellbound.

"Even so," continued Kelly, "he dug a hole in the woods where he was, returned the cube to its original immovable setting, and covered it with dirt.

"One quick digression," she added. "Uru has been confused by how the cube's downward weight isn't nearly enough to account for its enormous resistance to lateral movement. But the thing can manipulate gravity as effortlessly as you can change the channel on your television, and with the precision and flexibility of a gymnast. So my guess is that the aliens gave it a tricky default setting—which Otto called its lockdown mode—in case it fell into the hands of primitives like us."

"With its lockdown mode being the way it was when I first saw it, right?"

"Right. In this mode, the cube's gravity in the downward direction is set lower than its gravity in the lateral direction. In this way, it can sit on the ground, or a surface—provided it's a very, very sturdy one—without crashing through it. But at the same time, it still can't be moved."

"So the aliens made sure it could sit there, stably, and mock us for eternity," noted Boyd wryly.

"Exactly," said Kelly. "Bastards!" she added with a smile.

"In any case," she continued, "the cube you saw in our facility was, indeed, in lockdown mode. Inert and inactive. With blazing light pouring from each of its eight vertices, and its twelve edges forming a cage rather than a solid. And as you know, in this mode, it isn't going anywhere, nothing on Earth is going to affect it, and there are no glowing red glyphs to control it."

"And the only power on Earth that can activate it, take it out of lockdown mode, is a small dose of dark energy."

"As far as anyone knows."

"But why dark energy?" asked Boyd. "What's your guess?"

"Otto conjectured, and I agree, that it's an alien test of maturity. The cube itself makes use of dark energy, so only a civilization advanced enough to wield this energy for itself is qualified to activate the cube. Nothing less. And we weren't even close to being qualified in the 1940s. Otto Richter was just way ahead of his time."

"Interesting theory," said Boyd. "I also find it interesting that dark energy is the key to unlocking the cube, because it clears up a mystery I was trying to solve."

"What mystery is that?" said Kelly.

"The mystery of your uncharacteristic behavior. Which occurred twice, both times involving the Haycock group's prototype dark energy generator. When I first proposed testing it on the cube, you disparaged their work. You argued fiercely against even making the attempt."

"Fiercely?" repeated Kelly. "Really? Is that another reference to Connolly meaning fierce as a hound?"

"Absolutely," replied Boyd with a smile. "But you can see where I'm heading with this. Now I know why you acted the way you did. You weren't worried that trying the generator would be a waste of time. You were worried that it wouldn't be.

"You did everything you could to talk me out of it. And when you failed, when we were a day away from our breakthrough, you just removed the cube on your own. Which is why you were so surprisingly amiable this morning with the Haycock team, and didn't argue against their generator at all. Because you knew it didn't matter any longer."

"You're right," said Kelly softly. "And I felt like a real ass disparaging their work. But I thought it was for the best. I didn't count on you being so stubborn in the face of my objections."

Boyd nodded. He hated when things didn't make sense, and was glad that order had now been restored to this part of his universe. "Before you finish your story," he said, changing gears yet again, "I need to ask about something I've been avoiding."

"Go ahead."

"Can I assume that you didn't bring the cube with you on this trip?"

"Of course not."

"Shen wanted you to tell him where you hid it. Which implies his people haven't found it yet. Given the resources he's no doubt plowing into this task, I'm surprised."

"I don't want to tell you where it is quite yet, Justin," she said. "I need to see if we're on the same page. And I have a lot more thinking to do in any case."

"I understand," said the major. "I think."

"But I did hide it well. And I hid the dark energy generator separately, not that anyone could possibly be looking for that. When I took the cube, I was extremely paranoid. I've never so much as stolen a candy bar before. I was convinced that somehow Uru would be on to me, even though it was after hours. I never expected China to have seen me, that's for sure. Still, I tried to be very clever about how I hid it, and where."

"I'm sure you were," said Boyd. "Did you leave it in lockdown mode?"

"No. It's in a temporary hiding place. I planned to find a better one when I returned from this trip. But I hid it inside something that couldn't contain its light in lockdown mode, so would advertise its presence. Besides, in its active form, after making the glyphs disappear, it looks like a harmless marble paperweight. Even Uru personnel wouldn't guess what it was. And a thief wouldn't bother stealing it."

"Yeah, but given what we know now..."

"Given what we know now," said Kelly, "I'd feel a lot better if it was locked down. But at the time, I thought the worst case was that Uru would get it back. In what world does a foreign power catch me stealing it when our own government doesn't?"

"Yeah, tell me about it," said Boyd miserably.

"Fortunately," said Kelly, "without the glyphs being activated, the cube is useless."

There was a long silence. "You should get back to your story," said Boyd finally. "I interrupted. You were saying that Otto Richter had buried the cube in the woods."

"Right," said Kelly after taking a moment to gather her thoughts. "And after he hid it away, he had a tough decision to make. His first thought was to give it to the Americans. To the Allies. Who could probably use it to win the war."

She paused. "But in his short life, he had witnessed more human evil, delusion, cruelty, and barbarism than most of us can even comprehend."

"I don't doubt it," said Boyd.

"The list of Nazi atrocities goes on and on," she continued. "Burning books, enforcing ghettos, and starving millions into skeletons. Rounding innocents up in train cars and sending them to work camps, where they would be exterminated by the millions in the most callous, systematized means imaginable. Absolute control of speech, of thought. Doctors conducting gruesome experiments on non-anesthetized human beings. An entire culture fostering sadism and cruelty."

She shook her head. "If you think you're familiar with all of the horrors of Nazi Germany, do an hour of research, and you'll find even more. What happened there makes your worst nightmares seem like rainbows and unicorns."

"So Otto hadn't exactly seen humanity at its best."

"Which is why he finally decided not to give the cube to the Americans after all. He had witnessed untold human evil, human cruelty, his entire life. And even the most compassionate of the species could be corrupted by absolute power. Even angels in heaven could be corrupted, as Satan himself proved only too well."

She sighed. "So there was no way he was letting any human being gain control of the cube, and especially not a government or military. He couldn't trust anyone with this kind of power. And not just this single cube's power to implode tanks and wreak havoc. But the even greater power to be gained from the study of the unlocked cube, assuming its scientific secrets could be learned. Besides, he hadn't forgotten that he had only activated two of the glyphs. There were still thirteen left to try."

Boyd frowned. It was hard to argue with Otto Richter's reasoning.

"So he decided to build a cabin around the cube, and set it in eternal lockdown mode. To buy the land around it under an assumed name, cover his tracks, and keep careful watch of it. Even in the unlikely event that someone stumbled upon it, it wouldn't matter. They couldn't budge it, and when he discovered the trespass, he would simply move it somewhere else."

"Why not just leave it buried?"

"He wanted it to be easily accessible to him—just in case. He didn't want anyone to have it, but he did recognize it as the ultimate fail-safe. If Hitler was on the verge of winning the war, he would give it to the Americans then. Or if the Earth was ever about to be struck by an asteroid the size of Texas, he would use the cube to deflect it and save the planet. He slept easier knowing it was within easy reach."

Kelly paused to collect her thoughts. "He described all of this in his journal in great detail. Including a diagram of the activated cube, with glyphs, and a detailed instruction manual.

"After he built the cabin, he became an upstanding citizen of Spokane, keeping a very low profile. He was afraid to even attract the attention of the scientific community. He had heard rumors that any number of German scientists were in America, and he didn't want anyone who knew about the cube program to know he was alive. Any one of them could have been shown his photo while still in Germany, and briefed on Otto Richter the prodigy.

"He also made inquiries and learned his parents had died in the war, never learning exactly how. He was heartbroken, but when Himmler separated him from his parents, he had the feeling he would never see them again. And although he tried, he never did learn the fate of his sole ally, Kurt Hahn.

"Finally," continued Kelly, "one last point of interest before I move on. I'm convinced that when the Nazis discovered their Atlantis Cube was gone, knowing how much it weighed, they must have figured some sort of anti-gravity tech had to have played a role. How else could it have been moved? I think this explains their anti-gravity program during the war. We can never be sure, but I think the timing of this program is too much of a coincidence."

"I suspect you're right," said Boyd.

"You're up to speed on much of the rest," she continued. "The Allies won the war, and time marched on. Otto Richter became Jim Connolly, and made a great living as a small-time inventor, studying physics in secret. All in all, he felt good about his life, about what he had accomplished. He went on to achieve any number of breakthrough physics results, but only for his own edification. He disclosed none of these, and while their nature was touched upon in his journal, none were elucidated.

"Ultimately, he decided he would pass knowledge of the cube down to his descendants, so it wouldn't be lost to humanity. He didn't know whom he could trust, but he hoped his offspring would share his values. He hoped they would watch over the cube in the cabin when he was gone. Be there to wield it in emergencies. He saw himself, and his family, becoming humanity's caretakers."

She paused. "So he wrote of his experiences in a journal and hid it in a book about zero-point energy. The discovery of this energy was his first big breakthrough in Canada, and had ultimately led to his dark energy generator. He hoped the journal would be handed down by his descendants, generation after generation, for centuries. Until mankind had matured enough to be ready to handle the kind of knowledge the cube represented. And he wrote dozens of pages in the journal pleading with his eventual offspring to resist the temptation of giving the cube to the world. His arguments were brilliant and eloquent, as might be expected of the greatest genius mankind has ever produced."

"Were his arguments all centered on humanity's inhumanity?" asked Boyd. "And our tendency to let power corrupt us?"

"Much of them, yes. But he also knew that his descendants would see the immense good the cube could do. And he knew how painful it would be for them to turn their backs on the extraordinary knowledge the cube represented. So he asked for their forbearance, and argued that there would come a time to reveal the cube to the world. But that whoever was the caretaker at this point had to be certain. Once the lamp was rubbed, there would be no way to put the genie back in.

"He recounted the story of Adam and Eve, who were banished from paradise because of their curiosity. Their inability to resist the temptation of the forbidden fruit. Which itself was a metaphorical standin for knowledge and power. He urged us to find the restraint needed to resist the temptation of the cube—the biblical apple in modern garb. He urged us to remain in Eden until we were able to work out the knowledge the apple offered, all by ourselves."

Kelly fell silent, allowing her companion to ponder all he had heard.

"I need you to back up a bit," said Boyd after nearly a minute had passed. "Your grandfather wanted his journal to be handed down through the generations. So how is it that no one in your family knows anything about it—or the cube—to this day? And how is it that you only know about it through chance alone?"

"Good question," said Kelly. "My grandfather wrote the journal—and continued to make entries—with the plan of sharing it, and his history, with his firstborn when he or she turned eighteen. Introducing his firstborn to the lifelong responsibility of watching over the cube, and of using it if the fate of humanity hung in the balance."

"So what went wrong?

"My grandfather died suddenly one day from a heart attack. Before my father, his firstborn, reached eighteen."

"You did say that heart problems ran in the family, didn't you," said Boyd solemnly. "Along with the dazzling brilliance that you've clearly inherited."

"Nice of you to say, but no one can hold a candle to my grandfather. Genetic dilution, I guess. My father and I became world-class physicists. But Otto Richter was in a league no one else has ever achieved."

"How old was your father when Otto died?"

"Fifteen. Otto Richter/Jim Connolly married my grandmother when he was twenty-eight, and she was twenty-three. They had my dad in 1956, when Otto was thirty-one. And Otto died fifteen years later, at forty-six, without any warning."

"What a loss to the world."

"No doubt," said Kelly sadly. "My understanding is that he seemed healthy as a horse at the time. But the heart attack killed him in minutes. My grandparents were in separate rooms when it hit. My father told me that my grandfather had gone to heroic efforts to pull himself across the floor as he was dying to see his wife one last time. But the last words he managed to gasp out before he died weren't 'I love you' or any other such sentimentality. They were 'open zeer.'"

She paused. "This became lore in my family. All of us took a crack at trying to discern what he might have meant by zeer. But we failed, of course. We decided that my grandfather had been too far gone to think clearly, and these words were little more than gibberish. Or that my grandmother had heard him wrong."

"But she had heard him perfectly, hadn't she?" said Boyd. "He was trying to say zero, but he died before he could utter the second syllable, so it came out zeer."

"That's almost certainly right," said Kelly. "Knowing what I do now, it's clear that he was trying to say 'open zero-point energy book.' He was desperately trying to hand down knowledge of the cube in the seconds he had left to live." She frowned and shook her head. "But he came up just short."

"So your father grew up knowing nothing about it."

"That's right. For all intents and purposes, the information, and the cube, were lost to the world. When my dad was thirty-seven and my mother was twenty-seven, they had my older sister. Four years later—thirty years ago—they had me."

"And then, just sixteen months ago, your father died, and you rediscovered Otto and the cube. So you salvaged his legacy after all. It just skipped a generation."

"Except it wasn't that simple," said Kelly. "Because, as you know, the cube was found in the meantime, during a time when no Connolly was keeping watch. When no Connolly was around to whisk the cube to a new location before the Uru facility could be completed."

"Good point."

"My grandfather's journal had the exact coordinates to the cabin. After I read it through, you can imagine how eager I was to see the cube for myself. But when I ventured out there, I found that the government had bought up hundreds of acres of woods around the cabin. Which shouldn't have been possible, because there wasn't a seller. My grandfather had bought the land under an assumed name.

"The area was covered by surveillance cameras. It took me a while, but I learned how to beat them, and eventually managed to get inside the cabin. And you know what I found. It was empty. But even though the hole around where the cube had been was filled with concrete and covered up, I found evidence that it had been lowered underground. Which is why the cabin wasn't all that well guarded by then, since the cube was a half mile of granite and concrete away."

"So how did you manage to join the team?" asked Boyd, fascinated.

"I knew whatever team was studying the cube must be traveling through a tunnel to reach it. It took me a few months of reconnaissance, but I eventually identified the fake factory that served as the entrance. Then I kept careful track of who was coming and going."

Boyd whistled. "You might be in the wrong line of work. You'd make a hell of an enhanced commando."

"Wow, you really know how to flatter a girl," said Kelly in amusement. "But there's no way in hell I'd have ever found it if my grandfather hadn't given me the precise coordinates of the cabin. He gave me a great head start. It occurs to me the Chinese could never have found it, either, unless they knew where to look."

Boyd frowned. She made a good point. "But how could they possibly know where to look? Are you suggesting we have a mole?"

"No. I'm suggesting they are somehow able to detect the energy of the cube when it's in lockdown mode."

"Interesting theory," said Boyd. "One I'd like to explore further when we get out of this. But go on. What did you do after you identified Uru personnel?"

"I contacted one of them, Claude Pascal. Academic to academic, not letting on that I knew anything about the cube. I'm an accomplished enough physicist that Pascal didn't find this strange. I proposed collaborating on several experiments that I knew would get his attention. I got to know him, built a working relationship. I thought if I skirted around the edges, brought up provocative topics and ideas that he might find useful in his Uru work, he'd eventually realize I'd be a good addition to this secret project."

"Sure enough," said Boyd, "when I reviewed your file a few days ago, it did indicate that it was Dr. Pascal who recommended you for the team. Truly outstanding," he added. "Even though you learned of your legacy too late to stop the world from discovering the cube, you found a way to position yourself to guard its secrets after all."

"Exactly. Although I never expected to have to... relocate it. Until you came to visit. You and your inspired idea. Another reason I'm so impressed with your instincts. I mean, who comes to see the cube for the first time and suggests the one experiment that will actually work?"

"So you knew the gig was up?"

"Yes," said Kelly. "After I failed to talk you out of trying the generator."

She sighed. "So then I had a decision to make. I could do nothing, and pretend to be astonished when Haycock's dark energy beam kicked the cube out of lockdown mode. Or I could take and hide the cube. I could honor my grandfather's wishes that it not be activated unless the Connolly acting as caretaker was certain that humanity was ready. Or to fend off an asteroid or some other potential crisis. But you know, make sure it was kept out of human hands."

"And especially kept out of government or military hands, if my memory serves."

"Yes."

Boyd considered. Perhaps they were on the same side after all. She had done what she had done for what she considered the right reasons. And who could say she was wrong? Given everything he had heard, could he really blame her for her actions? Hell, he might have made the exact same choice. He had also seen the underbelly of humankind, and it wasn't pretty.

"If I'm going to be honest," he said finally, "I can't really fault your choice. I mean, the dangers of this thing couldn't be any greater."

Kelly sighed. "Thanks, Justin. But if I'm going to be honest, so is its potential. To lift humanity to greater heights. And while humanity is still barbaric in many ways, we've come a long way since Nazi Germany. This time we didn't get to the dark energy key because of a genius that only comes along once every thousand years. Our civilization got to the level of scientific maturity required to earn this breakthrough.

"Ironically," she added, "you were the one who kicked this all off, without knowing it. But before I met you, my decision would have been simple. I was convinced that letting the unlocked cube fall into military hands would turn my grandfather's dire prophecies into reality.

"But after meeting you, I wasn't so sure. Maybe our military has become mature enough to handle it. After all, look how mature they've been when it comes to the EHO program. I never thought I'd find a soldier I could trust it with. But I was wrong. I'd trust it with you."

Boyd stared deeply into her arresting green eyes and knew that she was being sincere. "That means a lot to me," he said. "But I still think you did the right thing," he added, finding it hard to believe that these words were actually coming from his mouth.

"Maybe. But maybe not. It was a very tough call, balanced on the edge of a razor. I suspect you only think I did the right thing because we've been focusing on mankind's barbarism, and on the destructive, negative things the cube can do. But it's likely to be able to do a host of positive, miraculous things also. And after I've described these, you may feel differently."

"Well, we have more than an hour in this car before it gets dark enough to leave," replied Boyd. "So describe away."


"Before I give you a crash course on the cube's potential," said Dr. Kelly Connolly, "would it be too much of a risk for us to sit up?"

"Yeah, I've been wishing for that too. The risk is small, but we've come this far, so it isn't worth taking."

"I thought you might say that," said Kelly in disappointment. "Second question. You don't happen to have a blanket in that miracle duffel bag of yours, do you? Shen was right. It's getting a little nippy as the day goes on."

"Sorry, I don't. I've been genetically modified to be able to maintain body temperature better than average. All I can offer is sharing body heat if it gets too uncomfortable for you. I could join you in the back and hold you, but it'd be pretty tight quarters."

"Body heat?" said Kelly with a smile. "Really? My mother warned me about boys like you when I was in high school. Boys who might pretend their car had died when we were in the middle of nowhere. And then try to grope me under the guise of conserving body heat."

"I didn't say anything about groping," said Boyd with a smile. "But I do like how you think."

She laughed. "It's nice to know that you aren't letting a little felony like Grand Theft Enigma get in the way of our budding chemistry."

"I don't know. You could make the argument that the cube is a family heirloom, and that you're the owner. This won't stop the government from taking it, but they might forget about the felony charge. And, you know, the whole treason thing, if they tend to see the theft that way."

"Now I'm liking how you think," said Kelly. "I'll tell you what, let me describe the wonders of gravity control, and if it isn't dark when I'm done, maybe I'll take you up on your offer to keep me warm."

"Great," said Boyd with a playful smile. "Then you'd better hurry up and get through it."

"I'll do it so fast, you'll hardly notice," she replied. "Here goes. I know you're well versed in science, for a layman. So you may be aware of some, or all, of what I'll be saying. But I'll just say it anyway, rather than ask you if you already know it. That'll make it faster."

"I won't be offended if you tell me something I already know."

"Good. So let me start by giving you a quick overview of gravity. First, it's extraordinarily weak. The weakest of the known forces, by far. For example, the electromagnetic force is thirty-six orders of magnitude stronger. That's a trillion, trillion, trillion times stronger."

"I don't doubt you," said Boyd, "but I have to say, gravity seems pretty strong to me."

"That's because it's produced by mass, and there's so damn much of it. The entire weight of Earth is trying to pull you in, yet you can lift your leg off the ground with ease. A magnet the size of your thumbnail can pull a paperclip from the ground, easily winning a battle of forces against a planet weighing thirteen trillion billion tons."

"Okay then. Good examples. Weak it is."

"But the most important thing to know about gravity is that it's a warp in spacetime itself. In the very fabric of our universe. If spacetime were a trampoline, our planet would be a bowling ball in its center, indenting it. This indentation, this warp in the trampoline, is gravity, and would cause any matter nearby to roll toward the bowling ball. Are you with me?"

"Yes."

"Another important thing to know is that spacetime isn't just about space. It's about time also. The stronger the gravity, the bigger the dent in spacetime, and the slower time will run. GPS satellites in orbit experience less gravity than we do on Earth, so their time moves faster than ours. Their onboard atomic clocks have to be corrected for this, using Einstein's equations. If not for these corrections, they'd be off by more than six miles after a single day."

Boyd raised his eyebrows. "I can see how that would make them less useful for navigation."

Kelly ignored him and continued. "So gravity attracts all objects, all mass. Anti-gravity and dark energy—which could well be one and the same—repel mass. But the Enigma Cube can do both at will. And modulate levels of both at will. So what it really gives you is absolute control of nothing less than the fabric of spacetime itself," she added emphatically. "As I said before, the cube allows you to mold spacetime like clay. Which opens up a staggering array of possibilities, as you can imagine."

"Well, yeah," said Boyd. "The possibilities couldn't be more obvious." A wry smile came over his face. "But just for fun," he added, "why don't you pretend that I don't know any of them."

Kelly laughed. "Will do," she said. "The first is the production of traversable wormholes. And by traversable, I'm not talking about the better-known Einstein-Rosen Bridges or Schwarzschild wormholes formed by black holes. I'm talking about hyperspace tunnels through spacetime that can connect remote regions of our universe. If you can manipulate spacetime in any way you want, you can create these shortcuts and stabilize them. This would allow you to pop through a wormhole and reach a planet a thousand light years away in seconds. If you want instant access to a certain region of space, just be sure to build a bridge to it. The cube makes this possible."

"And you're sure about that?"

"Yes. You and I already talked about how our government finally admitted to taking UFO sightings very seriously. I'm sure you're also aware that the government has been studying wormholes and other advanced physics concepts, trying to figure out how aliens could possibly traverse interstellar space."

"I am."

"As you know, much of this work, done under the auspices of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was declassified and published in 2019."

Kelly paused for a moment in thought. "Sage," she continued, "search your database for a Defense Intelligence Agency report entitled, 'Traversable Wormholes, Stargates, and Negative Energy.'"

"Report found," said Sage immediately.

"Good. Can you read the first sentence of the paper's conclusion for us."

"Affirmative," said the AI. "Reading now. 'Implementation of interstellar travel via traversable wormholes generally requires the engineering of spacetime into very specialized local geometries. Analysis of these via the general relativistic field equation, plus the resultant source matter equations of state, demonstrates that such geometries require the use of "exotic" matter, which includes anti-gravity, in order to produce the requisite FTL spacetime modification.'"

"Thanks, Sage," said Kelly. "You can read the entire report later, Justin, but I think you'll find it offers ample support for what I'm saying."

"I'm sure it does."

"The second huge, huge possibility the cube opens up," continued Kelly, "is a working warp drive. Wormholes are like galactic superhighways. But if you want to get around between exits, you need a faster-than-light drive."

"Nothing can go faster than light," said Boyd. "I know that for certain. Wormholes may be able to get around this by cheating, by creating shortcuts through spacetime, but no ship traveling through space can exceed light speed."

"Very good," said Kelly. "But the universe offers another cheat. It's true that nothing in space can go faster than the speed of light." She raised her eyebrows. "But space, itself, can. So if you could speed up space and stick to it like glue, you'd come along for the ride. Like a stationary passenger on a moving walkway. Or maybe a better analogy would be a surfer, with space being the wave. You and your surfboard don't move much, but if you ride the right wave you can get to shore in a hurry."

"But how would you turn space itself into a moving walkway? Or a wave?"

"Good question," said Kelly. "Let me point to one last DIA report. Sage, pull up the report entitled, 'Warp Drive, Dark Energy, and the Manipulation of Extra Dimensions.' Got it?"

"I have it, yes," said the AI.

"Read the first paragraph about warp drives."

"The warp drive," began Sage immediately, "involves local manipulation of the fabric of space in the immediate vicinity of a spacecraft. The basic idea is to create an asymmetric bubble of space that is contracting in front of the spacecraft while expanding behind it. Using this form of locomotion, the spacecraft remains stationary inside this 'warp bubble,' and the movement of space itself facilitates the relative motion of the spacecraft. The theory of relativity places no restrictions on the speed of motion of space itself, thus allowing for a convenient circumvention of the speed-of-light barrier."

"Thank you, Sage," said Kelly. "We know that space is already expanding at great speed. Which is the very observation that led cosmologists to realize that dark energy exists, and that it's a repulsive force like anti-gravity."

"So the cube, by manipulating spacetime, can give us both wormholes and warp drives."

"A more impressive piece of technology than you thought, isn't it? If you can manipulate the fabric of spacetime itself, the universe is your playground. The same paper talks about the possibility of manipulating higher dimensions. I want to get to the part of our program where you and I exchange body heat, so I won't go into this in much detail, but imagine what it would mean to be able to tap higher dimensions."

"Again, assume I'm not expert."

"Imagine you lived in a two-dimensional world, on the surface of a vast sheet of paper. If I, a three-dimensional being, drew a circle in front of you, would you know that it was a circle?"

Boyd thought about this. "No, because my eyes would be smashed down on the 2D surface. So I'd only see a convex line, or maybe a straight one."

"Good. You wouldn't be able to see the back of the circle at all, unless you traveled around to that side. And you couldn't see the circle shape in its entirety no matter what you did. Because you're a 2D being and can't lift yourself off the page. And if I placed a dime inside the circle, you could never see this, either."

"Right. I'm following you so far."

"But a 3D being like me, looking from above, can easily see the entire circle, and what's inside.

"If I drew a line down the middle of the entire page, I'd split your 2D world in half. I'd have created an impenetrable wall, blocking you from ever crossing to the other half. But I, the 3D god that I am, could just step over the line. Easy as pie.

"If you put 3D me in a 2D prison, only my footprints would be visible. And when I lifted up my feet to step over the prison walls, you'd see my footprint disappear, and then reappear outside the prison. Or perhaps a considerable distance away.

"To a 2D being, there is no up and down, just side to side. No matter how hard they try, they can't pry their eyes or bodies from the page. They can't see the world above and below it. Nor can they view their own world from above or below. They can't possibly imagine such a 3D world, such a 3D viewpoint, even existing."

Boyd nodded. "I think I see what you're getting at," he said. "In the same way, we can't see or imagine a fourth spatial dimension. One could be right above us, so to speak, but we can't look up."

"Exactly," said Kelly. "And just as we 3D beings can easily perform feats that 2D people would find impossible, miraculous, imagine what we could do from the vantage point of a higher dimension than ours. A 2D being who wanted to extract the dime from inside the circle would have to drill a hole in the circle's perimeter. But I could just reach down from above, straight into the circle's stomach, without penetrating its skin, and pluck it out.

"So someone in a higher dimension could do the same to us," she continued. "Could remove a tumor without breaking our skin, coming in through an avenue that we're incapable of perceiving. Or could enter one of our closed bank vaults at will, and could then appear to teleport out again. These and many more miracles not only suddenly become possible, they become easy. Unspectacular."

"You said in Spokane that the cube was a showoff," noted Boyd. "But I didn't know the tenth of it, did I?"

Kelly shook her head. "You still don't know the tenth of it. Even if the cube couldn't create wormholes, warp drives, or higher dimensional miracles, it could still bring a paradise to Earth. The ability to mold spacetime gives us more power to transform civilization than all other major advances in history, combined. Free energy is a given. A revolution in transportation a given. We would have free and absolute mobility. Not just flying cars. Flying everything. From trains to ocean cruise ships. Highways and train tracks become useless. Cargo ships largely useless. Mining and construction revolutionized as the heaviest loads, the heaviest girders, can be manipulated effortlessly."

She paused to catch her breath. "And then there's space travel. Local space travel, since we're stipulating uses for the cube that don't involve wormholes or warp drives. No more strapping ourselves to the tops of rockets. Space travel becomes dirt cheap, and absolutely safe. Settling the solar system becomes a breeze, as does mining any metal or precious material from the asteroid belt."

"Does seem to be an attractive future," said Boyd, in what had to be the greatest understatement ever.

Kelly sighed. "Still think I did the right thing by preventing Uru from unlocking the Enigma Cube?"

"A little less than I did before, I have to admit."

"Then let me go the other way for a moment. I presented much of the cube's promise, so let me revisit its peril for a while. I studied my grandfather's instructions for operating the cube, the capabilities he discovered, until I memorized every last one. And the variety of settings is breathtaking. It can be used to make an object heavier by increasing the force of gravity below it. Or it can be set to what I think of as implosion mode, instantly increasing gravity in the center of an object to a level that will draw the object in on itself, explosively. In short, it's a more versatile weapon even than it seems."

"Of course it is," mused Boyd, no longer surprised by anything.

"Imploding tanks and the ability to crush troops like grapes are only the beginning," continued Kelly. "You think you could sink a battleship if you could make it weigh a billion tons? Bring down a jet? What about a skyscraper?

"And while you could flatten an entire army into liquid, you could use the opposite setting to send them rocketing into the sky, only to reverse it when they got to a hundred yards up."

Boyd swallowed hard. "Not the sort of technology you'd want a terrorist to control," he said.

"Or any army," said Kelly. "And even what I just listed are fairly benign possibilities. There could well be a setting that allows you to create and destroy black holes at will. Create one, let it swallow an entire city, and then kill it.

"Or just lift a skyscraper ten miles up and let it slam back to Earth at free-fall speeds. The faster an object goes when it hits something, the more power it unleashes. A bullet hitting you at one mile per hour doesn't hurt a bit. One traveling five hundred miles per hour blows through you like you're made of cotton candy. So imagine the enormous crater something as heavy as a plummeting skyscraper would make. It would release as much energy as a nuclear bomb."

She paused, and there was an extended silence once again inside the Lexus.

Boyd finally spoke. "Clearly, your decision as to whether or not to move the cube was even more difficult than I knew. Insanely difficult."

"Good thing there was nothing important riding on it."

Boyd laughed.

"I agonized over what to do," said Kelly. "It was as close to fifty-fifty as it could be." She sighed. "But no use revisiting my decision just now. I say we call a halt to our discussion—at least for the moment."

"Agreed," said Boyd.

"Good. Because I really am starting to freeze my butt off. I think it's time you honored your offer and paid a visit back here."

Boyd checked the drone feeds to make sure the coast was clear. "I'll be right over," he said. "You know," he added with a grin, "I haven't shared the back seat of a car with a woman since I was a kid."

"Well, I've never been hunted by enhanced Chinese commandos," replied Kelly. "So I guess new experiences are the order of the day."


All things considered, thought Kelly Connolly, things were going well. At least, a lot better than she had any right to expect after being attacked, knocked unconscious, hunted, having her theft discovered, and being trapped inside a car.

Not that exceeding expectations when the bar was set this low was saying all that much, but a lot of positives were coming out of this. She was falling for a major, a commando no less, in a big way. She would never have believed it. And she knew that he was falling for her, too.

She was relieved to have come clean about the cube. The burden of knowing about its origins, about her grandfather, about her responsibilities, and not being able to share this with anyone had been crushing. And Boyd had at least understood why she had done what she had done, and was sympathetic, if not outright supportive. She felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders—or the weight of the cube in lockdown mode at any rate.

But now she was focused on nothing more than the man lying beneath her, and the passionate kiss they were sharing. Their mouths had found each other, almost of their own accord, and seemed locked together as if by an irresistible force. It was electric. Gentle, yet ravenous, as the bottled-up feelings they had for each other revealed themselves in a way that was primal, undeniable. On paper, there was no way they should have clicked, but, inexplicably, something about them seemed to fit together like a puzzle.

She felt Boyd finally pull away and turn his head, making it clear that he wanted to stop the proceedings. "Sorry," he whispered. "I'm a little embarrassed, but I feel like a teenager. I seem to be having trouble keeping my engine in, ah... idle."

Kelly grinned. "Yeah, I could tell that something had come up. Something big."

Boyd laughed. "I knew there was a reason I liked you."

"But I agree we should stop," said Kelly. "Why torture ourselves? Don't want to heat up your engine with no place to go, since there's nothing we can do about it now. And nothing we should do about it. I mean, we could continue to get lost in each other's eyes, or we could try to stay alive."

"Tough call," said Boyd with a smile.

She rested her head on his chest and he put his arms around her. She really had been getting chilly, and she welcomed both the warmth and intimacy.

"I get that we need to restrain ourselves," said Boyd, "but I am going to insist on a raincheck."

"Keep me from being captured, and I'll give you two rain checks."

"Deal," said Boyd immediately.

They laid together in silence for several minutes, basking in the temporary comfort their entwined bodies were providing.

"So do you do this often, Justin?" she said softly. "I don't want to think that you take all of your dates here."

"When you find the ideal spot for a first date," he replied in amusement, "you don't change things up." He paused for several long seconds. "But you have nothing to worry about," he added. "I haven't even had a date for more than six months now."

"That's surprising. Even when you don't show your superman side, you have a lot to offer."

Kelly knew this was an understatement. He was handsome and smart. And she could tell he was quite compassionate, which wasn't easy for a man to show while he was leaving dead bodies in his wake like a runaway weed-wacker. Finally, he had a great sense of humor, which seemed to blend perfectly with hers. There was nothing about him not to like.

Boyd sighed heavily, and she could feel his chest move as he expelled air from his lungs. "Women seem to like me well enough," he said in a way that didn't seem boastful, "but it turns out I'm a little too picky. Plus, having to keep so much of my life secret doesn't help."

Kelly's ears perked up at this. Sounded exactly like her, although having to keep secrets was a fairly recent development in her case.

"Plus," he continued, "I've been on a lot of missions, which makes a long-term commitment difficult. I've had some shorter relationships during the past few years, but nothing more substantial. I was hoping that now that I'm transitioning out of a pure commando role, this might change."

"Oh yeah," said Kelly wryly, "you've left the commando part of you way behind. You've been acting like a paper-pushing accountant all day. You must be bored out of your mind."

Boyd smiled. "Just to get back to the part about me being picky," he said. "A woman needs to have a number of qualities for me to really fall for her. She has to be bright. Being brilliant, like you, is a bonus. She has to have a great sense of humor—like yours. And finally—even though I sound like I'm reading from a Kelly Connolly resume—she has to be independent. Fiercely independent."

"You mean as independent as an Irish hound?"

"Couldn't have said it better myself."

"You do know that I'm not actually Irish, right? I'm really a Richter. Which is German for Judge. Not quite as interesting as fierce as a hound. Worse, I grew up being misled that I was part Irish. Should have taken one of those DNA tests."

"Well, the Irish thing wasn't a bad cover," said Boyd. "You do have green eyes and a light complexion."

He paused. "So what about you?" he continued. "Any other guys you've been hiding in the woods with lately?"

"None. Or doing anything romantic with. Not in almost a year. I'm a lot like you. I'm picky. I like men who are smart, and even though I'm around a lot of them, I haven't seemed to find the right one. Besides, while you seem to go for women you consider brilliant, funny, and fiercely independent, I think most men become intimidated by this type of woman." She raised her eyebrows. "So maybe today is my lucky day."

Boyd sighed once again. "If we can get out if this, it just might be," he said. "Mine too."

Kelly put her head back down on his chest, as content as possible under the circumstances.

"Given everything the cube can do," said Boyd softly after almost a minute had passed, "why do you suppose the aliens would just leave it here?"

She shrugged. "It could be the drive from one of their starships, jettisoned just before a crash. But I think it was left by super beings wanting to help shape our future. To provide a ticket to the universe when we become advanced enough to unlock it."

"So if we're worthy we gain a ticket to the infinite. If we're unworthy, we destroy ourselves."

Kelly was about to reply when her comm became active, startling her yet again. "Hello again to my two American adversaries," said the voice of Commander Shen Ning. "Congratulations on eluding us for this long. Whatever hole you're hiding in has served you well.

"Make no mistake, we still intend to capture both of you. And we will, especially after my reinforcements flood these woods. But this has become less critical than it was an hour ago. Why? Well, you'll be pleased to know that my team in Spokane was finally able to find your cube, Dr. Connolly, weighing so little that a child could lift it. And it will soon be on its way back to China."

Kelly lifted her head off Boyd's chest and stared into his eyes in horror. "He's bluffing," she said. "I was too careful."

"But nice hiding place," added Shen. "inside the furry abdomen of a giant spider being used as a Halloween decoration—one hanging inside a home. The fact that the home it was in wasn't yours is what made this so impressive and hard to find."

The blood drained from Kelly's cheeks, and she looked like she might be sick.

"Maybe not so much of a bluff after all," she said grimly.


"You have really impressed me, Dr. Connolly," continued the voice of Commander Shen Ning straight into the ears of the two Americans lying together in the backseat of a Lexus. "You've previously been a model citizen. Yet you managed to steal a priceless, immovable object and keep it hidden for a very long time from the vast manpower I put on this case. Truly remarkable.

"You led us on what you Americans call a wild goose chase. Street cameras we hacked showed you stopping at two wooded locations, a store, and your home, before heading to the airport. So at three this morning, my men were tearing your house apart like a piñata, and digging up every inch of your yard. But they found nothing. Everything inside your house is now in shreds. Your walls, drawers, cupboards, toilet tanks, furniture, and everything else. We gave your car this same rectal exam, and hunted for footprints in the wooded locations you visited, digging up more than I'd care to admit.

"We were about to give up when my comrades back in China provided us with your hacked phone and text records. We learned that your neighbors ten houses down the street, Ryan and Charity Lee, are out of the country for two weeks, and you've volunteered to bring mail and packages inside."

Shen paused. "And Enigma Cubes, apparently," he added smugly. "When the Lees return from vacation, they may find their home a little... torn up. But at least it was for a good cause."

Kelly issued a bloodcurdling primal scream, unable to keep her rage bottled up any longer, but Boyd used superhuman reflexes to slap a hand over her mouth after the first few seconds and stifle the earsplitting shriek.

"Anyway, I just wanted you to know. I'll leave you to your hiding and cowering. I'm sure we'll be with you in no time."

With that, Shen discontinued his unilateral broadcast.

Tears welled up in Kelly's eyes. "This is all my fault," she said. "I should have put the cube in lockdown mode. How could I have been so careless?"

Boyd was roiling inside but fought to maintain his calm. "You're being too hard on yourself, Kelly. You had no idea the Chinese were in the picture. And even so, they were lucky to find it. Despite pulling out all the stops, and using massive manpower and intelligence resources."

"I took it because I didn't want the American military to have it," said Kelly. "So how bad is this?"

Boyd frowned. "Devastatingly bad," he said. "Worst-case-scenario bad. China is one of only two superpowers on Earth, and they haven't made their interest in global domination a secret. They're a ruthless, totalitarian regime. One that has done a brilliant job of showing a friendly, benign face to the world, and managing public relations. Partly because with almost a billion and a half people, more than four times our population, they wield considerable financial resources and punish anyone in the West who tells the truth about them."

Kelly winced. "I do know this. I was just hoping you'd tell me they were beginning to trend more democratic."

"Just the opposite. The Chinese are a wonderful people. But the president and politburo have become Big Brother. They've turned China into a surveillance state, with hundreds of millions of cameras that use algorithms to make sure citizens are toeing every line. China's human rights record, rarely mentioned, is atrocious. They have the lowest level of internet and media freedom anywhere in the world, no religious freedom, and absolute ideological control of education. They discriminate against women, convict dissenters without trial, and have over a million Muslims in detention camps."

Boyd shook his head miserably. "Short of Iran or North Korea gaining control of the cube, this is as bad as it gets."

"Then we have to get it back," she said adamantly. "This is my fault. I have to rectify it."

If Boyd wasn't already smitten with Kelly Connolly, he would be now. His chivalrous instincts balked at the idea of letting her take this kind of risk with her life. But he knew she had to. They both had to. He was bracing himself to persuade her of this, but she had come to this conclusion on her own. She was truly remarkable.

"I have to contact Shen," insisted Kelly. "Right away. I have to be sure his people don't activate the glyphs, either accidentally or on purpose. Make them properly terrified. And then I have to surrender. So I can go where the cube goes. Which is what they want anyway. And I have some ideas as to how to get it back."

Boyd stared at her in wonder. Her thinking was as clear as anyone could want, and the courage she was showing was off the charts. But he had to be sure she understood just what it was she was suggesting.

"It's almost nightfall," he said. "We're very close to being able to escape. If you surrender, I'll surrender with you. But you have to know it's a suicide mission."

"We have to do this, Justin. We have to. I was willing to commit treason to prevent my own government from wielding the cube's power. But we cannot let the Chinese have it, under any circumstances. You know that better than I do. If we die trying to stop it, so be it."

She paused. "How can a man—or a woman—die better?" she added. "Right?"

Boyd shook his head in disbelief. Had she really quoted a line from Horatius at the Bridge? From a stanza that he, himself, had recited in his mind when facing impossible odds for a worthy cause.

He barely knew this woman, yet he could easily see himself falling in love with her. Instead of having to convince her to volunteer for a suicide mission, she was attempting to convince him. It was extraordinary. It didn't seem fair to have finally found a woman this perfect for him, only to learn that both their lifespans were now measured in days.

"If we're going to do this," he said, "we have to do it together. If we want any hope of getting the cube back, we'll likely have to spill blood. Probably lots of it. And not just me. Both of us will have to." He paused for this to sink in. "Are you really prepared for that?"

Several tears rolled down Kelly's face. "No!" she said emphatically. "Not at all. I consider myself a fricking pacifist." Her hands balled into fists and she blew out a long breath. "But even though I'm not prepared for it, I will do what I have to do. I give you my solemn vow. The cube is just too dangerous for them to have."

"Okay," he said softly. "Then let's do this thing."

Kelly wiped the tears from her cheeks, and they both rose to a seated position. After a few minutes of discussing strategy, her expression hardened, and her eyes gleamed with absolute resolve.

"Commander Shen!" she bellowed out once Sage had established a link to the man's comm. "We need to talk. Now! Respond!"

A few long seconds passed. "Dr. Connolly," said Shen in delight, "what a nice surprise. Are you and the major finally ready to surrender?"

"If you honor our conditions, yes."

"Is the major with you?"

"I'm here, Shen!" snapped Boyd.

"Curious that an esteemed major like you would let a civilian scientist negotiate your surrender for you."

"You were the one who said she's the more important of the two of us."

"This is true," replied the Chinese commander. "Okay, then, Dr. Connolly, go ahead. Tell me your conditions."

"I have four of them," said Kelly. "First, you have to promise not to hurt us. That's obvious. Second, you have to promise to keep us together at all times when we're in your custody. Third, and most important by a long shot, you have to make sure your people don't touch the cube any more than they already have. Not in Spokane, and not while they're transporting it to China. Put it in a box and don't touch it again. You have no idea what you're dealing with, and when you might handle it in just the wrong way."

She paused. "Which is why you want me in the first place, right? Because I know what makes it tick. Mess with it randomly and risk losing more than just your people. More than China itself. This thing has the power to accidentally destroy ten Earths and not even feel it. You're not a child playing with dynamite. You're a child playing with a hydrogen bomb. Please tell me you understand what I'm telling you."

"I do," said Shen. "So what is your last condition?"

"You bring us both to where the cube is. So we can make sure you don't do anything... apocalyptic. You know I'm the only one who knows anything about it. Which is why you're so eager to capture me in the first place. So I'll surrender, and all you have to do are the things you want to do in the first place. Make sure the cube doesn't accidentally blow up in your face. And let me tell you how to operate it properly."

"You drive a hard bargain," said Shen wryly. "Of course I agree. But what about you, Major? Are you on board? Do you agree not to resist when we come to round you up?"

"I do," said Boyd. "But you had better take what Dr. Connolly said very seriously. Touch that thing wrong, and not even Earth's cockroaches will survive."

"You've made your point," said Shen. "I'm perfectly willing to wait until Dr. Connolly can guide me through its operation."

Boyd nodded somberly. "In that case, Commander, we're in the car we were in when we first arrived here."

He glanced at Kelly and nodded as reassuringly as he could. "Come and get us."


 Then out spake brave Horatius, the captain of the gate:

 "To every man upon this Earth, death cometh soon or late.

 And how can man die better, than facing fearful odds.

 For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his gods."

—Thomas Babington Macaulay, Horatius at the Bridge


Kelly Connolly awoke inside a small, empty room, numb, with her eyes and mind still not in focus. She sensed that she had been out for at least twenty-four hours, maybe longer—ever since they had surrendered in Pennsylvania. Boyd had tried to hide his duffel bag, hoping Shen would overlook it, but this was not to be, as the duffel had also become of great interest to the Chinese commander. Once the bag had been retrieved, the commander had handed them each a pill to swallow, and that was the last thing she remembered.

The room she was in contained a single cot and nothing else. It was white, antiseptic, and its only decorations were two small cameras attached near the ceiling, watching her as if she were a specimen in a zoo.

She gasped as her mental numbness finally wore off, and it hit her with a start that she was alone. Where was Justin Boyd? Her heart began pounding wildly and a chill swept up her spine.

When he had been by her side, no odds had seemed too daunting. But now that he was absent, she felt just the opposite. She felt out of her depth, foolish—helpless.

What had they done with him? Was he okay?

As panicked as she was to be alone in what were surely desperate circumstances, she was more panicked at the prospect that he was hurt. Or worse. Or that she might never see him again.

If any of these possibilities came to pass, she would never forgive herself. This was all her fault. She had taken the cube out of a secure black ops facility. She had failed to lock it down. And she had persuaded Boyd to surrender.

Kelly knew she was in a downward spiral and needed to get a grip on herself. Right now. This was no place or time for weakness. No place or time to be squeamish.

She realized that while unconscious, she had been bathed, and all of her clothes changed, down to her panties. This was uncomfortable to think about, but also something she appreciated after a red-eye and then a very long day of sweating and crawling in dirt. She was now wearing soft, faded jeans and a thin black sweatshirt.

She tried the steel door that trapped her in the room, but it didn't budge, as expected. Then, feeling silly, she proceeded to clap out twenty jumping jacks to get the blood flowing into her extremities, and especially into her brain.

Kelly paced for what was probably thirty minutes, although it felt like much longer, and reviewed the cube's various control operations in her mind, over and over, to keep from becoming hysterical or losing her mind.

Was she in solitary confinement? Was Shen leaving her here to soften her up?

He must know that after waking up this way, alone, with no idea where she was, the longer she had to think, to worry, to imagine one horrific scenario after another, the weaker her psyche would become. She was meat, and this treatment was tenderizer.

She was barely able to stop herself from screaming, from staring into one of the cameras and demanding that Shen acknowledge her existence. But she knew that this would give him exactly what he wanted, so she somehow found the strength to fight off an impulse that was quickly becoming overwhelming. She refused to let him know just how easily she could be broken.

Finally, after an agonizingly long time, a bald Chinese official in an unrecognizable military uniform opened the door. He was escorted by two guards, who both held their guns extended toward her, although their listless demeanor made it clear they were as worried about a possible attack from Kelly Connolly as a lion was worried about a possible attack from a newborn beagle puppy.

She was relieved to have a visitor and get out of her own head for a while, but refused to show it. "Where is Major Boyd?" she snapped. "I was promised we'd be kept together."

"You'll be seeing him very soon," said the man in perfect English.

"Then I demand to see Commander Shen Ning!"

The man smiled. "I can't tell you how much your demands mean to me," he said dryly. "But I'm afraid he isn't here. I'm Colonel Wu Fen, and you're now in my humble hands."

"So Shen's promises to us mean nothing?"

"Less than nothing," replied Wu. "But it's cute that you think they might."

Kelly knew she shouldn't have been surprised. All was fair in love and war. And the truth was, she had no intention of honoring the bargain she had made with Shen, either.

"Where am I?" she said, suspecting he would tell her, since he was sure to believe that she would never leave captivity again.

"You are on a man-made island in the South China Sea," said the colonel. "A combination advanced research station and military base."

"Lucky me," replied Kelly unhappily.

They had been smart. The cube was a mysterious dynamo that she had already warned could be volatile and unleash untold destruction. So better to study it on an island than in mainland China. And the combination of military base and top-secret research facility was ideal.

"You must be hungry and thirsty," said the colonel.

Kelly considered her response. Was he genuinely wanting her to be comfortable? Or was he making it clear that he had the power to starve her at his whim?

"I want to see Justin Boyd!" she demanded, ignoring his question.

Wu nodded. "I admire your persistence. Follow me."

He began walking away from the room and down a hallway, while the two guards waited for Kelly to follow, taking up positions behind her as she passed.

Wu led her through a maze of rooms and laboratories until he arrived at the biggest room of all, half the size of a football field. The immense room was filled with high-tech equipment of all kinds, dozens of lab benches and other lab stations, twenty or more scientists, and maybe fifteen soldiers ringing the perimeter, each carrying a machine gun that was extended in her direction.

Kelly had flashbacks to the clearing in the Pennsylvania woods. She had never even seen a gun in person before her trip to Haycock, and now having multiple soldiers pointing machine guns at her was becoming commonplace.

She caught Wu's eye as he continued leading her into the room. "Do you think you have enough men?" she asked in disgust.

The flicker of a smile crossed the colonel's face. "The majority of the people here speak English," he pointed out. "Those who don't are receiving a translation through comms."

Kelly barely heard him as she spotted the activated Enigma Cube sitting on a stainless steel table in the center of the vast room. Her eyes widened, and she was relieved to note the absence of any glyphs. Wu halted and gestured to her right, directing her to look about fifteen yards in the distance.

She gasped as she realized what he wanted her to see. Justin Boyd.

He was hurt. Badly.

The EHO major was pinned on his back to a stainless steel gurney by a series of restraints that looked formidable enough to keep Steve Rogers down. His advanced clothing—the thin graphene body armor and electroactive weaved shirt—had been replaced by jeans and a thin black sweatshirt to match hers.

The sleeves of the sweatshirt had been pulled up, and his bare forearms were now covered in blood, as was much of his shirt. He was unable to move any part of his body even an inch, including his head, which was locked vertically into place by a silver vise-like device. Opaque goggles had been placed over his eyes to blind him, and his mouth was duct-taped shut.

And he didn't appear to be breathing.

Kelly charged across the room toward the American major, closing the distance between them like an Olympic racewalker. She ignored Wu, his two guards, and every other soldier or scientist in the room as if they didn't exist. She was frantic to reach Boyd's side. To confirm that he was alive. To hold and comfort him.

As she rushed ahead, she surveyed the area around the American major in a few quick glances. His ever-present duffel bag was open on a table nearby, with its contents strewn about. The bag had been depleted by overuse in Pennsylvania, so the contents now consisted simply of several first-aid vials, truth serum, truth serum blocker, three chocolate-flavored energy bars, a spray can of wound-sealing foam, four flashbang grenades, a Glock 22 semi-automatic pistol, a few diminutive electronic devices, and what looked to be plastic explosives.

His smart contact lenses had been removed from his eyes and were being examined under a scanning tunneling microscope, which was recording every circuit on a monitor above it.

Several Chinese scientists in lab coats were studying small vials of his blood, running them through genetic sequencers or other tests. If the respirocyte technology was secret, that wouldn't be the case for much longer.

"Justin?" she whispered in a panic as she reached him, barely fending off hysteria. "Justin?" she repeated as tears once again welled up in her eyes. She gently lowered her head to his chest, the only area of his torso not soaked with blood, and listened for a pulse, felt for the rise and fall of his rib cage.

She finally detected both, but they were exceedingly faint. He likely only had minutes to live. "Hang on, Justin," she pleaded, as tears now dripped from her face. "I'm going to get you medical help if it's the last thing I ever do."

Wu's two guards had long since caught up to her and now forcibly pulled her away from the supine major. Colonel Wu followed, pressing a nearby button that retracted the vise holding Boyd's head in place. He removed the opaque goggles from Boyd's eyes and then violently ripped the duct tape from his mouth.

Boyd turned his head to gaze upon his American compatriot. "I should never have let you surrender," he said, regret etched in every line on his face. "No one should have to go through this. Especially not you."

"How are you even able to speak?" said Kelly in dismay.

Boyd sighed. "Because I'm fine. Really. The cuts are superficial."

"But what about your heart rate? Your respiration?"

"My enhancements suppress both," said Boyd. He shook his head miserably. "I'm afraid this was nothing more than a setup."

"A setup?" she repeated in confusion.

"Tell her, Wu," said the American.

"Oh no. Why don't you tell her, Major."

Boyd blew out a long breath. "They made sure my eyes were covered and I couldn't move or talk. And they made sure to make me as bloody as they could. The blood soaked into my shirt isn't even mine. They wanted me to look like I was nearly dead. Then they brought you in. Wanted to see how you'd react. Get a sense of how much you cared for me, on a scale of cold and clinical on the one hand, to absolutely devastated over the possibility of losing me on the other. The more deeply you seem to care, the more leverage they have over you."

Kelly felt the room begin to spin around her. Of course that's what had just happened. She had fallen for their trap. She had let them see just how vulnerable Justin Boyd made her. Five minutes earlier the Chinese had no idea how much he had come to mean to her.

But now they did.

What a fool she had been. She had played right into their hands.

"Justin, I am so sorry," she said to him. "I should have known."

"Don't be sorry," he replied. "How can I be upset with you for caring about me?"

Wu caught Kelly's eye. "I'm pleased that you two have become so obviously... close," he said. "But things are going to get very rough for your friend here." He shook his head. "You brought this on yourselves."

"Sure we did," said Kelly in disgust.

"In fact, you did," said Wu. "We found a truth serum blocker in the major's bag. And then faint traces of it in your bloodstream. I know enough about this blocker to know that drugging or torturing you will prevent you from talking." He raised his eyebrows. "But if we torture Major Boyd here, I have a feeling you'll want to tell us what you know to get it to stop."

"That's still duress," said Boyd. "The drug will react to it the same way it reacts to torture. She might want to tell you, but she still won't be able to."

The colonel shook his head. "We both know that being tortured is different than reacting to the torture of another. You just better hope that she can stay calm. That she can fool the drug into thinking she wants to cooperate. Because if she doesn't tutor us on the cube's operation, you are going to have a very bad day."

He turned to Kelly. "We wanted the major to look bad, to test your reaction, but made sure that he's actually largely undamaged. Because we want you to be able to witness his transition from good health to a hacked-up shell of a man. We'll begin by stabbing out his right eye. Then we'll chop off his fingers, one at a time. Then, if you still haven't told us what we want to know, we'll get even more creative."

Wu paused to let this sink in. "Major Boyd is enhanced, so he'll have a very high pain threshold. But even so, he'll be screaming so loud he'll wake the dead."

"You are one demented bastard," whispered Kelly in disgust. "I already told Shen I'd teach you how to control the cube."

The colonel smiled. "We didn't believe you for a second." He motioned to a man in a lab coat, standing over Boyd's immobilized form. "Stab him in the right eye," he ordered.

"Wait!" screamed Kelly, as the man Wu had spoken to lifted a scalpel from a tray nearby. "I'll help you. You haven't given me a chance! Let me do it now. The more you torture him, the less likely the drug will let me help you."

Wu faced the man with a scalpel and shook his head, rescinding the order. "Okay, Dr. Connolly," he said. "You've bought the major a temporary reprieve."

"Kelly, no!" shouted Boyd. "You can't do this! Let my death have meaning. You said you would do whatever was necessary! You vowed it!"

The orderly standing over the major elbowed him hard in the mouth, drawing blood. Wu issued an order in Chinese, and the man held down Boyd's head while an associate sealed his mouth shut with tape once again.

Kelly looked as if she had been punched in the gut. "I'm so sorry, Justin," she said, shaking her head sadly. "I thought I could do what it took. But I was wrong. I'm not strong enough to watch you get mutilated. I'm not."

"Major Boyd is very brave," said Wu, as if trying to console her. "But you're doing the right thing. I'll make sure he stays healthy. And if you tell us how to operate the cube, we can avoid any more... discomfort."

The colonel paused. "So go right ahead, Dr. Connolly," he said. "You have the floor."


There were from thirty-five to fifty people in the sprawling laboratory, mostly men, and the entire room was utterly silent, as if breathing, and even heartbeats, were no longer allowed.

All eyes, near and far, along with those watching remotely, were firmly glued to Kelly Connolly's face, ready to hang on her every word.

"I can't just tell you how to operate the cube," she began. "It's not as simple as that. You have to learn the controls. Feel them. It's like playing the violin. I can give you the sheet music for Beethoven's Violin Concerto and tell you how to play the instrument, but without showing you how it's done, you have no chance of getting it right."

Wu shook his head in disgust. "As you Americans like to say, that's a load of crap. The next time I order Major Boyd's eye taken out, I won't be rescinding the order."

"It isn't crap," insisted Kelly. "It's the truth. Control of the cube isn't just about what hieroglyphs you hit. Or what order you hit them in. It's also about the amount of pressure you apply. The controls are exquisitely sensitive."

"What controls?" snapped Wu. "What hieroglyphs?"

"I'll show you. But I want your assurances that you won't hurt either one of us. If I live up to my end, you have to treat us well from here on out. I get that you won't let us go, but let us live together in peace. Find a prison that gives us privacy and feels like house arrest. Remember, you never know when I can be useful going forward."

Wu considered. "Agreed."

"Good," she replied. "Then I need you to get pressure sensors that can stick to the tips of my fingers. Sensitive ones. You'll want to measure the exact pressure I apply, along with the order of controls I touch, because not even I know how much pressure I use. I've just developed a feel for it. And I was very lucky. Knowing what I do now, I came very close to disaster on several occasions. I was a fool for doing random experiments, which is why I can't let you do the same."

Wu issued orders and two male scientists rushed out of the room to locate the specialized sensors Kelly had demanded.

With this in motion, the Chinese colonel and his two guards ushered their American prisoner over to the cube where it rested on a stainless steel table, halting five feet away.

A full forty-five minutes passed, and time seemed to stop. Everyone in the room remained silent, alone with their thoughts, with their attention still on Kelly, although the fifteen machine-gun-wielding soldiers were allowed to lower their weapons and rest their arms until the scientists returned.

Finally, the two men returned with what were clearly jerry-rigged sensors. It appeared they had located tiny round labels, colored a bright fluorescent orange, used to mark boxes or other inventory, and had stuck minuscule, threadlike pressure sensors to the adhesive, possibly taken from cell phones or other electronics.

Kelly held out her hands while electric-orange labels were affixed to the tips of each of her fingers.

She was then instructed to press down on a table with all ten fingers while the scientists consulted a computer monitor to make sure the sensors were working and the wireless signals were being received. Finally, Wu indicated they were ready to proceed.

The Chinese colonel issued an order in Mandarin, and three of the fifteen soldiers in the room, who were once again pointing their weapons at Kelly's chest, peeled off from the phalanx and double-timed it to the gurney on which Boyd was restrained. In seconds they were standing over him with machine guns pointed at his head at point-blank range.

Wu gestured toward the cube. "It's all yours," he said to Kelly. "But if you even blink funny your friend will be dead before you can blink again. If you do anything that seems more threatening than a blink, my men will cut you down where you stand, regardless of your potential importance. Do you understand?"

Kelly swallowed hard. "You have nothing to worry about, Colonel," she said, approaching the cube. Wu and his guards stayed ten feet back and off to the side, not wanting to be collateral damage if his men had to open fire.

Several video cameras surrounded the cube on all sides, and these now zoomed in on the alien object, displaying its white-marble-like splendor in exquisite clarity on dozens of television and computer monitors arrayed around the room.

"First," said Kelly when she reached the object, "I'm going to place my thumb and index finger on two of the cube's vertices on top, and my other thumb and index finger on the other two. Then I'll press down on all four corners at once for several seconds. I'll leave it to you to measure the precise length of time I do this, and the pressure I'll be using."

Kelly proceeded exactly as she had specified, and a collective gasp broke out among dozens of observers as fifteen blazing red glyphs burst onto the surfaces of the cube, looking as if they were on fire.

"You'd think these glyphs would be as hot as the sun," she said, "but they're the same temperature as the rest of the cube."

If her audience was captivated before, they were now spellbound. The Chinese observers could have been thrown in vats of acid and wouldn't have taken their eyes from her or the monitors.

Kelly lifted the cube and turned to face Wu. "Now, I'm going to unlock additional controls," she said, "which will float above the cube as holograms."

She gestured to a face that showed a glyph of what appeared to be the cube itself, acting on another object, with eight distinct control notches arrayed around it. "The holographic controls are unlocked by touching this glyph, then three notches around it in succession, and then touching the glyph again while sliding my fingers outward—like I'm trying to enlarge a photo on my phone. All right?"

Wu was clearly mesmerized by the glyphs. "Understood," he said. "Please proceed."

Kelly manipulated the controls as she had promised. "Now," she said when this was complete, "if I touch the glyph in the center one final time, the holographic controls will appear."

She hesitated.

"What are you waiting for?" demanded Wu. "Don't make me have to torture Major Boyd after all."

Kelly shook her head sadly. "I won't," she said, pressing down on the glyph one last time.

The cube immediately carried out her preset instructions, leaving the gravity in a three-foot circle around her untouched, while sending out a wave at the speed of light that, for just an instant, increased the force of gravity ten thousand fold inside every object for almost thirty yards, in a band that began at about chest height and ended approximately four feet higher.

The upper torsos and heads of all soldiers and scientists in the room burst inward into vapor, leaving legs, waists, and stomachs untouched, as though a scythe made of light-saber energy, four-feet thick, had neatly erased the upper halves of their bodies.

Blood poured from the gaping openings that remained, as if severed veins and arteries were momentarily unaware that the hearts that controlled the circulation of the bodies they were in had been crushed into liquid.

To Kelly, it all seemed to happen instantly—and simultaneously. The sickening popping sounds of dozens of human implosions. The wrenching groan of steel as the parts of equipment rising higher than four feet were compressed into a dense amalgamation the size of a flea, like a car crushed all the way down to a metal sugar cube. And the loud boom from broad sections of two walls that splintered in on themselves and were ground into dust.

The room was rectangular, and the two nearest walls now had gaping three-foot-wide bands missing, from four to seven feet off the floor. The enormous laboratory was only standing because the farthest two walls were unaffected, and provided just enough structure to prevent the room from collapsing.

Kelly heard a hysterical shriek that seemed to go on forever, and realized only after it had ended that the scream had come from her own throat.

She had known exactly what to expect, but this was still too much. Too much death. Too much blood. The reality was far more gruesome, far more horrible, than her mind had been capable of imagining beforehand.

She didn't even like killing insects if she could help it. And now this. When she had told Boyd she was willing to do what it took, she was telling the truth. But how could she ever recover from what she had just wrought?

Kelly fell to the floor and vomited—but nothing came out. She hadn't eaten in days, leaving her stomach completely empty, which resulted in a series of dry heaves. She had read her grandfather's journal dozens of times and recalled that he had vomited also after witnessing two little girls being shot to death by his soon-to-be ally, Kurt Hahn. Perhaps this reaction ran in the family.

She was numb, paralyzed, and found herself wishing that she were dead too. Anything not to have to face her role in the gruesome, senseless executions of dozens of men and women.

She forced herself to fight through the shock to her system, through the debilitating horror of it all. The only way she could possibly handle this psychologically was to convince herself it wasn't real. That she was inside a particularly graphic haunted house on Halloween and nothing more.

She finally managed to stumble to her feet, dazed, and make her way over to Justin Boyd. The floor around his gurney was now littered by the severed lower bodies of the three soldiers who had been standing over him. He had been lying below the implosion zone, so was unaffected, but even after all he had seen in his career as a commando, he was stunned speechless from the grisly, barbaric scene he had just witnessed.

Kelly vaguely realized that an alarm was now blaring at ear-crushing decibel levels, no doubt triggered by a human or AI who had been watching the video feed remotely, as most of the video cameras were above the implosion zone and remained operational.

Boyd shouted out instructions to her on how to undo his restraints, and when she had finally freed him, he rose and held her for almost ten long seconds, keenly aware of how psychologically devastating her actions had been. The plan they had devised just prior to their surrender had called for her to pretend to cooperate with the Chinese—to get her hands on the cube—so when Boyd had insisted she let him be tortured to death, it was only for show.

"We have time before reinforcements arrive," he bellowed, words that she barely heard over the blaring alarm. "No one's rushing into this room after seeing what happened on the feed."

He walked ten feet away to where his smart contact lenses were being scanned by a powerful digital microscope, which had been just below implosion height, and inserted them carefully back into his eyes, while Kelly peeled the makeshift pressure sensors from her fingertips.

"They didn't find Sage or remove my comm," said Boyd's voice in Kelly's ear. "I assume they haven't removed your comm yet, either. Nod if you can hear me?"

Kelly nodded vigorously while the major retrieved the can of wound-sealing foam that had been in his duffel bag, sprayed both of his forearms, and then covered them with his sweatshirt once again, not even bothering to wipe away the blood first.

Boyd handed her two of the three chocolate-flavored energy bars on the table and insisted that she eat them to maintain her strength, taking the third for himself.

While she bit off a portion of the high-calorie bar and began chewing, the major shoveled the rest of the items arrayed around the duffel bag back inside it, save for the Glock 22 semi-auto, which he kept in his right hand, appraising it like it was a long-lost friend.

This finished, he turned to Kelly. "We're getting out of here," he said through Sage. "I need you to put this place out of your mind forever," he added. "You did what you had to do. You know they were going to kill us both once they got what they wanted. And this carnage took only an infinitesimal fraction of the cube's power. If that doesn't underscore why we can't let the Chinese military have it, nothing ever will. The freedoms of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people around the world are at stake."

Kelly nodded, but tears once again began sliding from the corners of her eyes and streaming down her face. She hadn't cried in many months, yet had recently let this become as common as breathing. She fought to regain her composure, knowing she had to toughen up.

Justin Boyd looked heartbroken to see her in such pain, but there was nothing he could do to help.

"Stay behind me," he said, this time carrying the duffel bag for himself. "You and the cube have done enough."

He nodded at the gun in his right hand. "I'll take over from here."


Boyd found himself marveling at Kelly Connolly's resilience as he waited for her to finish the second protein bar. Yes, she was in immense pain, and her psyche was in an alarmingly fragile state. Even so, there were hardened veterans who would still be shell-shocked after the massacre she had unleashed. He hadn't been at all sure that she'd be able to bring herself to do it, no matter what the stakes.

And few could have pulled it off so effectively. It wasn't just her mastery of the cube, but the way she had played her role to perfection. She had been so in control. Even though he had known that a second set of holographic controls didn't exist, she had been so convincing he half expected to see them materialize anyway.

She was clearly torn up inside. How could she not be. This massacre would have shaken a serial killer. Kelly now had deep emotional scars that might never heal. Seeing her suffering so acutely was more painful to him than he could have imagined. But the faster he could get her out of the room, get her focused on other things, the better.

"Sage," he said subvocally, "extend your sensors to maximum range. Also, increase reception on my comm to maximum range. But instead of funneling amplified sound into my ear, monitor it yourself. I want an immediate warning if you detect any possible hostiles, or any autonomous weaponry."

"Understood," replied the AI.

With this completed, Boyd led Kelly from the laboratory and up two flights of stairs. They came to the ground floor, as evidenced by several windows, and entered what appeared to be office space. Office space that showed clear signs of having been abandoned in a hurry.

The alarms that had been screeching into their brains abruptly stopped, and Boyd let out a heavy sigh of relief. "Did Wu give you any idea of where we are?" he asked Kelly, relieved that he no longer needed to shout, or communicate through an impersonal comm.

"He said we were on a man-made island in the South China Sea."

Boyd's eyes widened. "Of course we are," he mumbled to himself.

It was a perfect location. China had been expanding their presence in the South China Sea for decades, muscling into international waters despite considerable pushback from the world community, along with the strident objections of Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, and Taiwan. One early island that had become a Chinese military base, Fiery Cross Reef, was almost eight hundred miles from mainland China, but less than two hundred miles off the coast of Vietnam.

All in all, China had created seventeen such islands by depositing millions of tons of concrete and sand on top of coral reefs. And while China's Xi Jinping had promised not to create any further islands after the first handful, he had broken this promise as early as 2015.

Boyd rushed through the first floor of the building, with Kelly in tow, and soon found what he was looking for, a large corner office, hastily abandoned like all the rest. He entered, checked for cameras, and deposited his duffel bag on the floor behind him.

"Perfect," he announced.

"Perfect how?" said Kelly.

Boyd gestured to two walls of windows that met at the far corner of the room. "This gives us the broadest view outside. Gives us a chance to see what we might be dealing with."

Beyond the north window was perhaps twenty feet of sand that dropped off into a stunningly blue expanse of endless ocean. The adjacent window, facing east, showed any number of buildings, some with radar and satellite equipment on top, extensive storage facilities, and five basketball courts arranged side by side, a favorite recreation of the Chinese military.

No one was in sight outside, as if the two Americans had materialized in the island equivalent of a ghost town.

"Sage," said the major, "can you get internet access?"

"Negative. I've found a network, but the encryption protecting it is keeping me out, at least for now."

"Keep trying. Meanwhile, based on the layout I'm seeing, what island are we on?"

"Sun Island," replied the AI. "The second smallest of the man-made Chinese islands, three hundred miles southwest of mainland China."

"Where are the runways?"

"On the opposite side of the island," replied Sage, "just over two hundred yards distant."

"Figures they'd be the maximum distance away," he said to Kelly with a frown. "We wouldn't want this to be too easy."

"So we're going to steal a military jet?"

He nodded.

"And you can pilot one of those?"

Boyd swallowed hard. "Sure," he said unconvincingly. "I've had some training. Sage can walk me through the rest."

Boyd waited for an ironic reply, like 'that's comforting,' but none came. This was the starkest indication of all that Kelly was in a very bad way. Her sense of humor had survived every hardship. But it was finally nowhere to be found. She was a shell of her former self, listless and emotionally drained.

"Let's go," he said, lifting his duffel. "They're bound to regroup any moment."

"Okay, but I'm leading," said Kelly, seeming to come back to life as she made this proclamation. "And I'm going to make sure that no one else dies. I could've gotten us out of there without using lethal force. I should have. I'll never forgive myself for that mistake. But no more innocents are being sacrificed on my watch."

Boyd knew that she was right. No one in that room had deserved death. He felt the tragic, horrific loss of life almost as deeply as she did, he just had more experience suppressing it. Most of the men and women killed had been pressed into service and were just trying to get by. Provide for their families. Many were victims themselves, appalled by their leaders but powerless to do anything to stop them.

He had hoped that Kelly would focus on Wu and his sadistic threats of mutilation, and not on the fate of so many others who were little more than collateral damage.

"So you think you can clear a path to the runways without killing anyone?" he asked her.

"I do."

"Good," said the major. "Then I'm all for it."

Boyd paused and shook his head. "But you need to know that you had to use the force you did," he added. "And you have to find a way to forgive yourself. The colonel had guns pointed at both of us, held by scores of men with itchy trigger fingers, watching you like hawks. He threatened to kill us if you blinked funny.

"Yes, non-lethal force might have worked. Might have. But you only had one chance at this. If you miscalculated, we were dead. And the Chinese would control the cube until the end of time. You used the force you did because you had to be sure."

Boyd waited several seconds for this to sink in. "So I'm all for using non-lethal force going forward," he continued. "But I won't let you rewrite history. I won't let you second-guess yourself and succumb to self-loathing. Sometimes very good people have to make very hard choices."

Kelly didn't reply, but he sensed that his words had helped.

They exited the building and headed across the island. They crossed about twenty yards of sand and were nearing the first outdoor basketball court when Sage came to life. "Incoming military drones at eleven o'clock," the AI blasted into their ears.

Kelly's fingers raced across the cube like a concert pianist as four unmanned aircraft came into view in the distance, streaking over the horizon. They looked more like small, windowless fighters than standard issue octo-copter drones, and far more deadly.

Kelly struck the last glyph, aiming another implosion beam outward, just as each drone fired two missiles, which leaped toward them eagerly. An instant later, all four drones and eight missiles imploded in spectacular fashion, close enough to have pulverized the two Americans had the gravity field not kept the destruction self-contained.

"Alert," said Sage once again, but Boyd had already launched himself at Kelly, dropping his duffel and driving her onto the sand, as a barrage of bullets pierced the air where their heads had been a moment before. In one smooth motion Boyd landed on the ground, rose to a crouch, and dragged his companion behind a concrete bathroom facility near the first basketball court, all at a speed that no unenhanced human could hope to achieve.

Kelly rolled to her elbows, still holding the alien object in one hand, as dozens of men with machine guns, grenades, and missile launchers advanced from the north. Her hands flew over the cube once again, and she thrust one corner toward the incoming platoon, lifting them all into the air at once. Several dropped their weapons in panic, and several others wet themselves.

Not yet done, Kelly worked the cube further, demonstrating what exquisite control of the fabric of spacetime could do, and the men careened toward the ocean in an upright position. She stopped their surreal flight fifty yards past the edge of the island and dropped them, screaming, into the tranquil blue sea. They would live, but they wouldn't be troubling the two Americans for some time.

"I'm hearing approximately twenty-five more hostiles approaching from the east," said Sage.

Boyd hastily escorted Kelly to the west side of the concrete outhouse as a second small army, much like the one that was now swimming, made itself known.

This time Kelly took a different approach, increasing the gravity under the group. She pointed a vertex of the cube at the approaching platoon, and all of them crashed to the ground, as if they were covered in steel and walking on a powerful electromagnet. All were instantly pinned there, every inch of their bodies and cheeks pressed against the ground, unable to move a millimeter.

Kelly realized that this was effective, but she couldn't hold the cube on them all day. "Sage," she called out. "How many Gs does it take to knock a man out without killing him?"

"Air Force officer John Stapp survived over forty-six Gs for almost two seconds. But without a special compression suit, nine G's for twelve seconds should do it."

Kelly nodded, fiddled with the cube's settings, and held it on the men. During the seconds she did, they looked like fighter pilots undergoing full acceleration, their skin and hair stretched toward the ground as if pushed there by hurricane force winds. Finally, after counting to twelve, she discontinued her effort, and there was no doubt that they had all blacked out as expected.

She and Boyd both continued to frantically scan the area, looking for additional threats, while Kelly tried to catch her breath.

"Enough!" shouted a voice in the Americans' ears. The all-too-familiar voice of Commander Shen Ning. "I've called off all further attacks. I have what I want. More than I could have hoped for. So it's time to end this, once and for all."