Guan-yin stood. “Yes, it’s how we knew you were on the island, but the last word to reach us claimed Ju-long would be at an inn at Khuzhir.”
Gray understood. Ju-long must not have had time to call and update his spies before moving here. “Then how did you know to come out here?”
A sad look swept over her features. “We found a woman, shot, still alive. She told us.”
Rachel . . .
Guan-yin read the rising hope in his face and quashed it. “She did not make it. But it was her dying words that brought us here.”
And saved us all, Gray realized. And maybe the world.
Guan-yin touched his arm. “I think she was hanging on just to get that message out.”
Grief ripped through him, but he held it in check until later.
They were not finished here.
He headed toward the tunnel.
Besides saving the world, he had another mission still to go, one even closer to his heart. As much as it would destroy the man, Vigor deserved to know the fate of his niece.
9:57 A.M.
“And Rachel?” the monsignor asked.
Duncan read the hope in the man’s eyes as they crossed the threshold into the chamber of gold. Jada hobbled on the far side of Vigor, looking upon Duncan with an equal expectation of good news.
After climbing the frozen waterfall, he had caught up with Jada and Vigor on the small pond that served as an antechamber to the golden ger.
Duncan explained as best he could as they scaled the stairs. He had told them about Seichan being held at gunpoint, about the turning of the tides by the arrival of new allies—which still baffled him.
Still, he knew one truth.
“Rachel was killed,” Duncan said, seeing no way to blunt the news.
Vigor stopped a few steps into the room, staring at him in disbelief, his face crashing into ruin. “No . . .”
Jada stayed next to Vigor as grief felled the old man to his knees. She pushed Duncan toward the rock pillar in the center of the room.
“Check the cross,” she hissed, dropping her pack, going after the Eye inside. “But don’t move it.”
He understood. They needed confirmation that the artifact was what they all sought. He hurried to the nest of three boxes: iron, silver, and gold. A skull rested on the gold floor next to the cairn.
Keeping clear of the relic, he looked down into the innermost box. A heavy black cross rested inside, seated in a sculpted bed of gold that matched its shape.
He reached a hand inside, but even before passing through the outer box of iron, he felt the magnets in his fingertips respond. Again he sensed pressure, as if a force were resisting him. He pushed deeper into that field, drawing his fingers closer to its dark surface.
Again, he recognized the same oily, unnatural feel to the energy, but as his tips drew to within a hairbreadth of the cross, he noted a subtle difference. With this unadulterated power wafting off the meteoric metal, he recognized that this energy—while much the same—had a different flavor to it.
Or color.
It couldn’t be described any other way.
While he had gripped the Eye, he sensed a blackness to it, like the darkness between stars, beautiful in its own right.
Here, he could only express this energy as white.
Jada had said the two items—the cross and the Eye—were opposites, different quantum spins from each other, separate poles on an axis of time.
But there was another fundamental difference.
With the Eye, he found its touch repellent.
Here, he had to restrain himself against grabbing that cross. It was nearly irresistible. Despite the warning from Jada, the tip of his index finger brushed the surface.
As contact was made, that whiteness enveloped him, blinding him.
From his background in physics, he knew black holes sucked all light into themselves, while theoretical white holes cast it all back out.
He felt that way now, cast out, thrust somewhere else, possibly sometime else. Through the brilliance, a figure approached, all in shadows. Like a dark mirror of himself, this shape reached to his outstretched hand, as if going for the cross, too.
As their fingertips touched, Duncan found himself blasted away.
The room returned, snapping so suddenly back he stumbled to the side, clenching and unclenching his hand.
“What’s wrong?” Jada asked.
He shook his head.
“What about the cross?”
“It’s . . . it’s got energy.”
He retreated from the pillar, but not before noting again the skull on the floor, picturing the shadowy figure in the light.
Could it be . . . ?
Not wanting to think about such a possibility, he reached Jada’s side. “What do we have to do?”
“I think just touch the Eye to the cross. Bringing their opposite energies together should trigger an annihilation, thus breaking that quantum entanglement.”
Duncan pictured that field snuffing out.
“Okay,” he said, holding out his hand for the Eye. “Let’s do this.”
Jada lifted the sphere, but she pulled it away from him.
“What?”
She glanced around. “I think we need this room sealed when it happens. Gold is one of the most nonreactive metals. Pure gold won’t even tarnish.”
“Like silver and iron will,” Duncan said.
“Maybe the ancients knew something. Felt such insulation was important.” Jada stood up. “Either way, I feel it would be safer if everyone else was outside this vault after it’s sealed. It could be dangerous to be in here when those two forces annihilate.”
“Then you and Vigor head out and close the door.”
“Maybe I’d better perform this,” Jada argued. “I’m less sensitive to these energies than you.”
Duncan could not let her risk it.
The stalemate was decided by another.
Vigor surged to his feet and snatched the Eye. He strode toward the ancient boxes. Duncan stepped after him, but the monsignor shoved an arm up, pointing a finger at him, his tone both commanding and grief-stricken.
“Go!”
Duncan recognized that Vigor would not relent.
Jada checked her watch and tugged Duncan’s sleeve toward the door. “Someone has to do it. And we’re out of time.”
With a heavy heart, he fled with Jada for the threshold. As they stepped out and began closing the doors, he watched Vigor step before the pillar, his shoulders slumped, weighted down by grief.
No matter the outcome . . . thank you, old man.
Duncan closed the door and latched it tight.
9:59 A.M.
Vigor stood before the reliquary of St. Thomas, cradling in his palms a crystal sphere holding the very fires of the universe. Within the triple chests lay a cross forged among the stars and carried by a saint. He should have felt exultant, elated to be allowed this hallowed moment at the end of his life.