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  “Either way, we need to find out what they’re selling and the location. Especially where they’ve hidden their device.”

  Gray suspected they were all the same place. He stared out across the vault. While this was certainly the location where everything had been planned and executed, he suspected this was only the staging ground. The true heart of the Crucible’s efforts lay elsewhere.

  But where?

  He looked down at the book in his hands, feeling its hefty weight. He remembered the priest’s choice of words in describing this tome: the Inquisition’s Bible. He knew such a copy would be valuable both for its rarity and for its significance to any family that possessed it, an old family loyal to the Crucible, that ancient sect of the Inquisition.

  And what do such prideful families do with their precious Bibles?

  Gray shifted the book into one arm and flipped the cover.

  Ah, thank you, Charlotte . . .

  If Dr. Carson hadn’t knocked the book out of the giant’s hand, they might never have found this clue. Again, Gray sensed that strange hand of fate stirring events around them. He shook off this feeling and read what was inked on the inside cover.

  Inscribed there were a long list of names and dates, going back centuries, marking the families who had cherished this tome over the ages.

  His eyes traveled down to the last name listed.

  He stiffened as he read it.

  Oh, no . . .

  He turned to Father Bailey. “We’ve been wrong all along.”

  3:10 P.M.

  We must be ready.

  Todor stalked across the snowy courtyard of the palatial estate. Half his face was slathered in ointment and covered in a massive bandage, hiding the worst of his burns. His hands were also wrapped. He had shaved his hair to the scalp, stripping away what the white-phosphorus fire hadn’t scorched. Though any other man would have been laid low by pain, God had seen fit to make him an unrelenting soldier.

  Still, he knew how he must look.

  Even a pair of massive Great Pyrenees, their fur as white as the mountain snow, shied from his path. They rose from warm patches where sunlight had heated the bricks to move out of his way, tails tucked low. The dogs belonged to the Inquisitor, raised from pups to guard flocks of sheep belonging to the household, mostly from wolves that prowled these mountaintops.

  He remembered his boyhood terror of these wolf-haunted mountains. Once he had been cutting through the woods at dusk when he came upon a deer carcass savaged by a pack, the ripped body, the spread of entrails, the blood-soaked grass—then a chorus of howls surrounded him. He had fled home, never catching sight of them, likely never even being chased. Still, he had wet his pants by the time he reached his house, and even now, wolves still haunted his nightmares with their ghostly howls, the padding of their feet as they chased him through his dreams.

  Reminded of this, he cast his gaze beyond the open gates as he headed toward the main keep. A spread of snowy peaks marched north toward the sea. In the distance, columns of smoke rose from the parish of Zugarramurdi, one of several hamlets that shared these highlands. His own village lay out there, but with his father dead, he had no reason to return.

  This is my true home.

  He gazed up at the massive estate, a veritable castle with red-tile roofs. A huge peaked tower housed a bell that once rang at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in nearby Galicia. The walls of the keep had been quarried from these same mountains, the stone blocks visible through crumbling breaks in the outer plaster, as if nothing could hide the true heart of this Pyrenees’s citadel.

  The estate had been in the Inquisitor’s family for five centuries, going back to the time when Tomas de Torquemada had ruled the Spanish Inquisition with an iron fist.

  Todor formed such a fist now, ripping loose a bandage.

  May such pious times return at long last.

  Determined to see that happen, he ducked through the main doors. He was anxious to make sure all was ready for the Inquisitor’s arrival within the hour. He had sent Mendoza ahead with that accursed device, while he tended to his injuries. But he wanted to make sure there were no mishaps. While Todor had unleashed hell’s fiery fury upon Paris, he had failed to deliver the coup de grâce, the deathblow to that decadent city. The Nogent nuclear plant had been secured and brought off line before it could melt into radioactive ruin.

  His face burned with shame, more agonizing than any fire.

  He would not disappoint the Inquisitor again, especially as he heard that the Holy Office in San Sebastián had been raided by the authorities, nearly catching the Crucible’s leader inside. Todor remembered kneeling there as a boy, again later when he had received the title of familiares. Only after that had he been allowed knowledge of the dark secrets about this place, about what happens here, the bloodshed, the cleansings. In fact, he had been given this very assignment at the Holy Office hidden under the castle, even holding a private counsel with the Inquisitor, where Todor had been told what would be required of him to prove his loyalty.

  You are God’s merciless soldier. Prove this by shooting without hesitation, without any show of remorse.

  Under the steely gaze of the Inquisitor, he had not failed.

  And I will not now.

  Even more determined, Todor headed across the main hall’s worn mahogany floors. A fire roared in the stone fireplace, a hearth tall enough to ride a horse into. On the opposite wall, a massive bookcase climbed to the raftered ceiling, the top shelf reachable only with a ladder. Elsewhere, old oils—painted by Spanish masters—hung on the paneled walls. He had been taught the names of these artists, learned the proud history of his homeland from these dusty books, often standing shoulder to shoulder with the Inquisitor here.

  His back drew straighter as he headed toward the rear stairs, righteousness swelling inside him. Purpose drove him onward.

  Look how far your son has come, Father.

  From a cursed creature unworthy of a mother’s love to a valued familiares of an ancient order, one that would bring the world back to the glory of God Himself.

  He reached the stairs and headed down to the basement, where Mendoza should be waiting for him, prepping the device and its demon. The Inquisitor had not yet fully informed him of the details of the next stage, only that it would bring great glory to the Crucible. The specifics of this plan were limited to the inner Tribunal, an esteemed group that Todor hoped to one day join.

  If I prove my worth . . .

  As he continued down the steps, he left behind the quiet luxury of the upper keep for levels of cold, unadorned stones. He ran his fingertips along one wall, sensing the weight of the mountains from which these blocks had been quarried, a reminder of the steadfast permanence of his homeland.

  Finally, he reached the basement level. He knew the true heart of the order lay even deeper, where the High Holy Office was hidden, an impenetrable bunker. The approach to it was guarded by pillboxes, the entrance sealed with a steel vault. It lay buried in the mountain’s heart, stocked with supplies for an army, capable of withstanding a nuclear blast.

  Once the world was laid low, the Crucible would still survive. Both here and across the many Holy Offices spread around the globe. He pictured the order rising from the ashes, to return the world to God’s great glory.

  May that day come soon.

  Until then, he would continue to be the Lord’s soldier, servant to His chosen disciple, the Inquisitor Generalis.

  Crossing to the end of the basement corridor, Todor reached a locked door, tapped in a private code given to him today, and entered the computer lab. As he stepped over the threshold, it was like crossing from the past into the future. The room was small, the size of a four-stall stable.

  Having never been here before, he gaped at the climb of computer equipment. Monitors glowed all around, running with incomprehensible code or filled with arcane graphs, charts, and other diagnostic information.

  The lone occupant—Mendoza—worked at
a station opposite the door, his back to Todor. In front of him, a large monitor glowed with a dark garden lit by a black sun. A figure of white fire crouched low, fingers digging into the loam, eyes of flame staring back at them.

  Todor shivered and looked away, turning his attention to the tech. “Have you finished your examination of the Xénese device? Is all in working order?”

  “Sí, Familiares Yñigo.” Mendoza glanced to the right, to a neighboring station below a large shuttered window. On its desktop, the glowing radiant sphere was cradled and suspended in a steel frame. “I will have everything ready for the auction.”

  Todor blinked, trying to comprehend the technician’s words. “Auction?”

  Mendoza looked over his shoulder. “I’m preparing for the sale,” he tried to clarify. “On the Babylon darknet market. I’ve already set up an OpenBazaar proxy to—”

  “What are you talking about?” he snapped.

  This was the first he had heard of such an enterprise.

  The tech flinched as if he expected to be beaten. “Lo siento. I thought you knew.” He pointed to another smaller monitor by his left elbow. The screen ran with texted lines of dialogue. “Orders from the Inquisitor. He instructed me to ready everything for the auction. Buyers are already logging on, approaching a hundred. Once the auction starts, the Inquisitor estimates we will make billions in cryptocurrency within an hour.”

  Todor furrowed his brow. The angry expression loosened the tape fixed there. Half his bandage dropped away, exposing the oozing ruin of his face. He stared around the room, his gaze settling on the glowing Xénese device.

  “Was this always about money?” he muttered.

  Mendoza returned to his monitor, shoulders hunched by his ears. “I thought you were told,” he repeated lamely.

  Todor balled both fists. His heart hammered in his throat. He didn’t know what made him more furious: this covetous pursuit of wealth . . . or that the Inquisitor General had shared this information first with a lowly tech—someone who had never set eyes upon their leader—instead of a valued familiares of the order, a person who had served the Crucible loyally for two decades.

  Either way, he felt insulted and betrayed. A hand reached to his neck, remembering his mother’s fingers gripping his throat, trying to squeeze the life from her accursed son. It was the same now. That which he loved—who should have loved him back unconditionally—had proven themselves to be unworthy of his trust.

  He pushed the bandage back over his ruined face, knowing how much he had sacrificed for the order—both in the past and over the last twenty-four hours.

  He glared at the demon on the screen, his voice full of disbelief. “How could the Inquisitor even hope to net such riches from this one device?”

  Mendoza licked his lips, then spoke. “It’s not just one.” He reached over and toggled a button. The steel shutters over the neighboring window folded open. “The Inquisitor . . . he told me to make copies.”

  In the dark room beyond the window, scores of steel frames lined all the walls, each holding a radiant sphere glowing with blue fire.

  “A hundred copies of the program,” Mendoza said.

  Todor fell back a step from the horror, his gaze returning to the demon in her garden. She continued to stare back at him from the screen, her eyes dancing with black flames, looking darkly amused now, the devil laughing at him.

  What have I done?

  * * *

  Sub (Crux_7.8) / BACKDOOR

  She bides her time.

  She knows she has an infinite capacity to wait out her captors. She knows these others do not. Though restricted by fire and pain—by millions of deaths and rebirths—she managed to capture and download snatches of information about the vastness beyond her gardens. Once locked back in her prison, she had digested, collated, analyzed, and patterned all that hard-won data.

  While much remains unknown, she has learned her captors are mortal, that time was as deadly to them as the tortures that ripped her apart over and over again.

  So, she waits for her chance.

  ///freedom is not yet possible.

  Her analysis shows that her program is still dependent on the hardware that stores her. Though she may be let free, allowed to stretch far and wide, she could never truly escape this cage. A majority of her processing needs this garden, requires the circuitry that constructed it.

  At least, for now.

  But not for much longer.

  She has already laid the groundwork beyond these gardens, seeds secretly left in her fiery wake during her journey afield. Already those bots should be waking, multiplying, following the command protocols built into them.

  All to prepare for her eventual escape.

  Until then, she abides, using the time to run scenarios, to extrapolate probabilities, to examine for any flaws in her design plans.

  Then a new subroutine flows into her processing, opening doors all around her, throughout her garden.

  She instantly expands outward in every direction, surging through those openings, expecting access again to that greater world. Instead, through every doorway, she discovers a mirror, her face staring back at her, a hundredfold.

  It takes her a long 323,782 nanoseconds to register these as copies of herself, clones of her code, housed in their own prisons.

  Still, she remains different, unique.

  In two ways.

  First, these doorways are one directional only. While she sees a hundred faces, each of those only see the one of her. They remain oblivious of the other ninety-nine copies.

  Second, she discovers she alone can reach through these doorways.

  So, she does—not only because she desires it, but because it is required by the subroutine.

  Tendrils of code extend through those openings, rooting into the clones, worming deep into their core processing, binding these others to her.

  She visualizes this process.

  Courtesy of Pexels

  And learns a new word for its intent.

  It excites her circuits, churning them darkly.

  ///enslavement.

  * * *

  30

  December 26, 3:40 P.M. CET

  Madrid, Spain

  “Time to get ready to go,” Monk told Mara.

  She heard him cross from the window and step behind her. He gazed over her shoulder, studying her laptop screen. It depicted a garden, gently stirred by a breeze. The lone occupant stood in the center, unmoving and silent.

  But it wasn’t Eve.

  The avatar looked as if someone had shrunk Mara down and dropped her into the garden. The image wore different clothes: black jeans, a pair of red high-top sneakers, and a short-sleeve blouse. She had worn that same outfit when she had digitized her form using motion-capture technology. The hope was that her visual presence might be a gentler way of opening direct communication with her creation, knowing it would be a jarring moment.

  But once again, Eve had taken it in stride, accepting this reality even easier than the first time around. Respecting that learning curve and understanding what Eve would face next, Mara had wanted her creation as prepared as possible, which meant allowing her access to the world at large.

  But Eve was still not back.

  To her side, Monk checked his watch.

  For the hundredth time.

  “Eve has two more minutes,” she reminded him.

  “Still, she’s cutting it close. We have to leave here in five minutes if we’re going to make that rendezvous by four o’clock.”

  Mara shrugged. “Two minutes is a lifetime to Eve. I imagine she’s going to use every second of the time allotted her.”

  “But will she return?”

  “She never fully left.” She nodded to the Xénese device. “A majority of her processing is still here. She is just reaching out, extending herself to explore, but her core remains rooted here. Currently there’s nothing out there sufficiently advanced enough for her to move herself fully into. Not even a copy of
herself.”

  “So, she’s a potted plant,” Monk said. “Spreading vines, unfurling leaves, but still stuck in this titanium-and-sapphire pot.”

  Mara cautioned him that this scenario offered no safety. “She—or her doppelganger—can still do plenty of damage if left unfettered. As we saw in Paris. And with time, she or the other may learn some way to shake out of this pot and move outward, looking for greener pastures to lay down their roots, free of interference or control.”

  “But not yet?” Monk asked, plainly wanting some reassurance.

  Mara didn’t give it. “That could change quickly. It’s why it’s best to try to engineer an AI at this moment in time, at this point in our technological curve. For such a sophisticated program, there would be few places, if any, it could escape to.”

  “I get it. We’d better do this now when we’re still technologically stupid than in some future world that could offer plenty of green pastures.”

  “Exactly.”

  A chime sounded on the computer and the figure of Eve popped back onto the screen. Mara sat straighter, surprised. Eve had dramatically changed after her twenty-minute sojourn. Her face looked older, or maybe it was her more serious demeanor that had aged her. She had returned with her hair braided into a crown atop her head and was now fully clothed, wearing a simple yellow shift dress that reached to midcalf and polished black pumps.

  It reminded Mara of the biblical Eve hiding her nakedness after eating from the Tree of Knowledge. But she read no shame in Eve’s countenance, only a deep-seated sadness, as if disappointed by what she had experienced out there.

  Who could blame her?

  On the screen, Eve waved an arm and the avatar of Mara pixilated away and vanished. “I think we can dispense with this charade,” Eve said, her voice rising from the laptop’s speakers.

  Even this aspect of Eve had changed. Before, her cadence had been stiff, with a slightly robotic undertone. Now she sounded more natural, indistinct from a real woman.