Clean air pumped into the room to replace it, rustling Nina’s clothing. Soon the cloud became translucent, the discoloration thinning, then vanishing.

‘The air is clean,’ Wu reported. ‘You can take off the mask.’

‘Y’know, I’ll give it another minute, just in case,’ Nina replied. Cautiously returning to the now-open coffin, she looked beneath the cover – and gasped.

The giant figure within, naked except for a broad golden circlet around its head, was entwined in what at first glance looked like silver threads until she realised they were tendrils of crystal, extruded from the inner bed on which it lay. The occupant’s genitals were concealed beneath the covering, but she knew at once from the hard, angular features of his face that he was male.

That face was . . . unsettling. The mummified Veteres bodies in the Garden of Eden had been of a related but separate species to Homo sapiens, as Hui had suggested, resembling popular culture’s idea of a Grey alien. The man before her was somewhere between the two. Even had he not been ten feet tall, one look would have been enough to know he was not quite human. The face was longer, eyes larger and more canted, the proportions of the features off. He had an almost predatory feel, giving Nina a brief, involuntary shiver. The offspring of angels and humans . . .

‘Our instruments do not show any change in his condition,’ said Hui. ‘Is he waking?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. The figure hadn’t moved at all; if not for the small but powerful sense of life she had felt, she would have assumed him to be dead.

‘Use the key again,’ ordered Wu. ‘Wake him.’

‘Don’t I get a coffee break first?’ Her joke was met with stony silence. ‘Okay, okay. Let’s see what I can do . . .’

She placed her hand back upon the key. This time, she brought her attention to the point of life within the patterns of force. Somehow she had to free it, wake it up. But how?

The question, the mere desire to do so, was already guiding her invisible hands. The flow of energy shifted. The sense of contact with the sleeper’s consciousness returned—

Cold shock, almost fear, nearly jerked her hand from the key, but she forced herself to maintain her hold.

He was awakening. And he knew she was there.

But somehow, she knew there was more she needed to do. Something scraped at her subconscious, a discordance telling her that whatever process was bringing the man from his stasis was not going smoothly. Again, she didn’t know exactly how to fix it, but the application of her willpower reshaped the earth’s invisible forces. The discomfort began to ease.

She became dimly aware of a voice saying her name. Not the sleeper: Hui, penetrating her fugue state. ‘. . . you all right? Can you hear me?’