‘You are not a leader?’ Zan’s voice was flat as he delivered the translation, but the Nephilim had asked the question with surprise.

‘No. I’m from a different country, a different . . . tribe. They don’t have anyone who can use the key.’

Gadreel said a word Zan couldn’t translate, the Chinese shaking his head apologetically. But the Nephilim’s expression was one Nina knew from university, both as a student and a teacher: she could only think that he had said interesting, waiting for the other to elaborate on their theory – or dig themselves deeper into a hole. A pause, then he spoke again. This time Zan knew the words. ‘Do you know how to follow the lines of qi?’

‘I don’t, no,’ Nina admitted. ‘The knowledge was lost.’

‘Then I do not know how to show you where it is.’

‘Oh . . . okay. That kinda puts the kibosh on the plan, then,’ she said to the cameras.

Hui’s voice came through the headset. ‘Colonel Wu suggests we show him a map of the region.’

‘The landscape’s probably changed a lot over a hundred and thirty thousand years,’ she replied. ‘It’d be like burying a pirate’s treasure chest in the woods on Manhattan Island in the seventeenth century, then asking them to take you to it today.’

‘Then what can we—’ Hui broke off as Colonel Wu spoke in Mandarin. Whatever was being said, it became more heated, the commander’s voice rising. The scientist eventually addressed Nina again, sounding both angry and defeated. ‘The colonel has a new suggestion. Please tell Gadreel to wait.’

‘Tell him . . . okay, tell him somebody’s had an idea, and he’ll have to wait to find out what it is,’ Nina instructed Zan. ‘I’ll be interested myself, actually!’

Leaving the translator to relay her words, she returned to the conference room. ‘What’s going on?’

‘There is a device,’ said Hui, with a brief glance at Eddie and Macy that immediately made Nina concerned for their well-being – not from anything the scientist might do, but because she was warning the redhead that she and her family were about to hear something the Chinese military kept at the highest levels of secrecy. ‘We call it a qi tracker – it shows the flows of earth energy on a global scale. It was built using Nephilim technology.’

‘I thought you couldn’t make it work,’ said Eddie.

‘The rest of it, no. But this . . . It is hard to explain in English,’ she said, frowning.