‘Good to know you’re flexible.’ She examined the machine as it was placed alongside Zan’s station. One of its bearers opened the laptop, pecking out commands on its keyboard. LEDs inside the torus lit up to indicate that it was now active. Nina glanced at Gadreel, who watched with fascination. Amazement that the savage beasts who had been humanity at the time he entered stasis had now created their own technology, perhaps? Or was he containing his contempt that for all their advances, they still couldn’t replicate that of the Veteres and the Nephilim?

The man working the laptop called out to Colonel Wu, who nodded. ‘It is ready,’ his daughter announced. ‘Display the map. Professor Wilde, ask him to show us the fortress.’

Nina took her seat beside the softly humming tracker. Its operator gave the trackpad a final tap before retreating.

Two maps appeared on the laptop’s screen. One was a Mercator projection of the world, the other a computer-generated globe. Red lines began to appear on both, a twisting web spreading over the earth’s surface. ‘Are those the lines of earth energy?’ Nina asked, watching as the network grew ever more dense.

‘Yes,’ Wu replied. ‘The tracker will take few minutes to show them all, but now it is calibrated it can identify them even on the other side of the planet.’

Gadreel moved closer to the glass, crouching for a better look. The laptop was on a swivel mount; Nina turned it towards him. ‘Well, he’s got to see the thing to find the fortress,’ she pointed out as the Chinese officers expressed silent disapproval.

Gadreel’s expression became one of amazement as he stared at the screen. For all the ancient race’s achievements, television had not been one of them, a moving picture as remarkable to him as an artefact levitated by earth energy was to a modern human. Nina spoke to him. ‘This is a map of the world. The red lines are where earth energy is flowing.’

‘I understand,’ came the translated reply. Gadreel stared intently at the image. Ever-finer lines were being drawn, curling and weaving across continents between much heavier currents of natural power. ‘I recognise some places.’ He pointed, Nina leaning to see where he was indicating. It seemed to be the region of the Persian Gulf. ‘That sea. We explored it.’

‘I don’t know exactly where he’s pointing,’ Nina told the observers. ‘Is there a way to zoom in?’

‘It is a touchscreen,’ Hui replied. ‘You can use it like the map on a phone.’