She stepped across the threshold – becoming the first living thing to enter the buried fortress for one hundred and thirty thousand years.

Chapter 28

28

The passageway beyond the entrance was much like the one in the iceberg, but almost twice as long. Nina made her way to a T-junction at its end. Others followed; first Hui, relaying what she saw to base, then Colonel and Major Wu. Behind came the first of the soldiers guarding Gadreel, then the Nephilim himself, Zan at his side. The other two guards were behind their charge, and finally came the men carrying the qi tracker.

‘Which way?’ Nina called back. ‘In the other fortress, we went right to get to the throne room.’

Gadreel waited for Zan to translate, then replied. ‘Go left,’ Zan reported.

She raised an eyebrow – the layout so far seemed to match the other fortress, just on a larger scale – but took the left path as suggested. Orichalcum and adamantium and crystal gleamed in her torchlight, the new passage curving out of sight. Nina followed it, the rest of the team behind her.

‘Ma-?’ said Cheng into his headset, frowning first in confusion, then rising concern. ‘Mom, can you hear me?’

A camera on one of the helicopters had relayed the exploratory team’s arrival at the hill to the control centre, but once they started digging, they passed out of sight over its crest. Eddie had spent the time since being as unobtrusive as possible, watching Macy show off what he had to admit were impressive yo-yo moves with her toy trikan while listening to Cheng’s progress reports. The worry in the young man’s voice made him hurry to his workstation. ‘What’s going on?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cheng. ‘Mom was describing what she saw as they went inside, then she just . . . stopped.’

‘It’s like the one in the ice,’ the Yorkshireman realised. ‘We lost radio contact with the ship, remember?’

Cheng called to one of the other staff, who spoke to someone via his own headset. ‘We can still talk to the chopper pilots and the soldiers guarding the site,’ he said after receiving a reply. ‘But they can’t reach the people inside either.’

‘We should get out there. If anything goes wrong, they’ll need help.’

‘I don’t think they’ll let us borrow a helicopter,’ Cheng told him unhappily, casting a glance at the hard-faced captain overseeing operations.

Macy came to her father. ‘Is Mom going to be okay?’

Eddie gave his daughter a reassuring smile. ‘She’ll be fine. Just a radio glitch, that’s all.’ He looked at the screen. The image had not changed, a handful of men visible around the hill. ‘She’ll be fine,’ he repeated, concealing his own disquiet.