Hui squinted through the swirling cloud. To her shock, the hill was gone.

An empty crater was surrounded by a ragged ring of piled debris, the earth and stone that had fallen from the fortress as it rose – but where was the fortress itself?

She looked up . . . and got her answer.

Panic and confusion ran through the control centre as churning earth and billowing dust clouds filled the screen. ‘Mom!’ cried Cheng as he spotted a figure running towards the camera.

‘She’s okay – but where’s Nina?’ said Eddie. Others were behind Hui, but his wife was not one of them—

The image cleared enough for him to see what lay behind the running figures. It took him a moment to process. ‘Okay,’ he said in disbelief. ‘Tell me that’s not a bloody UFO!’

Something hovered over the crater where the hill had been, dust streaming from its dark metal hull. It looked like the fortress Eddie had seen trapped in the iceberg – but much larger, more menacing.

Hui and Wu Shun stood in the image’s foreground, staring up at the impossibly floating juggernaut. Cheng was similarly awestruck. ‘Fuzanglong . . .’ he whispered.

‘What does that mean?’ Macy asked, wide-eyed.

‘It means a dragon – a treasure dragon,’ he replied. ‘It’s a Chinese legend – it lives underground, but can come out and fly.’ He pointed at a detail on the screen. ‘And it has a pearl under its chin, a symbol of qi.’

Eddie saw what he meant. The fortress did indeed bear a distinct resemblance to the head of a Chinese dragon, the windows on its upper section forming sinister eyes – and on its underside, below the elongated snout from which fangs protruded, was a brightly glowing sphere, mostly hidden behind curved plates of armour.

There was more to the fortress than the head section. It had a snake-like rear body, tapering back to a point, though the camera’s angle meant he couldn’t judge its size. All he knew for sure was that it was big.

And Nina was still inside it.

‘We’ve got to get out there,’ he told Cheng. ‘I’m not sitting around while my wife’s trapped in that thing!’

‘I don’t know how!’ the young man replied. ‘If my mother’s no longer in charge, the scientific team won’t have any authority—’

He broke off at the sight of Wu hurrying towards the helicopter, Hui and the surviving soldiers behind her. Cheng covered his microphone as he overheard an exchange between the major and the captain in the control centre. ‘She’s calling for backup,’ he whispered. ‘Colonel Wu is still inside – and so are Professor Wilde and Gadreel. And Zan,’ he added.

‘I’m assuming the sentence for treason in China isn’t two weeks’ community service,’ said Eddie. ‘He’ll do whatever it takes to escape.’