King hung up his cell phone and paced in the small open space at the front of Alexander’s Gulfstream jet. He was trying to wrap his mind around the idea that Ridley was in two places at once, which meant that one of them was an impersonator. Either that or they were—he hated thinking it—clones. That there could be more than one Ridley was bad on its own. But it also meant they had no idea where Fiona had gone. If there were two Ridleys, there could be three. There could be fifty.

And Fiona could still be in Rome. The entire trip to England could be a massive waste of time. But it was all they had. And even though this Ridley might not have Fiona, he might know where she was being held.

But what was the point? Try as he might, King couldn’t pin down Ridley’s endgame. He decided to review what he knew. Ridley was creating and using golems to do his dirty work, yet they were tools, not the goal. But they hint at the goal, he thought. The sandfish was nothing new. Ridley had created genetic monsters before. But had the sandfish been created in a lab or manipulated by the strange protolanguage? These were all symptoms of something larger, but he couldn’t think of what that might be.

He focused his attention on what he knew about Ridley. He was a genius, ruthless beyond comparison, and considered no person his equal. The man had a god-complex to the point of successfully achieving immortality through science. Likewise he had now learned to grant life, at least temporarily, to inanimate objects. While Davidson had given them some insight into the science that gave the ancient language world-altering capabilities, he had yet to—

King’s thoughts froze on the words “world altering.” In a sense, that’s what Ridley was doing. Living statues, giant lizards, copies of himself. He was manipulating reality. But how far could it go? How much could he manipulate and to what extent? Could he become a god? As soon as the question formed in King’s mind he knew the answer.

Yes.

Ridley would be immortal and hold the keys to life, death, and to some extent, creation. He would be a god and much of the world would bow down and worship him. But that couldn’t be the end. Not for a man like Ridley. He was interested in power. In domination. But he was just one man. It might take him centuries to build a large following and he wasn’t a patient man. There had to be something else.