Origin

1

For the first time in as long as he could remember, Jacobs was excited.

He had lived as Jacobs for several decades now, and no longer thought of himself as Charles Whitworth. But Whitworth he had been, firstborn son of Benjamin and Mary Whitworth, and he had cut his teeth at the back end of the First World War. He had done and seen it all. But this would outdo everything.

He couldn’t wait to meet the Anunnaki, and he had none of the doubts that Adams and Edwards had tried to instil in him. They would keep their end of the bargain; of course they would, he was already an immortal. But the real reason that Jacobs trusted them — at least for now, anyway — was that the Anunnaki needed him and his chosen colleagues.

For all their hi-tech advancement, the fact remained that the Anunnaki had not lived on a real planet for several thousand years; their minds were strong but their bodies were weak, and they needed assistance if they were to truly enslave the rest of humanity. The deadly virus would only do so much; the survivors would need hunting down, which was why the entire Alpha Brigade were also to be spared. The Bilderbergers’ mission was to use their various talents to lure out the other survivors, so that the Alpha Brigade could capture them. This physical task was something that the Anunnaki could simply no longer manage. They had the technology to build all sorts of robotic or cybernetic answers, of course; but they didn’t have the space — which was why they were coming back to earth in the first place.

And so Jacobs was more than happy to trust the Anunnaki upon their return. He had no doubt they would look for a way to get rid of him and his allies at the first available opportunity, but he planned to make himself indispensable to them in the short time he had, which he was more than confident he could do. He also harboured another, altogether more ambitious plan but was wary of thinking about it too much due to the Anunnaki’s telepathic abilities. Over the years he had developed a technique for getting around this to some extent. He had learnt that the thoughts or words had to be fully formed before the Anunnaki could interpret them, and therefore when he was thinking about anything he didn’t want them to know about, he never let anything become fully realized in his mind. It was almost like trying to see something in the dark; you didn’t look at it directly but glanced to the side so that peripheral vision picked it up instead.

And so it was that Jacobs’ ultimate plan lay just out of reach of the Anunnaki, and although he had no guarantees that it would work, it was certainly something that was worth pursuing when the time was right.

For now, though, he was just enjoying the anticipation, as he was whisked through the dark, snow-filled streets of Geneva. He and his colleagues — they were the Hundred once more, after his invitation to Saul Rubino, a billionaire diamond merchant, had been accepted — had arrived at the airport late the previous evening and had decided to spend the night at the Palais Grande, overlooking the wonderful lake that had made the city so famous.

Wesley Jones had stayed behind to manage affairs back in Washington, aiming to stall the investigation into the crash site near Jacobs’ house, but he was due to get to Geneva in time for the arrival of the Anunnaki. Jacobs had come to rely on Jones over the years and found himself hoping that he would make it.

The rest of the Bilderberg Hundred were now in convoy, travelling out of the city and taking the autoroute through the glorious foothills of the far mountains, heading for the Large Hadron Collider facility of CERN, the organization he himself had helped to establish for the express purpose of bringing the Anunnaki back to earth.

Philippe Messier had come to join them for dinner at the hotel the night before and, over lobster and Dom Perignon, he had informed the assembled group that the device would be operational by the following afternoon. There had been cheers and celebration, and Messier had been toasted time and again, until he could barely stand.

As the first rays of dawn started to appear over the mountains, Jacobs rested back in the deep leather seat of the huge Rolls-Royce limousine, and took a sip of early morning cognac.

His telephone rang as he put the glass to his lips, and he quickly retrieved it from his pocket. He saw who it was and answered the call immediately, the blood draining from his face.

It wasn’t a call Colonel Caines had wanted to make but better it came from him directly than that Jacobs heard it from another source, which would surely happen before the morning was out.

‘Mr Jacobs,’ he started uneasily. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news.’

Jacobs listened intently as Caines gave him a rundown of what had occurred over the past few hours.

‘Do you have any leads whatsoever?’ Jacobs asked.

‘No, sir,’ Caines admitted, glad Jacobs was not in the room with him. ‘We have no idea where they might have gone as of this time. But we’re doing everything in our power to relocate them.’

For a brief moment, Jacobs considered shouting at Caines, screaming down the phone at him for his ineptitude and threatening him with torture and death for failing in his mission; and then he would have liked to smash the phone to pieces.

Instead, he merely closed the phone slowly, cutting off the call without a word, succeeding in his efforts to control himself. It was no use shouting at Caines. What purpose would that serve now?

Adams and Edwards were clever, and now they were even more dangerous than ever. Why had he told them everything, back in the laboratory? His pride had got the better of him, that was why. He was certainly old enough to know better, but just as there was no use in shouting at Caines, there was also no point in beating himself up either. Instead, as his limousine glided along the smooth Swiss roads, he considered how they might have performed their vanishing act.

Moments later, he snapped upright and grabbed his phone to call Caines back.

Caines saw that it was Jacobs calling and reluctantly answered. ‘Yes, sir?’ he said gingerly.

‘Caines, have you checked the inner base?’ He could hear Jacobs’ excited tone.

‘I’m sorry, what do you mean, sir?’

Jacobs sighed audibly in exasperation. ‘I mean have you searched inside the damn base?’ he almost screamed down the line.

‘Er… no, sir,’ Caines answered, never having considered that the fugitives might have broken back into the base.

‘Well, get checking now!’ Jacobs ordered. ‘If you can’t find them outside the fence line, they must have gone back in!’

Adams looked out of the small window next to him, watching the thick clouds obscuring the view of the Atlantic Ocean far below, and allowed himself to relax ever so slightly. The flight from Reno-Tahoe to Zurich took sixteen hours, giving him the opportunity to do nothing but relax.

A flight to Geneva would have been ideal, but the international flights went to Zurich, and they would have to arrange onward transportation from there. Once Jacobs had learnt of their escape he would doubtless have arrivals at Geneva monitored anyway, so it was probably just as well that Zurich was the destination. A fast train from there to Geneva wouldn’t take long, and the train stations would be easier to arrive at unannounced.

To avoid any undue attention, the four of them were sitting in seats well away from each other, so Adams didn’t even have anyone to talk to. The in-flight magazine didn’t keep him occupied for more than a few minutes, and he had no interest in the mediocre selection of films that were on offer. And so he was left alone with just his thoughts for company. Still, that was no bad thing, he considered. He had known no other way for many years.

As he sat there, he tried to concentrate on what they would do once in Zurich. It had been decided that Ayita and Stephenfield would deplane first, try and spot any surveillance and draw the attention of anyone who may be there waiting for them. He and Lynn would follow, if the coast was clear. They would then go separately through passport control, and each get taxis to the main city square. They would meet up and make their way on foot to the train station, using cash to purchase four tickets to Geneva.

Once in Geneva, things would get a little more problematic, Adams knew; and yet try as he might to think things through logically, his mind kept returning instead to Lynn.

Evelyn Edwards, his ex-wife and now the mother of his as yet unborn child. So beautiful, so intelligent, so resourceful, even all these years after they had first met. To some extent he couldn’t believe that she had ever fallen for him in the first place.

He still loved her, he knew that for certain. That had been a part of his problem for so many years, the fact that he was still in love with her. It had stalled the rest of his life, making him incapable of carrying on fully. And now she was pregnant, and they were going to have a child of their own. Adams just didn’t know how to feel about that. The larger part of him was almost indescribably happy — he was to have the child he had always wanted, with the woman he wanted. But there was a deep conflict too. Given all that was going on, what would happen with the baby? Would he or she ever be born, or would humanity be wiped out before that glorious day?

The weight of the responsibility came crushing down on him. It was up to him to make sure that never happened, just like it had been up to him to get to that damn truck in the desert.

But unlike then, he promised himself now that he would not fail, no matter what it took.

2

Jacobs was in the foothills just ten kilometres from the fabled CERN Large Hadron Collider when the call came through from Caines, the man’s tone now more optimistic.

‘You were right, sir,’ he said with some excitement.

‘You’ve found them?’ Jacobs asked immediately.

‘Not exactly, sir,’ Caines answered, the nervousness back in his voice. ‘What I mean to say is that they did come back on to the base but they left several hours ago.’

‘And just how in the hell did they manage that?’ Jacobs almost exploded.

‘We checked all CCTV footage of the base grounds, and although the film is a little dark and hazy, it looks as if they managed to sneak on board the six o’clock Janet flight to McCarran.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding me. So where are they now?’

‘We’re still investigating, sir. Terminal CCTV has them leaving the plane and escaping into the parking lot. Using traffic cameras, we’ve traced them to the Luxor Hotel and Casino. It looks like they made a call from a payphone next to the slot machines, and we’re following up on that. But we’re confident we can reacquire them in short order, now we’re on their trail.’

‘Good,’ Jacobs said. ‘Keep me informed.’

Adams took the bumps slowly along the desert road in his Toyota Landcruiser, taking the twists and turns at under five miles per hour, the vehicle seemingly unable to go any faster.

He could barely see, and didn’t want to crash off the road. What good would he be to anybody then?

He looked through the windscreen up at the burning sun, and looked away, his head aching, in agony.

He pulled over to the side of the road. It was no use. He’d been on the truck’s trail for three days now and was no closer to catching it. He needed a rest, just half an hour to shut his eyes. He’d been here before so many times, knew what the consequences would be if he fell asleep, and yet he was powerless to resist. He had to carry on, had to try and get there in time, at least once, at least this time. But he was so tired…

He was in the desert, on foot now and tracking the tyre marks that had gone off the road just half a kilometre from where he had been resting. The sun was lower in the sky, several hours having passed. He cursed himself, knowing what that would mean. He would find the truck like he had a thousand times in the past, open the doors, hoping that this time it would be different.

But it wouldn’t be different; there would still be the same rotting bodies lying dead in the rear of the scorching hot truck, dead because he couldn’t keep himself awake.

Still he soldiered on, trapped in the dreamland version of the event that had destroyed his life. He tracked the tyre marks for another mile over the dusty terrain, until he found the truck lying there deserted in the dying rays of the afternoon sun. He moved close, and immediately knew that there was something different this time.

What was it? He tried to think, to clear the fuzz from his head.

The smell! It wasn’t there! Were they still alive? Quickly, he rushed to the rear doors, pulling them open in excitement.

And there they were — dozens of children, dazed and starving, but still alive! They looked at him in wonder, and then there seemed to be more, and instead of dozens there were hundreds, and then thousands, until there were as many as there were grains of sand on a beach, until his vision could take in nothing else.

He heard a ticking sound, and his head turned to it. There was a small clock on the truck wall, counting down the seconds, and Adams instinctively knew that this was the amount of time the children had left until they died. He moved forward immediately but was halted by a voice to his rear.

‘Matt!’ Lynn’s voice called out, and his head snapped round at the sound.

He could see Lynn with a newborn baby — his baby — cradled in her arms, mother and child both teetering on the edge of a cliff, about to fall.

He looked at the clock on the truck’s wall. Ten seconds.

He turned back to Lynn and the child. Her foot slipped, rock and shale falling into the chasm below, her balance lost.

Adams froze, unable to move, caught in indecision. In the truck were thousands, millions of people to be rescued. On the cliff was the woman he loved, and his own child, a part of himself given life through that love.

What should he do? How could he save both sets of people in the time he had available? He had to do something but he couldn’t move; he just didn’t know which way to turn.

An alarm sounded, and he turned to the truck; and then Lynn screamed, and he turned to the cliff.

His mouth went wide as he saw Lynn and their baby fall over the cliff edge, and he started towards them, but was halted by the screams behind him, the cries of millions of souls in torment.

The sun above him seemed to grow larger, increasing in size as it came towards him, bigger and bigger, hotter and hotter, until it was all he could see, all he could feel.

And then Adams did the only thing he could do; he collapsed to his knees and screamed.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ the portly Texan next to Adams said with concern, shaking him awake.

Adams snapped out of it immediately, doing his best not to look around the cabin and bring even more attention to himself. ‘Yes, I’m OK,’ he said to the kindly man. ‘Thank you. Just a bad dream.’

The Texan nodded his head in understanding. ‘I know what that’s like, son,’ he said. ‘Ain’t nothing you can do about your dreams.’

Adams nodded his head. ‘I guess not,’ he said, giving the man a reassuring smile, making clear that he was now OK.

The dream was new, but it was most definitely bad. Was there truly nothing that he could do about it?

Adams felt a drop in altitude, heard the change in engine speed, and then saw the seat-belt lights come on. They were coming in to land, and he rested back into his seat, understanding that he was probably about to find out.

3

The sight was glorious as always, the myriad buildings that made up the ground-level complex of the LHC facility. They were not at all beautiful in and of themselves; rather it was what they represented that was glorious.

The wormhole device was so secret that it didn’t even have a code name; only those few selected knew of its existence, apart from the specialist technicians who worked on it, and who would never see the light of day again after it became operational.

Jacobs’ limousine passed through the main gateposts, and he wondered how long it would take to gather everyone together. Most of the Bilderberg Hundred had been at the dinner the night before, but some members had still to make it to Switzerland. He hoped they would be here before the device went operational; they wouldn’t want to be caught outside after the Anunnaki had returned.

The car continued on through the outlying buildings, winding through the snow-covered inner roads until it came to a stop outside the main administrative building.

Jacobs’ driver went round to open his door, and as he stepped out, he was pleased to see Philippe Messier striding out to meet him, hand extended.

‘Philippe,’ Jacobs said in greeting as he shook the proffered hand. ‘How are we looking?’

Messier smiled in answer and escorted Jacobs towards the entrance. ‘Let’s just say I hope the others get here soon.’

Eighteen hours after boarding the flight at Reno-Tahoe, Adams found himself in Das Central, the main square in the old historic area of Zurich.

He stood at the barrier overlooking the Limmat, a chillingly cold body of water that nevertheless sparkled under the rays of the winter sun. He took up a position where he could monitor both banks of the river, checking on the comings and goings of the streams of people, ever vigilant against the threat of surveillance.

He hadn’t been stopped at the airport, and as far as he could tell nor had Lynn or the others, which indicated that they were not under observation but he knew he couldn’t be sure.

His counter-surveillance picked up both Lynn and Ayita long before they arrived at his position by the bridge. He was careful not to show too much emotion as Lynn approached, although he was overjoyed to see her; they were just a group of friends taking a tour of the city. Stephenfield arrived last, and although he was the least observable, Adams was pleased that he was still able to pick him up before he was upon them; if he could spot an intelligence operative as good as Stephenfield, then his skills were probably sufficient to spot anyone else that might be observing them.

‘Was anyone followed?’ Ayita asked when they were all together. When they all replied in the negative, he turned to the north. ‘Come on then. The train to Geneva leaves in twenty minutes.’

As they set out along the Neumühlequai, Ayita continued, ‘We’ll board the train and get our tickets from the inspector once we’re travelling. We don’t have time to get them in the office, and anyway, the purchase doesn’t get reported this way.’

They turned north-west along Museumstrasse, all of them keyed up, constantly checking about them. But as they neared the Hauptbahnhof, the city’s main train station, they realized that no one was watching them, and they might yet reach Geneva unopposed.

Philippe Messier was proud; indeed, this week was surely to prove the proudest of his incredible career.

As Director General of CERN, Messier was directly responsible for the success of the Large Hadron Collider project. The LHC, like the invention of the internet before it, had given CERN its current status as the world’s primary scientific research centre. The main work of CERN was now particle physics research, and the LHC — as well as the other experimental particle accelerators and the single decelerator that were also to be found on the site — was rightfully famous around the world for both its scale and its cost.

Particle physics centres on the study of subatomic particles, and how they create matter. The trouble is, to thoroughly understand such a subject, the particles themselves have to be broken down into smaller parts, and the only way to achieve this is to have them crash into one another at incredible speed.

Thus particle accelerators came into being, designed to fire particles up to the required speeds for such a collision. The LHC is the world’s largest such ‘collider’, and consists of a circular tunnel 27 kilometres in circumference, buried a hundred metres underground. The extreme length is to give the particle beams the distance necessary to accelerate to the required speed. The beams are fired in opposite directions, in the hope that they will collide upon meeting. However this is, in the words of the LHC’s chief engineer, ‘like firing two needles across the Atlantic and getting them to hit each other’.

Messier smiled when he thought of this quote, knowing that it was in fact easier than the public at large was led to believe. The technology that the Anunnaki had gifted the Bilderbergers essentially ensured that each time the machine was fired up, there was a hit. But even within CERN, only a handful of trusted staff knew that this was the case, because the purpose of getting the beams to collide was to carry out research, not to harvest the energy that resulted from such super-collisions. But harvesting the energy was exactly what Messier had been doing, and transmitting it to the secret experiment further underground.

The wormhole device required power, and lots of it. Controlling the bending of space-time as it did, a normal power source was simply not enough. The experiments going on above with the LHC, however, created a constant stream of antimatter, the most powerful energy source in the known universe. It was the need for antimatter as an energy source that had led Charles Whitworth to lead the drive for CERN’s creation in the first place, back in 1954, and it had taken since then — even with external help — to perfect the technology.

Messier looked across the chic, ultra-modern bar at Stephen Jacobs, as Whitworth had been known since the sixties. The man was living proof of the abilities of the Anunnaki, and verification of their promises.

Messier raised his champagne flute in salute, and saw Jacobs smile and raise his own.

Soon they would meet the Anunnaki face to face; and both men felt ready.

Jacobs felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out, and saw it was Eldridge.

After the disaster at Area 51, Jacobs had made a grudging Eldridge take control of the situation, which meant that the commander of Alpha Brigade would have to delay his journey to CERN. This had displeased him greatly, Jacobs knew, but at the end of the day, if Eldridge had done his job right in the first place, they wouldn’t be in such a situation now.

Jacobs answered the phone. The call was coming from his private jet, which was once again being used as their mobile headquarters, as it had been in South America.

‘What’s the status?’ he asked without preamble.

‘I think we’ve got them, sir,’ he heard Eldridge announce with confidence. ‘I’ll wrap this up once and for all, and then meet you for the big finale.’

‘Not the finale, my friend,’ Jacobs corrected. ‘Remember, this is just the beginning.’

4

Lynn sat by the window, watching as the large Geneva-Cornavin train station appeared out of the freezing fog ahead of her.

The fog had descended just an hour into their two and a half-hour journey, and had obscured what had up until then been beautiful views of the Swiss countryside.

At any rate, now they were here, and she had to concentrate on what was going to happen next. As before, Ayita and Stephenfield would get off first, checking the platforms for any sign of the enemy. If the coast was clear, she and Adams would leave the train and the four of them would move independently to the taxi rank outside the station.

Their taxis would take them to four random places, from where they would all move on foot to Moilebeau Park. They would meet up there, and then pair up in two more taxis, Stephenfield and Ayita in the lead, with Lynn and Adams following, and ask to be taken to Maisonnex Dessus, the suburb to the north-west of the city just before the foothills of the Jura Mountains. The CERN facility was located very close to this small town, and the four of them would meet up once more and confirm their final plans for entering the base itself.

Lynn was all too aware that the plan for her was to remain in the town of Maisonnex Dessus, monitoring communications and acting as the central point of contact. She understood the rationale behind this, as the fact was that out of the four of them, she was the only one untrained and without direct operational experience. If that had been the only consideration, she would still have insisted that she accompany them into CERN. But as the others had all pointed out — Matt with extreme conviction, understandably — she was pregnant, and couldn’t take the risk of getting involved in the action directly.

It was sensible to have someone keeping an eye on things from a distance, and when all things were considered, it could really only be her. Stephenfield had shown her how to operate the array of electronic machinery he had somehow managed to carry with him from America, and so it wasn’t as if she would be doing nothing; but a part of her still wished she would be taking a more active part.

Another side of her — a more powerful side? — demanded that she follow their recommendations and stay out of harm’s way. She didn’t know if it was mother’s instinct already making itself felt, or if she was just afraid. But maybe the two things were linked — perhaps she was afraid not for herself but for her unborn baby.

And, she decided, she could live with that.

Eldridge and his men landed at a private runway at Geneva International, and immediately transferred to a squad of Audi 4x4 vehicles, tearing away from the airport on a direct run for Geneva’s Cornavin rail station.

The big break had come through electronic monitoring of local CCTV surveillance. It had been Caines’ team back at Area 51 that had made the match, picking up an image of Lynn Edwards at Reno-Tahoe airport.

As it was a minor transport hub, the team were not quick to find the match, and by the time the facial recognition software had found and analysed the image, the flight had already landed in Zurich.

Once Edwards had been identified, they discovered that Adams had been on the same flight, and a quick investigation into the passenger list revealed their new passport details. Where they could have got such identification in so short a time, Eldridge could only wonder.

Caines, to his credit, had then ordered a satellite to be rerouted to cover Zurich, as well as real-time monitoring of ticket information systems; the passport details Edwards and Adams had flown under were red-flagged, and the fugitives’ latest images were uploaded into the surveillance systems of the Swiss capital.

They had then lost them for a short while, before a partial match — again of Edwards — was made at Zurich’s Hauptbahnhof. It seemed that Adams — as expected, given his background — was rather more adept at hiding from the surveillance cameras.

There had been no ticket purchases made in the names of the passport holders, but when Caines had made his report, Eldridge had known there was only one place the two of them could have been headed — Geneva, on their way to try and stop the return of the Anunnaki.

If only Jacobs had kept his mouth shut. Why did he have to tell them everything? What possible good could it have served? But tell them he had, and now they were on their way.

Eldridge had accessed the train timetable and identified the most likely routes, then ordered Caines and his men to analyse satellite images of the platforms as the trains boarded.

The matches had not been one hundred per cent but they were good enough for a partial ID, this time of both Edwards and Adams. And so now Eldridge and his men were racing through the streets of Geneva for a deadly rendezvous with their targets.

Adams watched through his window as Ayita descended from the now stationary train on to the platform. Although it wasn’t obvious, Adams could tell that he was doing a thorough counter-surveillance run.

Less than a minute later, Stephenfield also got out, subtly checking out the platform from the other side. After another minute, both men extended their right forefingers, indicating that it was safe for himself and Lynn to leave the train.

Having Ayita and Stephenfield along was proving invaluable, Adams acknowledged. He knew the search would be primarily for himself and Lynn, and so it was immensely useful to have two such seasoned professionals able to check out their route beforehand. It also made him feel much better that they would be accompanying him to the CERN laboratory instead of Lynn. He was uneasy about Lynn having come this far but he knew she would never have stayed in America. At least this way she could be of help and still stay relatively safe.

Adams rose from his seat, about to turn into the gangway, but suddenly went rigid, his eyes picking up movement from Ayita’s right hand. All four fingers went straight, the signal that somebody was there; the coast was not clear.

Adams stayed where he was as the other passengers continued to filter out. Pretty soon he would be the only person left in this compartment, and if Lynn had also seen the signal, which he hoped she had, she would also be left alone in hers, which would make them both stand out.

Ayita must have had his reasons, and Adams knew it couldn’t be anything good. He began to move, walking as calmly as he could for Lynn’s compartment just through the next door. If something was about to happen, he wanted to be with her.

He saw Lynn through the little porthole window and put his hand to the door handle, pushing down.

And then all hell broke loose.

5

Eldridge was tired of playing nicely. Too many times now he had tried to capture Adams and Edwards, or lie in wait for them, or try and catch them out in some sort of sophisticated trap. But no more. This time they were going down.

He and his dozen men, all top commandos in the Alpha Brigade, had left their cars running outside the train station and went through the doors at a sprint, cocking their assault rifles as they went. Eldridge had cleared their presence with the municipal transport police, but if they tried to stop him anyway, he would have no problem adding a few of them to his tally of corpses.

He led the surge on to Platform 5, an internal line with a train just in from Zurich, and ordered his men to spread out down the length of the stationary train, guns trained on the doors. He and his men ignored the screams of the throngs of passengers as they left the train, concentrating instead on their faces. Adams and Edwards were not among them. And then Eldridge scanned the windows, and a smile spread across his face as he saw both of his targets, in two separate carriages. Perfect.

The smile was wiped off his face instants later. The shock of the bullet hitting him in the shoulder spun his upper torso round while his feet remained rooted to the spot. Pain ripped through his hips and chest.

He hit the ground, gasping for breath, and saw his men turn and open fire at a man standing on the platform, a pistol in his hands. The man dived for cover behind a metal bench.

As Eldridge checked that his armoured vest had successfully stopped the round that hit him, two of his men were hit, by rounds coming from the opposite direction. Eldridge turned to look and saw a second man aiming a pistol and firing at his team, loosing off an entire magazine before dropping to the railway tracks, using the concrete platform itself for cover.

From inside the train, Adams and Lynn, now in the same carriage, watched in horror as the thirteen armed men stormed the platform, and then as Ayita and Stephenfield opened fire and were in turn fired upon.

Adams had seen enough. He took his own pistol out and shot through the glass of the opposite window. Then he turned to grab Lynn and pulled her to the other side of the train.

‘But the others!’ she cried. ‘We can’t leave them!’

‘We have to,’ he snapped, disgusted with having to make the decision. ‘If we stay, we’re dead. And then what happens if the wormhole opens?’

Lynn paused for a moment, then nodded her head and followed Adams to the shattered window, her thoughts still on Stephenfield and Ayita as she went.

John Ayita watched from behind the bench as Matt and Lynn escaped out of the other side of the train.

He saw Stephenfield was holding his own, hiding down behind the platform’s edge. His friend pulled up, fired three shots — two of which hit their targets — and then dropped low again. Ayita fired his own gun twice more, then stopped to change magazines. As he did so, Stephenfield popped up again, raised his gun, and then — and then…

Ayita couldn’t believe his eyes as he saw the top of his friend’s head explode, a 9mm round taking the skullcap straight off, the reddish grey mass of the brain quivering as Stephenfield staggered backwards, before he took twenty more shots to his centre mass, his entire body quivering under the massive shock of the bullets’ impact.

And then Ayita felt pain of his own, his ankle exploding in agony. He looked down and, saw the huge wound in his lower leg, blood staining the ground around him.

Ayita spat on the platform. He was wounded, his friend was dead, but he wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

Eldridge watched with satisfaction as his men took the first man down, and realized that the man behind the metal bench would probably be distracted.

From his position on the ground, Eldridge could just about see the man’s feet and ankles underneath the bench, and so aimed his submachine gun and loosed a single round. It hit the man’s ankle but didn’t make him drop to the ground as he had hoped it would. The man was tough, whoever he was.

And then the man appeared from behind the metal bench, a crazed look on his face, seemingly ignoring the gunshot wound to his leg. It was then that Eldridge realized it was John Ayita, the head of the Shadow Wolves whom he had failed to find when recently ordered to execute them. Which meant that the other man was probably Samuel ‘Two Horses’ Stephenfield, the unit’s intelligence chief and the only other member to have successfully evaded Eldridge’s death squad. Until now.

Ayita shot his pistol with unerring accuracy, taking one man down after another, but the result was inevitable; like Stephenfield before him, Ayita, too, was eventually shot by Eldridge’s expert team. The first rounds entered Ayita’s gut, doubling him over, making him drop the gun; the next four tore into his chest, ripping into his internal organs. But still he kept coming, the warrior in him not dead yet, and Eldridge was amazed as Ayita reached into his belt and pulled out a hunting knife, raising it above his head and charging the rest of the men on the platform, letting out a ferocious war cry as he did so.

But the cry was caught in his throat as another forty bullets entered his body almost simultaneously, hurling him backwards ten feet on the platform, his torso all but destroyed, his lifeless eyes staring up at the steel-girdered platform roof.

Eldridge got to one knee, and then to his feet. He looked through the train window.

Damn! Adams and Edwards had gone.

6

Trying to ignore the sounds of gunfire behind them, Adams sprinted across the tracks on the far side of the train, away from the platform. Ahead of them was another train, making ready to leave the platform. The doors on this side were closed, but Adams knew they had to make it if they were to stand any chance of getting out of there alive.

The gunfire was still continuing as they reached the train, and Adams grabbed Lynn and hauled her up into a locked doorway, pulling himself up after her just as the train pulled out from the platform.

Holding on to the exterior as they were, they were sitting ducks if one of the armed men on the far side decided to take a shot at them, and so he helped Lynn round to the small handholds to the side of the door, which acted as a ladder, and gestured for her to climb.

And climb she did, reaching the top and then helping him up.

He rolled on to the top of the train as it passed the end of the platform, mercifully leaving the station.

And then the sound of gunfire stopped.

Eldridge saw what Adams and Edwards were doing and immediately ordered some of his men back to the cars, to give chase if need be, and others to race around to the other platform.

Meanwhile, as his targets climbed the ladder to the top of the train, Eldridge went down on one knee to stabilize his position, put the stock of his assault rifle tight into his shoulder, took aim and squeezed the trigger, firing off one shot.

The round only narrowly missed, passing between their bodies, but it was enough to unbalance Lynn. She turned on the unstable top of the moving train and slipped, falling over the side.

Adams reacted in an instant, his hand grasping her arm as she went over the side, holding her weight as she dangled in front of a carriage window.

Digging his feet into the metal roof and gripping a side rail with his free hand, he started to pull her back up.

Eldridge cursed and licked his lips, taking aim once more.

He squeezed the trigger again, and was gratified when the round went through Adams’ upper arm with a spray of blood.

Adams felt the round enter his arm and his grip loosened instantly.

He watched as Lynn fell to the tracks, and moved to follow her; but instead, his head filled with pain, his vision turned cloudly, and he passed out, unconscious on top of the moving train.

Eldridge watched as his men jumped from the opposite platform, picked up the unconscious Evelyn Edwards and carried her off the tracks.

He took another aim at Adams, his body slumped over the edge of the train’s roof, but the train rounded a bend, taking his target away.

He turned to look at his men across the train station and keyed his mic. ‘Do not kill the woman yet,’ he ordered. ‘Stop that train, and make sure the male suspect is dead first. For now, bring her back over here. We may still need to use her.’

It was the searing pain in his left biceps that woke Adams eventually, his head first lolling groggily to one side, and then snapping up when he realized where he was, and what had happened.

Ignoring the pain in his arm for the moment, he pulled himself up to a crouch, looking back down the length of the train and the track behind it. The Geneva-Cornavin station was now just a small spot in the distance, and Adams could only assume that he’d been out for a full minute or two. Easily time enough for Eldridge and his men to have got to Lynn.

His whole body convulsed in anger, and only with the recurrence of the pain did he look down to check the damage to his arm. It seemed like a clean wound, the 9mm round having passed through the meat of the biceps like a hot knife through butter. The bone was undamaged but the wound was bleeding badly, and he knew if he didn’t stop it soon, he would pass out again from a drop in blood pressure.

Even though instinct told him to instantly leave the train and race back to the station, years of training and experience dictated that he first of all tend to the damage to his arm. If he did not treat that as a priority, he might not make it off the train at all.

He took off his jacket and tore the sleeve from his shirt to expose the wound fully, then tore off his other sleeve and wrapped it round the bullet wound in a tight compress. He then tore off the bottom of one trouser leg and cinched it round the makeshift dressing, tying it off in a tight knot. He put his jacket back on to conceal the damage. Not perfect, but it would do.

The train was picking up speed but was not yet travelling too fast to dismount. He would climb carefully down the side ladder, get as close as he could to the tracks in order to minimize the impact of the fall, and then he would jump. He just hoped his arm would hold up.

And then he heard the scream of tyres and the gunning of loud, powerful engines, and turned to look. Just twenty metres away, racing down the city streets parallel to the tracks, were two Audi 4x4s, keeping pace with the train.

He recoiled instinctively when he saw rifles coming out of the side windows of each car. He pushed back and rolled, just as the top of the train carriage lit up with sparks, high-velocity rounds ricocheting off the metalwork. The rounds chased him over the roof, eating up the metal so close to him he could smell the cordite, and then he was off the roof entirely and falling through the air on the far side of the train.

It wasn’t the exit he had hoped for, and although he tried to roll as he hit the tracks, the impact knocked the wind out of him, dazing him momentarily. He broke the fall with his damaged arm, fighting against the desire to use the good one. The bad arm was already useless, he figured, so why risk hurting the one that still worked? It took great presence of mind to wantonly endanger the damaged limb, but the jarring pain just caused his mind to sharpen even more, driving him up and off the tracks, racing for the far side, away from Eldridge’s men.

He managed to get to the far side, diving over the side of a huge metal barrier before the length of the train passed by and betrayed his position to his pursuers. Stuck as they were on the road, unable to close in on the tracks, the soldiers would have to abandon their vehicles and give chase on foot.

Behind him was another barrier, and when he went to look over the side, he saw a shopping concourse down below. Without pausing, he leapt over the side, clinging to the metal girders that supported the track, and edged down to the shopping level using his legs and one good arm. He knew he would be being tracked by satellite, and realized that he could use the underpass to lose the surveillance. He had to be aware of CCTV, but he was used to that.

He joined the throngs of shoppers making their way through the underpass, trying to act as normally as he could, while still keeping an eye out for both his armed pursuers and for the inevitable CCTV. He noticed a sign for an underground parking garage for the shopping concourse. It was just what he needed.

He knew it was useless to return to the station now, even though he wanted to with all his heart. Ayita and Stephenfield would both be dead, and Lynn… But he didn’t want to think about that now; if he was to be of any further use, he couldn’t. He had to put aside what had happened at the station, box it up in a far corner of his mind, to be dealt with at some point in the future.

If he ever survived to see the future, he thought grimly.

‘We’ve lost him,’ Eldridge heard one of his men report in. ‘He fell off the roof on to the tracks but by the time we left the vehicles, he was long gone. We’ve searched the area but there’s no sign of him.’

Eldridge double-clicked the radio in acknowledgement. Damn it. He had already received notification from the team at Area 51 that satellite surveillance had tracked him as far as the underpass and had not reacquired him. Either Adams was still somewhere in the underpass area — unlikely, if his men hadn’t found him — or he had managed to escape the area somehow.

Still, Eldridge now had Evelyn Edwards as his hostage and he was certain he would be able to use her as leverage if Adams came at them again.

He keyed the radio. ‘OK,’ he ordered, ‘that’s it then. Start making your way to base. It’s almost time.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he heard the confirmation come back to him, eagerness in the man’s voice.

Eldridge turned to look at Lynn Edwards, unconscious and handcuffed in the Audi’s leather bucket seat next to him.

One out of two wasn’t bad, he figured. At any rate, it was going to have to do for now, at least.

Just a few miles behind Eldridge, unbeknown to both men, Adams drove his recently stolen car. He had hot-wired it in the parking garage and was now on the road to CERN. There was to be no more subtlety, no more attempts to second-guess. There was no time. He was just going to go straight up to the main gate of CERN and demand to be let in.

He had remembered something that Professor Travers had said during their impromptu ‘hidden history’ lecture in the bowels of Area 51, and it had given him something that at least resembled a plan.

He just needed to make a quick stop first.

By the time the big Audi reached the main Mysen entrance to the CERN facility, Lynn was awake, although she chose to hide this fact from her captors.

Her immediate thoughts were for the baby. Would it still be OK after such a fall? But there was nothing she could do about that now; only time would tell.

But what about Matt? What had happened to him?

As she looked about the car with hooded eyes, she recognized the large bulk of Eldridge next to her and realized she had been handcuffed to him. But Matt was nowhere to be seen, and she wondered what that meant.

Had he escaped? She hoped with all her heart that this was the case. But what if he had been captured, and was in another car? What if he was dead? But the fact that she was still alive lent credence to the possibility that Matt was alive too. It made sense to hold her as a hostage if he hadn’t been killed yet.

The thought gave her hope, despite her current situation. If Matt was alive, then maybe they still had a chance.

7

Eldridge looked down at Lynn. ‘You might as well cut the pretence and open your eyes, Dr Edwards,’ he said bluntly. ‘I know you’ve been awake since the city.’

Lynn opened her eyes and stared at him. ‘Well, clever old you,’ she said sarcastically.

Eldridge smiled. ‘I don’t think you’re in any position to poke fun,’ he chided. ‘We are allowing you to live, for now. You would do well to remember that.’

She ignored him, and they proceeded in silence. The car drove through the gate to the CERN laboratories, a rather unassuming barrier that looked as if it was guarding nothing more than a regular, run-of-the-mill industrial estate. As they passed nondescript office blocks, temporary accommodation and the occasional larger concrete laboratory, Lynn wasn’t surprised to find that the rest of the complex, like the gate before it, was also not dissimilar to a standard industrial estate.

During her time in NASA, she had come to understand that many of the world’s most famous and highly regarded scientific facilities — the kind of places that the public imagined would be all spotless, gleaming stainless steel and high-end electronics — were in actual fact very often depressingly mundane, and it seemed that CERN was no different.

After a few minutes, they halted in front of what appeared to be the administrative headquarters. The front seat passenger got out and opened Eldridge’s door, and the big man got out, pulling Lynn along behind with him.

They pushed through the heavy front doors, and Lynn was surprised to see that the foyer was rather more plush than the exterior would suggest. But then, she figured, the research carried out here depended to a large extent on donations and external funding, and in her experience the people signing the cheques liked to be wined and dined in fine style.

There were a few people wandering around, and Eldridge was careful not to make a show of the fact he had a woman handcuffed to him. The desk security guard noticed but merely nodded his head at Eldridge.

They remained silent as they passed through the foyer, and Lynn noticed the first signs for the Large Hadron Collider, labelled in several different languages. They turned down a long corridor and followed it to the end, and despite circumstances, Lynn found herself excited to be here. The LHC was the world’s scientific Mecca, and she had always wanted to see it.

Eldridge noticed her interest and smiled. ‘Want to see the collider, eh?’ he asked. When Lynn just ignored him, he continued anyway. ‘Not on the agenda for today I’m afraid, Dr Edwards. But what you’re about to see is a lot more special, believe me.’

And although she hated the man next to her, Lynn suspected that in this case he might just be right.

They found the elevator at the end of the left-hand corridor and went straight in. Eldridge pushed the button for the LHC level, one hundred metres below the surface. Once the elevator had stopped, Eldridge removed a key card and entered it into a concealed slot, and the elevator started moving again, further into the bowels of the earth, and Lynn was instantly reminded of her similar subterranean trip back at Area 51.

Another minute later, surely another hundred metres below the tunnels of the LHC, the elevator eventually came to its final stop.

The door slid open to reveal an enormous, luxurious conference room. It was filled with people, well over a hundred, and as Lynn examined the faces, she was sure she recognized many of them.

There was Scott Keating, the famous Hollywood movie star; Roman Parlotti, the notorious Italian media magnate; Kristina Nyetts, the director of the world’s largest pharmaceutical company; Tony Kern, the special aide to the US President himself; and many more besides. So here they were, the Bilderberg Hundred, in addition to the men of the Alpha Brigade. The most powerful people in the world, all joined together in the hope of becoming more powerful still, no matter what it took.

And then her eyes wandered to the corner, and she saw Samuel Atkinson, the Director General of NASA, sipping casually from a champagne flute and chatting animatedly to Stephen Jacobs, the architect of this entire insane project.

Seeing her old boss, someone she had trusted and who had betrayed both her and her entire team, chatting to Jacobs as if he had not a care in the world, destroyed what little composure she had left.

‘Son of a bitch!’ she screamed at the top of her voice, and the room went deathly quiet as she launched herself across the room at the two men.

She was yanked backwards painfully by Eldridge who gave a sharp tug on the handcuff that still joined them. She tried to go again but Eldridge moved in and grabbed her in a bear hug, lifting her off her feet.

Atkinson looked at her, then down at the floor as recognition dawned. Jacobs felt no such guilt, though, and smiled across the room at her.

‘Ah, Dr Edwards,’ he said charmingly, ‘how good of you to join us. And as luck would have it, you’re just in time.’

8

Since the room was already quiet, Jacobs went on to address the assembled visitors.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, our mission here is an extraordinary one,’ he intoned, two lifetimes of public speaking ensuring he commanded everyone’s attention, ‘and we are extraordinary people. The road has been long and hard, consisting of twelve years of selection for our little group, and nearly seventy since contact was first made. Since then, we have used our influence around the globe to bring the whole world under our control. For we all know that it is not politicians who wield the power.

‘How long can a president stay in power, after all? In the United States, a maximum of eight years. You can stay in control of a company for eighty years, and the money wielded by congressional advocates on behalf of those companies ensures more political clout than any ten presidents combined. Actors, singers, writers, they change and influence the culture around us to a much greater extent than politicians can, or ever could, and yet they are not accountable to anyone.

‘What we have, gathered here today, are the one hundred most influential people in the world, people who have made the world what it is today. We have achieved this by all manner of manipulation, by corruption and, yes, sometimes through violence, but achieve it we have. As such, we are indispensable to the coming Anunnaki. We control the world as it is, so who else would they allow to survive? They need us, let us never forget that.

‘And we will soon have our reward. We will rule the world openly, and live in unimaginable luxury and comfort for the next thousand years. The world as we know it will be at an end, of course, but is this so regrettable? Humanity needs purging, we have grown too weak and need a re-injection of suffering in order to propel us to new achievements. And so I welcome our visitors, the Anunnaki, who, let us not forget, are our own ancestors, the original human race.

‘So without further ado,’ Jacobs concluded, gesturing to a set of gilded double doors behind him, ‘let us see for the first time what our efforts over the years have helped to fund and create.’

The crowd surged towards the oversized doors, which were ceremonially opened by two uniformed guards.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give to you the world’s first controllable cosmic wormhole.’

Lynn felt Eldridge pull her through the doors into the chamber beyond, but pulling her was no longer necessary; she wanted to see it.

Lynn gasped as she passed through the doors.

This was the kind of hi-tech facility that people would probably have expected to find upstairs. The room was large, dozens of immaculately presented white-suited technicians scurrying from one bank of monitors to another. The room was a hive of activity, and yet it was so perfectly clinical, Lynn couldn’t help but be impressed.

And what was even more impressive — although more ominous, given its purpose — was the fact that CERN employed several thousand scientists and support staff, and yet almost nobody knew this place even existed.

The other half of the room was some sort of observation gallery which stretched for two hundred feet to either side of the doors. Ahead of them was a huge perspex window, with luxurious leather-upholstered benches lining the gallery from one end to the other.

Lynn tried to see through the long window, but whatever was on the other side was shrouded in darkness.

Despite the situation, and despite what the device was intended for, she was still curious about it. A real, operational wormhole? What on earth would such a thing look like? Even with her own high level of scientific knowledge, she could not imagine.

As the gathered members of the Bilderberg Group took their seats, Professor Messier strolled to the front, smiling broadly.

‘My friends,’ he said, clapping his hands together in delight, ‘first of all let me say thank you. Thank you for helping to fund this project. Since CERN’s first days in nineteen fifty-four, the creation of what you are about to see has consumed the modern equivalent of six trillion US dollars, most of which has come from Bilderberg Group members like yourselves. Stephen has spoken of the importance of the project already, and I do not wish to labour the point. I will just show you instead.’

Messier nodded his head to one side, and all of a sudden the chamber beyond the huge viewing window was cast into bright illumination.

He was pleased with the looks of amazement on the faces in front of him.

Lynn, too, was astonished by what she saw. She had imagined something like the Large Hadron Collider itself, a gigantic piece of machinery, something that shouted ‘high-tech, super-advanced physics’. But here there was only a massive, colossal underground canyon; a truly gigantic pit dug deep into the earth, walls of bedrock stretching up and around as far as the eye could see.

‘What is this?’ she heard one member of the Hundred exclaim, confused.

Messier held up a hand. ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘It’s not what you were expecting, eh? Well, don’t worry, there are plenty of exciting metallic bits and pieces dotted around that cavern, all designed to focus energy to the centre. But think about it logically. We are bringing back an entire people, approximately twelve thousand of them. In deep space, the wormhole device they have created is outside their own starship, and their entire starship will be going through it and returning here. And remember, if you will, that their spacecraft is Atlantis itself, regarded as an entire city-state when last it was on earth, which should give you some indication of its size.

‘In fact, the craft is so big that it will literally fill that vast cavern completely. It will be an incredible sight to behold,’ Messier said, his eyes shining. ‘We will witness the return of Atlantis, the return of an ancient pre-historic civilization, the return of humanity’s gods, and the return of our direct biological ancestors, all at once.’ He looked down at his watch. ‘And it will all happen within the next hour.’

9

Adams drove his car down the streets of Maisonnex Dessus until he eventually reached the main gate of CERN.

The guardhouse wasn’t much, but the sentry got on the phone as soon as he saw the car, doubtless calling Eldridge or another of his Alpha Brigade goons. But Adams didn’t care; getting picked up by the brigade was part of his plan.

As he halted at the gate, the sentry got out of the shack and approached him warily. ‘If you wait there, sir,’ he said nervously, ‘someone will be right with you.’

Adams just nodded his head and waited.

Sure enough, within minutes his vehicle was surrounded by a dozen armed men, all screaming at him to get out of the car with his hands where they could see them.

Adams complied, got out of the car and rested both hands on the car roof, even though it caused tremendous pain in his arm.

Two of the men searched him thoroughly, then spun him back round, pushing him against the car. Backing away, they raised their rifles, ready to execute him on the spot.

And then Commander Eldridge was there, Sig Sauer pistol in one beefy hand.

‘Mr Adams,’ he said graciously. ‘We meet again. Although I’m afraid this time I’ll have to make it quick, we’ve got to get back in time for the show.’ He smiled and raised the handgun.

Adams stared down the end of the large barrel. ‘Wait!’ he shouted, and the urgency in his voice caused Eldridge to hesitate for a moment. ‘I have information about the Anunnaki.’

Eldridge scoffed. ‘What could you possibly know about them that we don’t?’

‘Something Travers told me back at Area 51, something that might be useful to Jacobs. All I want to know is if Lynn is alive. If she is, then release her and I’ll tell Jacobs everything. If she’s not, then you might as well shoot me now.’

Adams watched Eldridge’s face, and knew the man was weighing his options. Suddenly, he flipped open a phone and dialled a number. He quickly relayed what Adams had told him, listened, and then turned back to Adams. ‘He’s not interested.’

‘Tell him it’s about where they come from. Originally, I mean. I don’t think Jacobs knows, does he?’

Adams remembered Travers’ history lesson, and clearly recalled him saying that advanced humans arose on the earth many thousands of years ago, but nobody — apparently not even the Anunnaki themselves — knew how this had happened.

Eldridge scowled but relayed the message to Jacobs. He then waited — for what seemed to Adams an inordinately long time — for a reply. Eventually, he gave a confirmatory ‘Yes, sir,’ and ended the call. He turned to his men. ‘Did you search him?’ Two of his men told him that they had performed a thorough search, and Eldridge turned back to Adams, looking him up and down with suspicion. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘search him again. He’s going inside.’

Jacobs had no idea what information Adams might have, if any. He realized that it was probably just a ruse to get inside, but there was an outside chance that Travers had told him something; the professor had spent more time in contact with the Anunnaki than even he himself had.

He also knew that, despite his confidence with his guests, their position wasn’t as secure as he made out; the Anunnaki were far more powerful than they were, and there were no guarantees that things would be as promised. As such, any scrap of information that might be of use to him in his dealings with these ancient humans would be worth having. Knowledge of their origins, for instance, might be of great value.

And so he left the viewing gallery and went back inside the conference room, where he took a seat and waited for the arrival of Matthew Adams.

10

Adams was pushed into the room minutes later, forced to sit in a chair directly opposite Jacobs.

Jacobs smiled warmly at him. ‘We really must stop meeting like this,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid there’s no time for pleasantries, so we’ll get straight to it. What is the information you have?’

‘Is Lynn still alive?’

‘Yes,’ Jacobs answered simply. ‘We thought it best to keep her alive as collateral in case you decided to come here. Now what is the information? Where did the Anunnaki come from?’

‘Not until I see her,’ Adams responded.

Jacobs nodded to Eldridge, who grabbed Adams’ head and slammed it into the glass conference table, before pushing him back in his seat, blood leaking from his nose.

Adams just held Jacobs’ gaze, silent.

Jacobs watched Adams for several moments, searching for any sign of weakness, but found none.

Finally he tutted to himself and gestured to Eldridge. ‘Go and get Dr Edwards, please,’ he said in resignation.

Philippe Messier had retired to the control room to oversee the operation of the wormhole, but his voice could still be heard on the speakers dotted throughout the viewing gallery.

‘The energy that will be generated in the chamber will be enormous,’ he explained over the PA system. ‘The viewing glass in front of you is ten inches thick. Without it, and without the protective bedrock surrounding the cavern, this whole level would be destroyed when the wormhole becomes active. But don’t worry.’ He chuckled. ‘You’ll be fine right where you are. It has all been modelled and tested a thousand times before.’

In her seat, Lynn laughed to herself. Tested before? Maybe by a computer, but for real? It was hard to make predictions about a technology that had never been used before.

‘We are now about to start our lead-up procedure,’ Messier explained. ‘You will now see some of the power that we are able to generate by harnessing the antimatter produced by the LHC above us.’

There was a short lull, when everyone went quiet and the lights flickered off and on; and then a sound like an electrical generator, only much louder started up. It was a loud, deep, throbbing hum that passed through her body like a physical blow to her gut. And then the viewing gallery lights dimmed again, but stayed dim this time, revealing the chamber beyond in even greater clarity.

Seconds later, the lights went out in the chamber itself, and Lynn could hear the groans of disappointment around her.

‘Just wait,’ she heard Messier say. ‘One moment.’

And then lights appeared far into the recesses of the chamber’s cavernous roof. They were just sparks at first, but then they blossomed larger, each one bright enough to illuminate the entire chamber. Before long, the whole cavern was sporadically lit up by these energy sources, like trapped lightning, flickering with vast energy.

Lynn was transfixed, and then felt a hand on her shoulder.

‘Come with me,’ she heard Eldridge whisper in her ear.

Adams’ heart fluttered in his chest when he saw Lynn enter the room. She was alive!

He saw the excitement in her face too, which turned to a wince when she was unceremoniously dumped into the chair next to him.

‘Now, Mr Adams,’ Jacobs said, ‘tell me what you know.’

‘Not until Lynn is safe,’ Adams said. ‘She leaves CERN now, escorted off the premises.’

Jacobs nodded to Eldridge, who grabbed Lynn back out of her chair, a blade appearing in his right hand, held close to her right eyeball.

‘Or you could just tell me now, and Eldridge here won’t cut out the bitch’s eyes,’ Jacobs shouted angrily, aware that the device was already starting to become operational in the next room.

Adams looked around the room. The door to the gallery ahead of him was guarded by two men of the Alpha Brigade, as was the door to the elevator behind them. Then there was Eldridge, holding Lynn in his strong grip just a few feet away, and Jacobs directly opposite him, across the table.

A light started to flash above the double doors to the gallery, and an electronic voice came over a PA system. ‘Three minutes to wormhole opening,’ it said without emotion. ‘Everyone to their stations.’

Jacobs turned to Eldridge. ‘Cut her!’ he ordered, tired of playing games.

Adams saw the glint in Eldridge’s eye and reacted an instant before he did.

The darts were in the roof of Adams’ mouth, and had thus been missed during the two body searches. Adams had picked up the wood at a hardware store in Geneva, along with a knife, and had worked them himself before setting off for CERN. They were small yet heavy, and very sharp. Dropping one from the roof of his mouth to his tongue, he curled his tongue up and round it, and blew it out of his mouth as hard as he could.

He had learnt the technique as a boy, and had spent hundreds of hours training to hit a one-inch target from twenty feet, until it had become second nature. It was possible to hold up to half a dozen poisoned darts in the mouth without risk, although he had been unable to source any poison in the short time he had had to prepare. But he had coated the tips of the darts with chilli powder, and when the first dart entered Eldridge’s right eye, it made the man recoil in agony, screaming at the top of his lungs.

He let Lynn go instantly, dropping his knife to the floor, his hands going to his ruined eye, legs going weak with the shock of the excruciating pain.

Adams turned to Jacobs, knowing he had only one shot at the man before he would have to deal with the guards. He fired out another dart, but Jacobs was quicker to react than Adams had expected, diving for cover behind the table, and the dart whistled away harmlessly over his head.

Adams swooped down to pick up Eldridge’s knife and hurled it across the room at the guards by the double doors. Then he swivelled to the two men by the elevator. Their weapons were already up and aimed, but Adams loosed two darts in quick succession, both of which struck the men in the face. They weren’t disabling but were sufficient to take the guards’ attention off shooting him for a few vital moments.

He heard a muffled cry behind him and turned to see the knife he had thrown sticking out of the chest of one of the other guards. The man fell to his knees, eyes wide with surprise, while his partner opened fire on full automatic.

As Adams and Lynn took cover behind the metal struts of the glass table, Jacobs scurried for the double doors.

Glass shattered and bullets ricocheted off the metal legs. Adams pulled the near-blind Eldridge towards him with his bad hand and punched him on the jaw with the other, knocking him out cold. Adams reached to get his gun, but Lynn was one step ahead of him, the pistol already in her hand, aimed at the men by the elevator.

The two guards were now recovering from the darts in their faces and were raising their guns again, but they were rocked backwards into the metal door of the elevator as Lynn loosed off four rounds, two bullets hitting each man directly in the chest. Plumes of blood exploded across the polished wooden floor.

Adams looked at Lynn with momentary surprise, then turned back to the double doors.

‘Damn!’ Lynn said as she saw Jacobs disappearing through the doorway into the safety of the gallery beyond. The remaining guard opened fire at them again, and then Lynn drew his fire by rolling one way, returning fire of her own, while Adams rolled to the opposite side, loosing off his two remaining darts.

The last guard was punched to the side as one of Lynn’s bullets struck his hip, and then he keeled over backwards as both of Adams’ darts entered his throat.

‘Two minutes to wormhole opening,’ the electronic voice announced.

‘Come on,’ Adams said, getting to his feet. ‘Let’s get in there, now!’

11

The attention of the Bilderbergers was concentrated entirely on the viewing windows, and they watched with fascination as the antimatter-powered machinery throughout the vast cavern started to activate fully. Beams of intense light were cast from seemingly every nook and cranny of the distant roof, and it looked like some sort of incredible thunder and lightning storm inside the chamber. The vast power being harnessed was clear for all to see, and nobody was in any doubt as to what they were witnessing.

But then the double doors to the conference room burst open and Jacobs came tumbling in, falling to his knees as he crashed through the doors.

‘Block the doors!’ he screamed, although his cries went unheard over the thunderous roar of the wormhole machinery.

And then the double doors burst open again, and Adams and Lynn came storming in, submachine guns aimed into the room, sweeping along the rows of leather benches. The Bilderbergers dropped to the floor as one, screams starting to ring out, and then the two intruders raised their guns and fired up at the ceiling, and everyone hugged the floor harder, heads down.

Four men — men of the Alpha Brigade, unarmed in this supposedly sacrosanct area — started to run towards Adams and Lynn but were cut down instantly, their bullet-riddled bodies hitting the ground hard.

‘Turn the machine off!’ Lynn screamed at the top of her voice. When nobody moved, she let off another burst from her rifle, the rounds passing just inches over the Bilderbergers’ heads. ‘Turn it off!’ she screamed again.

Still there was no response, and Adams leapt across the benches, having seen Jacobs cowering below. He reached down and hauled him up, placing the barrel of his gun underneath the man’s chin.

‘Turn it off,’ he whispered with truly menacing intent. ‘Turn it off or I’ll blow your brains out right here, and you’ll never get to see the Anunnaki anyway.’

‘One minute to wormhole opening,’ the electronic voice advised again.

‘Do it,’ Adams said again, even more forcefully.

‘You can’t stop it now,’ Jacobs said through gritted teeth. ‘It’s over.’

Adams was about to pull the trigger when the double doors opened once more and Eldridge burst through with a submachine gun in each hand.

Half-blind, face bloodied, and incensed with rage, the big man opened fire immediately, raking the viewing gallery with high-powered .40 calibre rounds.

Adams and Lynn dived for cover and the bullets smashed into the viewing glass, ricocheting off the armoured material.

‘No, you fool!’ Jacobs called from the ground. ‘You’ll kill us all!’

But Eldridge wasn’t listening and opened fire again, the bullets tracing a line across the room, shattering and destroying an entire panel in the nearby control centre.

‘No!’ Messier cried out, running to the panel to try and save it. But it had been destroyed beyond repair. He turned to Eldridge with all hope drained from his features. ‘What have you done?’ he asked. The scientists around him were scurrying about the laboratory in blind panic.

Suddenly, the armoured viewing panel hissed from its frame, lifting and tilting, opening like some sort of huge vent, and Adams realized that Eldridge must have hit the operating mechanism.

The lightning in the chamber beyond grew even brighter, and the one hundred Bilderbergers screamed in earnest now, remembering the words of Messier. Without the protective glass, they would be doomed.

‘Thirty seconds and counting,’ the voice continued to report, without emotion.

12

‘Close the window!’ came the same cry from dozens of mouths. The whole viewing gallery erupted into chaos.

But the window couldn’t be closed, it was too large, too heavy, and the control panel had been completely destroyed by Eldridge’s bullets.

And then Eldridge’s guns clicked empty. Adams surged forward and tackled him off his feet, smashing him back against the double doors and through into the conference room. Eldridge used his superior size to turn Adams and run him through the room until he slammed into the hard metal of the elevator doors.

Adams gagged from the pain shooting through his shoulder, and then Eldridge shoved a huge, meaty forearm across his throat, leaning in with all his weight, crushing his windpipe and choking him slowly unconscious.

Adams saw the maniacal look in Eldridge’s eye and knew the man would not stop until he was dead. He started to feel his eyes going dark, the air being cut off to his brain, and his fingers reflexively reached out, searching along the wall beside him.

‘Twenty seconds and counting,’ the voice announced, and then Adams’ fingers found the button he was looking for. He pressed it and the elevator doors opened. As the men fell through on to the metal floor, the pressure on Adams’ throat eased.

Adams used the momentum of the fall to place his foot in Eldridge’s stomach and flip him over his head. The man’s huge body crashed into the elevator’s far wall. Adams felt the elevator rock with the impact, and then the doors closed, and the elevator began to ascend. Eldridge’s body had hit the controls.

Adams heard the electronic voice one last time.

‘Ten seconds and counting.’

13

Back in the viewing gallery, the excitement of the Anunnaki’s arrival had given way to abject fear and horror at what was about to happen.

In the chamber beyond, the lightning flashes became more concentrated, more permanent, as the beams began to centralize in the middle of the cavern and a ball of light formed on the rocky floor before their very eyes.

As Lynn watched, she knew what she had to do. She didn’t know why or how she knew, but know she did, with every fibre of her being.

While everyone else tried to flee from the giant window, she started to move towards it, until she was running towards the light-filled cavern.

Suddenly, a hand on her shoulder arrested her progress, and she turned to see Jacobs’ horrified face staring at her. ‘Stop!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t go in there! You’ll ruin everything!’ He reached for her throat, his crazed hands trying to strangle her, face only inches from her own, and she could finally see the insanity in his eyes.

She didn’t even have time to feel satisfaction as she pulled the trigger of her submachine gun and a burst of .40 calibre rounds ripped through Jacobs’ guts. He dropped to the floor with a groan, fingers slipping from her throat and going to his belly, intestines spilling out over his hands as he looked at them in disbelief. His eyes went up to meet Lynn’s, but she had already turned away, towards the open window.

And then she threw the rifle to one side and mounted the wide window frame, legs bent, breathing deeply.

‘Five,’ the voice announced, ‘four… three… two… one. Wormhole opening.’

And then, saying a prayer for the first time in many years, she jumped.

14

The elevator was rising rapidly, unbalancing both men, but Adams realized Eldridge was still stunned from his impact with the elevator wall.

He took advantage of this, pushing him backwards and then thrusting the web of skin between his forefinger and thumb into the man’s unprotected throat.

Eldridge gurgled, his larynx shattered, but he surged forward, clasping Adams in a bear hug, squeezing the air out of him with his powerful arms. Blood started to seep through the makeshift bandage on his upper arm, and he felt his vision going hazy.

But he wasn’t beaten yet, and he was damned if he was going to give in. His knee came up sharply into Eldridge’s groin, his forehead slamming into the man’s face, breaking the nose, but still Eldridge held on to him, crushing even tighter.

And then the elevator started to wobble, to shake, to seemingly rip itself apart at the seams, and Eldridge finally gave up his grip. Adams hit the floor, which was searingly hot, seemingly superheated from underneath.

He recoiled reflexively, and as he did so, the whole elevator floor gave way.

He instinctively gripped the elevator’s handrails, watching as the floor, and Commander Flynn Eldridge along with it, tumbled down through the elevator shaft, which was filled with a strange green flame.

Eldridge’s face went white with shock as he plummeted down the burning shaft, fear finally entering his eyes just moments before his body hit the flames.

15

Lynn entered the chamber in a flying leap, just as the lightning strikes solidified into one solid mass, enveloping the whole chamber in a ball of pure energy.

As the only living thing in the chamber, the energy converged on her falling body, pulsating around her like another living entity. And she found herself suspended in the air, the ball of intense lightning energy coagulating around her with the feeling of warm liquid. The light became even more intense, and she lost all sense of who and where she was, all sense of existence.

And then everything went black, and she felt nothing at all.

16

The strange green fire died away almost as soon as it had appeared, leaving Adams clinging to the handrail of the elevator, staring down at the charred, burned elevator shaft and the lumpen mass of Eldridge’s ravaged body below.

He gingerly touched the wall exposed below the elevator, and was surprised to find it cool. He felt around, and found everything was cool, as if it had never been burnt.

He slowly lowered himself through the elevator floor, using handholds on the shaft to climb down it.

At the bottom, he stared at Eldridge’s body. The flesh looked as if it had been steamed clean off the bones. He almost gagged at the smell.

With energy like that having burst through the entire level, what would have happened to Lynn? He almost didn’t want to go back but knew he had to.

Would the Anunnaki be there?

Adams swallowed hard, and pressed on. There was only one way to find out.

He reached the conference room to find the wall separating it from the control room and viewing gallery now just a shattered shell, and no sign of any activity in the chamber beyond. There were bodies everywhere, and most of the flesh had been seared from the bones. He pressed on to the huge windows. He stood at the ledge and peered into the cavern beyond, and it was immediately obvious that there was no ‘mother ship’, no Atlantis spacecraft carrying the genocidal Anunnaki.

But where was Lynn? He turned away from the cavern and looked at the dozens of ruined bodies.

He gritted his teeth and began to search.

17

An hour later, he finished examining the bodies, convinced that Lynn was not among them. Where was she? Had she managed to escape somehow? He hoped so, with all his heart.

But what had happened here? The energy had obviously centred on the cavern — the walls bore the same burn markings as the rest of the ravaged underground level — and yet the wormhole had not opened.

Or had it?

He considered Lynn’s disappearance again, and looked back at the cavern with new eyes.

Lynn was alive, he knew it. He didn’t know where, but somewhere in the universe, she was alive.

And he would never rest until he found her.