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The statues moved slowly at first, like sleepers dragging themselves up to consciousness. Their golden exterior was as supple as actual skin, allowing smooth, unrestricted motion, such that the only sound was of heavy hands thudding against the solid concrete floor as the fallen statues began struggling to right themselves. Those that had survived Bones’ diversion without being toppled simply straightened and began milling about.
Watching them, Maddock searched for some indication that they were truly alive, but saw none. They seemed more like animatronic figures than living beings.
Animatronic figures as big as elephants and evidently, completely independent.
His observation was cut short by a burst from an assault rifle. He swung his eyes in the direction of the muzzle flash, and saw one of Hauser’s men, surrounded by the shuffling figures. Bullets stitched one of the statues, but instead of cratering the soft metal, the rounds vanished into it like a pebble thrown into a pond. There were even ripples of energy spreading out from the points of impact, meeting and canceling one another out.
Yet, as impotent as the attack proved to be, it got the attention of the animated statues. Those nearest the gunman immediately swung to face him. Perhaps sensing his imminent peril, the man tried to flee the circle, but a golden hand shot out from his blind side and plucked him off the ground. The statue—a male figure with curly hair and beard—lifted the gunman like a doll and dashed him to the floor. Maddock heard the crunch of the man’s bones breaking. Immediately, the other statues raised their fists above the shattered form, and then with what seemed like mechanical efficiency, proceeded to pound the man into a bloody pulp.
Another flurry of motion distracted Maddock. He glanced toward it and saw Hauser’s retreating back disappear into the midst of another cluster of statues. Kismet was close on his brother’s heels, his kukri still bared and ready for action. Only then did Maddock realize that the elemental relic was gone, taken presumably by Hauser as he fled. Kismet reached the statues a moment later, and then he too disappeared as the statues turned to follow, ponderous but relentless.
Maddock grabbed Leda’s wrist and began moving away from the vault’s center, and away from the unfolding carnage. He could feel the eyes of some of the statues turning toward him, following his movements, shifting toward him as if drawn to any motion, but he did not stop. Off to his left, he heard another burst of gunfire—the other gunman—which was just as quickly cut off. The swift reprisal seemed to confirm his working theory that the statues were at their most lethal when attacked.
“Don’t shoot at them!” he shouted, straining to make himself heard over the thud and crunch of another pulverization-in-progress. Still gripping his pistol, he awkwardly unclipped his radio and squeezed the push-to-talk. “Bones! Do not engage those things. Get out of the vault.”
He didn’t wait for a response, but kept moving, heading for the spot where he’d left the others. He spotted Garral and Rose. The two were poised like running backs on a football field, watching for the opening that would allow them to make a break for the end zone. He found Jade and Jimmy nearby, similarly dodging the giant automatons as they shifted this way and that, moving far slower than those that had killed the gunmen.
“Get to the exit!” he shouted as he got near the others. “And whatever you do, don’t attack them!”
“Which way?” asked Jade, ducking to avoid a slow swipe from a tall Aphrodite.
The question confounded Maddock. In the confusion, he had become disoriented, and with the statues now in motion, milling about and blocking his view of the vault’s edges, he had no idea which direction to go.
Leda chose that moment to pull free of his grip, but she did not flee. Instead, she just stood there at arm’s length, massaging her wrist where Maddock had held it. She met his gaze and then looked to his left. “That way.”
Maddock was about to thank her, but just then something struck his cheek. It was cold and hard, like a hailstone.
No, not like. It was hail. Tiny pellets of ice were falling all around him, bouncing off his parka, rattling tinnily on the statues, or just splattering wetly on the floor.
Wet? He looked down and saw that this impression was indeed correct. The little hailstones were melting on the floor, leaving big damp splotches on the concrete.
“What’s happening?” Rose shouted over the increasing patter.
“The ichor is raising the temperature in here,” Leda said. There was no urgency in her tone. She might simply have been commenting on the weather. “It’s thawing the permafrost.”
The air was still cold enough to freeze the meltwater as it dripped down from the ceiling, but judging by the swiftness with which it melted again on the floor, the temperature was continuing to rise. The hail was now more like wet sleet, and coming down harder.
As if they didn’t have enough to worry about.
“We’ve got to move,” Maddock said. “If we get soaked, we’ll freeze solid when we get outside.”
“Maddock! Bring your ass!” Bones’ voice reached out to him—not a radio transmission, but a shout. Through the haze of falling precipitation, Maddock could just make out his friend’s towering form, one arm raised and waving him on.
Maddock saw something else, too. Something that Bones had missed. He pointed, frantic. “Bones! Behind you!”
Bones turned just in time to see a towering Zeus-like figure, one lazy hand reaching toward him. Bones started to pivot away, but before he could, something slammed down onto the statue, crushing it to the floor. A boulder, as big as a car, had fallen onto the golden automaton, flattening it. The impact jolted the floor and sent Bones sprawling toward Maddock, but he scrambled back to his feet as more mud and debris began to pour down from the melting permafrost ceiling.
Kismet ducked under a reaching hand, narrowly avoiding it, then dropped to his knees and slid between the legs of the titanic figure. Ice pellets were falling from the ceiling, melting into a slushy mess underfoot, which made the slide easy but recovering from it a lot trickier.
The vault was definitely warming up, the permafrost thawing, but that situation, like the rampage of the reanimated statues, had to take a back seat to his pursuit of Hauser. He popped back up just as Hauser cut to the right, disappearing behind another pillar-like leg. He was weaving through the god-bodies like a pinball, trying to shake his pursuer. Encumbered as he was by the elemental relic, the best he could do was to stay a few steps ahead, but with the statues running interference, a few steps was all he needed.
The golden giants were moving faster, reacting to them as they had to the attack by the gunmen. Their rampage was mindless. The ichor energized their bodies, but without the consciousness of the entities that had once occupied them, they were simply reacting according to some kind of primitive default behavior written into whatever they had that passed for a brain. Their actions reminded Kismet of warrior ants, swarming in response to a threat. But what was driving them to attack him? He wondered if it was the close proximity of the relic. Were they drawn to it, recognizing it as the source of their potent lifeblood? Or was Hauser using it to control them somehow? Either way, Kismet knew that getting the relic back, separating the pieces and scattering them once more to the four winds was of paramount importance. If Hauser escaped the vault with the relic, there was no telling what kind of hell he might unleash on the world.
Kismet spotted the open vault door through a forest of legs as tall as he was. If he could get there before Hauser....
Too late. His brother was already there, his silhouette starkly visible against the whiteness of the seed vault beyond. Hauser seemed to hesitate there, just for a second, then he was gone, disappearing down the aisle between the empty racks.
As he reached the opening a moment later, Kismet saw the reason for his brother’s pause. The false walls that served as a secret entrance to the Prometheus vault were swinging closed. They were moving too slow to prevent him from slipping through, but even as he did, he realized the true reason Hauser had done this.
Kismet might be able to make it out, but his companions would be imprisoned inside, trapped with an army of mindlessly destructive automatons.
He looked back, searching for some sign of Maddock and the others, but all he saw through the blur of precipitation were gigantic golden figures stalking relentlessly toward him.
“Damn it,” he muttered. This was why he preferred operating solo.
He returned his attention to Hauser, who was now more than halfway to the airlock door, and knew what he had to do. He took off down the aisle at a full sprint.
The only way to help the others was to stop his brother, get the relic back. If he didn’t he would almost certainly have a lot more deaths on his conscience. Besides, he wasn’t even sure he would be able to stop the door from closing, or get it open again once it was shut. His mother might know, and she was in there, too.
That realization only added to his growing sense of guilt.
Even though it was the right choice, the only choice, it felt like he was abandoning them all to an uncertain fate. Alexandria all over again, only worse.
Fifty feet ahead, Hauser was past the steel safety cage. He slammed the gate shut behind him with such force that it rebounded halfway open again, but he was already gone, shooting toward the airlock doors.
Kismet blasted through the gate just as Hauser entered the airlock and pulled the door shut, practically slamming it in his brother’s face. Kismet had too much momentum to stop and crashed into the doors. The impact rattled his teeth and he bounded back, spilling painfully onto the floor, but he was up again in a heartbeat, reaching for the lever.
Locked.
He rattled it repeatedly, knowing that it would disengage as soon as the outer door was closed again. Unless Hauser wedged it open, he thought.
Unwilling to wait and see, he jammed the point of his kukri into the gap between the doors and attempted to pry them apart. The thick blade was more than tough enough to serve double-duty as a crowbar, but he wasn’t just fighting the lock. The rising temperatures had increased the already slightly higher air pressure in the vault, forcing them to remain shut. He tried to drive the knife in deeper, but his gloved hand slipped off the hilt, sliding along the length of the blade. He winced as the edge slice through Gore-tex and skin alike, and snatched his hand back in an instinctive protective reflex. Blood was already seeping through the gash in the glove, dripping down to stain the floor in dark red blotches.
He bit down on the finger of the glove and yanked it off. Blood was streaming from the gash, but he wiped it on the front of his parka. His hand was throbbing all the way up to his elbow. Rapid healing abilities did not grant him any immunity from pain, but he gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore it as he resumed trying to force the doors open.
A loud crash filled the vault, shaking the floor and dislodging a shower of ice chunks from the ceiling above. The accompanying shock wave buffeted Kismet, shoving him forward and nearly knocking him down again.
A glance over his shoulder confirmed what he already knew had happened. Through the parallel rows of shelves, he could see an uneven gap in the back wall. The god-bodies were smashing through it. If the walls of the vault would not contain them, nothing would. Before he could turn back to his task, there was another resounding crash and one of the golden forms stumbled forward into the empty seed vault where it immediately began shoving shelving racks out of the way, intent on clearing a path for the exit.
Kismet whipped his head back around, desperate to get the airlock doors open. To his astonishment, he discovered this had already been accomplished. The tremors had shaken the doors off their hinges. He bolted through, and kept going, past the still-open exterior doors. He made the turn and headed back to the long tunnel leading up to the surface where he finally caught sight of his brother, just for a moment as the latter slipped through the door at the far end.
He sprinted ahead, crossing the full distance in about thirty seconds. He was surprised at how winded the effort left him. His brief exposure to the relic in its correct alignment had not, it seemed, completely recharged his batteries. Nevertheless, he dug deep and poured everything into catching his brother.
As he burst through the last set of doors, emerging into the darkness of the Arctic at midday, he heard the diminishing whine of a snowmobile engine. A white plume trailed out behind a dark speck shooting away, straight down the hill, toward the not-so-distant lights of the airport and the plane that would carry Hauser away, along with a power that might reshape the world.
Or destroy it.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Kismet jumped on one of the remaining snowmobiles, started it, and took off after his brother.