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The woman stood at the bow deck rail of the Norwegian coast guard vessel, statue-still and seemingly impervious to the cold as she stared out across the emptiness of the frozen white landscape. She did not dwell on the events which had transpired nearby just a few days earlier. Things had gone badly, but she did not consider it a failure. That was the thing about experiments; the goal wasn’t necessarily to produce a set of desired outcomes, but rather to gather data with which to refine the experiment in the next iteration.
And she felt confident the next iteration would be the last.
Although his actions had very nearly cost her control of the organization, her eldest son’s actions were consistent with his psychological profile. In the next phase, she would funnel his reckless ambition, focusing his supernova bright energy into a laser that would cut through the barrier between heaven and earth.
Her thoughts were already on that not-too-distant day.
It would take a few weeks to move the golden god-bodies from the wreckage of the seed vault, but that would be easy enough to do. The local authorities had already circulated the story that global warming in tandem with a power failure, had caused the permafrost inside the vault to melt, assuring the public that Vault Two, which contained almost a million seed samples had escaped unscathed. The repair effort would provide the perfect cover for recovery and removal of the contents of the Prometheus vault, and while she knew that many items had probably been damaged beyond repair, she only needed one viable god-body for completion of the grand design.
Once the anomalies—what her youngest had taken to calling “the elemental relics”—were recovered, she would have Ulrich use them to produce a supply of ichor, albeit in a more controlled fashion than before, which would permit Prometheus’ scientists to begin harvesting genetic material.
And then?
Then she would be more than just the mother of a pair of demigods.
A voice intruded on her musings. “Ma’am?”
She turned and found one of the ship’s officers, bundled up against the cold, standing beside her at the rail. The man had a pinched expression, as if he was the bearer of dire news.
They must have found him, she thought, hiding a smile.
She had told them what to expect, that this was a recovery operation. Ulrich would appear as dead to them, a drowning victim. She would have to move quickly to hide his resurrection from the crew. Keeping her face expressionless, she faced the officer. “Have you found something?”
She was actually surprised it had taken them so long. The crew had been running search lanes using an array of instruments—towed sonar, magnetometers, even a remotely-operated undersea vehicle—for several hours already. The incident had occurred in shallow water, and she had expected quick results.
“No ma’am,” the man said, and now she realized the real reason for his apprehension. “There’s nothing here. Nothing at all.”
“That’s impossible. I saw him go into the ice right here. I saw with my own eyes.”
The officer nodded patiently. “All the same, there’s no trace of him. The captain requests that we expand the search area.”
The woman frowned. She could understand how the body might have been carried away by currents and tides, but the relic should not have been affected by those forces.
Her mind raced with possibilities. Had Ulrich recovered on his own, escaping a watery grave with the relics in hand? It seemed unlikely, especially since she had placed the entire archipelago under intense surveillance almost from the moment she had witnessed her sons falling through the ice, but what other explanation could there be?
This iteration of the experiment was still ongoing, it seemed.
“Ma’am?” the officer asked again.
She blinked still pondering the significance of this development, then faced the officer. “Perhaps I did not see what I thought I saw,” she said. “Tell the captain to call off the search and return to port. I have business elsewhere.”
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If you enjoyed the Elementals trilogy try Cavern- A Dane Maddock Adventure!
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For more information on Sean Ellis and his work, visit his website.