The soles of my boots clanged against the metal grating, and the filtered air whooshed in and out of my lungs as I started my twenty-fourth circuit around the ring-shaped Vault of Souls. I’d estimated the hallway running through the Vault of Souls was ten feet across and about half the length of a standard track, so about an eighth of a mile.
The high walls on both sides of the hallway were lined with row after row of small, round recesses, reaching maybe twenty feet overhead. The recesses in the upper half of the walls were empty, the lower half filled with crystalline consciousness orbs swirling with glittering ribbons in every imaginable color. The shade of those ribbons was unique to the Olympian mind contained within each orb, the more muted colors belonging to regular Olympians, the more vibrant, luminous colors belonging to the psychically gifted, like me.
My hoplon suit kept my body more or less sweat-free, but my face and hair were another matter entirely. The stitch in my side convinced me to take a break, and I slowed to a jog, then a walk, and then I stopped, raising one arm over my head to help ease the side ache.
It was late morning, meaning we were trapped down here, beneath the Great Sphinx, for another ten or eleven hours, until full nightfall allowed us to sneak out to the Western Desert for some fresh air. I glanced up at the metal ceiling high overhead. It was so strange to think that a horde of tourists were traipsing around up there right now, exploring the Giza Necropolis, clueless to the alien complex hidden beneath their feet.
Well, maybe not entirely clueless. The fabled Hall of Records was believed by many to exist down here, containing the lost history of ancient Egypt. Some even believed the Hall of Records had been built by Atlanteans. Not quite, but close enough to the truth to have me believing that at some point the ancient Egyptians knew about Hades’ hidden underground lair.
With a quick flick of my finger around the stone in my regulator, I deactivated the device, unleashing my psychic gifts. I could sense the crowds of strangers above but tuned them out, focusing on the more familiar minds surrounding me down here. Emi, Hades, Fiona, and my mom were in the control room, while Raiden and Meg were in their respective private quarters, so far as I could tell.
I lowered my arm and cocked my head to the side, sensing something else. It was like a whisper in my ear, tickling the very edges of my psychic senses. The whisper was all around me, and I could have sworn it was coming from the consciousness orbs.
I moved closer to the outer wall, scanning the orbs resting in their individual recesses. One orb stood out in particular, displaying ribbons a hauntingly familiar shade of brilliant coral pink. From handling my own consciousness orb, I knew an Amazon’s regulator glowed the same hue as the threads of her stored consciousness. And this color—this consciousness—was achingly familiar to me.
Tentatively, I reached out for the orb and brushed the tips of my fingers over the smooth surface.
The image of a chaotic city street flashed through my mind, overlaying my perception of the space around me.
Startled, I yanked my hand away from the orb. But curiosity got the better of me, and once again, I touched my fingertips to the glassy surface, closing my eyes and focusing on the foreign image.
The city street reappeared, sights and sounds slowly overwhelming my own senses until this place felt just as real as the Vault of Souls, where I had been standing just a moment ago. The city surrounding me reminded me of New York City, at least as I had seen and experienced the famous city in movies and games, but with an alien flare. The skyscrapers were sleeker and more uniform, the people filling the sidewalks a little too tall, their features a little too sharp to be human. This was no city here on Earth; this was an Olympian city, the likes of which I had never visited, and I stared around in wonder.
A woman in a hoplon suit strode past me, the channels running the length of her skin-tight armor glowing a steady coral pink. Other Olympians bowed their heads as the Amazon warrior passed them. The cadence of her stride, matched with the yellow-gold bun atop her head and the telltale swagger, told me exactly who this particular Amazon warrior was—Despoina, my closest friend within the Order of Amazons.
I stumbled forward into a jog to keep up before she could melt into the stream of people. “Des!” I called out, pushing people out of my way as I chased after her. “Despoina!”
Despoina stopped and turned around, her eyes narrowing.
I slowed, then stopped just out of arm’s reach of her.
As Despoina looked at me, she shook her head, her eyes slowly widening until wonder transformed her expression. “Peri? How—” Again, she shook her head. “How are you here? You weren't supposed to be integrated into the system with the rest of us.”
My brows bunched together, and I tilted my head to the side. “What system?” I asked, then looked around. “What is this place? I was running through the Vault of Souls, and . . .” My attention returned to my old friend.
Despoina smiled, but there was a weariness in her eyes. “This is the Vault of Souls. Or, at least, the inside of the vault.” She held her arms out to either side of her. “Welcome to Olympus. Hades rigged the system to create a simulated reality pulled from our collective subconsciousness to keep us stimulated during our extended stay here in the ever after.” Despoina took a small step closer to me, her brow furrowing as she scanned me from head to toe. “But if you’re in the actual Vault of Souls, out in the physical world, does that mean—are you real?” Again, she stepped closer, her eyes searching mine. “Did it work? Did Hades resurrect you?”
My mouth opened and then closed again, and I swallowed roughly. If I was understanding Despoina correctly, then she and the rest of the Olympians stored here at the Omega site had been living in a simulated world since the collapse of the Alpha site over twelve thousand years ago. They weren’t dormant, as I had been in my lone consciousness orb; they were existing, experiencing new things. Their world may have been virtual, but they were very much still alive, and my heart soared with the realization.
Hades and I weren’t alone. We weren’t the last of our people.
“Yeah, I—” I cleared my throat, then nodded my head. “I'm real. I, uh—a lot has happened since . . .” Since I died, I didn’t say.
Without warning, Despoina threw her arms around me and pulled me into a tight hug. “I can’t believe it’s really you!” After a long moment, she released me and took a step back. “Last time Hades communicated with us, he told us everything was going according to plan, but something in his voice told me he wasn't being entirely honest.”
I laughed under my breath. “As I said, a lot has happened.”
Despoina frowned, but her eyes filled with hope. “Since you're back, does that mean we get to come out soon?”
I inhaled to answer but found I didn’t know what to say. Finally, I nodded. “We're working on it,” I told her, hoping I was telling the truth.
We were working on a lot of things at the moment, saving Earth from the Tsakali threat again, first and foremost among them. But how could I tell her that nothing had changed? That we were right back where we started—or ended—twelve millennia ago, trying to figure out how to evade an imminently invading force?
“I—” I glanced over my shoulder, like I might be able to see the world beyond the simulation. “I should get back, but I just wanted to see you. I never got to thank you for trusting me.” We never would have been able to save this planet from destruction by the Tsakali the last time if she hadn’t supported me. I flashed her a weak smile. “You’ve always had my back, Des. Thank you.”
“Peri,” Despoina said, reaching for me. “Wait—”
I pulled my hand away from the consciousness orb, keeping my eyes closed as the simulated city vanished around me. I hung my head and lowered my hand to my side, my chest rising and falling with each heaving breath. I sensed a presence behind me, both welcome and not. Hades.
My heart beat a little faster, and butterflies fluttered in my belly, my body’s instinctive reaction to knowing he was near.
“I was going to tell you about the simulation as soon as you had settled in a little more,” Hades said, guessing the reason for my somber mood. Within his mind, I could sense the truth of his words—the purity of his intentions and his regret at the lie of omission.
I opened my eyes and stared at Despoina’s consciousness orb, watching the coral-pink ribbons swirl and sway within. She was in there, as alive as me, just lacking a body. What if we could never free her? What if we could never free any of them? What if they were trapped in that simulated reality for all time?
“I didn't realize . . .” Swallowing down my confusing emotions, I raised a hand to activate my regulator. It was hard enough to make sense of my own thoughts without Hades’ thoughts invading my head. I took a deep breath, my shoulders relaxing, and turned around to face Hades, tilting my head back to meet his ice-blue eyes.
His elven beauty was as breathtaking as ever, the sharp contours of his face made more pronounced by the way his silver-blond hair was pulled back and tied at the nape of his neck. During my first few lifetimes, I had found Hades incredibly intimidating, but as I had come to know him better, that sense of intimidation had transformed into intrigue, and in time, to desire and love. Once upon a time, I had been ready to give up everything for him, including the relative immortality cloning afforded my people, for the chance to experience something forbidden to the members of the Order of Amazons: love. But before Hades and I could run away together, the Tsakali had brought the illusion of safety surrounding this world crashing down, and our dream of sharing one last lifetime together remained unfulfilled.
Now, we were together again, but the ground beneath our feet was no less shaky. The yearning I had felt for him so long ago still lingered, but I feared we had missed our chance, that what could have been was lost to the ages, just like our people.
“We could bring them back the same way I was brought back,” I said, latching onto the safer subject—our people. Talking about us was not a conversation I wanted to have right now. My heart was split clean in the middle, and I wasn’t ready to deal with the consequences of loving two men. “With surrogates and—and—”
Hades nodded, his expression thoughtful. “We could revive them the same way.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’m sensing a but in there . . .”
Hades sighed. “But, I don’t think we should bring them back.”
I sucked in a breath to demand an explanation, to argue.
“At least, not right now,” Hades added before I could even get started. “I think it would be too risky to implant any Olympian embryos into surrogate human mothers at present with the Tsakali on the way here right now.”
Hands on my hips, I pursed my lips, processing his words. “So, what? You think we should wait to see if the Tsakali destroy this planet, then think about resurrecting the others?”
Hades shook his head, his mouth forming a thin, flat line. “I think we need to consider evacuating the planet.”
“But—but—” I sputtered, my thoughts tumbling over my shock. “But that would require a ship . . . or the gephyra. And we don't have a ship”—the Tartarus, which had carried our people here, had been destroyed during the revolution that had claimed my life so long ago—“so you must be talking about the gephyra.”
The gephyra was an Olympian device that could create a bridge between distant planets, allowing people to travel far across the universe in the blink of an eye. Only, there was one big problem with that plan—the gephyra required a power source to run, and the chaos fragments that had once powered the gephyra located at the Alpha site were long gone, jettisoned from this planet to lead the Tsakali away the last time they had threatened Earth. Chaos was a unique, sustainable power source the Tsakali coveted above all other things. A new, human-created chaos stone formed from the orichalcum extracted from a meteor that landed on Earth several years ago was the reason we found ourselves in the same bind once again.
My eyes widened, and my lips parted as I stared at Hades, realizing his plan. “You want the chaos stone,” I said with absolute certainty.
Hades blinked once, his icy stare steady. “I need the chaos stone,” he countered. The way he said “need” sent a thrill through my body. “Regardless of what happens when the Tsakali arrive or what we do to prepare for the invasion, without a chaos stone, the Omega site's power core will fail, and then not only will all the Olympian embryos preserved in the Eberus perish, but I will be unable to transfer the consciousness orbs to the Alpha site should evacuation through the gephyra end up being our only option for survival.”
I shook my head, grinding my teeth together. “Stop saying ‘evacuation’ like it's inevitable.”
Hades inhaled and exhaled through his nose, his eyes never leaving mine. “It may be the only way to save our people.”
“No,” I snapped. “It would only save the Olympians, but you're forgetting that they're not my only people on this planet, and there's no way in hell I'm going to abandon humanity to an enemy we know everything about while they know nothing.” Chest heaving, I took a step closer to Hades, drawn in by his intensity. “If that's what you're planning on doing, then know you'll be evacuating without me.”
Hades clenched his jaw. “Always so idealistic,” he hissed. “And so stubborn.” His eyes searched mine, his gaze flicking down to my lips, and my stomach did a little flip flop of anticipation.
“Isn't that what you love about me?” My eyes widened as soon as the words left my tongue, and I immediately wished I could suck them back in. My pulse raced, and I flushed.
Hades leaned in closer, his gaze dipping down to my lips once more. “I love many things about you, Peri.” His focus returned to my eyes, his own burning with a tightly reined passion. “Would you like me to list them?”
I gulped, then licked my lips. My breaths came faster, my heart hammering in my chest. “I—”
Hades leaned in even closer until our breaths mingled.
Someone cleared a throat nearby.
I jumped back a step, putting some much-needed distance between myself and Hades, and stared at the intruder.
Fiona stood a dozen paces away, her face a mask of discomfort. She flashed me an apologetic smile before shifting her focus to Hades. “Sorry to interrupt, but an alarm is going off,” she said, pointing over her shoulder with her thumb. “Just thought you should know.”