them, Kane pulled out a handheld buzz saw and snapped together an acetylene torch from the leather pouch. Then he set about finding a place to start working, with Grant and Brigid dogging his footsteps.
As Kane selected a mound from which one of the curious icelike spires protruded, Grant turned to Brigid and asked why anyone would design a building that needed to be constantly dug out of the snow.
Brigid shrugged. “Maybe the owner preferred it that way,” she suggested. “Abraham Flag was, by all accounts, a fascinating and unique individual. He liked his privacy.”
“So Lakesh was saying back at the base,” Grant responded, recalling the briefing that the Cerberus team leader, Mohandas Lakesh Singh, had given them prior to dispatching the Manta craft. “But what’s the big deal about all this anyhow?”
“If that military record was correct,” Brigid explained, referring to the coded file they had found on the North Dakota computer, “there’s a strong possibility that Flag gained control of an ancient Annunaki artifact. It’s that artifact that caused him to go into hiding.”
“What sort of artifact?” Grant asked, brushing snow from his sleeve.
“A weapon,” Brigid said.
“What kind of weapon?” Grant asked. “A nuke?”
“Well, what kind of weapon does a god carry?” Brigid replied enigmatically.
“A lightning bolt,” Kane growled, not bothering to look up from his work at the mound, “if what we found Marduk using in Greece is anything to go by.”
“We’ll see,” Brigid said diplomatically.
Kane’s eyes met with hers and Grant’s for just a moment, and the hint of a smile crossed his lips. “I’m saying lightning bolt,” Kane said. “Anyone care to take a bet?”
“Kane…” Brigid began, her expression frosty.
“Giant hammer,” Grant cried, snapping his fingers. “I say it’s a great big hammer with a handle as tall as Brigid. A hammer that can…knock down mountains.”
Kane laughed. “Sure, that’s likely,” he said, an edge of sarcasm to his tone.
“You never heard of Thor?” Grant snapped back.
“Whatever.” Kane laughed. “I’ll take the bet.
“Baptiste?” he prompted.
Brigid shook her head, her ponytail of vibrant red hair whipping about her with the rising wind. “I can’t really…”
Brigid offered a resigned sigh. “Okay. I say it’s a…dagger.”
“A dagger?” Kane repeated dubiously, while Grant worked beside him, hefting the hunk of reinforced glass away. The hunk of glass was large, almost as tall as Grant himself and it clearly weighed a great deal. Yet Grant seemed to lift it with almost no effort, such was the man’s strength.
“A knife,” Brigid continued thoughtfully, “made of stone that features…”
“Features?” Kane encouraged.
“Writing,” Brigid finished. “A stone knife with writing down both sides that promises the death of godly enemies. Satisfied?”
Kane raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Pretty specific, Baptiste,” he said. And then, after a moment’s thought, he asked, “How much inside knowledge you got?”
“Me?” Brigid replied, offended.
“Come on, spill,” Kane insisted.
“If you’d bothered to read Lakesh’s notes, you’d have seen…” Brigid began.
“Notes?” Grant spit. “Did you see how thick that report was? The file was like the Prophesies of Whathisnamus.”
“Nostradamus,” Brigid corrected automatically.
As they spoke, Kane swept snow aside and pulled back a hunk of glistening metal from the ground. The edges were a little jagged, but it had the rudimentary appearance of a door into the snow. “Okay, kids,” he announced, “we’re in.”
Seconds later, Kane clipped a powerful xenon flashlight to his jacket’s lapel and clambered through the door, his two partners following him.
Making their way through the makeshift doorway, the three Cerberus exiles found themselves standing on a ledge about seven inches across. Leading the way, Kane walked along the ledge, kicking several small objects aside that appeared to be nothing more than paperweights.
Together, they made their way along the ledge until they could jump down to what appeared to be a series of steps running along the towering walls of a vast chamber. They found themselves in a high-ceilinged area that reminded Brigid of a chapel. Remarkably, Kane’s flashlight beam was redundant; the area appeared to be lit through some hidden process that granted the ceiling a soft, pleasant glow. The glow was more than enough to light the room, and it almost seemed to be natural light, rather than artificial.
The chamber stretched on for almost eighty feet, with a width of half that again. The high ceiling gave it the air of a cathedral, and Brigid found herself looking up in wonder at the enormity of the place. The ledge that they had initially dropped onto had led to a series of shelves that doubled as steps. The shelves stretched all the way up all four walls, with a few items placed sparsely along their lengths. Everything was the color of ice, white and blue and crystal clear.
As they peered all around them, the three explorers saw twin rows of glass cabinets spaced widely apart in two perfectly straight lines that led to the exit doorway. Each of the cabinets held a mismatched item of some description, and Brigid found herself drawn to the one nearest to where they had climbed down the shelves. Inside, she saw an old-fashioned barrel organ, finished in lustrous mahogany with a large wheel at each of the four corners of its base. She leaned closer, peering at the strange item until her forehead brushed against the cool glass of its containment box.
“So,” Kane asked, “what is all this?”
Brigid turned away from the cabinet. “Storeroom?” she proposed with some uncertainty.
“You said this place had become buried,” Grant said, “which means we’re at the top of the building. Meaning it’s an attic full of junk. Nothing unusual about that.”
Kane glanced around him, checking several of the cabinets. The nearest held an empty wooden chair, and in the one beside it a single bullet rested on a plinth. “Trophy room maybe,” he suggested. “Where old man Flag kept his treasures.”
“I wonder what they all mean,” Brigid said, her quiet voice echoing through the vastness of the chamber as they made their way toward a doorway at the far end of the room.
Kane gestured to the large wooden throne that stood inside the nearby cabinet, indicating the strange ideographs that decorated its surface. “Looks like Egyptian writing,” he said.
Brigid glanced at it for a second. “Aztec,” she corrected him.
Trailing behind them, Grant cast his eyes across
