The winds battered the Osprey as the aircraft flared upward for a hard landing on the snow. Alex gripped her harness to remain in her seat. She was not prone to airsickness but the last ten minutes made her glad she had skipped breakfast. A white blast evaporated the darkness beyond the cabin windows. The explosive thunderclap defeated even the roar of the Osprey’s turbines. A jolt threw Alex against her harness. Then they were on the ground.

Ellzey was the first on his feet. Bedford, sitting beside Alex, stood, crossed the cabin to Martin, and helped him up. Alex kept still while listening to the tempest outside. Lightning again brightened the cabin with a double flash She shut her eyes and rubbed at her forehead. A strange sensation had grown since their departure from Williams Field, a heightened awareness akin to when she focused to use her abilities. The world appeared sharper, everything clear. The ozone scent of lightning close as if she had absorbed the bolts of electricity. And behind it all was the steady, heartbeat pulse.

“Are you all right?” her father said.

She unhooked her harness without answering. Something was out there in the storm: a part of her, flowing through her veins, and it knew she was coming. She felt drawn toward it – the sphere, the Anomaly, the thing Martin and her father had uncovered from beneath the ice, the thing that had ended their world. The pull was stronger now that the Osprey had landed. She stood and went to the door.

Snow and freezing wind swept into the cabin once Alex unlatched the door and threw it open. The storm’s churning black clouds dominated the atmosphere and blocked out the sun. A series of swaying generator lights designated the perimeter of the Directorate’s most remote outpost. She left the Osprey and approached the lights. Corrugated metal shacks resolved from the darkness, preceding more of the prefabricated buildings like those near Williams Field. But here, the only thing that mattered was the belted, all-terrain transport vehicle close to the landing zone. The vehicle resembled one of the Directorate’s multiple launch rocket systems, with the same driver’s cabin and tracked chassis. The difference was in the rear where a boxy, windowed passenger compartment had replaced the rocket module.

Driving snow beat against her as the scream of the Osprey intensified. Without looking, she knew the aircraft was rising into the sky. Soon, it was gone, the pounding thrum fading into the distance and allowing her to hear the full power of the storm and winds.

Ellzey appeared at her side. “You can feel it, can’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Do you see now? Why Kansas City and the Reagan were necessary? You’re powerful enough to wake it up. You understand.”

“It’s already awake.”

Bedford and Martin came up behind them. Her father held onto Martin to keep him from blowing over in the wind. Ellzey gestured at the stepladder leading up into the transportation vehicle. “Get in. I’ll drive.”

Ellzey went to the driver’s cabin and got inside while Bedford helped Martin into the passenger compartment. Alex stayed where she was. Bedford held the door open and looked down at her but she barely noticed. She watched as a red fork swept along the bottom of the storm, forming a great fissure as if reality were tearing itself apart. The lightning’s imprint burnt into her eyes and faded slowly as the force of the thunder shook the ground and rattled the vehicle’s windows. She took a deep breath of the freezing air and climbed the stepladder.

She remained standing once she was inside. She could not sit down. She could barely stop herself from rushing back out into the darkness toward the center of the storm. “Hurry up,” she said as if Ellzey could hear her through the walls, and a moment later, the cabin trembled as the vehicle sputtered to life.

“Alexandra.” Martin’s grey-blue eyes were worried and desperate. “Talk to me. Tell me what’s happening.”

She squinted at him, feeling confused and almost annoyed, but then noticed her reflection in his mask. Her eyes were near black. She drew back her sleeve. Her artery bulged from her wrist while pulsing a steady rhythm matching the heartbeat in her mind.

Martin stood with a grunt and took her hand. “Look at me.”

Alex raised her eyes. Her reflection for an instant became her mother’s with that brown corona of hair and beautiful smile. She felt unsteady. She drew back from Martin and sat heavily on one of the seats. Martin joined her.

“Alexandra?” Martin’s soft voice broke through the heartbeat, the gusting wind, and the chaotic storm.

“I’m scared.”

“I know.” He put his good arm around her. She leaned into him and rested her head against his trench coat and scarf. Bedford sat across the cabin. He gazed past them out the window. As she studied his features, his grey once-brown hair, the familiar sags and jowls of his face, and the profound sadness in his eyes, the cabin began to blur in her vision.

The heartbeat, the world darkened, and a single word reverberated within her mind as she closed her eyes. Watch.

---

Henry Bedford is in bed beside his pregnant wife. The room is dark and warm. Katherine Michelle Bedford is asleep, but he is awake. He doesn’t look at Kathy, doesn’t touch her even though he wants to embrace her familiar warmth. Instead, he stares at the ceiling’s shadows. Did he do the right thing? They only recently decided on a name. Alexandra. A strong name. Fitting for his child. He hopes she’ll surpass him someday. Perhaps she’ll follow in his footsteps and become an officer in the United States Air Force. Perhaps she’ll be a powerful CEO or politician or a successful lawyer or surgeon. Whatever her goal, he’ll do anything to support her. He has already given her so much, ensured for her a perfect genetic slate. She’ll be capable of anything. But what will he have to give up in return?

Kate turns on her side. She is still asleep but smiling that beautiful and captivating smile. He can almost hear the happy laughter that brightens her face and expression. If only he could offer her that happiness more these days. But they’ve spent less time together ever since he started working at the Pentagon. At least John is around to keep her company. He is thankful for his friend, thankful and ashamed that John was able to give her what he could not.

“I love you,” he whispers. Kate’s smile persists yet only intensifies the guilt. He turns away and closes his eyes. The world goes dark.

Bedford sits at Kate’s bedside in a quiet and sterile hospital room. The air smells of antiseptic struggling to mask the worse smell coming from his wife, that stench of death. Her brown hair is gone. Her once steel-blue eyes are a sickly grey and have sunken into her skull. She is too weak to smile. Her skin is pale and tight over her bones. He holds her cold, frail hand. Tears fall from his eyes.

He lowers his face and shuts his eyes tight. Please. Don’t take her away from me. This is my fault. Take me instead. Please.

His prayer goes unanswered.

Kate has not been lucid for the past few hours. He received the call from the doctors as he was sitting in his office forcing himself to read reports, to put his signature on orders and memorandums, to do anything to cast away the guilt. He almost left the phone ringing instead of picking it up to answer. He knows he should call John. He should call home and let the nanny know to drive Alexandra to the hospital. He is too afraid to do anything but hold Kate’s hand, afraid any movement will push his wife that last inch toward death.

“I love you,” he whispers to Kate and then closes his eyes.

Bedford stands in a glacial cavern. Diesel generators hum nearby. Powerful lights shine against his back, but the sphere, which hovers before him with absolute stillness consumes his shadow. He is the only one who can perceive the heartbeat. None of the scientists or military personnel or even his friend John can hear the steady lub-dub pulsing. John is in the control room with the rest of the men. No one wants to approach the Anomaly. The sphere imparts a sense of unease they cannot explain. The reason for that unease, that primal fear, comes to them in their dreams, which they do not remember when they wake sweating in their cramped quarters. Kate has been gone a year. Alexandra is six. He wishes they were here.

He touches the Anomaly. The impossibly smooth and impenetrable surface is ice cold. A ripple expands outward from his palm. Kate’s face resolves in the darkness, the dead visage he saw in the hospital room after his wife’s heart stopped and she let out a final, rattling breath, the face he saw before he broke down and cried and screamed until John arrived and sat with him on the floor while holding him in a tight embrace.

Let me out, Henry, Kate says. You did this to me. I’m here because of you.

What are you? Bedford asks, unsure if he is speaking aloud or in his mind. This is not Kate, not his wife. It is something else, the thing that comes in his dreams urging him to look into the darkness.

Do you want her back?

Yes.

Free— There is a second word he cannot understand. The word causes him physical pain. It is how the thing inside references itself. Not ‘me’ or ‘us,’ or even a name, but something else, something incomprehensible to his mind. But he knows what the entity wants. It wants out and it will give him Kate in return. He knows this beyond a doubt. It is not lying.

Katherine Bedford’s specter disappears, leaving only the black surface.

Bedford sits in the back seat of a black sedan. He is on the phone in conference with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Pentagon shrinks behind them. They speed across the city toward his home, toward Alexandra. Outside, a man is on his knees on the sidewalk. Blood pours from around his fingers, which he has jammed into his eyes. A woman leaps from the roof of a high rise and smashes into the pavement. The driver swerves but not in time. Bedford feels the bump and imagines a sickening crunch. The driver slams the breaks.

Bedford reaches forward and grabbing the man’s collar. “Keep going!”

“Hank?” The Chairman squawks from the cell phone. “What’s going on?”

The driver looks into the rearview mirror, sees Bedford’s intense stare, and steps on the gas. The man on the sidewalk falls forward and twitches before going still.

“Nothing,” Bedford says gruffly and then opens his briefcase. Papers and reports spill out onto the seat. A classified image from one of the nation’s orbiting eyes depicts Antarctica consumed in darkness. He recalls the screams he heard while listening in on the latest experiment to penetrate the sphere. The laser, it would appear, was a success. Did John make it out before… But he doesn’t have time to find out. All that matters is his survival and the survival of his daughter. A Black Hawk will be waiting close to his home to take him to Andrews. From there, they will depart to Peterson Air Force Base and Cheyenne Mountain. He will lock himself and Alex inside until the outbreaks pass. He will wait there for what was promised.

“We’ve made contact with the USS Henry Jackson,” says the Chief of Naval Operations. “All we need is the president’s authorization to launch.”

Bedford clenches the cell phone. “No!”

“What? Hank, whatever the hell that thing is—”

“Do not launch those missiles!”

“Have you turned on the news?” The Chairman says angrily. “We have thousands – millions – of people dying in the streets. And it all started the second we activated the test you recommended. If you have a better suggestion than nuking that thing, I suggest you make it.”

Bedford ends the call and drops the cell phone to the floor. Everything is falling apart. This was not part of the plan. He was never told this many people would die. The men at Lansing Station were a given but that was a reasonable sacrifice. But this is more than he ever considered, and it will all be for nothing if the military manages to force the entity back into its prison. He never anticipated the presence of a ballistic missile submarine within range of Antarctica. Neither did the old men.

The car slows and stops at the curb. “We’re here, sir,” the driver says nervously.

Bedford gets out. Screams and tortured howls compete with emergency sirens. A cold feeling moves down his back as he approaches the open front door of his house. Alex’s nanny lies dead on the front steps. Blood leaks from her ruined face and flows step-by-step down to the path from the sidewalk. Bedford hurries past the corpse into the house.

“Alexandra!” he shouts. “Alex! Where are you?”

He does not hear an answer. He goes to the living room, the kitchen. She isn’t there. He rushes up the stairs into his daughter’s bedroom. He nearly collapses when he sees her sleeping beneath the covers of her bed. He goes to her side and kneels.

“We need to go.”

She opens her eyes. “Daddy?”

“We have to leave.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere safe. I’ll explain later.” He pulls back the covers and picks his daughter up in his arms. He has not done this in a long time – years. She is heavier than he remembers. She puts her arms around his neck and holds on. He goes to his bedroom, the room he once shared with Kate. He grabs takes two items: a framed picture and the .45 on his bed stand. He leaves the room and starts downstairs. He pauses when he remembers the body. “Close your eyes, Alex.”

“Why?”

“Trust me. I’ll tell you when to open them.”

“Okay.”

They leave the house. He steps carefully around the body. When he is halfway down the path leading to the sidewalk, Alex screams.

Bedford sits behind his desk in Cheyenne Mountain. The clock on his wall shows past midnight, a week after the outbreaks. Washington has gone quiet. No word from the president’s bunker, no word from any other military installation, no word from any world government. The Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center is alone. He and a few hundred lucky others are all that remains. They represent the last remnant of the United States of America. A black handgun sits on the desk beside the picture of his once-happy family. The weapon is loaded with a round in the chamber.

Everything went wrong. The world is dead. The USS Henry Jackson launched its nuclear payload, and the entity, the sphere, and Kate are gone. John is alive but he suspects his friend of so many years is now his enemy. He told John about Kate, about Alex. He sees that ruined face as he stares at the handgun. The old men believe they can salvage the situation. Their new plan will take years but they are willing to wait for Alex to grow up, to reach her full potential – the potential that sealed Kate’s fate the moment they injected it into her womb.

But is it worth it anymore? John told him they are damned, but Bedford no longer has faith in God, not after Kate’s death. His wife prayed every day, went to church, and lived a pure life. And she died in pain from cancer.

He hefts the gun, heavy and cold to the touch. He took Kate to the range several times. She wasn’t any good at shooting but she enjoyed spending time with him. She held this gun, fired it, and even cleaned it under his watchful eye. Now she is gone and he suspects he will never see her again.

A soft knock on the door.

Bedford looks up and puts the gun on the desk. “Come in.” The handle does not move. Another knock. He gets up and goes to the door to open it.

Alex stands outside in her pajamas. “Daddy?” Her steel-blue eyes look at him worriedly. They are Kate’s eyes – John’s eyes. He takes her inside and closes the door. They go to the couch and sit.

“What’s wrong?”

“Daddy, I had a bad dream. I dreamed you were gone. You left me all alone.”

“I’d never do that,” he says and hugs her close although his gaze drifts to the handgun.

“I don’t like this place,” she says. “I want to go home.”

“We can’t go home. This is home now.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“I miss mommy. I wish she was here.”

“So do I,” he says as the tears fall down his cheeks. Alex is crying, too. They hold onto each other and eventually fall asleep on the couch. Bedford dreams of his wife.

“I love you,” he says.

She smiles. “I love you, too, Henry.”

---

The Antarctic transportation vehicle jolted to a halt. Alex was still leaning against Martin, her head nestled against his scarf and trench coat. Her father was looking into her eyes. His expression of ineffable and timeless sadness had not changed. The heartbeat pounded in her brow, louder and much closer. The atmosphere seemed to pulse in time with the beat. The sky above was clear although they were inside the swirling eye of the storm. Yet the landscape was even more disturbing than the churning black clouds and the red flickers of lightning.

They had arrived at the edge of the crater. Except this was no longer the smooth, miles-wide cavity that nuclear fire had burnt away sixteen years earlier. Instead, the crater hosted a topography of chaotic and frozen geometry. Spires resembling skeletal horns and antlers reached across the basin. Jagged stalagmites rose from crevices and fissures in the ice to form vast networks resembling veins and arteries throughout the bowl. Great spikey formations evoking fangs and claws reached toward the sky as if trying to snatch something out of the storm. And in the center of the crater, a smooth and shimmering dome.

As Alex regarded the dome, the details of the crater began to reshape themselves and gain coherency. The towering formations of ice, the spikes and spires, had all twisted themselves around the dome, cradling it, creating a barrier reminiscent of barbed wire or a crown of thorns.

Ellzey appeared outside the compartment door and pulled it open. “Welcome to World’s End. We go the rest of the way on foot.”

They left the vehicle and went to the edge of the crater. A rough and narrow path led into the basin before disappearing into the labyrinth of ice.

“Can you make it?” Bedford said to Martin.

“Do I have a choice?”

Bedford left Martin’s side without answered and followed Ellzey, who had started down the path. Alex followed them. The heartbeat wanted her to move toward the dome. She was a sliver of metal sliding toward a powerful magnet. Yet she hesitated as she felt Martin’s gaze. He limped toward her, his bad leg dragging through the snow.

“I know it’s too late to ask you to stop,” Martin said. “But remember who you are, Alexandra. Whatever happens down there, make your own decisions.”

“Do you need help down?”

He shook his head. “Don’t let me be a burden.”

“It’s okay.”

Martin nodded slowly. In spite of the urge to rush headlong toward the center of the crater, Alex remained beside him and helped keep him steady. They soon caught up to Bedford and Ellzey.

Alex’s gaze shifted between Martin and the surrounding geometry. The pillars and spires and spears of ice loomed above them in silhouette against the storm and lightning. Back in New York and Kansas City, the skyscrapers had climbed from the streets to form steel valleys reaching toward the clouds. But here, those high-rises were structures of ice, their lines jagged and strange and unclean.

Alex realized the light was fading as the eye of the storm closed around the crater. Beside her, Martin’s breathing sounded labored. Despite the cold, perspiration dripped from around his mask. Her reflection gazed back from the metal surface. Her eyes were no longer black but they had not returned to their normal steel-grey. They were a blend of grey and red, which fluctuated with the slow pulse of the heartbeat. Martin held her gaze as they continued down the path.

Martin’s mask darkened from silver to black. Alex mistook the change as a reflection of the atmospheric darkness but then the mask, Martin, the crater, and the entirety of the world vanished.

Wind touched her face but it was no longer the cold Antarctic breeze, instead warm and smelling of ocean salt. She was on a boat with a white sail that glowed in the afternoon sun. The calm waters lapped at the hull. A youthful and handsome man with wavy brown hair stood nearby. His shirt was off, revealing a toned figure and tanned skin. But what she cared about most were his soft grey-blue eyes – the same color as her own. Except she was not the one looking at John Martin. This was her mother standing on the boat. Her two-piece bikini showed off her long legs and slim figure.

She – her mother, Katherine Michelle Bedford – strode forward and took Martin’s hand. His skin was warm. He grasped her palm gently as both of them smiled. “John.”

“Katherine.” Martin’s voice caressed her mother’s name. She had first heard that soft and emotional tone in his office high above New York City. The voice of a man the Directorate had taught her to think of as a monster. The man who had only ever shown her kindness and compassion since that fateful meeting. And here he was, so long ago, speaking her mother’s name the same way, holding her hand as they held each other’s gaze and smiled.

Her father’s words came as a distant echo. On weekends or holidays, when I was working, I asked John, as a favor, to see your mother. This was before you were born. They’d go up to the Adirondacks or go sailing off the Massachusetts coast. Kate… your mother and John both looked great after these jaunts. And it made me happy to see they enjoyed each other’s company. And then, I knew nothing… physical happened between them. Your mother was very strict about such things.

Except Alex understood now the look in her mother’s eyes. That was how she had looked at Shepherd for so long, the way she had looked at him while he held her in the small bunk onboard the Independence.

John Martin and Katherine Bedford were more than just good friends. This man gazing back at her mother and holding her hand was her father in every sense.

“Alexandra?” Martin’s voice dissolved the sailboat and the ocean and the clear skies.

Alex blinked. The mask had returned, concealing all but Martin’s eyes. They had stopped walking. Martin was no longer leaning on her for support. In fact, the opposite seemed true. “Are you all right?”

She nodded slowly although the memories of the vision persisted in her mind. The way Martin spoke Katherine’s name. The way he spoke her name. That same inflection and emotion.

What was she supposed to say?

Could she even speak?

The heartbeat reasserted itself, pushing to the forefront of her consciousness and demanding she continue toward the center of the crater. Without replying, she looked away from Martin and started walking. He followed at her side.

She couldn’t say how long it took to reach the dome. No one spoke during the long descend. The crater’s rim had long since vanished above them. The towering protrusions surrounded them and arched overhead, evoking the teeth of a flytrap while obscuring the darkening atmosphere. All noise had faded save for the heartbeat.

Ahead of her, Ellzey stopped. They were at the center. Alex continued past him away from Martin and moved to the dome. The entrance was a narrow arch matching her height and width. She stepped through.

Within the dome, a subtle red glow without an apparent source pulsed along with the heartbeat. The black sphere hung at the center of the chamber. The object was much larger than when her father had encountered it beneath Lansing Station. As best she could estimate, it was at least a hundred and fifty feet in diameter, about as long as the Valkyrie from nose-to-tail. The oily, jet-black surface allowed her to see her reflection and those of Bedford, Martin, and Ellzey.

The four of them stood on a ring along the circumference of the dome’s interior. The loop surrounded the widest part of the sphere, which vanished against the shadows of the ceiling and descended toward the floor of the chamber far below. The distance between the icy catwalk and the sphere was just far enough to keep the two out of reach. A spiral path moved inward and down from the walkway, matching the sphere’s contour and ending at a flat space where five men wearing parkas, scarves, mittens, and insulated boots stood in a close huddle.

Alex proceeded down the spiral path. She wanted to stretch her arm out and touch the sphere but it remained maddeningly out of reach. When she arrived at the bottom, she stood and watched the men. They all stood with heads bowed, the sphere directly above them. She recognized Chairman Randall Lewis, who she had spoken with onboard the USS Ronald Reagan after Kansas City. She reached to touch him but stopped when she heard his voice.

We’ve been waiting for you. The words came directly into her mind. We knew things would work out in the end.

“What do—”

No, Lewis said. Not out loud.

What do I have to do? she thought. Why am I here?

This was your destiny from the moment you were conceived. You’re here to bring back our world. You’re here to break down this prison and herald a new age for our species. We’ve always been destined for greatness, and this will set us back on that path.

What do I have to do?

Just make your choice.

Alex moved forward. The five men each stepped back without looking up. She was now beneath the lowest point of the sphere. She stared into the darkness and found her reflection. Her eyes were steel blue. The black substance in her veins and arteries had either vanished or gone into hiding. Bedford arrived and took her hand. “This is it, Alexandra. Don’t be afraid.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“Something wonderful. I promised you we’d rebuild the United States. I promised you you’d see those lights again, all that life. This is the way.”

“But how?”

“I can’t explain it. But I know it’s in there. I promise.”

“The only thing in there is death,” Martin said. “Don’t lie to yourself, Henry. Don’t damn Alexandra like you damned us.”

“You never understood. Not that it matters now. You’ll see. We’ll have her back. I’ll have her back. You can have your mother, Alex. You can have anything you want.”

The heartbeat quickened with excitement and anticipation. The reflections across the sphere vanished and gave way to Katherine Bedford’s features. Alex raised her hand with her palm open and her fingers spread wide apart. Katherine smiled and reached out to meet Alex’s touch. Their hands met and their fingers intertwined. The touch was colder than anything Alex had ever felt but that did not surprise her; the cold was pleasant.

Welcome home, a voice said.

“Kate.”

Alex couldn’t tell whether the voice belonged to Bedford or Martin. Perhaps it was both. She felt something flowing from her into the sphere. Power, life, everything she had taken from Kansas City and the Reagan. And flowing back was something greater. A feeling of belonging, of love and desire and fulfillment. A hairline fissure opened across the sphere and spread outward from where her hand met with her mother’s.

White light filled the chamber.