The Devil Colony (Sigma Force 7)

Iceland.

Soon only the map remained on the ceramic grate. Its edges were rough, misshapen, slightly curled up at the corners. A fine, straight crease split the middle, the two halves fitting perfectly together. Gray pictured the map lining the cranial cavity of a mastodon’s skull. Jefferson’s people must have burned away the ancient bone to preserve the map.

“Is that writing?” Seichan asked.

“Where?”

“Along the map’s margins.”

Gray leaned closer to the oven, the radiating heat burning his face. Seichan’s eyes were sharper than his. Faint lines of script did indeed run along the map, to the west of the continent, like notations of a cartographer.

Pinching his eyes, he studied it. “Looks like the same writing we saw in Fortescue’s journal, the ancient lettering he copied from one of those gold plates.” He turned to Seichan. “Grab some paper from the office here. You’ve got better eyes than me. I want that all copied down.”

Seichan obeyed without asking questions. She knew the challenge that was facing him and was happy to leave him to it.

Gray returned his attention to the tiny sculpted map of Iceland. To the south of the mainland, smaller peaks marked the Westman archipelago. Atop one of the islands, a tiny dark crystal shard—possibly a black diamond—had been embedded deep into the metal. It glinted in the dance of fire going on in the oven.

Ellirey Island.

He moved his attention to the west, to another diamond shining against the rosy metal. This shard was much larger than the one set in Iceland, perhaps indicating the relative size of the western deposit. It was a disturbing reminder of the danger brewing out there.

Gray frowned at the map, struggling to get his bearings. The lack of state lines and city names made it difficult to judge with great accuracy where this marker pointed, only that it lay somewhere in the chain of Rocky Mountains, well to the north but still within what would eventually become the United States.

Given the lack of clarity, it was no wonder that Fortescue had decided to go to Iceland first.

Seichan returned with pen and paper and began copying the notations found on the map’s borders.

As she worked, Gray followed the spine of the Rockies farther south. There, he found what he was looking for, the barest sliver of crystal, easy to miss unless you were looking for it.

That must be the Utah site.

Compared to the chunk of diamond to the north, it was nothing. So minuscule, in fact, that Jefferson and Fortescue had either overlooked it or hadn’t even thought it worth mentioning. Gray stared between the three crystals, growing more certain that their different sizes reflected the relative importance of the various sites—and also the relative danger each posed.

He checked his watch, all too aware of the clock ticking down.

Seichan finished her work and pointed her pen at the largest diamond. “Any idea where that is?”

“I think I might know,” he said, putting the pieces together in his head. It all made dreadful and terrifying sense. But he had to be sure before sharing his theory. “I need to check a map of the Western United States.”

Seichan pointed to the oven. “In the meantime, what do we do about that map?”

Gray showed her. He reached and dialed up the digital thermostat on the oven. He kept turning, watching the temperature setting climb above three thousand degrees Celsius, three times the melting point of ordinary gold. The blue acetylene flames shot higher inside the oven, dancing more vigorously.

Seichan stared at him, one eyebrow raised.

“We can’t risk the map falling into Waldorf’s hands,” he explained.

“So you’re going to destroy it?”

“I’m going to try. The map’s metal is denser, so it’s not going to melt at the low temperatures of ordinary gold. But there must be some temperature at which it does melt.”

To make sure this happened, Gray continued to twist the oven’s thermostat dial until the temperature setting changed from digital numbers to just three letters: MAX.

Hopefully that should do it.

Gray kept vigil with Seichan as the oven’s temperature rose higher and higher. Soon the radiating heat drove them back another few steps. Inside the chamber, the map’s rosy glow became a blinding brilliance, shining like a minisun.

Maybe it won’t melt . . . not even at these temperatures.

In another minute, Gray had to shield his eyes against the glare.

“Do you feel that?” Seichan asked.

“Feel what?” he began—then he felt it.

A prickling across his skin, a fine vibration, as if all the molecules in the room had grown excited. A second later, the heavy oven began to quake against the concrete floor.

Gray grabbed Seichan’s elbow and pushed her toward the door. “Run!”

He fled behind her. He pictured the tightly packed atoms in the nano-gold, squeezed abnormally close together, trapping massive amounts of potential energy in that strained state, like a rubber band stretched tautly.

He glanced behind him. If that rubber band were suddenly cut, if all that potential energy were released at once by overheating the metal . . .

It wasn’t going to melt.

It was going to—

The explosion blew him into Seichan and rolled them both through the shop door and out into the night. Shattered glass and splintered wood rained down around them. The scorched door of the oven flew past and crashed through the windshield of the shop owner’s Chevy Suburban, parked just outside.

Gray scrambled up, hooking an arm around Seichan’s waist and drawing her up with him. He pictured the shop’s rows of pressurized gas tanks. The next explosion knocked them back to the ground with a scorching blast of heat. A massive fireball blew out the remaining shop windows behind them and rolled high into the sky.

They regained their feet, each helping the other up.

Across a small parking lot that fronted the business, Monk stared back at them. He stood beside the stunned Russian next to their stolen white van. As they ran up, the goldsmith fell to his knees.

“What have you done to my shop?” the man demanded.

“You’ll be reimbursed,” Gray said, waving the man aside and the others toward the vehicle. “As long as you stay silent.”

They all piled into the van, with Monk behind the wheel.

“Hang on,” Monk warned.

He shifted into reverse, pounded the gas pedal, and sent the vehicle flying in reverse, tires squealing across the parking lot. Bouncing over a curb, they hit the surface street teeth-jarringly hard—then Monk yanked back into forward gear so fast that they risked whiplash.