The calm warmth of Arthur’s breakthrough was shattered by a low, sickening tremor that rolled through the bedrock beneath Vault 04-B. The heavy steel carousels swayed on their shock mounts. Their chains rattling in was dark disharmony as distant ground-shaking blast waves hammered the foundation of the atoll. Dust sifted down from the ceiling joints, settling across the clean glass pods.
Dr. Malachi Thorne stumbled forward from the hall ramp. He leaned heavily against a silver-steel support pillar. His clockwork eye was flashing crimson. His pale face was slick with cold sweat as he pointed down the service hall.
“He has started the set, Arthur!” Malachi cried out, his voice shrill with terror. “Father Genesis... Osric! He felt the power drain from the nursery! He knows the archives have fallen!”
Arthur stepped toward the scroll-keeper, his movements fluid, easy, and perfectly balanced despite the trembling floor. His new body physiology absorbed the shakes without losing an inch of balance. “What set has he started, Malachi?”
“The Tectonic Fault Detonator!” the old man gasped, clutching Arthur’s forearm with trembling, man-made fingers. “Osric has merged his twelve grafted organs directly into the main cold-fusion core in the cathedral! He has wired the reactor’s overload shunt into the earth-shaking anchors that pin the Bermuda crust-sink fault! If he detonates those anchors, the entire oceanic plate will collapse inward, triggering a size-nine earthquake that will send three-hundred-meter tsunamis crashing into the eastern seaboard of the Americas and Western Europe!”
