At thirty thousand meters beneath the surface of the Pacific, the digital depth display on Arthur’s wrist console gave a sharp, electronic shriek.
The sapphire glass face of the gauge fractured into a spiderweb of white lines, unable to measure the lithospheric squeezing of the Earth’s mantle. The numbers flickered once, glitched into a row of zeroes, and died.
Arthur didn’t need the gauge. The marrow in his own bones told him where they stood.
They were standing on the threshold of Vault 4—the Safe hall of the Celestial Wind-Tiger.
The giant stone doors were cast from solid Gengjin white iron, fifty meters tall and fifteen meters thick. Carved into the metal face was the bas-relief of an ancient saber-toothed tiger. Its jaws were wide in a silent roar that had defied the crushing weight of the world for ten thousand years. The left door had been forced inward, its massive lower hinge warped by an explosion of man-made void fire.
From the dark opening drifted a smell that made Arthur’s razor-sharp instincts flare with red alert. The stench of rotting tissue, burnt sulfur, and the metal iron smell of fresh bright red blood.
“Weapons free,” Arthur whispered, racking the charging handle of his ARC-7. “Titus, advance to the doorway and establish a hard anchor. Grimm, flank right. Pip, light up the high arches.”
