The giant stone doors of Vault 4 rose fifty meters into the vaulted cave, their white surfaces polished to a mirror finish that reflected the red emergency lights of Arthur’s suit.
The metal was not steel, nor was it silver-steel. It was pure, cold-forged Gengjin—the ancient metal of the Western Direction, an elemental alloy capable of cutting through magnetic flux lines and resisting the huge earth-shaking friction of the Earth’s mantle. Embedded in the center of the two towering leaves was a relief carving of the Celestial White Tiger. Jaws parted in a roar that held back the sky, claws extended in mid-pounce, and eyes inlaid with deep, light-absorbing black glass crystals.
Arthur stood at the base of the doors, his boots resting on the clean white flat stone slabs.
“Atom-deep locks,” Arthur muttered, leaning in with his Zeiss-Vanguard monocle dialed to maximum zoom. “The door leaves are held together by a quantum electron-sharing grid. There are no keyholes, no levers, and no clockwork bolts. The entire portal is a single, nonstop crystal lattice.”
Beside him, Vesper paced back and forth across the white stone. Her white-and-black fur was standing on end, her tail flicking with sharp, irritated twitches. The high-hum emitted by the Gengjin metal was shaking directly into her thigh bone bones, causing her Gengjin Marrow to thrum like a plucked guitar string. She stopped, turned to Arthur. Then she let out an impatient, high-born meow that carried the distinct command: Stop staring and open it.
