Six thousand three hundred and seventy miles beneath the fractured land-wide crust, the center of the world was neither molten magma nor empty blackness. It was a cathedral of crystal-clear geodes suspended in zero gravity, where mile-wide facets of world-size diamond caught the rainbow-bright pulse of an ancient heart.
Arthur Vance adjusted the strap of his air-powered needle glove. He wiped a smudge of clotted violet ichor from his cuff. His fingers ached with the deep, throbbing soreness that followed four hours of micro-blood-vessel cutting out. On the crystal-clear platform ten paces ahead, the huge, segmented coils of the Archaic World-Serpent World-serpent lay in calm repose. The cosmic fungal spore—a leech-like atrocity that had gnawed upon the serpent’s neural marrow for a hundred million years—now floated lifeless inside a high-pressure holding metal tube at Arthur’s hip, preserved in cryo-stabilizing formaldehyde.
The razor-sharp work was finished. The diagnosis was validated. Now came the resurrection.
Beside Arthur’s left knee, Grimm gave a low, rumbling huff that shook through the soles of Arthur’s combat boots. The hound stood nearly waist-high, his coat a dense thicket of matte-black carbon bristles that swallowed the surrounding reflections of the cave. A faint ring of gravity distortion shone around his paws. He anchored him firmly to the crystal floor against the core’s uneven gravity fluctuations. Sensing Arthur’s fatigue, Grimm leaned his heavy shoulder against Arthur’s thigh, offering two hundred pounds of solid, warm muscle as an unbending brace.
