Eight thousand meters above sea level, atop the jagged granite needle of the Himalayan Ionization Spire, the wind tasted colder than snapped ice.
Arthur Vance stepped out onto the main watching platform of Vault Seven. Behind him, the air-powered iris of the ancient transport channel hissed shut. It locked the high-pressure warmth of the underground passages away from the thin air of the upper troposphere. Around his boots, the six-sided silver-steel tiles of the outside deck hummed with a steady static-electric current, repelling the driving frost that whipped across the mountain peaks.
He was no longer in the underground dark. Below the mountain range, stretching toward the horizon for thousands of leagues, lay the healed face of the continent.
Under the clean blue sky, the brown and gray scars of the old world were fading beneath an ocean of fresh green canopy. Silver river deltas, unchoked by heavy-duty chemical runoff, sparkled like polished chrome in the crisp morning sun. Across the plains, the open blast gates of the distant mega-cities looked like tiny notches in concrete walls that no longer served any purpose. Humanity was out in the open, breathing without meters, walking without fear.
Beside Arthur, Grimm stepped onto the frosted grating. The four-hundred-two-pound jet-black hound lowered his head, sniffing the biting alpine wind. His dense carbon-fiber bristles flattened against his muscular frame, insulating him fully from the sub-zero chill. His black claws dug into the frost-rimed steel, his gravity pull adjusting automatically to anchor his huge mass against…
