Ethan hit the deck as a screaming noise wailed through the dome. He glimpsed rippling streams of water vapor and ice that were plucked from the air of the dome, flowing like a writhing river into the unimaginable blackness within the chamber. In an instant the failed power generator was torn from its roof mountings and smashed through the wall of the sphere with a terrific crash and another blaze of pure energy that seethed across the ceiling of the dome and fell like white hot rivulets of rain down toward the deck.

'The singularity's been exposed!' Joaquin bellowed above the din of rending metal and screaming alarms.

To Ethan's amazement the falling globules of energy were snatched from midair and zipped back into the breach. Suddenly Ethan lost his balance, as though the whole dome was tilting onto its side like a capsizing ship. The previously flat deck became a shallow ramp with the exit hatch at the top and the black hole's chamber at the base. Yet despite the alarming sensation, his brain told him that the deck was still level.

Ethan instinctively grabbed at the deck plates beneath him and searched for a hand hold. He realized that the black hole's immense local gravitational influence within the facility was overpowering that of the earth, and that now the singularity in the hole's dark heart was the direction that gravity was taking.

Ethan saw the IRIS soldier behind the control panel scream as he was hauled upward from the walkway and span through the air toward the sphere, slamming into its wall with a crunch of shattered bone as his legs crumpled beneath him. The ragged breach in the chamber folded further inward in a cacophony of failing rivets, like a giant black mouth with rows of sharp metal teeth, and the soldier screamed a final horrified cry as he was dragged into the breach and vanished in a flare of energy.

Ethan felt a bitter, unimaginable cold creep toward him, saw the air in the dome vaporizing in clouds before his eyes as it lost pressure and was dragged toward the terrifying maw of the black hole still entrapped by the remaining magnetic fields within the chamber. He realized that if the field failed entirely then the black hole would be able to move freely, and there would be nothing on earth that could stop it.

'Ethan!'

Ethan turned his head and saw Lopez clinging to the edge of the control panel. Joaquin was scrambling away from her and slammed his boots into her shoulders as leverage to get away from the black hole's devastating pull. Lopez grabbed Joaquin's ankles as he struggled, and then they both were dragged off the control panel and slammed down onto the deck, Lopez sliding past Ethan toward the chamber for several yards before she managed to grab hold of the deck plates.

Joaquin cried out and grabbed at the deck plates with one hand as with the other he aimed his pistol at Lopez. Ethan shouted out a warning as Lopez scrambled to her feet, as though she were climbing a steep hillside, and then Joaquin fired.

Lopez's head jerked violently to one side, her long black hair flew across her face and her legs collapsed beneath her. She hit the deck hard and instantly slid toward the black hole.

'Nicola!'

Ethan launched himself onto his feet and was about to leap for Lopez's prostrate form when the two IRIS soldiers before him aimed their rifles at his chest. Ethan desperately tried to raise his own rifle in time but before he could take aim both of the IRIS soldiers fired, bright bursts of flame leaping from the barrels as Ethan felt a series of thumps hammer his chest.

68.

June 28, 20:37 Time seemed to stand still.

Ethan had spent half of his adult life being shot at, first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, both as a soldier and as a journalist. It had happened so many times, there had been so many close calls, that he felt he had somehow become immune, as though he knew that he would never be hit himself. It had always happened to the other guy.

But not this time.

Ethan hit the deck hard on his back, his hands flashing protectively but uselessly to his chest as the wind was knocked from his lungs and his vision starred before his eyes. The deafening roar of the chamber breach and the wailing sirens receded for a brief moment, and with a sense of terminal despair he lifted his hands up, knowing that they would be smeared with warm blood spilling from his lungs and heart.

He stared at them for a long moment, briefly wondering whether the lack of pain meant that death was in itself such a shock that nothing could be felt. He allowed himself the thought that maybe getting shot wasn't such a bad way to go after all. In fact, he realized, he felt absolutely fine.

Ethan sat up and looked at the two IRIS soldiers, who were staring past him in disbelief and backing away toward the exit, leaning back against the increasing gravitational pull of the black hole. One of them fired again, the bullets smacking the air nearby as they somehow zipped past Ethan.

Ethan turned, and felt a surge of jubilance that warred with a terrible dread that chilled his guts.

The side of the sphere was peppered with five dents, the marks of the bullets that clearly should have killed him, and several more from the second salvo now hammered the metal panels, the bullets having been dragged from their flight path by the black hole's leaking gravitational field and the huge electromagnets, to pass harmlessly by just inches from where Ethan had stood. Only the shockwaves from the bullets had hammered his chest.

But what sent fear coursing through his veins was the growing breach in the chamber. Not only was every unsecured object now beginning to drift toward the breach, but the light around the breach was beginning to bend as though it were underwater, flowing into the sphere.

Ethan recalled the words of the scientist, Ottaway, at Cape Canaveral: once you get too close to a black hole's event horizon, too deep inside the gravity well, nothing can escape, not even light.

He looked up and saw the power generators straining against their mounts, huge weights that would smash through the sphere from all directions and fully expose the black hole within.

'Nicola!'

Bryson hurled himself across the void past Ethan and slammed down alongside Lopez, one arm wrapping around her as the other sought a handhold to prevent them both from lifting off the deck and vanishing into the breach. Ethan scrambled to his feet, aware of the cold emanating from the black hole as it drew even the atoms in the air toward its insatiable singularity. He struggled up the steeply inclined deck toward the control panel, where dense coils of electrical cable writhed like ranks of kelp flowing in underwater currents.

Ethan reached out and grabbed the cables in one hand as he hauled himself painfully up and away from the black hole's gravity well.

Looking back toward the sphere, he had the dizzying impression of the entire dome appearing like a huge funnel, with the black-hole chamber deep inside its mouth, buried at the base of the funnel's steep walls. Bryson was clinging to the deck panels, one arm around Lopez's waist to prevent her from slipping any further toward the breach. Katherine was crawling toward Ethan along the deck nearby, flinching as bits of paper, pens and clipboards flew past her face toward the breach. He could see that the outer surface of the sphere was now a sparkling white in color, coated thickly with ice that reflected the savage bolts of plasma searing the air around it.

Alternating heat and cold, Ethan recalled from his school days, makes metals brittle. The sphere would not hold for much longer. He could see that the swirling blur of light was growing larger, twisting around the breach as though being bent by a giant lens. He had the terrifying impression that reality was melting and pouring like liquid toward the black hole.

Ethan worked his way back toward Bryson, the deck beneath his feet tilting ever more as he moved toward the sphere, as though he were crawling on the surface of an ever-steepening slope toward the black hole's gravity well. The cold increased as he got closer to Bryson, a bitter, biting cold that condensed his breath on the air and was turning moisture to sleet crystals that swept toward the breach like a blizzard.

'Throw me some cable!' Bryson shouted. 'Hurry up or we'll be leaving our skin behind on here!'

Ethan nodded, seeing the surface of the deck frosted with sparkling particles of ice. He grabbed a handful of cables from behind the panel and pulled hard on them, yanking them free of their ties and lowering them toward Bryson. As he got closer, Ethan pinned his boots and shoulders against the deck to prevent himself from being captured by the black hole's gravity.

'The generators are failing!' Bryson shouted.

Ethan focused on getting close enough to Bryson to pass on the cables. He was almost there when a cascade of bullets crackled across the deck around him. Ethan flinched and saw Joaquin shielding himself against the black hole's gravity at the far end of the walkway, aiming one of the dropped M-16s. The tycoon was glowing blue as though enveloped in a halo of electrical energy. Ethan blinked, his vision strangely blurred, but then he realized that the entire far wall of the dome was tinged with blue light as the black hole's increasing influence twisted time and space ever more tightly.

'Ethan!'

Bryson's cry focused his attention once again and he reached out as far as he could. Bryson stretched out for the cables and one thick fist grabbed onto them and pulled. Ethan grasped his hand and wrist, holding him steady as another shower of bullets clattered across the deck, the rounds ricocheting and zipping into the chamber breach as though plucked from midair.

'Jesus Christ!' Bryson yelled.

Joaquin, his aim frustrated as the black hole twisted the path of the bullets away from Ethan, began edging his way toward them, his boots extended out toward Ethan as he slid his way carefully on his back, aiming between his legs. Ethan realized that if he got close enough, his shots would find their mark.

'Your time is finished, Warner!' Joaquin shouted.

With an immense effort, Ethan pulled on Bryson's hand as the big man kicked with his boots and scrambled up the steepening deck plates, Lopez's prostrate body limp beneath his other arm. Ethan's guts plunged as he saw the blood smearing her temple and face, his fear of losing her suddenly dwarfing that of being dragged into the black hole's oblivion himself.

Ethan hauled Bryson the last twelve inches with a renewed sense of urgency, and the big man pulled himself to safety. Ethan rolled away just as Joaquin's voice rang out in his ears.

'Goodbye, Mr. Warner!'

Ethan saw Joaquin aiming from barely ten feet away and stared at the barrel pointed directly at him. And then Joaquin's face collapsed into agony as he screamed.

In the weird and warped blue light, Ethan saw Katherine Abell appear like a genie from the distant exit hatch, moving impossibly fast like an old movie to zoom up behind Joaquin. He realized that, where she was standing, beyond the black hole's gravity well, time was running faster. The bright red fire axe in her hand whipped down from over her shoulder and crashed through the rifle in Joaquin's grasp, shattering the barrel and smashing through his fingers with a splatter of blood.

Ethan saw Katherine screaming at her husband as she pounded him with her fists and scraped at his face with her nails as they tumbled together across the deck and into the gravity well.

Ethan reached out for Katherine as they plunged toward him. Her nails dug into the metal plates and her fingers caught, enough that she began scrambling up and away from them. Then Joaquin Abell crashed into him and smashed both Ethan and Katherine down toward the black hole.

69.

June 28, 20:40 Ethan's fingers scraped across the deck panels as the metal gratings snapped at his nails and rasped across his face. His fingers caught painfully, bearing his body weight on the steeply inclined deck, and he looked up in time for Joaquin's boot to smash into his shoulder and send a lance of bright pain through his collarbone.

'Die, Warner!' Joaquin screamed.

Joaquin's boot smashed again into Ethan's shoulder and searing pain jarred his arm as he felt his grip fail, his fingers numb from the bitter cold now creeping across his entire body.

'It's over, Joaquin!' Ethan shouted. 'Give it up and we both live!'

'Fuck you, Warner!' the tycoon screamed back, his eyes poisoned with rage. 'You've taken everything from me! If I die, I take you with me!'

The dome around them was deformed now into an oval shape, with the black-hole chamber close below and the entrance to the dome far above, seemingly fifty meters away and pinched to a tiny point of light that glowed an unearthly blue.

Joaquin lifted his boot once more and aimed this time at Ethan's face, the tycoon's features shining with unrestrained malice, and then smashed it down toward him. The boot slammed across Ethan's arm, missing his face entirely, the light now so distorted by the black hole's gravity that it was warped sideways, the distant exit now not just above Ethan but also off to one side. Ethan felt his body becoming increasingly, impossibly heavy as the black hole's immense gravity finally began to overwhelm him.

Joaquin, hanging on to the deck plating with one hand above Ethan, screamed in fury and grabbed at the pistol in his shoulder holster, whipping it out and aiming it down at Ethan. With a flourish of malice the tycoon squeezed the trigger.

Ethan saw a flicker of movement in the distance far above them. In an instant Bryson's huge form surged into view like a curveball travelling at hundreds of miles per hour to smash sideways into Joaquin Abell and grab the pistol as he did so.

Ethan flinched as the sound of the gunshot crashed out, but the bullet never reached him as Scott Bryson slid down past him, his huge arms folded around Joaquin's body as they tumbled toward the black hole. Ethan saw the shot exit Bryson's lower back amid a spray of blood that shot toward the black hole and turned to crystals of ice as it vanished into the breach. He heard the big man grunt in agony as he twisted the pistol from Joaquin's grasp and sent it spinning down into the breach looming below them. Bryson twisted himself around on top of Joaquin, then grabbed the smaller man's collar in one giant fist and hauled him up onto his knees on the wildly tilting deck.

'You want to see the future, asshole?' Bryson yelled at Joaquin. 'Here it is!'

Bryson swung one huge fist back and then ploughed it through Joaquin's chest like a battering ram. Joaquin screamed out loud, his eyes wide with unspeakable fear as the blow lifted the tycoon off of his feet and he plunged down into the abyss below, his screams spiraling away with him.

Ethan saw Joaquin's clothes freeze on his body, saw his eyes go pale as the fluids within them froze solid and saw his hair turn white with frost as he plunged into the chamber, smashing a panel as he did so and opening the breach wider. Ethan saw the black hole now fully exposed, a demonic abyss ringed by searing coils of plasma.

Joaquin's body warped as it span in tight whorls around the black hole's fearsome gravitational field, bent by light and suddenly glowing brightly as it was torn apart at the sub-atomic level and ripped into ribbons of pure energy. Joaquin's image turned a deep blood red, and then suddenly it was gone.

Bryson collapsed, his fingers scraping on the metal deck plates and the shirt on his back thick with blood. In one terrible moment, as Ethan reached out to him, he knew that it was too late. Bryson's eye caught his, the twinkling light within already fading, and a brief smile flickered across one corner of his lips.

'It's your turn to keep an eye on Nicola,' he mumbled weakly.

'Don't quit, Bryson!' Ethan yelled, reaching out for him. 'Don't quit now!'

Bryson's eye glazed over. 'Don't let her down.'

The big man's eye closed as his grip failed him and he was snatched away, his body freezing instantaneously and then flaring with bright energy as he vanished into oblivion far below.

'Bryson!'

A terrible sense of loss ached through Ethan's chest as the raging storm of plasma around the black hole glowed brightly, the crackling, snarling bolts of energy reaching out for Ethan.

He tried to back away from the hole, but now it felt as though the deck of the dome was pitching almost vertically. He felt his feet slip from beneath him as he clung desperately to the deck plates, staring down toward the sphere below him and its terrifying host. The plates beneath his shirt began slipping and scraped painfully against his skin, and he saw frost forming on his boots as they slipped closer to the swirling maelstrom of light and energy.

'Ethan!'

Ethan looked up, and to his amazement he saw Lopez reaching out for him, her hand inches away and yet appearing small and stretched as though viewed through a fish-eye lens, her face seemingly twenty paces distant. Ethan reached out for her, saw his own arm extend crazily and bend sideways to his left into the distance as though twenty feet long. He blinked, nausea poisoning his innards as he struggled to make sense of the world now spiraling out of control around him, the light beginning to fold in upon itself.

He felt as though his weight were increasing with every passing second, the muscles in his arms screaming for release as he began sliding again, particles of ice forming inside his boots as his feet went numb within them.

'Ethan!'

Ethan looked back up to see the tightly coiled light curve above him and a warped face loom as though out of some terrible nightmare.

'My voice!' he heard Lopez shout. 'Close your eyes and reach for my voice!'

Ethan's arm wavered wildly from one side to the other in his vision, and he realized that it was useless for him to see where Lopez was, her image in the distance before him far removed now in time and space from where she actually was. Against every instinct in his body, Ethan closed his eyes.

'Reach for my voice!'

Ethan waved his arm left and right, focusing on Lopez's voice as she called to him, and suddenly he felt her fingers brush against his. With a final, monumental effort he held his arm still and Lopez's hand gripped his wrist and folded upon it. Ethan felt her heave, and he pushed against the floor plates as he clawed with his hands to pull himself free from the black hole's savage grasp.

Ethan felt himself being hauled upwards and away from the sphere, and as he travelled he felt the deck of the dome slowly begin to right itself beneath him, as though he were on a capsized ship that had somehow been saved from certain doom. He heard Lopez more clearly and opened his eyes to see her pulling on his arm, her free hand gripped by Katherine Abell, who was in turn hanging on grimly to the loop of computer cables stretching out from the main control panel.

Thick blood oozed from Lopez's temple into her hair as she pulled Ethan up, and he saw her eyes drooping from exhaustion and blood loss. Ethan slumped alongside her, his own body drained, yet even as he did so he felt the deck tilting beneath him, back toward the sphere. 'Come on!' Katherine yelled. 'We have to leave now!' Ethan looked down toward the sphere and saw the remaining panels folding like the petals of a steel flower toward the dark and terrible center.

70.

June 28, 20:42 Ethan dragged himself to his feet, and with Katherine they helped Lopez upright and staggered through the exit hatch and out of the dome. Ethan turned and slammed the hatch shut, sealing it.

'It won't make any difference,' Katherine gasped. 'You saw it! Nothing can stop that thing now.'

Ethan somehow managed to heft Lopez onto his shoulders. He staggered slightly, stars of light sparkling before his eyes, but he managed to move forward on his last remaining vestiges of energy.

'There might be a way to hide from it,' he gasped to Katherine. 'We have to hurry. Go ahead, get to the sub and start the batteries and engines. The controls are simple enough.'

Katherine ran away down the corridor ahead of him as he wobbled along with Lopez slumped across his shoulders. He heard her voice in his ears.

'I can walk,' she mumbled.

Ethan struggled through each painful and unsteady step and shook his head.

'If only that were true,' he managed to rasp. 'How come Joaquin missed his shot so close to you?'

Lopez's reply was weak and soft in his ear.

'The light. It was bent by the black hole, so I wasn't quite where he saw me. The shockwave must have knocked me out for a few moments.'