Jarvis nodded slowly.

'Yes, there is. When we finished reviewing the footage, and despite the fact that the contents were marked as classified, the director agreed with me that, considering the lengths you and Lopez went to in obtaining the footage for us, you deserved to see the final part of it. Ethan, sit down again, please.'

A tremor of apprehension twisted through Ethan's guts.

'What's going on here, Doug?' he asked, reluctantly sitting down.

'There's no way to describe it,' Jarvis replied. 'You've just got to see it for yourself. You understand that what you are about to see will not happen for six months, and that it cannot be discussed beyond this room. It must remain absolutely classified, and between you and me. Not Lopez, not anyone.'

Ethan nodded, but Jarvis put his hand on Ethan's shoulder.

'Let me hear you say it, Ethan.'

'I understand.'

Jarvis nodded, and Ethan looked at the blank monitor before him. Jarvis reached down to the keyboard and pressed one of the buttons. Immediately, an image appeared on the screen before him. It was dark and indistinct, and he wasn't sure what he was looking at until his brain processed the scene and it leapt into life before him.

There was no sound, and the image occasionally flickered with static as coils of energy flared around the edges of the screen.

Ethan saw a forest, deep and black, impenetrable trees lining a trail that wound its way through the woods into the inky distance. The sky above was velvet black, and jagged mountain peaks towered across the horizon in the distance, their snowy peaks glowing blue beneath a brilliant white moon high above.

Ethan's eyes flicked down to the trail below as he caught sight of movement, a shadow against the shadows. A body was slumped on the trail, and as it moved he saw a thick mass of long black hair draped across damp grass. The body wearily lifted its head, and Ethan felt a bolt of electricity spasm through his chest as he recognized the face.

'Lopez.'

Ethan stared at the screen, transfixed, as Lopez looked over her shoulder and away from the camera. He saw her begin to frantically drag herself toward the camera, as though trying to escape from something.

And then he saw it.

From the dense forest blackness a huge man lumbered into view. Heavy arms dangled from broad, thick shoulders, huge legs strode cumbersomely beneath a thick fur coat. The man was wearing an oddly shaped cap that was almost conical, but it was his size that stunned Ethan. The guy must have been two meters tall, and- Ethan's heart stopped in his chest as he realized that the man was not wearing a coat, and was not wearing a hat. For a moment he thought that perhaps a bear had reared onto its hind legs and was tracking Lopez, but then he saw the face briefly illuminated by the moon's pale light, and the unmistakably humanoid features, a low and heavy brow with eyes sunken into deep sockets.

Thick fur hung in knotted tags as the broad, flat face looked down at Lopez as she hauled herself toward the camera. A thick, meaty hand as big as Lopez's entire head reached down and stopped her before the creature looked up, as though noticing the camera. Ethan felt fear shudder through his guts as he looked into a pair of eyes that belonged to something that was both human and animal, an unspeakable chimera of man and beast.

Ethan watched as the red eyes flared angrily at the camera, and then a huge arm flashed across the screen and swatted the camera into the air, and the image crashed into static and vanished.

Ethan sat in stunned silence and stared at the screen. Joanna was alive, Lopez was facing death and he didn't have the first clue about which problem he should deal with first. He looked up at Jarvis in despair.

'You know the future, Ethan,' Jarvis said, 'but you're going to have to deal with that yourself.'

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

I often get asked by readers just how much of the science incorporated within my novels is 'real'. The simple answer is that all of the science within my novels is real, but some of it is stretched to embrace the extreme events that are part and parcel of thriller fiction.

As described in Apocalypse, we really do see back in time the further away we look, the speed of light does have a finite velocity and an endeavour like Project Watchman is entirely within the physical and technological capabilities of the United States' intelligence community. Their KH-11 'Keyhole' satellites are also real, and are rumoured to have optics more than capable of clearly photographing newspaper articles from orbit. Modern supercomputers could indeed crunch data sufficiently to provide a virtual replay of events from around the globe: only the storage of so many years of data might prove problematic. Quantum computers, just over our technological horizon, may resolve that issue.

The only science that I have adjusted for the sake of the plot in Apocalypse is the black hole itself. In reality it would take a black hole with the mass of hundreds of suns to produce the time-dilation described in the novel: an object this massive would swallow our entire planet almost instantaneously. Time-dilation, however, is real, as is the ability of objects to travel through time via extreme velocities. If one were able to stand alongside the event horizon of a sufficiently massive black hole, then time would indeed be dilated in the manner described. Although a low-mass black hole could probably be suspended in a tokomak just like Joaquin Abell's, the gravitational field of such an object would not be likewise contained: it would continue to affect its surroundings both inside and outside of the chamber.

At the time of writing, physicists working with the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN labs in Geneva have observed what they believe to be the fabled Higgs boson, the elementary particle responsible for mass in our universe. This discovery paves the way for a greater understanding of our universe, and potentially brings the subject matter in Apocalypse one step closer to reality.

Dean Crawford, 2012.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.

Since the publication of the first Ethan Warner novel, Covenant, time has flown by so incredibly quickly. The writing of new novels in the series, the rounds of edits on each of them, the new projects and the crime festivals have been a constant whirlwind of activity. I couldn't have done any of it without the fabulous support of the publishing team at Simon & Schuster, my literary agent Luigi Bonomi at LBA, my wonderful partner Debbie and our beautiful daughter Emma, and my family and friends who continue to champion my work so enthusiastically. Thanks also go to aspiring author Dean Owen, who won my blog competition to suggest the title for this book while I was writing it. Although ultimately not used by the publisher, it was an inspired choice and I'm sure his is a name you'll see on bookshelves before long.

Finally, at the time of writing, a team working at the CERN laboratories in Geneva have reportedly found the fabled Higgs boson, the particle that holds our universe together and is responsible for gravity: many thanks to them for spearheading the forward march of science and perhaps bringing the subject matter of this novel a little closer to reality.

Also by Dean Crawford.

Covenant.

Immortal.