“So if the physicist is right, what’s the problem?”
“He made an error, and I believe the new data supports it.”
“What error?”
“He assumed the growth of the gravitational effect was geometric, growing at a set incremental rate. But I don’t think it is. I think it’s increasing at an exponential rate.” She turned to him. “In other words, much faster.”
“How much faster?”
“I want to run the data through my equations to be certain, but right now I would say we have only five hours until an asteroid strike is inevitable. Not nine.”
“That’s almost half our remaining time.” Duncan leaned back into his seat, immediately understanding the problem. “We’ll be lucky to be touching down in L.A. by then.”
“And considering our past couple of days, I wouldn’t count on luck.”
4:14 A.M.
What the hell . . .
Duncan sat stunned.
Jada urged him to remain calm until she could confirm her estimates. To accomplish that, she was dumping data into an analysis program she had designed based on her equations.
As he waited, Duncan rubbed his temples with his fingers. “Why did that satellite have to crash in the middle of Mongolia of all places? Why not in freakin’ Iowa? We’re losing precious hours flying halfway around the globe.”
Jada’s fingers froze over the keyboard.
“What?” he asked.
“That’s it . . . that’s what was bugging me. I’ve been such a fool.” She closed her eyes. “It’s always been about attraction.”
“What do you mean?”
She pointed again to the graph showing the comet’s corona of energy being pulled toward the earth. “The physicist at the SMC theorized that there was something on the planet that the comet’s energy was responding to. And I agree.”
“You said before that you believed it might be the cross,” Duncan said. “Because it was sculpted out of a piece of that comet when it last appeared.”
“Exactly. The two—the comet and the cross—are most likely quantumly entangled and drawn to each other, at least energetically. I was hoping that if the cross was ever found, that by studying its energy—or even the energy of the Eye—I might find a way to break that entanglement.”
He nodded. It made theoretical sense. “And if you did that, the comet’s energy would no longer be attracted to the earth—and in turn, space-time around the planet would not warp toward it.”
“And the funnel would never form triggering the massive asteroid strike.”
Brilliant, Dr. Shaw.
“Two questions,” Duncan said. “How can you be so sure of this attraction between the comet and the cross? And what can you do to break that entanglement?”
“The answer to both is the same. To quote Einstein again, God does not play dice with the world.”
Jada read his baffled expression. “A moment ago,” she said, “you asked why did the satellite crash in Mongolia? That’s the best question anyone could ask.”
“Thanks . . . ?” he said tentatively.
“To answer it, I’ll ask you another question. Where do we currently believe the cross is hidden?”
“An island in Lake Baikal, about three hundred miles north . . .” Then he understood, his eyes widened. “From a global standpoint, practically in the backyard of where the satellite crashed.”
“And does that not strike you as wildly coincidental?”
He nodded.
And God does not play dice.
He stared at her, wanted to kiss her—more than he usually did. “The satellite fell in that general vicinity because it was drawn there, pulled by the energy of the cross.”
“How could it not? It’s charged with the same dark energy of the comet.”
Duncan glanced again to that graph showing the nimbus of energy being sucked earthward. He pictured the satellite as a disembodied piece of that energy, imagining it being tugged out of orbit by the pull of the cross and dragged down to the planet’s surface.
If true, that definitely supported Jada’s theory of entanglement, but it didn’t answer his other question.
He turned back to her. “You said this fact would also answer how to break this entanglement.”
She smiled. “I thought it was obvious.”
“Not to me.”
“We have to finish what the satellite tried to do. We have to unite the energy of the Eye and the energy of the cross. Think of the pair as a positively charged particle and a negatively charged particle. While their opposite charges draw them together—”
“—when they unite, they cancel each other out.”
“Precisely. The energy equivalent of joining matter and antimatter together. The explosive annihilation of the two opposites should break that entanglement.”
It was beautifully theorized, but . . .
“Why are they opposites?” he asked. “What’s the difference between them?”
“Remember, time is a dimension, too. While both the cross and the Eye are charged with the same quantum of dark energy, they hold two different and distinct flavors of time. Opposite ends of the same axis. One from the past, one from the present. Quantum entanglement means they both want to be one.”
“Meaning they must annihilate each other.”
She nodded. “I believe that will break the entanglement and release the pull on the comet’s energies.”
“Still, that raises the bigger question,” Duncan said. “Where is the cross?”
“I don’t know, but—”
The computer chimed again, interrupting her, announcing the completed run of Dr. Shaw’s program. A number glowed within a blinking results box.
5.68 hrs
“But that’s how long we have to find it.” Jada turned to him. “You know what we have to do.”
He did.
Duncan climbed out of his seat, crossed over to Monk, and shook his partner awake.
“What . . . ?” Monk asked blearily. “Are we there?”
Duncan leaned over. “We need to turn this plane around.”
27
November 20, 6:42 A.M. IRKST
Olkhon Island, Russia
With the sun still down, Gray woke to his limbs tangled with another’s, a warm cheek resting on his chest. The scent of their bodies, their passion, still hung in the air. His left hand clasped her shoulder, as if fearful she would slip between his fingers, turn into a ghost, a fevered dream.