But instead Gray only nodded. “I do.”

Nasser’s eyes widened, surprised.

Gray placed a palm on the bas-relief. “The story here. It’s not a creation myth. It’s the story of the Judas Strain.”

“What are you talking about?” Nasser asked.

Vigor had the same question.

Gray explained. “From what you told us about the exposure over in Indonesia, the disease all started with seas in the area glowing with bacteria. Seas described as frothy and white. Like churned-up milk.”

Vigor straightened, stepping around Gray to view the bas-relief with new eyes. He stood with his hands on his hips.

Seichan joined him. Off to the side, Kowalski remained where he was, studying a line of bare-breasted women, his nose close to the stone.

Gray continued, pointing to the snake. “Then a great poison was released that threatened all life, good and bad.”

Seichan nodded. “Like the toxic bacteria, spewing poison and laying a swath of death.”

Nasser looked unconvinced.

Gray pressed his point home. “And according to this myth, someone survived the exposure and saved the world. Vishnu. He drank the poison, detoxified it, and turned blue…”

“As if he were glowing,” Vigor mumbled.

“Like the survivors described in Marco’s book,” Gray added. “And like the patient you described, Nasser. All glowing blue.”

Vigor slowly nodded. “It’s too perfect to be coincidence. And many ancient myths grew out of true histories.”

Gray turned to Nasser. “If I’m right, here is the first clue that we’re on the right track. That perhaps there is more yet to learn.”

Nasser’s eyes narrowed, momentarily angry — but he slowly nodded. “I believe you may be right, Commander Pierce. Very good. You just reset the clock for another hour.”

Gray attempted to hide his relief, letting out his breath with a slight rattle.

“So let us continue,” Nasser said.

Vigor drew them toward a shadowed flight of steep stairs. Behind him, Gray lingered a moment more, studying the carving. He reached out and ran a finger along the carved mountain — then back to the central tower.

Gray’s eyes met Vigor’s. Vigor noted the barest shake of the commander’s head when he turned away.

Did Gray know something more?

Vigor ducked into the narrow stairs. Before Gray had turned, Vigor had noted something else, something in the commander’s face.

Fear.

“They must not go there…” Susan moaned again.

The woman lay sprawled across the rear seats of the Sea Dart, slipping into and out of consciousness, close to rolling back into a full catatonic stupor. Susan fought to pull away the fire blanket that Lisa had spread over her.

“Lie still,” Lisa urged. “Try to rest. Ryder will be back soon.”

The Sea Dart rocked and bumped against the end of the fuel dock. They had landed in the sheltered bay of a small island, somewhere off the coast of Borneo. Rain continued to pour out of low clouds, but the dark anger of the typhoon had swept away. Thunder rumbled, but it sounded distant and fading.

Still leaden with grief over Monk, Lisa stared past the Sea Dart’s windshield. While she waited, her thoughts slipped easily into recriminations. She could have done more. Moved faster. Thought of something clever at the last moment. Instead, Monk’s prosthetic hand still hung from the wing’s strut. Ryder hadn’t been able to pry it off.

Lisa glanced to the hatch, wishing Ryder would get back soon. He had topped off his boat’s petrol tank and gone in search of a telephone with a fistful of emergency cash he had stored here.

But his chances looked doubtful. The nearby village lay dark along the beach, storm-damaged with stripped roofs, downed palm trees, and beaches littered with overturned skiffs and debris. There had been no power at the dock’s fuel pumps. Ryder had to hand-crank the petrol, passing a wadful of cash to a wet dog of a man in flip-flops and knee-length shorts. The man had left with Ryder on a motorcycle, assuring him they could find a phone near the island’s small inland airport.

The tropical island of Natuna Besar served the tourist trade with its abundant snorkeling reefs and excellent sport fishing. But it had been evacuated with the threat of the typhoon. The place looked deserted.

Most of the islands they had flown over had been in a similar state of shambles.

From the air, Ryder had spotted the airport on Natuna Besar. “Surely someone down there has a sat-phone we could borrow,” he had said. “Or a way to repair our radio.”

Needing to fuel anyway, they had made a landing in the sheltered bay. Lisa now waited with Susan.

Worried, Lisa placed a hand on the woman’s damp brow. In the dimness of the cabin, Susan’s face shone with a deeper glow, seeming to rise more out of her underlying bones than her skin. Lisa felt a burn under her palm as she rested it on Susan’s forehead.

But it was not a fever.

Lisa lifted away her hand. It still continued to burn.

What the hell?

Lisa frantically rinsed her palm with water from a canteen and dried it on the fire blanket. The smolder subsided.

Lisa stared at the sheen of Susan’s skin, rubbing the sting from her fingertips. This was new. The cyanobacteria must be producing a caustic chemical. And while it burned Lisa’s skin, Susan remained resistant or protected.

What was happening?

As if reading her thoughts, Susan squirmed an arm out from under the blanket. Her hand stretched toward the square of weak sunlight flowing through the hatch window. The glow in her flesh vanished in the brighter light.

The contact seemed to settle Susan. She let out a long sigh.

Sunlight.

Could it be?

Curious, Lisa reached to Susan’s hand and brushed a fingertip across her sunlit skin. Lisa yanked her arm back, shaking her fingers. Like touching a hot iron. She again doused her skin with water, the fingertip already blistering.

“It’s the sunlight,” Lisa said aloud.

She pictured Susan’s earlier outburst, when she’d first set eyes on the rising sun. Lisa also remembered one of the unique features of cyanobacteria. They were the precursors to modern plants. The bacteria contained rudimentary chloroplasts, microscopic engines to convert sunlight into energy. With the rise of the sun, the cyanobacteria were ramping up, energizing in some strange manner.

But to do what?

Lisa glanced to the navigation chart on the floor. She remembered Susan’s earlier outburst, pointing down to a spot on the map.

“Angkor,” Lisa mumbled.

Lisa had attempted to convince herself it was just a coincidence. But now she was less sure. She remembered eavesdropping on a conversation while strapped to a surgical table. Devesh had been on the phone, speaking in Arabic. She had made out only one word.

A name.

Angkor.

What if it wasn’t a coincidence?

And if not, what else did Susan know?

Lisa suspected one way to find out. She shifted over and cradled Susan’s shoulders in her arms, keeping the blanket between them. Lisa lifted Susan into the shaft of sunlight flowing through the front windshield.

Susan shuddered as soon as her face touched the brightness. Her eyes fluttered open, black pupils shifted toward the weak light. But rather than constricting in the brightness, Susan’s pupils dilated, taking in more light.

Lisa remembered the bacterial invasion of the woman’s retinas, centered around the optic nerve, direct conduits to the brain.

Susan stiffened under her. Her head lolled — then grew steadier.

“Lisa,” she said, thick-tongued and slurred.

“I’m here.”

“I have to…must get me there…before it’s too late.”

“Where?” But Lisa knew where.

Angkor.

“No more time,” Susan mumbled, and swung her face toward Lisa. Her eyes twitched from the sunlight, shying from it. Frightened. And not just because of the danger to come. Lisa saw it in her eyes. Susan was scared of what was happening to her body. She knew the truth, yet was unable to stop it.