The twin-engine tilt-rotor aircraft banked hard over the Tyrrhenian Sea, leaving the sprawling lights of Rome behind. Inside the stripped-down cabin, the roar of the engines was a constant, physical pressure. Isabelle Moreau sat in the co-pilot's seat, her profile a rigid silhouette against the green glow of the instrument panel. She flew with an unnerving economy of motion, a seamless extension of the machine. Sineus ignored her. He sat on the cold metal deck, the waterproof pack open between his knees.
He lifted the Logbook from the pack. Water beaded on the dark, cured hide of its cover. The book was heavier than it looked, its weight dense and wrong. Under the single, harsh utility light of the cabin, the script etched into its surface seemed to writhe, the characters shifting and re-forming at the very edge of his perception. It was not an illusion. The script was alive, a current of pure Memorum bound in leather and thread. He ran a gloved finger over the cover, feeling a deep, resonant cold that had nothing to do with the altitude.
His objective was simple: decipher the broadcast from the Astral Compass. The Logbook was the key, but it was a key written in a language that had died before the first pharaohs. He opened it carefully. The vellum pages were impossibly preserved, the ink a stark, matte black against the creamy surface. The air grew colder around the book, a localized drop in temperature that made his breath mist.
— Where are we going? — Moreau’s voice cut through the engine noise, sharp and devoid of curiosity. It was a demand for tactical information, nothing more.
— North, — Sineus answered without looking up.
He focused on the text, letting his unique sensitivity to Memorum guide him. This was not a passive language meant to be read; it was an operational code, a set of instructions for the fabric of reality itself. Each glyph was a command, each sentence a function. To read it was to execute it. The realization settled in his mind not as a theory, but as a certainty, as solid as the vibrating deck beneath him. He had to test it. The risk was immense, but the price of ignorance was higher.
He found a single, isolated line of script, a simple clause that seemed to describe the nature of a boundary. He committed the shape of the glyphs to memory. He took a steadying breath.
— Hold on, — he said, his voice low.
He spoke the line aloud. The seven words felt like grinding stones in his throat. For 1.8 seconds, the forward bulkhead of the VTOL, a solid plate of aviation-grade aluminum alloy, lost its identity. It did not melt. It simply forgot it was a solid. The metal flowed like liquid mercury, shimmering with a thousand captured reflections of the cabin lights. The air temperature plunged, and the low hum of the engines faltered as the aircraft’s structure momentarily lost its rigidity.
Then, just as quickly, the metal remembered its purpose. It solidified with a silent shudder, its surface perfectly smooth, unmarred, and intensely cold to the touch.
Moreau made no sound, but her entire body had gone rigid. Her right hand had dropped to the grip of the pistol holstered on her thigh, her knuckles white. She was not panicked. She was a weapons system that had just identified a new and unpredictable threat. Her eyes were fixed on the Logbook in his hands, her expression a mask of cold, furious calculation.
Sineus saw her other hand begin to move, reaching out as if to touch the artifact herself, to confirm its properties.
— Don't touch the spine, — he warned, his voice flat, his eyes still on the page. — The binding is a ward.
Her hand froze, centimeters from the book. She held the position for a long second, a silent battle of wills playing out in the roaring cabin. Then, with a slow, deliberate movement, she pulled her hand back, resting it on her knee. It was a concession. The dynamic had shifted. He was not just the scholar with the key; he was the only one who knew how to keep the key from exploding.
He returned his focus to the text, the new understanding lighting his path. He could not simply read it. He had to navigate it, bypassing the operational commands and seeking only the data streams, the pure information woven between the lines of power. It was like disarming a bomb while reading the schematics printed on its casing. He cross-referenced the glyphs with the memory of the Astral Compass’s broadcast, the countdown timer a rhythmic pulse in the back of his mind.
Minutes stretched into an hour. The drone of the engines was a hypnotic constant. Moreau did not speak again. She flew the aircraft with unwavering precision, a silent, hostile guardian. Finally, he found it—a sequence of glyphs that were not commands, but coordinates. A location, tied to a specific resonance frequency.
He looked up from the book, the cabin seeming unnaturally bright after the intense focus. He met Moreau’s gaze in the reflection of the cockpit glass.
— Polyus-9, — he said, the words clear and sharp above the engine noise. — A decommissioned Soviet station on Novaya Zemlya. In the Arctic.
Moreau’s eyes narrowed for a fraction of a second. She processed the information, her mind already leaping ahead to the logistical and tactical implications. An abandoned Russian base in the high Arctic. Ice, isolation, and ghosts of the Cold War.
She gave a single, curt nod. Without a word, she banked the VTOL, turning its nose from the dark waters of the Mediterranean toward the distant, frozen north.
The new course was set. The alliance held.
He closed the Logbook, the cold emanating from it receding slightly. The next clue was buried under a kilometer of ice, in a place the world had forgotten. But the world was coming, and they had to get there first.
