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“Thanks for the lift.” Stella unbuckled and hopped out the door. The rotor downwash whipped her hair around her face as she stepped onto the field.

Journey followed close behind. “Twenty-eight minutes.” She matched Stella’s pace as they jogged across the outfield toward the looming silhouette of the Pittsburgh Museum of Ancient Art.

The museum was a grand neoclassical building, its stone facade illuminated by spotlights that cast dramatic shadows across the columns.

Stella scrambled up the broad steps leading to the entrance, but she hit the brakes as soon as she could see through the glass doors.

A large sign declared the museum closed for the holidays, but she didn’t see a single security guard.

She tried the doors and pushed them open .

Inside, the hallways lay quiet as a grave, not a single patron in sight. No one had locked up.

Why wouldn’t the place be locked up?

“Where’s security?” The security desk inside the entrance hall was empty. No guards, no personnel—just silence.

Journey put her hand on her weapon and did a slow circle of the entrance area. “I don’t like this.”

“Try Lucas again.”

Journey released her weapon and dialed her partner. But she never stopped scanning the area.

Stella pulled out her phone and dialed Tysen. “Ma’am, we’re at the museum. Security desk is abandoned. Requesting immediate backup.”

“On the way, Knox.” Tysen was all efficiency. “Situation?”

“Building entrance appears abandoned. Yates and Sullivan aren’t answering. But that could be the reception in places like this.”

“Could be. Hold position. Backup en route.”

“Understood.” Stella hesitated to defy a direct order…but she wasn’t about to leave Hagen alone in the depths of this museum. The Administrator was preparing for the ultimate end-of-the-world sacrifice. They only had twenty minutes. For Stella, the decision was easy. “We’re proceeding inside.”

Journey hung up at the same time as Stella. “Still no answer from Lucas. What’d Tysen say?”

“Hold position.”

“I don’t see that happening.”

Stella gave her a quick smile and headed to the security station. “There’s got to be a map or something around here. We can’t go into this place blind.”

The entrance hall was dimly lit, with only emergency lighting casting long shadows across the marble floor. Display cases containing Roman artifacts lined the walls, the glass reflecting the agents’ cautious advance .

“There should be monitors too.” Journey circled the security desk.

Inside, a bank of monitors displayed feeds from throughout the museum. They flicked to different locations every five seconds or so. A detailed floor plan was tacked to a corkboard on the desk.

“There.” Journey pointed to a spot marked just beyond the Egyptian corridor. “Napp’s office.”

Stella nodded. “Let’s check it first.”

“Hold up.” Journey leaned toward the monitors. Stella looked over her shoulder, and her stomach dropped out from under her.

A security guard was carrying an unconscious—she hoped he was unconscious—Lucas down a hallway. In the background, various old bric-a-brac stood on shelves. Probably priceless, but to Stella, it just seemed like clutter. The space looked like a storage area.

Journey pointed to the feed. “The camera stamp says Area Seventeen. Where’s Area Seventeen?”

Stella had to admire Journey’s cool in this situation. The woman’s voice was calm and steady. Stella’s hands shook as she yanked the map off the corkboard. She scanned the floor plans methodically. The space looked like storage.

That’d be the basement. They’d start there.

“Here.” Stella found it almost immediately. “We’re going to need keys or a badge or something. Maybe both.”

Journey was already opening drawers. She found a ring with maybe a hundred keys and two employee badges in the lost and found box. “Let’s go.”

“I didn’t see Hagen in that security footage.” Stella led the way, following the map like an Eagle Scout.

“Wherever Lucas is, Hagen will be there too. Lucas wouldn’t leave his partner. Even if the whole place was on fire. ”

They reached a heavy steel door marked Basement Access — Authorized Personnel Only . Stella tried the handle. Locked.

Instead of starting with the huge round of keys, Journey swiped one of the badges. A red light greeted her.

“Let’s hope our next guy has access.” Stella wanted to beat the door down with her bare hands.

Journey swiped, and the second badge got results. A bright-green light glowed, and the bolts giving way sounded like heaven.

The two of them descended the stairs, weapons drawn. The temperature dropped noticeably as they reached the basement level. A long corridor stretched before them, lined with additional hallways that branched off in multiple directions like a labyrinth.

“This place is a maze.” Journey moved carefully down the hallway.

“Napp has a research room. Should be down the east corridor, then north at the second junction.” Stella had a good image of the area in her mind, but she hadn’t expected the amount of stuff filling the space.

Crated artifacts and conservation equipment crowded in. She saw a small stone hippopotamus. The air smelled of dust and chemicals.

The door to Napp’s research room was open, and a flood of bright-white lights, like those used for television, glowed.

Inside, shadows shuffled, and low voices murmured.

Stella recognized Napp among the three separate low voices, all masculine.

One of them was probably the security guard they’d seen carrying Lucas on the footage upstairs.

Approaching the room would be dangerous. If she could see inside, they could see outside. According to the map, there should only be one entrance, which meant Napp and his people were cornered.

Journey seemed to be coming to the same conclusion. She crept to a far corner, behind a shelf. Stella followed her to regroup, taking careful, silent steps while keeping her gaze moving.

She and Journey stood so close that Stella could smell Journey’s coconut shampoo.

Journey nodded to Stella’s pocket, where her phone was. “Dollars to doughnuts he’s streaming what he’s doing right now. We can assess from here. Stay low. I’ll cover. You check.”

Stella flipped her phone to the Dispatch app and watched a muted stream on her screen. She swallowed the bile rising up in her throat. Hagen and Lucas were bound, face down, on two large tables that looked almost like those used for autopsies.

Both men were shirtless and tied to tables, their almost identical broad backs stretched out. Hagen’s “Vindicta” tattoo crossed his shoulder blades. If he was conscious, she couldn’t tell. Blood covered his head.

Beside him, Lucas was definitely out. From the angle of his head, she could tell that his eyes were closed, and a gash still leaked blood over his temple. There were also telltale signs of prong marks on his back ribs. They’d used a Taser to get him under control.

Two men in security guard uniforms stood beside each table. Napp’s lackeys. The front doors were unlocked because the security guards had been busy kidnapping federal agents.

As Stella watched her screen, Hagen’s head lolled, and he groaned quietly—she could hear it emanating from the room.

Stella wanted to shout for joy and relief and hope. He was still alive.

Napp held a small square slab up to the camera as he spoke. His voice sounded strange coming from inside the room eight feet away. “My friends, this is the moment. This is the time for which we have all waited. And this…this is the tablet.”

He pushed the clay block in front of the lens. The piece was so small and simple—an old hunk of scratched-up mud—yet it had caused so much destruction.

“This is the prophecy that foretells the end of this world. On this day, it says, shall fall a great disaster. Only those the gods deem worthy, only those who have paid their price in blood, shall live to see the birth of the new era. So it is written, my friends. And so it shall be.”

Napp nodded to one of the security guards.

The man, average height with a brown buzz cut, stepped forward beside Lucas. He held up a knife. Even from the tiny screen, Stella could tell the blade was sharp.

She kept her voice low. “Three men. One near the door. Two on either side of the room. At least one armed and approaching Lucas.” She sprang forward, with Journey on her heels.

Napp’s voice grew louder as they approached, and she turned down the volume on her phone.

If he heard them or was concerned with their presence, he didn’t break his cadence.

There was a tension in his voice, a touch of unrestrained excitement.

“This is the last day. These are the last minutes. I’m sorry more people couldn’t be saved.

But they should’ve listened to us. To you.

They should’ve paid attention. It’s too late now. ”

Stella had reached the doorway. Napp stepped back from the camera.

Behind him, the security guard had started carving on Lucas’s back.

“Federal agents! Weapons down!”

The guard paused and looked up at Stella as if he didn’t fully understand what he was seeing. He lifted his hands and dropped the knife. Blood oozed from Lucas’s broken skin, but his body rose and fell with breath. He was alive.

Napp, rather than obeying, lifted a bronze blade curved like a sickle. The color on the edge was brighter than the dark metal that made up the rest of the weapon. It shined like new.

“Welcome, Agent Knox.” He lowered the blade to the back of Hagen’s neck. “Now, as we approach the last minutes of this world, I will make my sacrifice. And then, as the world ends, you all will make yours.”

Stella raised her weapon.

But before she could place her finger on the trigger, her entire body sizzled as bolts of electricity shot through her.