PETAR IMMEDIATELY RAISED HIS arms in the air, hands open, palms facing the soldiers, disarming smile on his face. He caught Jem's eye and widened his own slightly. Follow my lead, the glance said. Jem got the hint and raised his own arms in a stance identical to Petar's.

The officer at the front of the men took a step forward, still smiling.

"You remember me, I'm sure," he said.

"Damien Samil," said Petar flatly. "Four-star general in the United States Army and five-star asshole."

Samil worked his jaw back and forth. The man had the sense of humor of a drowning honey badger. Petar would sooner stick his hand in a basket full of cobras than provoke him. But he didn't have many options. He let his hands dip and a round of clicks signaled the soldiers stiffening and bringing their rifles higher. Definitely on edge. Definitely a shortage of options.

The two groups, Samil and his contingent and Jem and Petar, stood at one end of a long, capacious room about the breadth of a high school basketball gym and at least four times as long as one. The entire lab appeared to be a single room, but Petar knew there had to be at least one other section. Even on Volos, Petar's father always conducted oscillation experiments in a sealed chamber separated from his main lab. It was too dangerous to risk the rest of the sensitive equipment.

That's where he needed to go to open the breach to Volos.

Getting there might be a problem, though.

The single large room was separated into roughly two sections, more by atmosphere than by any concrete barriers. The far end appeared to be a semi-storage area. Temporary, by the looks of it. Machines and tables of lab equipment were bunched into groups, along the walls and in clusters on the floor, with the remaining space transformed into a series of walkways that cut through them.

The side on which they stood was set up like an active engineering laboratory. A modern, active laboratory. Instead of a century's worth of dust and industrial-age equipment, Petar saw shining countertops, state-of-the-art glassware. A string of gray eighty-kilowatt generators stood on individual trailers along the long wall to Petar's left, stopping before the halfway point, where the temporary storage area began. They were massive, each one about the size of a minivan. One gave off a gentle hum; it must be supplying the overhead lights, Petar figured.

The rest of the space, both floor and countertop, was covered in gadgets. Some were familiar to Petar, some weren't. A large Jacob's ladder meant for building spark gaps was mounted on a table along the right side of the room. Beside it was a mass of wound copper coils that Petar couldn't quite place. After a short gap to allow for a nest of electrical wires and surge protectors on the floor, another table held a circular magnet rail that was piped into a tank of liquid nitrogen. Quantum attractor, Petar guessed.

Similar apparatus littered a series of tables arranged at drunken angles all through the center of the floor. And in the center of the work area loomed a fifteen-foot Tesla coil. It towered behind the squad of nervous soldiers like a dark giant waiting to come to life after a long sleep.

"You found the lab," Petar ventured.

"Of course," Samil sneered. "We've known about this place for years. It's yielded some very interesting technologies."

"And you knew I'd be coming here."

"I had my suspicions, sure."

"So that means you believed me!" Petar almost leaped forward and strangled him. A half-step forward from the rifle brigade stopped him.

"Life does not revolve around beliefs, Mr. Tesla. It revolves around the facts. And the fact is, we've been expecting something like this for some time. I'll say it again: It's about time you showed up."

"Then what is this?" Petar was outraged. "Why aren't you getting ready?"

"Oh, we're expecting ol' Nick, too. Expecting him with open arms. With his help and his technology, we'll restore the world to its proper condition. First it'll cower in fear. Then it will fight. And finally, it will drop to its knees and beg for salvation. Our salvation. 'God is dead,' Nietzsche said. I disagree: God ran away and hid. It's time to show the people of this world a new god."

"Help," Petar laughed dryly. "Salvation. You self-centered sonofabitch. What are you expecting to get out of this? Money? Power? When my father comes, he's not coming to help anyone. He'll come on a wave of fire and you'll be lucky to get a glimpse of his 'help' before you burn with the rest of the world. He's not a god. He's a psychopath."

"Not what I expected from the son of Nikola Tesla," Samil said. "Not at all. You're hardly the idealist that great man was."

"My father believed in good!" Petar shouted. "In the unity of mankind. He built his technology to help the world, not keep it under his fist. That's the belief I took from him. You're talking about a technological dictatorship, you're talking–"

"I'm talking domination," Samil interrupted, his eyes glittering like ice. "Total control of a weak-minded species. Don't sell me short, Petar. I'm not a politician or a carpetbagger. I'm after the big picture."

Despite his anger, Petar's head was cool. Even as he argued, he was scanning the room for a way past Samil and his men. Confirming his suspicions, he didn't see the equipment he needed to open the breach anywhere in the main lab. It could be under one of the dust covers in the storage section, but more likely it was somewhere near the far end of the chamber. It was the only wall Petar couldn't see. Let Samil drone on. As long as nothing happened, there was a chance to make an escape.

Beneath them, the floor shuddered. It felt like an aftershock from an earthquake. Barely noticeable. Petar risked a glance at Jem. The boy been watching the exchange like a tennis match. Now he returned Petar's look, his eyes scared. Petar winked.

God, he hoped this didn't get them killed.

A rumbling growl wafted through the dark breach in the wall behind them. The air on the back of Petar's neck stood straight with a sudden static charge in the air. He felt it in his thighs, in his belly. Almost time. Both he and Jem still had their hands in the air like football referees announcing a field goal. Samil was still saying something. Petar had stopped paying attention.

"Well, we'll just be going now," Petar said pleasantly, interrupting Samil's rant. That will piss him off, Petar knew.

"Is that so?" Samil hissed through clenched teeth.

"Sorry, bub. Time's up. Ta-ta." As he spoke, Petar wiggled his fingers up and down in a "good-bye" gesture and shut his eyes. Two orange lights raced from his wrist to his elbow and back again. Samil spun and shouted "Fire!" but the order didn't come soon enough. The spatial coherence amplifier took a mere seven femtoseconds – seven quadrillionths of a second – to charge before unleashing a hundred thousand lumens in a sweeping arc: a flashbulb from hell. Anyone who looked directly at it was permanently blinded, their retinas seared. Although Petar was behind the light and his eyes were clenched as tightly shut as he could get them, the flash still burned a fiery orange dot through his eyelids.

As soon as the flash faded, the soldiers opened fire. Petar lunged sideways into Jem, spilling them both onto the floor. Samil shouted another order. Incoherent. Rat-a-tats of rifle fire boomed through the lab. Tracer rounds ricocheted off the wall behind Petar and Jem, whining and careening like angry hornets.

Suddenly, the entire complex shuddered. The soldiers stopped firing. A deep, menacing growl filled the room, and the floor rocked violently again. A long, spidery crack grew out of the hole Petar and Jem had come through.

Petar covered Jem with his body and scooted both of them under a table in the corner. Another hissing growl, and the wall imploded, showering the lab with a spray of white dust and gray stone shards.

The soldiers raised their arms in blind defense and scattered from what they felt was the danger zone. One soldier moved too slowly. A bowling-ball-sized piece of rock sheared his head off. His body took two more steps before it stumbled and collapsed to the floor, the bloody stump of his neck spurting out a crimson fountain.

Petar glimpsed General Samil whirling and ducking behind a chrome-plated lab table in the middle of the room. A shotgun-spray of small gravel peppered the table's surface just as he got behind it, shattering glassware in a glittering cloud and pinging against dull metal.

Cries from the scattered soldiers filled the room. One man began to wail. Petar looked for him, but couldn't see where it was coming from. The air was thick with particulate dust, and the overhead lights had begun to flicker erratically. The headless soldier pumped ever-weakening pulse waves of blood that formed a wide, red pool around his body.

Amidst the chaos, a hulking shape stepped slowly over the crumbled remains of the wall. Petar felt its footsteps as small shudders in the ground. He wrapped his body more tightly around Jem's. He didn't have to look; he knew what it was.

The vucari had arrived.

Thanks for reading my story! Please VOTE and let me know what you think of it so far, then check out Chapter 42!