Jeremy Robinson - SecondWorld

Adler noted his attention on her clothing. “He made me dress like this.”

“Who?”

“Eichmann—Brodeur. I put up a fight before we left Antarctica. Almost got away.” She pulled back the hair behind her ear, revealing a sewed-up gash, still swollen and red. “The clothing is part of his program to ‘tame’ me. Dressing me like a woman will make me act like one, he said.”

The wound on the back of Adler’s head erased his doubts. “Sorry,” he said. “For doubting you.” It was a quick apology, but there was no time for anything more. He motioned toward the journal before she could acknowledge or accept his apology. “What did you find?”

Adler picked up the journal and flipped past the pages of handwritten German. She stopped at the math. “There are several different equations in the journal, each labeled by the theory being tested. Anti-gravity. Magnetic force. Field expansion. Oxidization of iron. Ten in total. And despite my best efforts I’ve never been able to understand one of them. Just when I think something is going to make sense, the following page turns it all into mathematical gibberish.”

She turned to the first page of math, written on a left-side page. “This is the first equation. For anti-gravity.”

Miller saw a confusing jumble of numbers and symbols that looked more like an ancient language than math. But on the next page, at the top, he saw a single word.

Energie.

“Energy?” Miller said.

“The second equation,” Adler confirmed with a nod. “But the first is incomplete. It never made sense to me.” She flipped through the following pages, revealing two more of the equations, each starting on the left-hand page. “None of them make sense. Unless…” She flipped back to the first page of the energy equation and pulled it out. Rather than turning the page, she slid it over so that the two right-side pages sat next to each other.

Miller instantly saw how the pages fit together, some lines and numbers continuing from one to the next. “She hid the equation.”

“And mixed them up so they would make no sense,” Adler said. “I think it was her way of making sure the equations couldn’t be understood by the wrong people.”

“How did you figure it out?”

“I was thinking about my grandmother, trying to understand her thought process. I remembered a game she used to play with me—a kind of mathematical hopscotch. The numbers in the answer determined where I had to jump, but the track always ended with two separate paths, left and right. I had to pick one and hop it to the end. Ten squares. I always thought it was a strange way to end the game, but I loved making her happy. The first time we played I chose left, and lost. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘When the path is confusing and the numbers all wrong, follow only the right side.’ For the longest time I thought it was a morality lesson, about being on the side of right—the good side. It’s part of why I became an agent—liaison. But the game had nothing to do with right and wrong and everything to do with this book.”

“She wanted you to figure it out,” Miller said.

“I think so.”

“And did you?”

“Some of the equations are still beyond me, though I think I could make sense of them if I had the time. But only one of them is important.”

“Follow only the right side,” Miller said. “Energy.”

“Exactly,” Adler said. “The equation proves the feasibility of the Bell’s power source, a ‘zero point energy’ device developed for the Reich by Hans Coler. My grandmother refers to it as the Coil in her notes. The equation runs for twenty straight right-side pages and despite its length is fairly straightforward, though I suspect it is a simplified version of the original. At the end of the equation is an addendum. Ten additional pages that I suspect my grandmother never gave the Nazis.”

Miller felt like a kid with his first lottery ticket, waiting to see if his numbers would turn up. He cracked his knuckles and licked his lips.

“The Coil generates a never-ending supply of power. Perpetual energy. But it is sensitive to rapid fluctuations. It takes a very specific charge to get the device going, and once it does, the charge must remain within a certain range or it will generate more energy than it needs, or can store in its batteries. It is a very delicate balance. Once it is operating, the Coil supplies its own energy, but produces more than it consumes. The excess energy is contained in batteries, which I’m guessing is what powers the Bell’s magnetic force, the energy field, and anti-gravity systems.”

“Why run off batteries when there is an energy source that can’t be depleted?” Miller asked.

“When too much energy is put into the Coil, it feeds more energy into itself. It begins to generate more energy than it can contain, and feeds even more to itself. The more it generates, the faster it generates. Power feeding power.”

“Until it reaches critical mass,” Miller guessed.

She confirmed it with a nod.

“And then, ka-boom?”

“Big ka-boom.”

“How big?”

Adler shrugged. “That’s not in the journal. But if the Bells are in orbit, and the world is doomed anyway, I think it’s worth the risk.”

She’s right, Miller thought. Even if the Bells detonated with the force of nuclear warheads, they couldn’t do any damage to the surface while in Earth’s orbit. “So what’s our plan, kick down the doors to Control and Security, find access to the system controlling the Bells, and give them a little extra juice?”

“That is what I was thinking,” Adler said.

Despite the odds being stacked against such a thing succeeding, with the fate of the world in the balance, there was no choice but to try. The thought led to a question. “Were you going to try this on your own?”

“Security is too tight. I was waiting,” she said. “For help.”

“You thought I was dead,” Miller said.

“I just…” She sighed. “If I tried on my own, I’d probably be dead already and then no one would ever know how to stop it. I wasn’t waiting for you. I was waiting for anyone. ”

Miller chastised himself for giving her a hard time. She had clearly been desperate to apply her knowledge, but could do nothing on her own. She was strong, and a good shot, but she’d be on her own against an army. And while four people against an army wasn’t much better, Miller had at least been trained to be a one-man army if necessary. “You said security is tight. You’ve been down there?”

“When we first arrived,” she said. “He presented me to Kammler like I was a big fish he’d caught.”

“Kammler is here ?”

“And the missing cryogenic chambers. From what I could see, there are just as many unopened chambers here as there were opened in Antarctica. I think the thawing process isn’t quite perfected yet—Kammler had some burn marks on his face I don’t remember from the photos I’ve seen of him. They must be waiting until after SecondWorld arrives to thaw out the rest.”

Miller thought about the name he’d read on the computer screen in Antarctica. The thought of that man returning to the world was an injustice he could not ignore. Nor could he deal with it now. “Tell me about the security. What do we have to go through?”

“There are four armed guards. Brownshirt Nazis. The blueshirts—U.S. citizens from a variety of law-enforcement agencies—police the general population. As do the robotic devices. They scan DNA, by the way.”

“I know,” Miller replied. “Found out the hard way.”

“The door to Security and Control has a hand scanner,” Adler said. “And a code number and a retinal scanner, and—”