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Alex ran forward, nervous and excited to finally see his Gear, his part of the machine—of the race itself. But before he could reach the pyramid, there was a noise like the world was tearing apart.

“The explosives!” Ahmed said. “They’ve opened up cracks in the lava field!”

Alex immediately saw what he meant.

Steaming lava had started bubbling up all over the floor of the cavern.

“We don’t have much time,” Hans said. “Hurry!”

SAM

The scene ahead seemed like a mirage.

The hood down over his face, the wind threatening to blow him off his feet, Sam stopped and wiped the ice from his goggles.

Is that …?

Yes
.

A wooden hut, leaning at an awkward angle, presumably from the wind buffeting it, crates and oil drums all around forming barriers that were banked with drift snow.

It’s not the Chilean station, but any port in a storm!

He looked over his shoulder—the wall of wind and snow of the superstorm was now just a couple of minutes behind him.

Sam pushed on, the wind at his back, struggling to stay upright with every step as the wind carried him onward. He hit the bank of snow at a row of oil drums and tumbled over it. He crawled to the hut. It was completely made from timber, and though he could not feel it with his double-gloved hands, he could see the wood was blasted smooth and worn by decades of ice crystals. It felt like it took an eternity to find the door, located on the side opposite the prevailing wind.

It was locked.

He tried to shoulder it, charging at it twice, but it held, the wood thick and strong.

There were no windows.

Maybe I can crash through the wall where it’s thinner and weaker, on the other side—

The door flew open.

Two people stood there, brandishing snow axes, ready to strike.

Then, one of them, a woman, lowered her axe and said in shocked disbelief, “Sam?”

Sam gradually thawed out by the fire. It gave the only light in the hut, but it was enough to see his two companions. A man and a woman, in their thirties—Clive and Nora. They were a news crew, out of New Zealand, there to film a re-enactment of a race to the South Pole.

There were eight dogs too. Sled dogs, malamutes, like he’d seen race a few times back in Canada in the Far North. The leader of the pack was dark grey with a black mane and big eyes. Called River, he sniffed Sam and allowed him to pat his head.

“He’s bigger than me,” Sam said, motioning to River.

“Yeah, but he’s just a big puppy at heart,” Nora said.

River licked Sam’s face as he laughed. Content that Sam was a friend, River went and sat with the other dogs in the corner of the hut.

Clive went to get more firewood from the adjoining storeroom.

“They don’t mind being outside,” Sam said to Nora, motioning to the dogs. “They’re used to it—it’s what they know, what they were bred for.”

“I know,” Nora replied. “But I just couldn’t—not if this storm’s going to be as bad as they say. I’d go out tomorrow to find eight dog popsicles.”

“Right …” Sam said.

Clive dumped a huge pile of former supply crates, now broken up for firewood, in the rusted cast-iron stove that sat squat in the centre of the hut. “You’re him, aren’t you?” he said. “You’re that one whose dreams are coming true.”

Sam nodded.

“We saw you speak at the UN,” Nora said. “You warned the world about some race to control the dream world.”

“Yep, that’s me,” Sam said, holding a hot drink in his hands, the warmth rising up to his face. “Sam the Dreamer …”

“A dream led you down here?” Nora asked.

Sam nodded. “It did. I have to find a friend who’s down here, looking for something. So I’m still in the news?” he said, changing the subject.

“Every day,” Nora said. “Yesterday they interviewed some guy, some kind of academic-looking older man.”

Sam laughed. “That’d be the Professor.”

“You’re not alone in this, Sam,” Nora said. “The whole world is waiting, watching.”

“I just have to get out of here, keep heading east, to catch up with my friends,” Sam said.

“Well, the storm’s about to get a lot worse,” Clive said. “No one will be able to get to us, not until it passes.”

He could see that they only had food packs for two people for a day. And the dogs had nothing but a large tub of dry food. River looked like he could eat it all in two minutes flat if given the chance. The heat of the interior was almost painful after the frigid cold. Sam shook off his gloves, then unzipped his snowsuit and threw back his hood. He rubbed his nose and cheeks to make sure they were still there.

Do you know when you’re getting frostbite?

“How’d you guys get to be here, in this hut, I mean?” Sam asked.

“We were here to make a documentary about some New Zealand explorations,” Nora said. “Then we heard a rumour.” She fell silent, watching the fire, and finally went on. “From Lake Vostok. Then before we knew it, we got diverted by our bosses to cover another related news story.”

“News—in Antarctica?” Sam said. “What, they found out that penguins are really wearing tuxedos?”

Clive laughed and passed around more cups of sweet, steaming hot chocolate from a pot above the stove. Sam took one gratefully.

“They found something at Vostok,” Nora said. “Drilling down, they brought up stone and metal. They said it was evidence of some kind of spectacular ruins,
underneath
the ice.”

“Ruins?” Sam said. “Like, from an early expedition down here?”

“You could put it that way,” Clive said. “Though not any expedition you’d read in the history books. This one was said to be, ah, just a
little
earlier.”

“Thousands of years earlier,” Nora said, “going by what they found near the Chilean station. They were coring too so they set their drill to the same depth as at Vostok. The whole drill rig fell through the ice, into some kind of tunnel system.”

“The things I’ve seen these past few months,” Sam said, “I’m about ready to believe anything.”

“Yeah, we’ve heard, and read,” Nora said. “It seems intense. Maybe we can help, Sam.”

“Thank you,” Sam said.

“There’s plenty of support for you, Sam,” Nora said, smiling. “You should check out social media sometime.”

“Or switch on the TV,” Clive added.

Sam smiled, lost in the thought of having the luxury to do that.

Would it be wrong, reading about myself like that? Maybe not—maybe I need to see and hear that there are people out there cheering us on
.

“So you didn’t find anything?” Sam said. “In these ruins?”

The pair shared a look.

“Well …” Clive began.

“We chalked it up to some kind of sub zero-induced delusion, you know these guys are out here for months at a time,” Nora said, “but when we turned up at the site, we were chased off by soldiers.”

“
Whose
soldiers?” Sam asked.

“Whatever big company it is that’s paying for the drilling,” Clive said. “We’re still trying to find out who that is exactly. These kind of businesses hide behind subsidiaries that can take weeks to untangle.”

“But why would they chase you off?”

“Because they found something, and they’re protecting it while they explore it.”

“Our bureau in Auckland got a tip-off that someone down here was willing to talk. We got our guides to go so we could wait here for them in secret. But they haven’t shown up. We were planning to leave tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow’s too late …” Sam said, then sat forward. “This place—is it far from here?”

Clive grinned. “It’d be worth the trip.”

Then the storm hit.

XAVIER

“Dr. Dark,” Poh called from behind them as they walked through the tunnel at a crouch. “What do you think will happen, at the Dream Gate?”

Dr. Dark took his time answering.

“Dad?” Xavier said, pausing, and the convoy came to a halt, the tight tunnel making it hard for them all to see each other.

“Just up here, a little more,” Dr. Dark replied, turning to smile at them. “Then we’ll stop. You’ll see.”

They walked on and came to a larger space that opened up even further.

A big cistern
? Xavier guessed. A place where the water once flowed high, according to the marks on the wall. Now, there was just a trickle of water running through the channel carved into the rock long ago.

“Are they … human?” Maria asked, pointing at piles of old bones scattered along the far wall.

“Animal,” Rapha said, shining his flashlight over there.

“The Dream Gate,” Phoebe gently reminded Dr. Dark. She crouched down to the water and washed her hands in it. “What do you think, Dark? Do you know what we’ll find?”

“I believe,” Dr. Dark replied, shining his flashlight over the ceiling, “that this ultimate power has something to do with the sun, given the name da Vinci gave his machine.”

“The sun?” Xavier said. “I read that Bakhu was the name of a mythical mountain in Ancient Egypt. They believed the sun rose from behind it, right?”

“I’m pleased to see you taking an interest, my son,” Dr. Dark said. “Yes, it was one of two great mountains that held up the sky, the other called Manu.”

“Sunrise, sunset …” Xavier said. “Opposites.”

“That’s right,” Dr. Dark replied. “Light and dark. Life and death. I fear that if the person who enters the Dream Gate is not true—if the power falls into the wrong hands, then we could all be in a world where night is eternal. Darkness will reign. Nightmares will be real.”

“You make it sound like a curse,” Maria whispered.

“It may well be,” Dr. Dark said. “I think there’s a good reason that the Dream Gate was hidden away and that finding it is such a battle. We’ve not been ready, not since the time of Ramses the Great, who sealed the Gate. Not until now, not until the thirteen of you.”

“This sounds like a myth to me,” Cody said. “The machine is named after a mountain where the sun rose? So you think maybe the holder of this power will, what, control the sun?”

Dr. Dark shook his head. “It’s no more unbelievable a story than that of the last 13,” he replied. “Which was told to me by my father, and his father to him before that. And here I am—seeing it play out.”

“He’s right,” Phoebe said. “I was told similar stories. About what the ultimate power might be and about the last 13.”

“Maybe it was seen as a power way back then—but it’s not a power now,” Maria said. “Like it has something to do with the stars, or the sky?”

“It could well be something like that,” Phoebe said. “You’re right.”

Dr. Dark nodded. “Everything is connected. Us, the earth, the stars in the sky. Some things are too big to easily explain. But our time is coming, when we are about to find something that has been hidden away from us for well over three thousand years.”

SAM

It had howled outside for long hours. The dogs were quiet and still. The three people inside were spooked.

Sam examined the map. Vostok was too far away.

My best bet is the Chilean station
.

“The Chilean station,” Sam said, tapping the map. “I have to get there as soon as I can.”

“In that storm?” Clive said. “It will take too long to get there—you’ll freeze.”

“It does seem like the storm has died down a bit,” Nora said. “We might be OK to wait it out here. You’re welcome to stay here with us.”

“Thank you,” Sam said, “but I really do have to leave. I just can’t sit here when there’s so little time left.”

“Are we running out of time?” Clive said.

“Well, I’m not really free to tell you much more than that right now,” Sam said, “but give me a call once it’s all over and I’ll give you guys an exclusive.”

Nora and Clive grinned. “We’ll hold you to that,” she said. “But I’m still worried about you leaving. It’ll take hours to hike there.”

“I’m not planning on hiking,” Sam said, an idea forming in his mind as he glanced around the hut. “I’m going to get there faster.”

“Faster?” she asked. “How?”

“In something I saw outside,” Sam said, thinking back to the junk pile. “There’s enough here to get me where I need to go.”

He saw them look at him in puzzlement.

“I don’t get it,” Nora said. “And Sam—this weather …”

I’m more worried about this hut weathering the storm … but I guess it’s survived this long
.

Sam saw the names of travellers who’d passed through carved into the walls. He used the point of his ice axe to put “SAM of the last 13” on the back of the door.

“OK,” he said. “Time to go sailing.”