The cold air seized my skin halfway down the staircase.

At least, I assumed it was halfway down, because we'd already made at least a dozen corkscrews around the central metal pole, and we still hadn't landed on any kind of floor. It was pitch black around us, and the cold became more and more pronounced as we stepped down, with Alexei's clacking Italian shoes echoing behind my head. It was like the earth itself was swallowing us whole.

I could feel my exposed arms prickling with goosebumps as Alexei walked a bit closer, his hot breath landing on my bare neck. Somehow the sensation made me feel even colder.

Finally, my right foot landed on something hard—cement. And as though the floor were attached to some sort of sensor, a dim red-hued light exploded through the frigid air and my eyes could finally take in the room we had entered.

I stopped dead in my tracks, causing Alexei to crash into my back, almost knocking me over. He chuckled softly, placing large, hot hands on either one of my shoulders to steady himself. By instinct, my hands shot up to either side of my head and my back arched like a cat's, pushing him off.

"Whoa, whoa," he said, gently touching my back again as he walked past me. I could feel the imprint of his palm lingering even after he'd walked by, like an iron had scalded me. I hissed with fear and anger, the sound coming out like a deflating tire.

"What the hell is this?" I asked, turning in a slow circle by the foot of the stairway. The room was a large cave, extending so far back I couldn't see the walls, and it was filled top to bottom with machinery. I looked around furtively for my brother, but if he was here, I didn't see him.

What I could see, however, were tall metal towers housing stacks and stacks of hard drives, with a jumble of yellow and red wires connecting them all like veins running through a body. It was a server, and whatever it was powering must have been huge, because there was enough data storage in this room to power a global search engine ten times over.

"Well?" Alexei asked, a mischievous smile spreading over his taut cheeks. "How did I do?"

"What is it?"

"You know what it is, Marina."

I shook my head. It couldn't be—it wasn't possible.

"It's not done yet, obviously. Still needs the missing piece."

He was waiting for me to ask more questions, but I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

Instead, I eyed the computers that surrounded me, and I had the strangest sensation of staring into a mirror. It was like all the lights and wires were calling to me, asking me to claim them. And I knew beyond a doubt what they were.

It was much bigger than the version of Minerva that Elaheh had kept in her house. But that made sense, of course. Elaheh's machine only needed to power her small dome. This was grander than that.

Alexei was building something that could power the whole world. He was planning the war—this time with himself in charge of it.

"Go on," he prodded, nodding towards the work he was clearly very proud of. "I know you're dying to check it out."

But I didn't need to approach the machinery to notice the most important detail: none of it was turned on. All those little lights and sensors, all those monitor screens and hard drives—they were all dark. "Why isn't it on?" I asked.

He smiled at me, his eyebrows squeezing together, questioning me. "Don't you know?"

I shrugged, tired of playing this game.

"I thought you were a genius. I was sure you had figured it out by now."

If he was trying to get a rise out of me, I wouldn't let him. "Just tell me," I insisted.

He flashed his teeth into a wide grin, toying with me. I couldn't help but feel that he had orchestrated every part of this dance we were doing, right down to the lines I was meant to say. I had to try to get one step ahead of him, but as long as he had my brother, he knew he had the upper hand.

"Didn't you wonder why I needed you? Why Jin and I couldn't finish the job?"

I looked back at the machinery, lying idle in this enormous room. There must have been some sort of password to get it started—something that even Jin couldn't figure out how to hack. Something...personal.

Something only I could do.

He leaned in close, so close that for a terrifying moment I thought his lips might touch my neck. My teeth clenched with apprehension. But he simply whispered in my ear. "She's waiting for you."

I looked at him in horror, my mind racing ahead to the inevitable conclusion. But instead of saying it out loud, he simply reached out to touch my face, and it took every ounce of will power I had not to swat his hand away. I didn't want him to see that he was affecting me like that. I didn't want him to know that he was winning.

His hand extended behind my ear, and he pushed my hair back very gently. His fingers grazed the bulging globe of my ICD, and his eyes filled with warmth, as though he was touching a baby in a crib. "It's time, Marina."

I shook my head, and I could feel my lip quiver despite all my efforts to keep my emotions in check. A low guttural cry escaped my throat as Alexei allowed his fingers to caress the side of my head, down my cheek and onto my neck. Finally, his hand landed firmly on my shoulder and his ice-blue eyes locked onto mine.

"Do it now," he said softly, his gaze unwavering. "Or you'll never see your brother again."

One rogue tear escaped my left eye—the one closest to his hand. He brushed it away with his thumb. "It's okay," he whispered. "This is your destiny. Can't you feel that? Everything you've done—everything you and I have done, Marina, was leading to this moment."

A wave of nausea overtook me, and I had to swallow down a sudden acid tang in my throat. I moaned slightly as I felt it pass. But Alexei wasn't done. His hand grazed past my shoulder and down my bare arm, like knives running over my skin. Finally, he took my hand and guided my index finger up to land flatly on the device in my temple—flat enough to read my fingerprint.

"Do it now," he repeated, and this time it was a command.

I took a deep breath. His eyes never left mine as I opened my mouth. "Minerva," I began, my voice shaking. But I could feel the plastic begin to hum beneath my finger, recognizing my voice. And I had no choice to but to continue. "Turn on."

**

It started with a click.

Then a hum began emanating from the stack of hard drives nearest to us, and a sea of glittering blue lights scattered into life from top to bottom. Then the next stack sprang into action, and the one after that. It was like watching a wildfire spread through the room. The stacks in all directions joined into the communal hum, their lights soon filling every crevice of the cold, cavernous room with a sapphire glow. Before I knew it, Alexei and I were surrounded by the electric buzz of machines, extending as far as the eye could see in all directions.

A sharp inhale filled my lungs—despite myself, I was overwhelmed by the beauty of it. Minerva was awake.

In front of me, one solitary monitor, no bigger than my hand, filled with a slight wash of light that appeared green against the ocean of blue that surrounded it. And a cursor appeared in the upper left-hand corner, blinking in anticipation. She was saying hi.

A felt a spot of pressure on top of my head, and it took me a moment to realize it was Alexei's lips, kissing the crown of my skull as his hands landed on my upper arms. "You did it," he whispered to me.

I whipped around to face him, and I was appalled to see the mist of emotion in his eyes. I backed up, towards Minerva's screen. "I didn't do it for you," I spat at him. "Where is my brother?"

"Tell her to accept commands from me, and I'll take you to him," Alexei said, his broad shoulders straightening and his head tilting back a bit as he looked down on me. His arms hung a few inches from his chest on either side, lending him the air of a linebacker. I remembered suddenly that he had given Adam a black eye once. Even without a weapon, he was a dangerous presence.

And he wanted to make sure I knew it.

"Minerva," I said quietly.

Yes, Marina? I heard the voice reply in my head.

"Speak out loud," I commanded.

"Of course," she responded, and it was a strange sensation to hear her warm, rustic voice echo through the large room. I had clearly modeled her intonations after my abuela's, and I couldn't help but feel like somehow the real woman had returned from the dead and was now surrounding me.

"Take commands from the following voice," I said, looking at Alexei with as much venom in my eyes as I could muster. I nodded to him.

"Hello, Minerva," Alexei said in his smooth, swallowing the 'R' in her name in his slight Russian accent. "I have been waiting a long time to meet you."

"Understood, Marina," the computer answered. "And what would you like to me to do first?"

I waited for Alexei to speak, but instead he just offered me a slight smile, as if to say, "Go ahead." His teeth glowed in the blue light.

And so I spoke to Minerva. "Tell me where my brother is."

Minerva made a whirring sound, like she was thinking about it. Finally, she spoke. "Are you sure, Marina?"

I turned to stare at the monitor, but the cursor simply blinked back at me. So I looked up towards Alexei, and a chill ran down my back at the superior glint in his eye. "Yes," I said quickly. "Of course I'm sure."

"Fine," Minerva said curtly. "Robbie O'Connell is behind the spiral staircase."

My feet were moving before my brain could process what she had said. The world turned into a blur as I ran past Alexei, who made no move to stop me, and around the staircase. Now that the room was light from floor to ceiling, I could clearly see what had been lingering there the whole time.

"No," I whispered to myself. "No, no, no." My lips kept moving, but no sound escaped them.

Finally Alexei stepped up to meet me. I couldn't even look at him.

Instead my eyes were transfixed on the sight before me. All those wires from the computers that filled the room snaked along the floor and the walls, twisting their way in and around the three brick doors that stood at attention like frozen soldiers. There was nothing behind them, not as far as I could see. They were just propped up in the middle of the room. And the wires glowed and almost seemed to pulsate as they entwined their way around the frames, along the floor.

The doors had no signs. But they did have coin slots. And they were all closed.

"They were created the same as the others, of course—using the pink solution from the fort. But no nuclear energy is needed to sustain them," Alexei said from a few inches away, his voice slithering out to fill the space around my head. "This time it's all you. And your beautiful creation."

I shook my head, not wanting to believe what I was looking at. My eyes clenched shut of their own volition, but when they opened again the view had not changed.

A cold metallic pulse hit my palm, and I looked down to realize it was a flattened penny, being pushed there by a smirking Alexei.

He motioned to the three doors, each laid equally before me. And he leaned down to whisper the next word directly into my ear:

"Choose."

***

Which door would you choose? Why?