Chapter 1

New York, July 1963

Illya could tell that Napoleon was dead before they reached him. They had rushed to the vault when they heard his call for help over the radio, but the upper levels of the complex were crawling with guards, and if they had tried to fight, they would be dead. So Gaby and he had crawled through access ports, lurked in hallways, and crept towards where Solo had been cracking the safe as fast as they could safely manage.

They saw at once that he had succeeded in opening it. The door stood ajar, alarm deactivated (for once, Illya had thought to himself), and beyond in the safe itself, Solo lay on his back, his skin blackened and burned, his eyes wide open and unseeing. Gaby fell to her knees at his side, crying and shaking him, yelling at Illya to help. Illya had seen too much death to believe there was a chance to save their partner. He simply stood, stoically, head bowed, allowing Gaby to rail against him in her grief; tides breaking on the cliffs. As he gazed at his partner, he was struck by the object in the centre of the room, that Solo had clearly been blasted away from. It was a large black box, ornately carved with symbols or letters that meant nothing to Illya.

"Stand back Gaby! Quickly." He carefully lifted Solo's body and carried it to the entrance to the safe, with a bemused Gaby trailing in his wake. He didn't want to repeat Solo's mistake, so he carefully took a pen from his jacket pocket and threw it at the machine, poised to act if there was any response. That was the plan, anyway, yet as the pen sailed through the air, the box started to emit a high-pitched, strangely beautiful sound. Before they could flee, they were bathed in white light that left them rooted to the spot, almost blinded. The light and the haunting sound seemed to grow in intensity. Illya and Gaby put their hands to their ears and screwed their eyes shut, kneeling and leaning over Solo's body in a vain and purposeless attempt to protect him. The last thing Illya remembered before losing consciousness was something winged soaring towards him. Maybe it was a bird.

Northwest Territories, Canada, Three Weeks Later

The two choppers touched down almost simultaneously on the helipad of a large, unmarked building in a complex surrounded by wire. The men who emerged from them had never seen each without their suits and squashed hats, but they would the hardened face of their adversary anywhere.

"Sanders," the first man nodded.

"Oleg," the other replied.

"You know what we are doing here in this wilderness?" the man called Oleg asked.

"Apparently, there's something we gotta see," replied Sanders. "Something that might cast some light on what became of our best agents."

"You maintain, then, that CIA did not do away with Kuryakin? I wish I could believe you Sanders. But these are perilous times for our countries. We do not trust each other easily."

"I want you to believe me as much as I want to believe that you didn't get Solo. Let's see what we find."

A small delegation came out to meet them, led by a familiar figure.

"Waverly? God damnit how did you get here so fast?" Sanders demanded.

"Really Sanders, and you count yourself so well informed. It was I who called you here. I think you'll find it worth your while."

The Russian and the American followed Waverly into the building, and eventually into a large medical bay which held three prone figures lying on the beds that occupied the centre of the room. Two of them were covered with blankets and hooked up to drips, monitors and oxygen. The third, naked apart from a hospital gown, appeared to be dead.

Sanders walked up to examine the figure closely, then looked angrily at his companions. "Solo. So he's dead? Why didn't you just tell me that by phone? What the hell happened?"

"Well you see Sanders, whether Agent Solo is in fact dead is the big question. Look at these photographs of Solo when he was found in New York." He handed them some blown-up images of a virtually unrecognisable corpse. "And here are some taken a week later. Now, look at him today."

Sanders' mouth fell open as he looked from the photographs to the figure lying in front of them. "There has to be some mistake. There's not a scratch on him now!"

"Exactly Sanders, and I can assure you there is no mistake. I was there in New York with the rescue team. There's also the fact that when the doctors here attempted an autopsy, believing Solo was dead, they found that this happened. Doctor, if you wouldn't mind?"

To Sanders' initial alarm, the medic took a scalpel and started to make an incision on Solo's arm, but after a second he noticed that there was no sign of injury; the blade couldn't even make contact with the skin. The harder the medic pressed, the more stress the blade itself took, until he eventually held up a twisted and blunted medical instrument and pointed to the unblemished patch of skin it had failed to penetrate.

"Holy smoke!" This was all the astonished Sanders could offer. "How is that possible?"

Waverly, unflappable as ever, continued. "According to all the normal laws of the universe, it isn't. As far as the chaps here can determine, Solo is generating some kind of gravity field that is rendering him invulnerable. We can't even get past it to administer fluids or medicine, but it doesn't seem to have had the adverse effect it should have. He ought to be, if not dead, on the verge of multiple organ failure from lack of hydration, but apart from the miraculous healing we've witnessed, he seems to be fine other than a little pale and, er, asleep, for want of a better word. Perhaps you ought to let in a little sunlight, doctor? No Daily Planet roving helicopters round here."

While Sanders seemed to be still processing the information received thus far, Oleg was gazing at the other figures in the room.

"What of my agent, Kuryakin, and your own, Waverly?"

"Well we found them collapsed over Solo's body in the fault, both unconscious but otherwise unharmed. We've been unable to wake them since then but they don't seem to be suffering any obvious injuries. Kuryakin is giving off some curious brain activity that we've been monitoring. The best guess the medics have is that he's psychologically disturbed in his sleep. Gaby seems to be flourishing as much as Solo. It's still a mystery, and then there's the matter of the black box we found them with. It's been resealed in the vault and is under guard at the moment; no one could approach it or attempt to open it, but it may provide a clue as to what happened. Otherwise, we can only …" He surveyed his team sadly. "… wait and hope."

Sanders had finally pulled himself together and straightened himself up with a meaningful look at Oleg.

"We'll be finding out everything we can about this black box. In the meantime, keep us informed."