PROLOGUE Alien Skin
The foothills of the Andes do not forgive mistakes, but Miguel did not make them. He was the Consortium’s best “hound,” and he hadn’t found this hideout by following maps, but by tracking the stench of fear radiating from the local monks.
The cave was dry and cold. It smelled of dust and something else: a sweet, metallic scent. Like ozone before a thunderstorm. Miguel adjusted his respirator and aimed the beam of his flashlight into a niche in the rock wall.
There, in the stone hollow, lay a bundle. It wasn’t paper, and it wasn’t plastic. It was a dark, matte material, rolled into a tube.
“Object located,” he whispered into his comms. “Proceeding with extraction.”
He knew the protocol: no direct contact with bare skin. He was wearing maximum-protection polymer gloves. He picked up the bundle carefully. It was warm. Not from the air, but with a living heat, as if he had just pulled it from under a bird’s wing.
Miguel slid the bundle into a hermetic containment pouch. It was in that exact moment that the itching started.
First, his palm itched. Through the glove. Then, the itch turned into burning. Miguel looked down at his hand. The polymer glove... was dissolving. It bubbled, turning into a gray slime that was ravenously absorbing into his skin.
“Base, I have a problem...” he began, but his voice cracked into a coughing fit.
The burning sensation shot up his vein like liquid mercury on fire. Miguel fell to his knees. He ripped off his respirator, trying to suck in air, but his lungs refused to work. He watched gray patches bloom on his wrist: hard as stone.
Calcification, his dying brain registered. Just like in Buenos Aires...
He still had enough time to seal the external transport case. Professionalism was the last thing to die.
A minute later, only a twisted statue remained in the cave, covered in a gray patina, clutching a sealed briefcase.
The artifact had killed the thief, but it had allowed itself to be taken. The package had been sent.
