Until This World Is Ready for Him

After all that was done, they set out again.

Inside the carriage, Graves was fixed to the innermost seat by a Binding Charm, his eyes closed, his hair fallen loose across his face.

Kingsley sat opposite him, wand in hand, his gaze never leaving the prisoner.

Cassandra and Nasser sat side by side, the Analyzer and the compass resting on their knees, the waveforms on the screen pulsing steadily.

Vivi leaned against Harry's shoulder, the Basalt Compass held in her hand.

The compass needle pointed due west, toward the Klamath Mountains.

Harry did not sleep. He watched the waters of Lake Michigan slowly recede outside the window, platinum-gold magic quietly gathering and releasing at his fingertips.

Kingsley lowered his voice and said, "Hermione just sent a message. When the Confederation Technical Group was analyzing the Data Storage Device seized from the bottom of Lake Michigan, they found a communications record between Graves and Runcorn. Runcorn said he was protecting that thing."

Harry frowned and glanced down at the sleeping Vivi. She did not wake.

"That thing? Aside from Cohen's patch and that person's original runes, what else was in Node Seven?"

Kingsley turned the Encrypted Communicator's screen toward Harry. On the screen was a three-dimensional scan of the Node Seven cave, with the data Cassandra and Anne had recorded during their previous surveys overlaid together.

The circular depression, stalactites, ground runes—all the known structures were on the map, but the Technical Group had marked an area on the very bottom layer of the scan with red lines, a region that had never been discovered before.

"There's another layer beneath the Node Seven cave. Directly under the circular depression, about twenty meters down. There's a sealed space there similar to Node Zero's fourth level, covered by an extremely thick layer of