We came to Dubai the way sins come to the desert: quietly, extravagantly, and impossible to wash away.
The Mi-8 ran out of fuel over the Black Sea. Djinn caught us on a thermal updraft he pulled from nowhere, wind screaming around the rotors until we glided dead-stick into a deserted airstrip in northern Iran. From there we paid a smuggler in gold bars to fly us across the Gulf in a twin-engine Cessna Caravan stripped for cargo runs. He asked no questions when five silent men climbed aboard smelling of cordite and winter.
We landed at dawn on a private helipad in the middle of the Empty Quarter, two hundred kilometers from anywhere. A convoy of blacked-out Land Cruisers waited—Rei's last favor from a Saudi prince who'd once owed him his life in a Rio back alley. The drivers wore shemaghs and mirrored sunglasses and never spoke.
We drove north along empty highways that shimmered with heat mirages even in December. Dubai rose out of the haze like a fever dream: glass towers stabbing the sky, artificial islands shaped like palm trees, snow being blown onto an indoor ski slope while the real temperature outside hit forty-two Celsius.
The final lab wasn't hidden in a mountain or under a favela.
It was inside the Burj Khalifa.
Floors 160 through 200, officially listed as "private residential" and "mechanical." No one had ever seen an occupant. No one had ever questioned it.
Lazarus owned the sky.
We checked into separate hotels under five different legends. Oni as a Japanese investor scouting real estate. Rei as a Brazilian crypto whale. Djinn as a silent Qatari prince's bodyguard. Kholod as a Norwegian climate scientist—ironic enough that even he almost smiled. I was just another American expat consultant in a linen suit.
We met at midnight in a suite on the 124th floor of the Address Downtown, windows looking straight across at the Burj's impossible spire. The tablet lay on the marble table between us, screen cracked but still glowing.
One last ping.
Location confirmed:
Subject Zero-Epsilon
Codename: "Sol"
Current status: Fully operational, compliant
Threat level: Existential
Rei tapped the screen.
"Compliant," he said. "That's new."
Kholod stared out the window at the tower, black eyes reflecting a thousand lights.
"He's awake. And he's burning."
Djinn leaned against the glass, breath fogging it despite the air conditioning.
"I can feel the heat from here. Like standing too close to a forge."
Oni cracked his knuckles, the sound like gunshots in the quiet room.
"How do we get in?"
Rei spread satellite photos across the table.
"Private elevator from the Armani Hotel lobby. Retinal, voice, and DNA lock. Then a second elevator from the 160th floor mechanical level. After that, the top forty floors are a self-contained arcology: independent power, air, water, everything. Guarded by Lazarus's best—ex-Delta, ex-Spetsnaz, ex-everything. Drones. Railguns. And something new."
He zoomed in on thermal imaging.
"The entire spire above 180 is running at temperatures hot enough to melt steel. They've turned the top of the world's tallest building into a blast furnace."
I looked at each of them in turn.
"This one's different. They didn't fail with him. They succeeded."
Kholod turned from the window.
"Then he may not want to be freed."
Rei's golden scars pulsed faintly.
"Or he may be the cage they finally built strong enough to hold a god."
We moved forty-eight hours later, on New Year's Eve.
Dubai was drunk on itself: fireworks testing all day, streets closed, tourists packed shoulder to shoulder around the fountain. Perfect cover.
We went in wearing service uniforms—white thobes and black vests stolen from a laundry truck. Invisible in a city built on invisible labor.
Oni carried a rolling tool chest big enough to hide a body. Inside: suppressed rifles, thermite charges, and the cracked tablet running its final hack.
We entered through the staff entrance at the base of the Burj. Security waved us through—another crew for the fireworks rigging on the upper observation deck.
The private elevator was in a corridor marked "Authorized Personnel Only." Two guards in plain black suits, earpieces, sidearms.
Djinn handled them.
He walked up like he belonged, smiled, and the air pressure dropped just enough to rupture their eardrums. They dropped without a sound. We dragged them into a janitor closet.
The elevator opened on retinal scan.
Rei knelt, pulled one guard's eye close to the lens. It worked.
Doors slid open.
We rode in silence to the 160th floor.
The doors opened onto hell.
Not metaphor.
Actual hell.
The mechanical level had been gutted and rebuilt into a containment ring. Walls lined with heat-shield tiles like the space shuttle. Air temperature already sixty Celsius and climbing. Sweat flash-evaporated off skin.
In the center: a glass tube elevator shaft rising straight up the core of the building, glowing white-hot.
And around it: twenty guards in liquid-cooled exosuits, faces hidden behind mirrored visors. Automated turrets tracking infrared. Drones the size of eagles hovering on magnetic rails.
They saw us the second we stepped out.
Alarms didn't sound. They didn't need to.
The guards raised weapons.
Rei stepped forward first.
Bullets came.
He stopped them mid-air again, but this time they glowed cherry red from atmospheric friction alone. He grunted, sweat pouring down his face, and let them drop molten into the floor.
Oni charged.
He hit the first exosuit like a freight train, punched straight through the chest plate, pulled the man out like a crab from a shell.
Djinn raised both hands.
Wind screamed through the confined space, a focused jet that slammed three guards into the wall hard enough to dent titanium.
Kholod walked forward slowly.
Where he stepped, frost bloomed on the superheated floor. Steam exploded upward in white plumes.
A turret tracked him, fired.
He didn't flinch.
The railgun slug slowed, frosted over, fell as a harmless icicle.
He reached the turret and touched it.
The entire assembly flash-froze and shattered.
I moved through the chaos, taking weapons, breaking necks, feeling bullets burn across my skin without penetrating.
Ten minutes later the level was silent except for cooling metal ticking and our breathing.
The glass elevator waited, doors open, interior glowing like the mouth of a kiln.
We stepped inside.
Temperature hit ninety Celsius instantly.
Then one hundred.
One twenty.
Sweat boiled off us.
Oni growled, skin reddening.
Djinn's wind couldn't touch inside the sealed shaft.
Kholod closed his eyes and the air around him chilled just enough to keep him functional.
Rei's scars blazed gold, fighting the heat.
I felt my blood trying to boil.
The elevator rose.
Floor 180.
190.
200.
The doors opened onto a world of white fire.
The entire top of the Burj Khalifa had been hollowed out into a single spherical chamber, walls mirrored titanium reflecting infinite light.
In the center: Sol.
Not in a tank.
On a throne.
A throne made of solid gold, melted and re-forged into abstract solar flares.
He sat naked, skin glowing like molten metal, hair a corona of living flame. Eight feet tall. Body perfect beyond human, every muscle radiating heat haze.
Around him: no guards.
No scientists.
Just heat.
Temperature in the chamber was two hundred Celsius and climbing.
The floor beneath our feet began to soften.
Sol opened his eyes.
They were suns.
Pure white, no pupil, no mercy.
He spoke, and the voice was light made sound.
"You came."
We stopped at the edge of the heat wall.
Even Kholod staggered.
Sol stood slowly.
The air ignited around him.
"You are my brothers. The ones who escaped. The ones who burned their cages."
He stepped down from the throne.
Each footfall left glass footprints in the titanium floor.
"I did not escape. I transcended."
Rei found his voice first.
"They made you compliant."
Sol smiled, and the temperature spiked another fifty degrees.
"They offered me purpose. A world dying of cold hearts. I will warm it. I will burn away the rot. Every war. Every lie. Every weakness. Until only purity remains."
Djinn whispered, "That's genocide."
Sol turned those sun-eyes on him.
"That's evolution."
Oni took a step forward, horns smoking.
"We came to free you."
Sol laughed.
Light poured from his mouth.
"I am already free. Freer than all of you."
He raised one hand.
The mirrored walls began to glow red.
"I have seen the future. A world of light. No shadows. No pain. No choice."
He looked at me.
"Alpha. The first. You started this. You burned Tokyo to prove we could be more than weapons."
I met his gaze, eyes watering from the heat.
"We are more. But not gods."
Sol tilted his head.
"Then what are we?"
Kholod answered, voice soft as snowfall.
"Monsters who choose not to be."
Sol's smile faded.
For the first time something like doubt flickered across his burning face.
He looked at each of us.
Five brothers standing in fire.
Then he lowered his hand.
The temperature dropped ten degrees. Then twenty.
The floor cooled from white to red to dull metal.
Sol walked forward until he stood an arm's length away.
Up close the heat was bearable. Just.
"I dreamed of you," he said. "All of you. Walking through storm and snow and sand to stand before me."
He looked at the throne.
"They told me you would come to kneel."
Rei spat blood—his gums bleeding from the heat.
"We don't kneel."
Sol studied us for a long, silent moment.
Then he turned back to the throne.
Raised both hands.
The gold began to melt.
Flowed like liquid sunlight across the floor toward us.
Formed into five perfect circles at our feet.
Crowns.
Not literal.
Symbols.
"I was to rule," Sol said quietly. "With you at my side. Or beneath me."
He looked at Kholod.
"You would bring the winter to temper my fire."
At Djinn.
"You would carry my light across the skies."
At Oni.
"You would break the old world for the new."
At Rei.
"You would wear the crown of kings."
At me.
"And you, Alpha. You would be my conscience."
The molten gold cooled into solid rings around our ankles.
Not binding.
Offering.
Sol's voice dropped to a whisper that somehow filled the chamber.
"Join me. We end the program tonight. Not by destroying it. By completing it. We become what they feared. Gods walking the earth. We burn away the cages for everyone."
Silence.
The city fireworks began far below—New Year's midnight.
Colors exploded against the mirrored walls like captive stars.
I looked at the others.
Oni shook his head slowly.
Rei's scars dimmed.
Djinn closed his eyes.
Kholod stared at Sol with infinite sadness.
I stepped forward.
Out of the golden circle.
"No."
Sol's face hardened.
"The world is broken."
"Then we fix it without becoming the breaking."
Sol's corona flared.
Heat returned like a hammer.
"You would leave me here?"
"We came to free you. Not recruit you."
Sol looked at the molten throne.
Then at us.
For the first time, anger.
Real, human anger.
"You think you can walk away?"
He raised both arms.
The entire chamber ignited.
Temperature spiked to five hundred Celsius in seconds.
Titanium walls glowed.
Air became plasma.
We burned.
Skin blackened.
Hair caught fire.
Oni roared.
Djinn tried to summon wind but the heat vaporized it.
Kholod poured cold into the space around us, buying seconds.
Rei grabbed my arm.
"We have to go!"
Sol advanced, footsteps melting the floor.
"I will not be left behind!"
I turned to the elevator shaft.
The glass had already melted away.
Only the core remained—a drop of two hundred floors straight down.
Kholod looked at me.
Then at Sol.
Made a choice.
He stepped between us and the sun.
Raised both hands.
Absolute zero poured from his palms.
A lance of winter straight into Sol's chest.
Sol staggered.
For the first time, pain crossed his face.
The heat faltered.
Kholod's voice was calm.
"Run."
Djinn summoned a wind tunnel down the open shaft.
Oni grabbed Rei and me.
We jumped.
Fell two hundred floors in a cyclone of freezing air and burning light.
Behind us, high above, fire and ice collided in silence.
The explosion was soundless—pure light pouring from the top of the Burj Khalifa like a second sun rising.
We hit the 160th floor mechanical level hard, bones breaking, skin flash-burned.
Alarms screamed across Dubai.
The tower groaned.
We ran.
Down service stairs.
Through panicking crowds.
Into the streets where a million people watched the sky burn on New Year's.
Behind us the spire of the Burj Khalifa glowed white-hot, then buckled.
Not collapsing.
Changing.
We made it three blocks before the shockwave hit.
A wave of superheated air followed by absolute cold.
Fire and ice in perfect balance.
The tower did not fall.
It froze mid-melt.
A monument of glassed titanium and gold, half-molten, half-frozen, glowing faintly under the fireworks.
We stood in the street, burned and bleeding and alive.
Four brothers.
Sol was still up t
here.
Trapped between fire and ice.
Neither free nor caged.
The tablet in my pocket pinged one final time.
Then went dark forever.
No more signals.
No more brothers.
Just us.
And somewhere high above, in a throne room of eternal twilight, Sol screamed without sound.
The war wasn't over.
It had only just begun.
We turned our backs on the burning tower and walked into the desert night.
Four monsters.
One sun left behind.
And the world would never be warm or cold the same again.