Sam grinned. “What just happened?”
“They triggered one of the passages many turnpikes by stepping on a mechanical paver that’s been fixed like a boobytrap,” Jess explained. “They now have to run a giant loop to get back to the side we’re on. Come on, we don’t have a lot of time.”
They started to jog down the new horizontal passageway.
Tom said, “If you knew about the turnpike, why didn’t we just trigger it and save ourselves the whole deadly predator confrontation?”
“If we had, then we would have opened up the door directly to the lions.” Jess breathed heavily as she jogged. “Now, they’re the ones racing back to catch us.”
They kept moving at a pace just faster than a jog. Sam and Tom had tried to sprint at first, but she encouraged them to slow down. They had a long way to go and would need to conserve their energy in case she made a mistake and they ran into the pride of marsupial lions again.
The passages continued in a unicursal process, more like a labyrinth, folding back on themselves at each end, without appearing to branch out like the traditional multicursal path seen in the maze from above.
She had made this run multiple times before and knew how the maze behaved. Although it wasn’t actually alive, it felt very much so. A series of underground aqueducts acted like hydraulics on the maze’s some four hundred turnpikes, making it change shape constantly. But what appeared like a series of random unexplained links between passages, had an underlying purpose. Like a Rubik’s Cube, a series of algorithms could be used to achieve the desired goal of matching up the colors on the puzzle no matter their position on the cube. In this case, the pieces of the maze kept rotating, but following a well-worn process, she would eventually beat each layer of the maze until she reached the center.
The maze was made up of nine layers, with each one consisting of vertical and horizontal passages. She had reached the eighth one. It was hard to tell how much farther she had to go until the next turnpike. The obsidian walls all looked the same. To make matters worse, the echo of angry predators was a constant, no matter where they were, making it impossible to tell how close they were to the threat.
She turned a corner, and came face to face with the pack of beasts running full speed toward her. Jess turned and yelled, “Other way!”
They raced back the way they had come, using whatever energy they had left to sprint. When the lions reached the turnpike some of them disappeared, but a few moments later, the turnpike spun again, and two lions were left.
My God! They’ve finally worked out how to play this game.
She yelled, “Run faster!”
Chapter Thirteen
The next turnpike was taking too long to move.
Sam leveled the MP5 at the marsupial lion and squeezed the trigger. The turnpike spun round and they were on the ninth layer of the maze.
Jess said, “Go right!”
Behind them, he heard the sound of many paws sprinting across the cold obsidian floors. It made the three of them run harder, but they could never outrun the ancient predators.
The internal wall was different from the rest of the maze, which looked like identical, smooth, and glassy obsidian. Instead, this one had multiple petroglyphs etched into the obsidian. There were images of pyramids, sarcophagi, looking glass pedestals, labyrinths, and star constellations. There was a wealth of information there, but he didn’t dare give any of them more than a passing glance.
He noticed that Jess did though.
She was obviously searching for something in particular, an image that meant something, like a code or a marker for a secret passage.
Jess stopped. “Found it!”
Sam’s eyes darted to the wall.
There was a petroglyph of a maze stretching from the floor up to roughly five feet. It could have been the same one they had just navigated, or it could have been completely different. Whatever it was meant to represent, Jess had dedicated all her attention to it.
There were a series of turnpikes hidden in the maze in the form of a raised stone. Jess quickly searched for and depressed each of the stones.
And the marsupial lions ran toward them at full speed.
Sam and Tom each took aim at the beasts to the front of the pride, and fired multiple short bursts, strategically placed to slow the group of predators, more than kill them.
Sam chambered another magazine and continued firing, but the shots had little effect on the oncoming predators.
“Jess!” He shouted. “We’re almost out of time!”
“I’m in!”
A small section of the wall, just big enough for them to crawl through, opened inward.
They slipped through, quickly closing the ancient obsidian door behind them.
Its latches had almost locked when a marsupial lion’s powerful fore limb protruded, gripping Jess on her right arm. Its razor sharp semi-opposable claw latched onto the arm like a vice, pulling her in toward the obsidian wall.
Tom threw his weight against the door. The beast gnarled as its fore limb became jammed against the obsidian, but its grip on Jess only tightened.
She cried out in pain.
Sam placed the barrel of his Heckler and Koch MP5 submachinegun hard up against the marsupial lion’s fore limb and squeezed the trigger — sending a continuous burst of 9mm parabellums into the animal’s fore limb, ripping straight through it.
Tom shoved his own 250 pounds of muscle into the ancient obsidian door, and its latches locked.
Sam turned to Jess, whose mauled arm was bleeding badly. “Are you all right?”
She looked down, her face registering surprise at the damage, and said, “I think I need help.”
Chapter Fourteen
The pain shot through her right arm like lightning.
Jess gripped the wound near her elbow with her left hand, but blood kept on oozing out through her fingers.
Next to her, Sam had dropped his backpack. He opened up the zipper and quickly removed a military tourniquet.
“Lie still!” Sam commanded, as he slid the mechanical tourniquet over her right upper arm. “It’s nicked your brachial artery. This is probably going to hurt a little.”
“What… more than being mauled by a…” Jess screamed.
And Sam started to twist the mechanical tightening screw.
The blood stopped flowing. She released the pressure from her left hand, examining the wound with detached interest and curiosity. Her eyes turned to Sam and Tom. “Thank you. Both of you for saving my life.”
Tom shrugged. “Hey, don’t thank me too much. There was plenty of self-interest in trying to keep that door shut.”
Her impish smile returned. “All the same. Thank you both.”
Sam asked, “Are we safe here?”
She nodded, “Yes. We’ve reached the center of the maze. A land of total safety, built by the Master Builders, as a place for them to come together.”
“There are multiple Master Builders here?”
“Sometimes.”
She went to stand up, but Sam placed a hand on her shoulder to stop her.
“Not yet. You’ll lose your arm if I leave that tourniquet on it.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So what are you proposing?”
“We have a suture kit in the bag.”
“You’re a trained doctor?”
Sam said, “No. But my aunt insisted I learn to sew as a kid. It’s basically the same thing. You’ll probably have a scar, but it will be better than losing an arm. What do you think?”
“Sure. Why not?”
It took Sam roughly ten to fifteen minutes to place three sutures in the wound on her arm. He wrapped the outside of the wound with a saline soaked gauze, and then bandaged it. When he was finished, he slowly loosened the tourniquet.