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The city came to life around him, a hustling, bustling metropolis, spreading out from the pyramid in its centre. Priests prayed to the ancient gods, temple virgins sung sweetly, carrying braziers of sickly incense through the pillared halls of elaborately carved temples. Bakers kneed their dough, blacksmiths worked their furnaces, and children played and frolicked in the wide, blue aqueducts, fed by an elaborate network of water pipes the likes of which the ancient world had never seen. Sunlight streamed into the immense cave through sinkholes in the ceiling, directed onto the green and fertile farming terraces, laced with irrigation canals, by giant mirrors hanging high above—

“Benny!”

Raine’s voice snapped him out of his daydream and he spun to face him, pulling his hand out of the pink purse containing the Moon Mask. He felt disorientated and glanced up to the ceiling. Sure enough, a single sheet of metal, once polished smooth, now tarnished and rusting, hung by one corner to a chain. It had once been part of the network of mirrors which he had seen in his daydream.

The only thing was, he hadn’t seen it in reality until after the spell was broken.

“Of course there is another way out,” he told Raine. He had seen that too. The water, collected on the summit during the jungle’s rainfalls, was fed through the Labyrinth tunnels, over the waterfall and distributed through the city, from east to west.

“Give me the binoculars,” he ordered then placed them to his eyes, scanning the west face of the cave. Sure enough, there he saw the confluence of all the aqueducts and irrigation canals flowing back into one body of water and vanishing into a tunnel. The mouth of the tunnel had once been fashioned into the maw of a giant serpent, now crumbled and decayed. “There,” he pointed.

“Good,” Raine replied from behind him. “Now move.”

Picking up on the shift in the other man’s tone, King slowly turned to face him, lowering the binoculars and raising his hands.

“Nate?”

“Sorry, Benny,” Raine replied, QBZ-95 aimed at the archaeologist’s chest.

19:

Escape from Xibalba

Xibalba,
Sarisariñama Tepui,
Venezuela

King led the way at gunpoint through the ruined city, moving fast and keeping low. Fury bubbled inside of him and he struggled to contain it. He had told everyone not to trust Nathan Raine but as usual, no one listened to jealous, paranoid Benjamin King! Now, he was the one aiding and abetting what was obviously a wanted felon in his escape from U.S. authorities.

“So what did you do, Nate, if that is your real name?” he demanded as they turned off of a wide plaza and jogged down a narrow alleyway. Both men’s eyes and ears were peeled for the Americans, though for different purposes. King wanted to find them so they could arrest this son-of-a-bitch, while Raine did everything he could to avoid them. They zigzagged their way through the city, the fire glow diminishing and stretching long, ghoulish shadows across the Mayan hell.

“It is,” Raine answered part of his question. “And it’s complicated.”

“You a terrorist? Murderer? Traitor?”

“All the above,” he replied lightly. “Stop here.”

King halted at the end of the alleyway. A six-foot wide cobbled path lined the edge of the aqueduct. They would be out in the open now until they reached the tunnel.

“Face the building, place your hands on the wall,” Raine instructed him. King did as he was told but craned his neck to watch as Raine crouched down and leaned out of the alleyway, scanning the open space with his stolen rifle. King’s confiscated Norinco handgun was tucked into the back of his kidnapper’s waistband, just out of arms reach.

He felt his pulse quicken as he evaluated his options. Raine was faster than him, stronger than him, and definitely more brutal than him.

“It gets easier every time,” his flippant response to death came back to haunt him.

If he did nothing and simply allowed the criminal to use him as a hostage, sooner or later he was going to kill him, take the mask and escape. And as they got nearer to the tunnel and freedom, King knew that moment was fast approaching.

In the blink of an eye, he made his decision.

He spun and threw himself at Raine, but the other man was faster. He wheeled about on his haunches and rose to his full height, slamming King back against the wall and pressing the muzzle of his rifle under his chin.

“Don’t be stupid, Benny!” he snapped angrily, blue eyes smouldering. “I told you I won’t hurt you if you do as I say.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

There was a flicker of emotion on Raine’s face. “It’s the truth. As soon as we get to the tunnel, I’ll let you go.”

King laughed bitterly. “And take the mask? That’s what you’ve been after all along, isn’t it? The potential to make a tachyon bomb. Fetch a tidy price in Iran or North Korea I bet.”

“I don’t give a damn about the mask or about tachyon bombs. I just want to get away from the Americans. If I left you in the pyramid, you would have told them where I was going. Now,” he relaxed his grip and stepped away, keeping the rifle levelled at his chest. “Let’s pick up the pace.”

They ran out onto the riverside path and followed its course west, crossing a crumbling bridge to the far side. Occasionally their path would take them away from the aqueduct and back into the ruins, but each time Raine led them back to the water.

Finally, the grotesque visage of the snake’s open mouth loomed before them. Where all the city’s water supplies met, a large churning pool of white water frothed and broiled before rushing with surprising speed down into the monster’s stony gullet. The six-foot wide path on either side narrowed to little more than a foot of slippery, crumbling stones, vanishing into darkness.

“I guess this is goodbye, Benny,” Raine said to him. He backed up along the path to where it vanished into the tunnel entrance, keeping his weapon trained on him at all times until, finally, he had to turn to watch his footing.

He kept his word, King realised with surprise.

A red dot appeared on the back of the escapee’s head.

He didn’t know what possessed him, what sense of betrayed camaraderie that had developed during their flight to Xibalba forced him to do it but, one moment he was watching the targeting laser fix itself on Raine’s skull, the next he ploughed his shoulder into the man’s back!

They tumbled into the churning water as the bullet spat off the tunnel wall. Shocked, Raine thrashed about, a flash of anger replaced by gratitude when he realised that his hostage a moment ago had just saved his life.

A splash of reptilian bodies turned King’s blood cold.

“Get out of the water!” Raine bellowed at him but as they both hauled themselves up onto the path, the stonework was shredded by a barrage of machine gun fire. They both instinctively fell back into the water.

“We’re U.N. scientists!” King yelled at their hidden attackers.

“I don’t think they’re here to help, Benny!” Raine shouted back at him. The churning vortex of the converging waterways spun them about. Raine fired wildly in the direction of the hidden enemy, causing their own weapons to silence for an instant. It was all Raine needed to grasp King’s shirt and throw him bodily up onto the path.