scientific coincidences. The king and his men must have eaten a lot more brains in that year than the commoners could have in a couple of weeks, right? The disease suddenly became destructive, and there had to be a reason.”
“You think it got stronger,” Chel said.
Stanton considered. “Or what if their defense mechanisms got weaker?”
“What do you mean?”
“Think of an AIDS patient,” he said. “HIV weakens the immune system and makes it much easier to get sick.”
Victor glanced at his watch. There was something detached about him. Stanton had to wonder where else the man’s mind could be at a time like this.
“So you think something lowered the defenses of the king and his men?” Rolando asked. “Their immune systems got messed up?”
“Or maybe it was the exact opposite,” Stanton said, connections forming. “They’re in the middle of a societal collapse, right? They were destroying all of their resources, burning down the last of their trees, and running out of everything from food to spices to paper to medicine. Maybe something was artificially raising their defense mechanisms before, and then it stopped.”
“Like a vaccine?” asked Chel.
“More like how quinine prevents malaria, or vitamin C prevents scurvy,” Stanton said. “Something holding the disease back without them even knowing. The king says they consumed the flesh of men for almost a year without being cursed. And Paktul thinks it’s because they stopped making offerings to the gods. But what if they actually lost or stopped consuming whatever was protecting them?”
“Where would they have been exposed to this… prevention?” Victor asked, returning to the conversation.
“It could’ve been something they were eating or drinking. Something plant-based, probably. Quinine was protecting people from malaria long before they knew what it was. Penicillium fungi in soil were probably preventing all kinds of bacterial infections before anyone knew about antibiotics.”
They reexamined every word of the translation, scrutinizing each reference to plants, trees, foods, or drinks—anything the Maya consumed before the widespread cannibalism began. Corn breakfast mixtures, alcohol, chocolate, tortillas, peppers, limes, spices. They searched for every reference to anything used medicinally. Anything that could have been protecting them.
“We need samples of all of these to test,” Stanton said. “The exact species the ancient people used to eat.”
“Where would we get that?” asked Rolando. “Even if you could find them in the forest, how would we know it was the same species?”
“Archaeologists have extracted residues from pottery,” Chel interjected. “They’ve found trace evidence of dozens of different plant species on a single bowl.”
“Inside tombs?” Stanton asked.
Victor stood up and walked toward the door to the lab. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m going to the washroom.”
“Use the one in my office,” Chel suggested.
He left without a word, seeming not to have heard her. He was acting strangely. A sad possibility suddenly occurred to Stanton; he would have to check the old professor’s eyes for signs of VFI.
Chel said, “We have to go down there.”
“Where exactly?” Rolando asked.
“The opposite direction of Lake Izabal,” she said. “From Kiaqix.”
Paktul wrote that he would lead the children in the direction of his ancestors, and elsewhere in the codex, he’d written that his father hailed from
“If he led them toward Izabal,” Chel said, “and they ended up at Kiaqix, we have to assume the lost city’s less than three days’ walk in the opposite direction.”
“Izabal is enormous,” Rolando said. “Hundreds of square miles. The range of that trajectory could be huge.”
“It has to be somewhere in there,” Stanton said.
The lab door opened again. It was Victor. He wasn’t alone.
TWENTY-NINE
IN THE SECONDS THAT FOLLOWED, CHEL CAME TO A SERIES OF terrible realizations. First, that one of the men with Victor was his friend from the Museum of Jurassic Technology, who’d once advised the
So when Rolando asked, “What’s going on, Victor?” Chel already knew.
They were here to take the codex from her.
Victor had let these people in. He had picked up the phone, called security down the hill, and gotten them waved by.
Chel circled to the front of the light tables, putting herself between the men and the codex. Through her jeans, the cold edges of the metal table pressed into the backs of her legs.
Taking a step into the room, Shetter turned to Victor. “I assume those plates behind her are what we’ve come for.”
Victor nodded.
“Who the fuck are these people?” Rolando demanded. He and Stanton were still behind Chel on the other side of the boards.
“Dr. Manu,” Shetter said, “we will appreciate your and your colleagues’ cooperation. Mark and David have to pack up the plates. I know how fragile they are, so we want to be as careful as possible. I need you to go back and stand with your team.” Reaching into his waistband, Shetter pulled out a gun, then casually held it at his side. It was so small that it looked like a toy.
“What are you doing?” Victor asked him.
“Making sure we get what we came for,” Shetter said. “I’m sorry, Daykeeper, but I can tell it’s necessary.”
Chel glanced at the intercom panel. There were fifteen feet between where she stood and that wall, but to get there she’d have to make it past Shetter’s men. They started to walk toward her, pulling the warehouse cart behind them like little boys with a sled. She stayed where she was.
She would die here before she would move.
“Why are you doing this, Victor?” Stanton asked from behind her. “What the hell is going on?”
Victor ignored him. When he finally spoke, it was only to his protegee. “Listen to me, Chel. You can come with us. We’re going to the land of the ancients. To your true home. But we must have the book. All we can do now is run, Chel.”
She felt tears streaming down her cheeks. “You’re gonna have to kill me, Victor.”
She was wiping her tears on her sleeve when Rolando made his move. She didn’t see him dart across the room toward the intercom. She only heard the noise that brought him down before he got there.
And the silence after.
Chel ran to him. It seemed to take forever to cross the room. No one tried to stop her.
She didn’t see the blood until she was holding his head in her lap. His hand clutched his belly. Chel covered it with her own.
Shetter’s gun was still pointed in their direction. The look on his face belied the steadiness of his arm. Even he seemed surprised by what he’d done.
“I’m a doctor,” Stanton said, starting to move. “Let me help him!”
