“Down!” she cried, pushing Sebastian aside.
The Predator disk missed his head by mere centimeters—so close it cut a swath through the collar of his jacket.
The disk struck the throat of the statue behind Lex. The vibrating blade hummed, neatly decapitating the stone effigy.
As Lex struck the floor, the statue’s head landed beside hers.
Then bright flashes—gunfire—bloomed in the passageway. Rolling into a corner, Lex saw Max Stafford firing at a blur. His bullets gouged holes in the rock around them and ricocheted down the hallway.
Dropping to his knees by Stafford’s side, Verheiden opened fire in the opposite direction. Bullets whizzed over Lex’s head. She found herself temporarily blinded by the muzzle flashes.
“Here!” she heard Sebastian call. “Over here.”
Lex rolled until she was on her belly. Then she rose and began to crawl toward the voice, light motes still bursting behind her eyelids. Suddenly the stone floor trembled under her fingers, and over the booming gunfire, Lex heard a rumble, then the grating sound of stone scraping against stone.
“The pyramid!” she heard Weyland shout. “It’s shifting again!”
Lex crawled across the cold floor toward Sebastian’s voice. Her vision was clearing, but not fast enough. A thick panel slid out of the wall next to her head far enough to block her path. Sebastian reached out and grabbed her arm, hauling Lex to safety.
Had she stayed where she was, Lex would have been cut off from the rest of the party.
“Wait—” Miller cried.
Another stone door dropped from the ceiling. Sebastian’s and Miller’s eyes met a split second before the door slammed down between them.
The gunfire stopped abruptly. Max raised his flashlight and scanned the faces around him—Weyland, pale and drawn; Sebastian, still clutching Lex and playing his own flashlight on a stone wall that mere seconds before had been a long, expansive hallway.
“I think I hear something,” Lex whispered. “Someone yelling maybe… it’s coming from the other side of that far wall….”
She was listening to Connors. He’d been trapped alone when the wall panels had slammed shut around them. Now he was pounding the thick rock that separated him from the rest of the party—first with his fists, then with a booted foot.
“Hello! Can anybody hear me? Is anyone there?”
In another chamber, where Miller and Verheiden were isolated together, Verheiden stumbled to his feet, dazed. He’d seen Bass and Stone die, and it had unnerved him. All his training in the use of exotic weapons, all his prior military experience had not prepared the man for the kind of slaughter he had just witnessed.
Verheiden staggered around the room looking for a way out. Panic was taking hold, and the man was fast losing control. Verheiden paced around the tiny chamber like a trapped animal.
“What are those things? Did you see what they did to Bass and Stone? I hit that son of a bitch. Dead on. He didn’t stop. He didn’t slow down. He didn’t even flinch!”
His voice was echoing off the walls loud enough to drown out Connors’s yells from the adjacent chamber.
“Hey, Verheiden.”
Miller’s yell snapped the man back to reality. “What?”
“I’m no soldier, but I think you should calm down. We’re not dead yet.”
“Thanks,
“Actually, it’s
Verheiden rubbed his face with his callous hands. “We’re never going to get out of this place.”
“Don’t say that.”
Verheiden looked down at Miller, sitting on the floor. “Whatever you believe in, you should start praying to it…
“Hey,” called Miller. “You have children?”
A smile curled Verheiden’s mouth. “A son.”
“I have two,” Miller said brightly. “You know what that means? We don’t have the luxury of quitting. We’re going to make it out of here. You hear me? We are going to survive this if I have to drag you the whole way.”
Verheiden lifted his eyebrows in surprise. Since when did a Beaker have more guts than him?
Max yanked the strangely designed spear out of the wall and eased Bass’s bloody corpse to the floor. He tore the backpack from the dead man’s shoulders and tossed it aside.
Immediately, Weyland snatched the bag and ripped it open, to examine the weapon inside. “No damage,” he said thankfully.
Max looked up. “One of our men is dead.”
Weyland touched Stafford’s arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said in a tone of genuine regret.
“I need to know what this man died for.”
Weyland blinked, surprised. “He died trying to make history.”
“Whose?” Max demanded. “Yours?”
Lex turned her back on the two and squatted beside Sebastian. She strained to hear Connors’s voice again, but he had gone quiet—which was probably a bad thing, she decided.
Lex noticed Sebastian staring into the distance and fingering the Pepsi cap that still hung around his neck on a frayed leather strap. She lifted her hand and touched his. “Careful. That’s a valuable archaeological find.”
Sebastian managed a wan smile. “Nervous habit.”
“Can’t think why you’re nervous.”
Lex followed Sebastian’s eyes, and they both stared at the cold stone slab that trapped them.
“Imagine,” said Lex. “In a thousand years,
Suddenly the alarm on Sebastian’s digital watch went off—a harsh, unexpected sound in that tiny stone cell. He stood up and helped Lex to her feet.
“Don’t go writing yourself into the history books just yet,” he told her as he silenced the alarm.
“What’s that about?” She pointed to his watch.
Sebastian smiled. “Just a theory. Listen…”
In the distance there was an explosive sound, like rolling thunder. Then the familiar grating of stone against stone—far away, but coming closer.
Sebastian placed his ear against the wall. He listened for a long time as the sound continued.
“I hear it!” Lex said softly. “But what is it?”
“I think the mechanism of the pyramid is automated,” Sebastian explained, his ear still pressed against the stone. “I believe it reconfigures every ten minutes—the Aztec calendar was metric, you see? Based on multiples of ten.”
Suddenly Sebastian stepped away from the wall he’d been leaning against. Three seconds later, the stone door slid aside to reveal a brand-new passageway.
Lex was impressed. “Give the man a Nobel Prize.”
“I’d settle for a way out.”
Max jumped to his feet, weapon in hand. Now that they were free, he was impatient to move.
Weyland rose slowly and seemed to have trouble getting to his feet. Despite his increasing infirmity, the industrialist would not relinquish the backpack containing the mysterious weapons.
“Everyone ready?” Lex asked.
Max stared into the dark abyss. “Ready? I’m ready,” he replied. “But just where the hell are we going?”
“It’s a maze,” Sebastian declared loud enough to break the tension. “A labyrinth. We’re meant to wander through it. I’m sure this was built to trap its victims, and we’re bound to run into trouble. But
