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“It’s ice,” Ahmed explained, “several metres thick in some places. It melts under this side—that’s all the dripping you can hear hitting the pools—and is replenished above. I can’t even imagine how long this ecosystem has been here.”

Alex nodded. On all sides, the rocky ground was cracked and steam hissed from within.

“This is no ordinary mountain range,” Hans said, leading the way. “We’re inside an old volcano system. It’s dormant, but there’s still enough lava near the surface to create heat.”

Alex followed them across the moss-covered ground, the sub pilots staying behind while two of Hans’ guys led the way to the far end of the vast network of caves.

“This is what my grandfather rediscovered so many years ago,” Hans said as they walked along.

“
Re
discovered?” Alex said to Hans. Ahmed was behind them, taking photographs. Alex picked a small pink flower that grew from the bottom of a stone wall and had a close-up look at a tiny lava tube opening next to it. It looked like a perfectly round, miniature tunnel.

Hans checked his notes, made from what he could piece together from his grandfather’s journal, and motioned them forward toward another tunnel ahead. “He found the documents during the war,” he replied, following his two men who lit the way ahead with powerful flashlights, “at the Dreamer Council’s base under the Eiffel Tower.”

“You mean he
stole
them from the Dreamer Council?” Alex said. The tunnel itself was another lava tube, similar to that which they’d navigated through underwater, but much smaller—this was maybe big enough to drive a van through.

“It was wartime,” Hans replied, “sometime in 1940, I believe. Paris had fallen. It would be a few years before it would be liberated again. If not my grandfather, someone else would have taken the Dreamer Council’s information, sooner or later.” Hans looked to Alex and sighed. “Look,” he went on, breathing heavily in the humid air, “he was in charge of antiquities during the war. He made sure they were safe. He protected the Dreamer Council’s information, as well as items from many museums, galleries and private collections.”

“And he found something mentioning this place?”

“Yes. It had been kept secret by the Council through the ages.”

“And when he says ‘through the ages,’” Ahmed said, walking next to Alex, “he means it. There have been rumours of this secret but nothing more. This place … we are going to be the first people to set foot here in over seventy years. And before then? Well, it may have been thousands of years since anyone else was here.”

“Why’d he come here?” Alex asked. “Your grandfather?”

Hans smiled. “To hide things.”

“It’s getting hotter,” Alex said, taking off another layer of clothing. He was now wearing just his shorts, T-shirt and boots. He packed his sweater into his backpack, along with his rolled-up snowsuit. Jogging to catch up to the others, he found Hans standing on a platform where the lava tube opened up into a dark cavern of black rock.

“The molten lava is nearer the surface here,” Hans said, squeezing the sweat out of his hat. “We’re close.”

“Close to what?”

“Why don’t you take a look and tell me?” Hans said.

Alex saw that Hans was motioning to where Ahmed and the others stood, hard to make out in the clouds of steam that rose from the ground. He walked cautiously over to them, keeping a sharp eye on the rocky ground beneath his feet. His flashlight was of little help in this place—it just got eaten up in the vastness. As he neared them, the steam cleared.

And he saw it.

Not another carved wall. Nothing to do with submarines or the last world war either.

It’s a building
.

It was an immense building, built into the volcano’s conduit, where eons ago the massive mountain had erupted and spilled hot molten rock from the earth.

It was a building like some he’d seen before, in movies and books and documentaries, never in real life. Not yet. But those buildings were on a different continent, far, far from here, and made of a different stone.

But there was no mistaking it.

It’s a pyramid
.

SAM

“What the …” Sam stopped dead when he felt the cool metal of a gun barrel press against his neck.

Oh no …

He turned to face the gunman, Dr. Roberts. At least, the short guy with the moustache and glasses with the name tag “Dr. Roberts” on his lapel.

“So, I’m guessing you’re
not
Dr. Roberts,” Sam said, his eyes going from the guy to the dart gun levelled at him, “head of the Crawley base?”

In reply, the guy took off his yellow-tinted glasses, then peeled off a fake nose and bushy moustache. Sam knew the guy behind the disguise.

Or rather, the woman
.

Stella
.

“If you move, Sam,” she said. “I
will
hurt you.”

The snowcats were up and running again. They were heading northeast this time, around the base of the mountains, skirting the glaciers, over the immense ice shelf that went out to sea some hundred kilometres away.

They don’t seem concerned about the storm. Maybe they don’t know about it?

So it wasn’t that it was getting too dangerous to drive. They were plotting what to do with us, since Jabari left and there was a clear sign that Alex had been there. And Hans
.

Well, now they’ve taken care of Lora. And the Guardians and Agents in the other snowcat are no doubt knocked out too
.

That just leaves me …

Stella and her crew of rogue Agents manoeuvred through the storm. They went slowly, in single file. Sam’s snowcat was the middle vehicle, while Lora was unconscious,
or worse
, in the ’cat behind. Sam could barely bring himself to think it.

The early bird may get the worm
, Sam remembered Tobias telling him once,
but the second mouse gets the cheese
.

“If the lead vehicle falls in a crevasse, so be it?” Sam said to Stella, who sat opposite him eyeing a GPS screen.

“They know their mission,” she replied without looking at him, watching the satellite readout of their movements via a blinking dot on the digital map. Sam could see two locations were labelled—one the last known location of Hans, the other the last sighting of Alex.

“There’s a storm coming in, from the sea,” Sam said. “Do you know that?”

Stella didn’t reply.

“A real bad one,” Sam said. “It’ll blow these snowcats right off the ice shelf and into the water. Is that what you want?”

Stella still ignored him.

Great. But I have to figure a way out of this—a way to rescue my friends, to get to Alex, to get the Gear before all the others
.

Need to stall for time
.

“
Did
you try to kill me?” Sam asked. “That first time I was with Alex and Eva, on the helicopter. Did you shoot us out of the sky with missiles?”

“That wasn’t me.” Stella answered without looking at him. “We never fired at the helicopter. Those were my guys on board—they would have brought you, and Alex and Eva, directly to me that day. All this? It would have been very, very different.”

So it really was the Egyptian Guardians
.

“Why would I kill you, Sam?” Stella asked, looking at him. “Think about that. If you’re dead—all this stops. You are the only person in the world who can see things that the others can’t—you alone can understand all this, link the rest of the last 13 together.”

“I think you’re lying,” Sam said. “You’ve been shooting at me and trying to blow me up the whole time!”

“Well, I
did
try to do without you, Sam,” Stella sighed. “If I could have gotten that Tesla technology to work properly, I wouldn’t need to be here now listening to you.” She smiled. “Believe me, we’re not that bad at what we do. If we’d wanted you dead, then that’s how you’d be.
Dead
. But you’re not. You’re here. I haven’t even darted you.”

Right … so what does this mean? She needs me alive. That’s good. But maybe she needs me conscious, right now, to lead her to Alex. How do I use that information? Could I rush her? Disarm her?

“Maybe you don’t know everything,” she went on. “Maybe, like your friend Alex who has been working with Hans, you have been working with the wrong group all along.”

“What, working with you would have been better?” Sam said. “No thanks.”

“Oh, poor us,” Stella said. “Having you here as a hostage keeps us safe—you’re our life insurance and our bargaining chip, should something go wrong. But it won’t. Like I said, we’re good at what we do.”

“You’re sure about all that?” Sam said. “You don’t seem to have that many of the Gears for your boss, do you?”

Stella was silent, watching the screen that she held in her hands.

“And now you want Alex?” Sam asked. “And what about the next Dreamer? There’s only one more Dreamer after him.” He had to grab hold of his seat to stay steady as the snowcat roared full-speed over the uneven terrain of the ice shelf. “What then? You going to try getting all the Gears? The Academy will never give them to you.”

“No.” Stella levelled her cold gaze at him.

“No?” Sam said, challenging her. “Do you even know what you’re doing? Because it doesn’t seem like it.”

“Do I want the machine? Sure.” Stella smiled, and it was almost worse than her cold gaze. “I’m going to do what everyone else is going to do, Sam. Take the easiest option there is. Whoever has the machine, I will take it from them. Kill them, if we have to, why not? Then I’m going to go to Bakhu and switch the machine on. Then I will go to the Dream Gate. And, well, you know the rest.”

Go to Bakhu? She talks about it like it’s a place, not a machine
.

Does she really know stuff about this that I don’t?

“You really haven’t got a clue. Playing at being the hero, saving the world, and you don’t even understand the game. It’s
pathetic
.”

Sam’s face burned and he looked away, gritting his teeth.

“Pity.” Stella tapped the driver on the shoulder and pointed at her screen, signalling that they had to adjust their direction, before turning to Sam again. “You’ll die ignorant, like the others. After we find the next Dreamer. You’re the key, Sam, but only for these Gears and the machine. And after we unlock this, once we’re at the Dream Gate, well then, what use is a key to something that we’ve already unlocked?”

Sam thought of the key hanging around his neck. He thought about when he’d first seen it, on top of the Great Pyramid of Giza, when it had broken free from inside the crystal sphere, the Star of Egypt. The first Gear—
his
Gear.

“Not that thing hanging around your neck,” Stella said, as though reading his mind. “
You
.”

“You’re so crazy for power, it’s the very thing that will make it slip through your grasp.” Sam forced himself to hold her gaze, staring her down.

“Maybe. But I tell you what, Sam. Despite what they may have told you at the Academy, you’re not the one, great hope to save the world.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Not even close,” Stella said with certainty in her voice. “You’re the one who will enslave it.”

XAVIER

They landed in Cairo and were met by a team of Enterprise Agents, dressed in their trademark grey suits. Xavier could see that Rapha looked uneasy, perhaps thinking back to whatever he’d been through with Sam in Brazil when rogue Agents were hunting them down. But there was barely any time to reassure him, to tell him to trust these Agents here today, that they were different, they were there to help. There was hardly any time to even think as they were sped through the airport, bundled into beaten-up cars and on toward Dr. Kader’s workshop at the edge of the city.

Xavier watched out the window, a heavy weight in his stomach. A sense of dread, impending doom. He tried to concentrate on what was happening outside his window.

Cairo
.

He’d always loved the hot, bustling, vibrant city on his many visits. It was part of his life, part of his blood. He closed his eyes and thought of his mother, smiling.