The Joshua Files - a complete box set: Books 1-5 of the young adult sci-fi adventure series plus techno-thriller prequel

by M. G. Harris

Tyler looks incredible. I’ve never seen him do capoeira with anyone this good. Now I realize just how talented Tyler is. Soon everyone in the restaurant is cheering him along. They give him a round of applause and a cheer when he finishes.

  When Tyler returns to our table, breathing hard, he wipes a sheen of sweat from his forehead and neck.

  “Wow, Ty, that was amazing.” I’m filled with pride in my pal.

  “Yeah. . .” Tyler says with a quick grin at everyone at the table. “Thanks. It was all right, wasn’t it?”

  It’s only then that I notice another presence at our table. Benicio. Without any fuss he’s joined us. He’s already sipping a drink and clapping Tyler, who’s the first one to greet him.

  “Hey, man, you made it!”

  There’s something like a squeal of joy from Ixchel. She turns around, delight in her eyes, and throws herself against Benicio. I sit by, uncomfortable once again. I watch as Benicio and Ixchel hug tightly. Her hand lingers on his shoulder. For some reason I can’t tear my eyes away from that hand. When I finally glance away, I catch Montoyo gazing at me again, with a sort of knowing look.

  Montoyo is really starting to get on my nerves.

  On the dance floor the capoeira players have given way to three couples dressed in casual black. They dance together to tropical music with an accordion backbeat. It looks a bit like ballroom dancing, only funkier, less formal. The lead singer calls it forro. After the demonstration, the dancers invite people to join them on the dance floor.

  Benicio winks at Ixchel. He offers his hand. “Do you dare?” She grins back, putting her hand in his.

  So then I have to watch them dance. It gets worse. Montoyo leads my mum on to the stage, where it’s obvious immediately that he knows what he’s doing on the dance floor too. My eyes flicker from them to Benicio and Ixchel, who aren’t anything like as proficient. But at least they can dance in time. When they make a mistake they just giggle helplessly, pressing their foreheads together.

  I feel something then that is completely new. Nausea throbbing somewhere underneath my diaphragm. The feeling gets more intense when I finally put a name to it.

  I’m actually jealous; more than I can remember being in my entire life.

  It’s so overpowering that for a few seconds the sheer novelty is almost funny. It’s like unlocking a whole new part of my brain.

  Who knew it could feel this bad?!

  Looking from Benicio with Ixchel and Montoyo with my mum, it’s hard to tell which of them is causing the feeling. In fact, they both are. But it’s worse with Ixchel. After a while I literally can’t bear to watch her dance with Benicio – I have to look away, suddenly act very interested in the lobster tank in the middle of the restaurant.

  I’m conscious of my heart pounding like a metronome. I concentrate on the lobsters crawling around in their tank. It suddenly strikes me as pitiful, watching them experience their last few minutes of life. I sense the tropical rhythms of the dance band; they enter through the soles of my feet, through my fingers, deep into my bones, which feel like they’re trembling inside my skin. Try as I might, I can’t stop exhaling sharply – more like a tiny gasp of pain.

  I like Ixchel; I like her a lot. When did this happen? Why didn’t I see it coming?

  Later, Tyler lies snoring in the bed next to mine. I’m hypnotized by the ceiling fan, watching it slowly rotate among the shadows. In my head, I can still hear the music from the beach restaurant, pulsing away in the background.

  I’ve been awake for almost twenty-four hours since waking up in Oxford. Although I’m shattered, I can’t sleep.

  My mind can’t stop motoring along, not for a second. My thoughts flit from the last minutes of my dad’s life, replaying the whole incident on the volcano in detail. Then I think about Ixchel. She’s falling asleep against me on the bus to Tlacotalpan. She’s holding my hand as we whisper to each other, the night before we climbed the volcano. She’s standing beside me at the funeral. I remember how aware I was of her, our shoulders almost touching all the way through that ordeal. The way she took my hand and murmured, You’ll get through this, Josh. . .

  Then I’m on to thoughts of the Bracelet. That quotation in the John Lloyd Stephens book that Montoyo brought me: I would like to swim against the stream of time.

  A perfect way of putting it. That poet Arcadio quoted from, Borges, in the letter he left me all those years ago . . . Borges wrote that time is a river.

  Well, if that’s the way things are, then yes, I want to swim upstream.

  Why is Arcadio writing something like that in so many copies of the John Lloyd Stephens book? Is that the reason why Madison stole a copy of the book from our house? As Montoyo says – who is Arcadio Garcia?

  From there I think about Montoyo. The way he looked at my mum. The way she smiled at him. Jeez . . . she’s my mother! I’m not thinking of her as a possession – what a jerk that Montoyo can be. I’ve never thought of a girl as a possession, either. But what my mum is to me, she can’t be to anyone else. I’m her first-born and only child, her son. I have rights, whatever Montoyo thinks. I don’t have to just stand by and watch him try to steal her away from my dad.

  Dad is not just a memory. For us, things can be different.

  I have the Bracelet of Itzamna. I can change everything.

  I roll out of bed, fed up with hearing Tyler snoozing so happily. I step out on to the balcony, listen to the breeze whispering over the sound of the waves. In the garden below, the palms are lit up with blue and red lights. Suddenly I notice a movement in the shadows, beyond the pool. I stare hard into the depths of that darkness. The more I stare, the more I grow certain that someone is sitting there quietly, concealed by the dark, on a deckchair.

  As I lean on the rail of the balcony, I have a keen sensation of being watched. My gaze falls into the blackness, with nowhere to focus. Whoever sits down there can probably see me clearly, outlined by the dim orange glow of a citronella candle.

  I suddenly hear my mother’s voice. She’s speaking very quietly, but there’s no doubt about it – it’s her.

  Is she down there in the darkened garden with Montoyo? Immediately, I lose interest in the mysterious presence in the garden below.

  I’ve gone rigid with tension when I realize that I hear both their voices – Montoyo’s and my mother’s. The sounds are coming not from the garden but from the path which leads to the beach.

  Montoyo and my mother have been together at the beach. They’ve only just returned to the hotel.

  I pull back from the rail and against the hammock that’s stretched across the balcony. I fall into the hammock, carefully wrap it around me so they can’t see that anyone is on this balcony. I lie rigid inside the hammock, one arm against the balcony door, holding the hammock perfectly still. I listen out for their footsteps on the stairs. There’s the sound of one door shutting and then another.

  They’ve each gone to their own rooms, which is a relief. Yet clearly Montoyo and Mum wanted to keep their conversation going. They fancied a midnight walk together, along a tropical beach. Well, that’s enough to put me off my sleep for the rest of the night.

  It’s a disaster. Tomorrow is the first day of the capoeira contest. I’m going to be wrecked.

  Outside, it begins to rain. Within minutes the downpour has built to a torrent, drumming loudly on the roof and balcony.

  Back in the room, I turn on my bedside lamp. I pick up the two volumes of the John Lloyd Stephens book and flick through them. I’m looking for the story my dad always told me about – where Stephens relates hearing rumours of a living city of the Maya – in 1840, hundreds of years after the Maya collapse, and after the Spanish invasion too.

  There shouldn’t have been Mayans still living in the ancient cities – not by 1840. Only in Ek Naab – the secret city beneath the ruins.

  Ever since I discovered their invisible city, I’ve always wondered whether that story could have been a clue. Was it John Lloyd Stephens’ way of hinting about Ek N
aab?

  Montoyo once told me that Stephens had secretly been to Ek Naab. That Stephens taught the people of Ek Naab English. And that’s how they finally worked out that the Ix Codex is written in Mayan hieroglyphs which spell out words in English.

  On page 195 of Volume II, I find what I’m looking for. A Living City.

  I read the page once, quickly, then more carefully. That’s when I notice that two of the letters on the page are very faintly ringed with pencil. I glance through the rest of the book to see if there are any similar marks anywhere else.

  There aren’t.

  I pick up Volume I and make the same check. Nothing in the pages. But now that I’m examining the second volume closely, I find something bizarre in the back flap, tucked right under an old Stanford University library sticker.

  A series of numbers, beginning with 195.

  195: 1, 1, 6; 2, 7, 4; 5, 3, 2; 6, 1, 4; 6, 4, 4; 6, 6, 1; 8, 5, 3; 8, 5, 5; 9, 1, 2; 9, 2, 2; 10, 4, 3; 10, 5, 4; 15, 2, 3; 16, 2, 1; 16, 2, 5

  I’m so still, I can almost hear my own pulse. I stare at the numbers; tiny, meticulous handwriting. Like something a librarian might write, or a bookshop owner, to help them catalogue the book. But I’m fairly certain this is no coincidence. A set of numbers starting with 195 in Volume I of a book I . . . and then traces of pencilled rings on page 195 of Volume II . . . ?

  The whole situation seems to remind me of something. It feels like there’s a telephone ringing in the distance, muffled, and I’m hunting down the phone in room after room.

  This should make sense to me. This should be easy.

  I’m just so tired, though. I can’t force my brain to calm down and think it through in a nice, calm, logical way. It’s like a TV image when the satellite signal breaks down. Doesn’t make sense.

  Yet it should. Volume I and Volume II. Numbers in one volume of a book, ringed letters in the other.

  Like a jolt of electricity, it hits me. An idea so incredible and yet simple that I can’t believe it could be true. . .

  The numbers in Volume I refer to the page in Volume II.

  My hands shake slightly as I open the two books again, locate the first ringed letter on page 195. It’s a Y. I mumble slightly, counting how many lines down, how many words across and how many letters along the word the Y appears.

  Five lines down, three words across, two letters along. Y.

  Now, my breath catching with excitement, I scan the long list of numbers in Volume I for that same triplet: 5, 3, 2.

  The triplet is there. Amazing. . .

  I struggle to calm myself as I test the theory a second time, now with the second ringed letter: a K.

  Fifteen lines down, two words across, three letters along. K.

  Now I’m looking for the triplet 15, 2, 3. And there it is.

  I gasp, stuff a fist into my mouth to stop myself from yelling with triumph.

  Each triplet of numbers corresponds to one letter. Two of them have been ringed – a Y and a K.

  The string of numbers written in Volume I is a cipher – a coded message.

  Someone started to decode this message. Who?

  I work my way through the entire cipher text, translating the triplet code into the single letters. But after the first three letters, my spirits begin to plummet.

  This doesn’t spell any word in English . . . in fact, it doesn’t look like any kind of word.

  I plough on right until the end. But by then I’m totally disillusioned.

  AGYLIHRPPREIKGR

  It’s meaningless to me. Might as well be another code.

  I still can’t sleep, and I don’t see why Ixchel should. So I slink into the corridor of the guest house and knock softly on her door, then a little louder. She comes to the door instantly. Although she’s in her pyjamas – shorts and a T-shirt – it doesn’t seem like she was asleep either.

  “Hey,” she says with a surprisingly shy grin. “Couldn’t sleep?”

  “I found something.”

  “Your mum’s in the shower. She just got back from the beach with Montoyo.”

  Impatiently I reply, “I know. Let’s go to my room. We can sit on the balcony.”

  The instant I say the words, I realize that’s a bad idea. It takes me a few seconds to work out why. Thinking about the balcony gives me a creepy feeling – a sense of being silently observed by whoever was just sitting out in the darkened garden.

  It’s OK, though, because Ixchel kicks the idea out. “Too dark. Let’s go downstairs, to the lobby.”

  Behind the high reception counter of the lobby, a tall rangy-looking guy with a shaven head and trendy black glasses sits reading a paperback folded almost double. He glances up for just a moment when we approach. We help ourselves to a fistful of sweets from a goldfish bowl crammed with fruit drops. It’s late and everyone else in the guest house is in bed, but after we sit on the sofas he doesn’t give us a second look.

  I unwrap a grape-flavoured drop and pop it into my mouth. Ixchel chooses lime.

  “OK, Josh . . . what have you found?”

  I show her the volume of the John Lloyd Stephens book I’ve been carrying as well as the separate piece of paper on which I’ve scrawled the deciphered code. I explain how I worked it out, and then my voice trails away as I watch for her reaction.

  Ixchel is quiet for a couple of minutes.

  “You worked this out, just now?” She looks at me keenly and I find myself stammering slightly.

  “Well, yeah. . .”

  “You really have a talent for codes, Josh. This is brilliant, you know.”

  She really seems to mean it.

  “Thanks,” I mumble, feeling myself redden. “But it doesn’t get us any further.”

  “Yes,” Ixchel says. “It does. It tells us a lot. I just don’t understand how or why. . .”

  “Huh?” I say. “Explain.”

  “Well,” Ixchel says, pointing at the string of letters. “Have you noticed that there are fifteen of these letters?”

  I actually hadn’t bothered to count them. If I’d noticed that there were fifteen, I probably wouldn’t have thought too much about it. But now that Ixchel mentions it. . .

  “You’re right,” I mutter. “That is fully weird.” And a crackle of excitement zips along my spine.

  “Fifteen symbols on the Adaptor,” Ixchel whispers. “Fifteen glyphs in the front of the Ix Codex fragment. And now fifteen letters in Arcadio’s book.”

  “You think it’s the same thing?”

  Ixchel chuckles. “I know it is! Look – see this combination near the end. RPPR-something-something-something-something-R. I’ve seen it before.”

  “You’ve seen this sequence of letters before?”

  “No . . . not as R and P. It could have been ABBA something-something-something-something-A. Or BCCB – and the rest. I never knew what it was – I just saw the glyphs. I saw them plenty of times. This pattern is pretty memorable. The same pattern of two different glyphs: glyph A, glyph B, glyph B, glyph A, then four other glyphs, then glyph A again.”

  A slow grin spreads across my lips. “You think this is the Adaptor sequence?”

  “What are the chances of a sequence like that happening by accident – in a fifteen-letter sequence?”

  “Hmm . . . I’m not great at maths.”

  “This could be the formula for the Key, Josh. Don’t you think?”

  “I think you’re right, Meninha,” I say. I can’t help smiling at her. “You’re a bit of a genius yourself.”

  “Yes,” she says, no hint of joking, ignoring that I just called her “girl” in Portuguese – or at a stretch, “babe”. “I know.”

  “Doesn’t look like any chemical formula I’ve seen.”

  “Well, me neither, but I don’t know chemistry. We could find one – a chemistry expert.”

  “You want to find a chemist here in Brazil?”

  “Well, sure,” Ixchel replies with a smile. “We’ll use the Internet.”

  She’s been strangely calm a
ll the way through this. Me, I’m sizzling with wonder at our discovery. But then Ixchel puts her finger on the one thing that makes me a little uneasy.

  “The thing is, Josh – why? Why is Arcadio writing the Key sequence in code? And why in these books?”

  I don’t know the answer to that yet. But for some reason, the question sets off a tiny little alarm bell. It feels like the source of something dangerous.

  Maybe even life and death.

  Next morning, Tyler has to shake me awake. I can hardly move. He’s shouting at me to get dressed, but it’s all I can do to prise my eyelids apart.