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

  “Right, so that’s the date when the Traitor Bakab guy stole the Ix Codex?”

  Montoyo pushes the glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “No, there’s a great deal more information to be extracted here, if we study it carefully. To begin with, K’inich K’ane Ajk is a historical figure – he’s known to the world of Mayan studies.”

  I stare at Montoyo, impressed. “He is?”

  “There’s a panel at Cancuen, the Mayan city that your father was studying just before he found Ek Naab. K’inich K’ane Ajk’s name appears in that panel. He’s clearly a person of importance, and related to Calakmul. He may even have been installed as a ruler of Cancuen three years later, when Calakmul, the Snake Kingdom, was about to make war on the kingdom of Tikal. Tikal was a great rival of Calakmul back then. In Ek Naab we know K’inich K’ane Ajk as the Traitor Bakab, Josh. But he rose to become a man of influence. A reward for bringing the Snake Kingdom’s ruler a holy book, perhaps?”

  “But Blanco Vigores told me that the Traitor Bakab was killed,” I say wonderingly. “Tortured to death at the orders of the king of Calakmul.”

  Montoyo looks baffled. “Vigores told you that?”

  I hesitate, think back to the first night I met Vigores and he’d taken me into the labyrinth of tunnels near his home. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure he said the Traitor Bakab was killed.”

  “I’d like to know how Vigores knows that,” he says thoughtfully. “It’s certainly not in any writings I’ve seen.”

  For a few minutes I’m silent, thinking it through. “I guess . . . at least we know that the Ix Codex was in Calakmul for three years, from 653 to 656. Then . . . it might have gone to Cancuen with the Traitor Bakab. The king of Calakmul can’t have killed him before 656.”

  Montoyo nods. “I’m going to set the Bracelet of Itzamna to return me to Calakmul in March of AD 653. That gives time for the Traitor Bakab to have arrived at Calakmul with the Ix Codex. He should still be in favour with the king.”

  I join Montoyo in examining the Bracelet on his arm. The matt metallic sheen is just as I remember it; strange, Sumerian-like cuneiform symbols are cut into the coppery surface, the slightly offset depression in which sits the tiny Crystal Key, an artificially produced protein crystal. With a sense of bafflement, I recall Lorena’s words to me about the last of the genetic changes the Sect of Huracan made inside me.

  The Key is produced in my own blood. Just as Arcadio predicted in his coded postcard message to me: WHAT.KEY.HOLDS.BLOOD.

  I don’t understand how the Bracelet of Itzamna works, except that the Key seems to activate the time circuit of the Bracelet. If the Crystal Key were to burn out again, as it had before, the Bracelet of Itzamna would lose its ability to transport in time, but not in space. It would be a teleporter. Even then, I wouldn’t know how to control it.

  I have to face the fact that Ixchel might be right about me becoming Arcadio. If I can produce the Key, I’m a natural to be a time traveller. Maybe the only person who can use the Bracelet of Itzamna without risking being lost in time.

  Thinking like this just makes me feel even more uneasy at helping Montoyo to zap himself into the Mayan past.

  If the Crystal Key burns out, he’s toast. Stuck in the past with no way back.

  Montoyo touches the Bracelet lightly with a forefinger. “According to the instructions, we need to activate this symbol, then this one. . .”

  In silence he taps the Bracelet several more times, changing the symbols that are displayed. When he stops, we stare at the Bracelet. Nothing happens.

  “Hmmm.”

  I ask, “Can you feel anything?”

  Montoyo looks blank. “For example?”

  I remember when I used the Bracelet, in fact even just when I wore it, I would feel this ripple of energy, a sort of electricity that coursed into me from the device. Or maybe it was the other way around? Truthfully, I could never be sure.

  “Like electricity,” I suggest. “Like the Bracelet is coated with that furry metal. What’s it called again? Iron filings. You get these little pinpricks of electricity all along its surface.”

  Montoyo shakes his head. “No . . . I haven’t felt that. But you did?”

  “Yeah.”

  He ponders, “Perhaps only a Bakab can change the settings. Perhaps the Bracelet is reacting with some biochemical agent on the surface of your skin.”

  It’s possible, I guess. Would explain the way the Bracelet always seemed to respond to me.

  “Why don’t you change the settings, Josh? Then before we activate the time crystal, we’ll switch it back on to me?”

  Montoyo unfastens the catch, slips the Bracelet off his hand. He takes my left hand and slides the device on to my wrist. We look at each other expectantly.

  A sharp intake of breath from behind us startles both me and Montoyo. Standing in the open doorway is Ixchel. She’s staring at us, pale and drawn. I have no idea how long she’s been there. Awkwardly, Montoyo drops his hand from the Bracelet. He strides over towards Ixchel.

  “You need to leave, Ixchel. This is a confidential matter.”

  He places a hand on her arm, as if to shepherd her out of the apartment. Still gazing at me in disbelief, Ixchel steps away from Montoyo, shrinking from his touch.

  “Stay away from me.”

  You could hear a pin drop. Ixchel breaks the silence. “What’s going on here? Josh?” She looks at me, imploringly. “Please tell me you aren’t going to use the Bracelet.”

  “There’s this thing. . .” I mumble. “It’s not me, anyway . . . Carlos is gonna.”

  “Leave,” Montoyo tells her. “Now.”

  Ixchel plants her feet firmly, hands by her side. “No.” Her eyes lock on to mine. “Josh. Take it off.”

  Chaos breaks out. To my amazement, Ixchel and Montoyo both lunge at me. Montoyo goes for the Bracelet. Instinctively, I pull away. When his hand moves, I see something that makes my skin crawl.

  The Bracelet of Itzamna has come alive. The metallic parts are sliding over each other, creeping like the body of a snake. The outer casing ripples away to reveal another set of symbols underneath. The symbols are moving, changing with a steady rhythm that I’ve seen before.

  The countdown.

  “How can I stop it? There’s a way to stop it during the countdown . . . how?!”

  The last word comes out like a desperate plea. But Montoyo only steps back, gazing solemnly into my eyes. “The Ix Codex must remain in Calakmul,” he says, pronouncing the words the way he might give a death sentence.

  With rising panic, Ixchel glances from Montoyo to me. Next thing I know, she throws herself on top of me, screaming, “Josh! No!”

  There’s a dazzling flash. Then it’s as though the image of Montoyo’s apartment is ripped away from my retina. Windows, walls, paintings, lights are replaced with pitch black. The air is different too; it feels warm, heavy, damp.

  It takes a while for me to work out that the sounds I’m hearing are the terrified yells from Ixchel and me. We clutch each other, hanging on for support as we both fall to the ground.

  “Oh God,” I manage to say. It takes a few seconds for it to sink in. But with each second of realization, I feel terror mounting. “No,” I mutter, panting with dread. “No. God, not this. Please!”

  In the darkness, Ixchel clings to me even more tightly. I can feel her breath against my neck. When she speaks, I can hear the fear in her voice. “What’s happened, Josh? Where are we?”

  Seventh-century Calakmul. . .?

  I can’t say it aloud, can barely even think it. I’m so panicked that it takes me several minutes to remember how to breathe properly.

  When I do, I remember something. The Bracelet of Itzamna has a safety setting.

  Wherever we are, we can go back.

  Ixchel’s breathing doesn’t calm down; if anything, she becomes more hysterical. Even though we’re surrounded by impenetrable darkness, one thing becomes obvious to us both.

  We’re in the middle of t
he jungle. The stifling heat, a sickly aroma of foliage, the faint scent of animals, the uninterrupted racket, clicks and buzzing of insects; the smells and sounds are unmistakable. For a moment it’s as though I’m right back in the thicket of Campeche next to Highway 186, where I first met Ixchel.

  I’m in the dark – again. Terrified – again. This time, Ixchel is too.

  I don’t want to push Ixchel away, but in her panic she’s gripping me so tightly that I can hardly speak. There’s a choking sound from her throat; she shoves me aside and retches violently on to the ground behind me. Her body continues to spasm for minutes after she’s emptied the contents of her stomach. When she’s done she begins to tremble. I take her by the shoulders as gently as possible, and when I’m sure she’s not going to resist, I draw her to me.

  “We’re in the jungle,” I whisper against her forehead. “Near Calakmul. In AD 653. So please, Ixchel. Shhh.”

  I hear the question in her voice. “The Bracelet did this? Oh, it feels horrible, Josh. How could you stand it?”

  “What felt horrible?”

  “The transporting. Like being sucked into a void. Like being swallowed whole and spat out. Really horrible.”

  Ixchel’s description doesn’t sound anything like what it feels like to me. “Maybe it’s because you weren’t actually wearing the Bracelet?”

  She’s shivering now, in spite of the night’s heat. She pulls me closer. I don’t resist.

  “We can get back,” I murmur. I’d like to stroke her hair but I don’t dare. “It’s going to be OK. The Bracelet has a safety setting. I can take us back to where we came from, just ten minutes before we left.”

  Ixchel seems confused. “So we’ll suddenly appear in front of ourselves?”

  “We’ll materialize in Montoyo’s apartment, ten minutes before we left.”

  “Were you there? When you arrived at Montoyo’s tonight – did you see yourself already there?”

  I consider what she’s suggesting. “You mean – if we do this, then we’ve already done it? And we’d have been in Montoyo’s already?”

  “Yes. I’m just trying to understand how this time travel thing works.”

  “Hmmm. Maybe we were hiding?”

  “OK, good idea. Let’s remember to hide.”

  Her comments make me nervous. It’s true that I hadn’t seen any sign of Future Me and Future Ixchel in Montoyo’s apartment. Montoyo himself, though . . . how could he have missed us? I can’t work it out right now; it’s all so confusing and I really can’t think straight.

  With the darkness hiding our faces, it’s possible for Ixchel and me to be less awkward around each other. Even so, now that we’re having a proper conversation, Ixchel seems suddenly shy about being in a clinch with me. Still talking, she edges away.

  “OK, Ixchel. Ready to go? I think you need to be holding on to me. You know, properly,” I say, stammering slightly. “Like last time.”

  She pulls away completely. I can’t tell if she’s angry, but it seems like she might be. “Can . . . can we just wait a minute or two? Please. I can’t go through that again just now.”

  “You want to stay in this forest? Listen. Can you hear those animal noises? There are pumas and jaguars here. Poisonous spiders and snakes and stuff. It’s not safe.”

  “Just two minutes,” she says, pleading. “At least let me know you’ve thought this through. What makes you think we’re in Calakmul in 653?”

  “I reckon Montoyo’s changed the coordinates,” I say. “Only, I don’t know how because I thought only a Bakab could activate the Bracelet. . .”

  Ixchel interrupts, “How do you know that?”

  I hesitate. “Montoyo told me.” Then it hits me. “He must have lied. He did set the coordinates, probably before I even got to his apartment. Maybe he got one of the other Bakabs to do it for him. . . Everything else, all that pretence of not being able to change the coordinates. . . It was all show.”

  She lets out an anxious gasp. “What else did he tell you?”

  I think hard, remembering the conversation. “Basically – he said his goodbyes. In case he never saw me again.” Montoyo’s little speech of things that “need to be said” is starting to make an awful kind of sense. “I said I’d look after my mum if anything happened to him,” I say bitterly. “Carlos said he’d make me the same promise, ‘if the situation were reversed’. Which, I guess, it actually was. Thanks to him.”

  With an air of resignation, Ixchel says, “He tricked you.”

  “Good and proper,” I agree. “The coordinates were set before I even touched the Bracelet. AD 653 Calakmul. I don’t know the exact date, but that’s the year.”

  “The year the Ix Codex was stolen from Ek Naab and taken to Calakmul,” she says. “But why?”

  Over the next few minutes I explain everything to Ixchel. At this point, there’s no good reason to keep any secrets from her. She’s astonished by my claims about Tyler – like everyone else, Ixchel has no memory of him. When I’ve finished, I notice that my eyes have adjusted to the faint starlight. It washes a ghostly shimmer over the interior of the forest. I can make out Ixchel’s silhouette and the tiniest sparkle of her eyes.

  “If Montoyo had to ask another Bakab to set the coordinates, why didn’t he get someone else to do this mission?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I say bitterly. “Because this is about the Ix Codex. No Bakab but me can touch it and live.”

  However horrible the job might be . . . it’s mine. From the minute my father died.

  “Montoyo really thought this one through,” I reflect. “Except for you. He didn’t bargain on you walking through his door.” I pause, then ask, “Why did you?”

  She stalls. “What did you expect?”

  I say nothing, waiting.

  “I knew something was going on,” Ixchel admits after a while. “You acted strangely; it’s not like you to avoid me.”

  “I didn’t want to avoid you. Montoyo asked me to help him; I just wanted to get it over with.”

  Ixchel shakes her head slowly. “He sent you into the past with no plan, no idea where to go, nothing to protect yourself . . . not the greatest way to think it through.”

  “A lot of effort, when he could have just asked me.”

  “Would you have agreed?”

  I give a sardonic laugh. “I’d have told him he’s mental.”

  “I think you’d have done it.”

  “Well, you think I’m crazy-reckless,” I remark. “But most times I don’t go out to do anything I think is going to be all that dangerous.”

  “Maybe you aren’t very good at assessing risk.”

  For some reason, Ixchel’s comment makes me angry, so much that my cheeks actually burn red for a few seconds. Luckily she can’t see me. I can only hope she thinks it’s a strong-silent-type response.

  “Montoyo went to a lot of effort to make sure he got me here,” I say coldly. “But he forgot I could just hit the safety to get back.”

  A horrible thought occurs to me. What if there’s a way to turn off the safety . . . like with a gun? Could Montoyo have done something to the Bracelet so that I wouldn’t be able to escape?

  Beside me, Ixchel tenses. “Did you hear that? An animal . . . moving . . . in the trees just behind. . .”

  Just before she gets silenced, Ixchel manages to cry out. I throw myself forward, grabbing uselessly for her in the dark, landing chin first on the ground. The second I try to budge, I feel the sharp edge of a blade against the back of my neck. A fierce voice hisses at me, spitting the words. It takes me a while to realize that I can just about understand what he’s saying. He’s speaking Mayan. It sounds a lot like Yucatec, though the accent is strange and so are many of the words. Basically, he’s saying, “Lie still or I’ll cut you open like a pig.”

  Someone grabs my arms and twists them behind me. It only takes a few seconds for my attackers to bind my hands so tightly that the twine cuts into my wrists.

  In a voice edged with pa
nic, Ixchel calls, “Josh, don’t say anything. . .” Then she cries out. I can’t see what’s happening to her but it sounds like she’s being slapped around. I’m too scared to protest, but I can’t help wincing from the pain when they drag me to my feet, then knock me down again so that I fall on my knees.

  I can hear at least three people – all young men – in the woods with Ixchel and me. Now that they’ve captured us both, their mood relaxes. When I concentrate, I realize I can understand most of what they’re saying.