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

  Now it’s my turn to be embarrassed. “Right! Good point. And you know what, there’s another thing.” I point at her arms. “All those gold bracelets. They’ll attract attention. We’d better hide them.”

  Ixchel looks down at her arms, as if it’s the first time she’s noticed that they’re draped in at least fourteen bands of ornate gold, some studded with jade, others with silver. Her mouth falls open. “Wow! Amazing.”

  “Yep. It would have been a bumper harvest for the Mayan gods. . .”

  Ixchel’s eyes flash with anger. “Don’t make jokes. I was with those people when they were getting ready to be sacrificed. They probably still are. Little children. . . You can’t imagine it, Josh.”

  “I know,” I say quickly, as solemnly as I can. “I don’t think it’s funny. It’s just . . . I didn’t know what to say.”

  “Look at you,” she says. “You’re a mess. Your clothes are ripped. You’re all cut up. Your arms, your face even.”

  “Just scratches,” I reply, blushing. But the knife wound in my calf is a bit more than a scratch. It’s turned into a steady, pulsating pain.

  Ixchel dips her head backwards into the water and smooths back her hair. I watch, mesmerized, while I swallow another mouthful of the lake water. “I can’t believe that you came back for me,” she says, when she straightens up. She looks right at me. “You could have just used the Bracelet to get yourself out. Instead of climbing all the way up that pyramid.”

  “I said I’d be back for you,” I tell her. Feeling like a coward. Why can’t I tell Ixchel how I feel? This is a perfect opportunity. I give her a look that’s half miserable, half hopeful. “Leave no one behind – that’s me.”

  “You’re a good friend, Josh,” she says after a few seconds. She lowers her eyes.

  It’s like being stabbed in the heart. For a couple of seconds I can’t speak. I’m a friend. That’s all I’ll ever be to Ixchel.

  Slowly, we wade back to the edge of the lake and climb out. I peel off my soaking jeans and socks. One sock has turned rust red at the top, where it soaked up most of the blood from my leg wound. I untie the bandage I made for the cut, rinse it out in the lake water and then take a look at the wound. It’s about four centimetres long, but it doesn’t look too deep. On the other hand, it won’t close. Ixchel watches in silence. She looks a bit worried. I tie the ripped piece of T-shirt back around my leg, then wring out and stretch the jeans and socks to dry in the sun. Then I open the Ek Naab phone. It lights up, yet the signal-finding icon just keeps rolling over and over. I hold the phone up high, but it makes no difference. Every movement I make is slow and laboured. It’s as though hearing those words – You’re a good friend, Josh – has sucked away all my energy.

  Eventually, Ixchel looks up. “No signal?”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s very strange,” Ixchel says, frowning. “We have total coverage in Yucatan. You shouldn’t have problems this close to the city.”

  She looks anxious, as if she’s just remembered a bit of bad news.

  “You think it has something to do with Martineau using the Bracelet?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she mumbles. “I need to eat first. I’m not sure that I’m thinking straight.”

  “OK,” I say, standing up. I put on my trainers and pick up the two hundred-peso notes, leftover from the last time I was in the outside world. It’s a disappointingly small sum of money – not even ten quid.

  I probably look pretty ridiculous in boxer shorts and a bloodstained wet T-shirt with one sleeve ripped off. But I can’t see any sign of a shop and the nearest road sounds like it’s at least two hundred metres away. By the time I reach a neighbourhood shop, I’ll probably be dry. “Will you be OK if I go and find us some food?”

  “There’s no one around,” she replies, lying down. “I’ll get some rest and dry off. If I get too thirsty I’ll drink from the lake. But I’d prefer a soda if you can get me one. And some potato chips.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “And a Gansito,” she adds.

  “Gansito,” I say, managing a grin. “Gotcha.” Any excuse to get away quickly. Before I start to act like I’m angry, which I am, a little.

  Forty minutes later I’m on my way back to Ixchel, thinking about what a weird time I had in the shop. The crisps and drinks had old-style brands. No canned drinks, only glass bottles. They had no fridge for the drinks, only an old-fashioned drinks cooler that used a huge block of ice. There were a couple of teenagers in the shop drinking guarana, a fizzy drink I’ve only ever seen in Brazil. When I went to pay the hundred and forty pesos she charged me (which seemed like an insane amount to pay; normally it would be around fifty pesos for some drinks, crisps and Gansitos), the shop lady almost wouldn’t accept my money.

  She didn’t recognize the peso notes. I managed to blag her, saying I’d just come from Mexico City and they were the first of a new design. She gave me sixty pesos change, rolling her eyes and muttering, “Looks pretty weird to me, but . . . OK. Seeing as God spared Mexico. . .” She was all “whatever” but I could tell she was pretty suspicious.

  For a minute in the shop, I even wondered if we’d somehow missed the right date and gone back into the past, the 1980s or something. So I checked a copy of Time magazine they were selling.

  It was from the right year. We’re not in the past. So what’s the explanation? Because something is very wrong with this timeline.

  I speed up, feeling myself break out into a sweat.

  My phone to Ek Naab didn’t work.

  What if it isn’t just the outside world that’s different? What if there’s something wrong with Ek Naab too?

  Ixchel is lying down under a tree. She hears me strolling through the long grass and sits up. As I get closer, she even smiles. I try to smile back. Kneeling next to Ixchel, I pass her one of the bottles without saying a word. After the first refreshing slug, I point to the brand label.

  “Antarctica guarana.”

  Ixchel smiles, puzzled.

  “Have you ever seen that in Mexico?”

  “I don’t know. I guess not?”

  “Also, there were no canned drinks,” I say. “Only glass bottles. The money is different too. The drinks were kept in an old-style cooler. No 7-Up, no Sprite or Fresca or diet drinks.”

  Ixchel looks even more confused. “So . . . what are you trying to say?”

  “Right here is where my sister, Camila, showed the Sect around a lake house. If they ended up renting it, they were never more than two hours from the gateway to Ek Naab. Camila saw Simon Madison and Melissa DiCanio ages before we’d heard about them. The Sect,” I repeat, “was here.”

  I can tell from Ixchel’s expression that she’s cottoned on to what I’m saying.

  “But not now?”

  “Not in this . . . reality? Timeline? Parallel world?” I hesitate, nervously. “Maybe there’s a reason why I can’t phone Ek Naab.”

  Ixchel drinks from her bottle in silence, thinking. I tear open the cellophane wrapper on the Gansitos and give one to her. “Eat it. I think we’re going to need the sugar.”

  Ixchel nibbles on the chocolate. I take a bite from my own.

  “Tastes different,” she says.

  She’s right. All the elements of the traditional Gansito are there: yellow sponge, white vanilla cream, sticky red jam and a plain chocolate coating. But somehow it’s different. Like the ingredients aren’t in balance.

  “Maybe we’re in the past?”

  “I saw the latest copy of Time magazine – we’re not.”

  Ixchel looks thoughtful. “You’re sure that this is where the house was?”

  “As much as I can be. There aren’t many landmarks. Why would it be anywhere else? What business would Martineau have being anywhere else in Bacalar? You think maybe he was in the middle of a hiking trip and suddenly decided to zap himself to the Mayan past?”

  Ixchel looks upset. “What’s wrong with you, Josh? You don’t
have to be mean.”

  I look out towards the lake. “Martineau left from that house, I’m sure of it. I reckon he got himself up as a jaguar priest and then zapped himself into seventh-century Calakmul.”

  “Wait a minute. Martineau left from here in Bacalar . . . so his Bracelet brought us back to the same place, but ten minutes before he left?”

  “Yeah. Meanwhile he’s gone back to Ek Naab.”

  I watch Ixchel trying to get her head round this. She’s still confused. No wonder – there’s a lot I still haven’t told her about how the safety device works. If I do, I’ll have to come clean about meeting my dad in Area 51.

  “Look,” I begin, “Martineau’s Bracelet – the one we’ve just used – I think it’s mine. I don’t know how he got it. But somewhere in the future of this Bracelet, Martineau finds it, starts using it.”

  Ixchel scrunches up her nose in disbelief. “You’re serious? How do you know?”

  “I don’t know, not for sure. Maybe there are two Bracelets. Maybe Itzamna made two. I don’t know, though . . . that doesn’t feel right.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s more of a hunch, really. Something tells me that if there were two or even maybe more Bracelets floating around in time and space . . . there wouldn’t be so much grief about finding one of them. D’ya get what I’m saying? It could be my imagination, but from the first minute I put the Bracelet of Itzamna on my wrist, I’ve felt this, like, electric charge. As if the Bracelet itself recognized me. As if the Bracelet is one of a kind.

  “The thing is, Ixchel, I’ve seen two Bracelets of Itzamna together once before. That time, it was the same Bracelet. One from the past and one from the future.”

  “What. . .?” She’s almost speechless. “You never told me. When?”

  My shoulders droop. It’s all going to come out now. “The last time I used my Bracelet. That second Bracelet – it was on my dad’s arm. But it was the same one. It was the Bracelet that my dad gave me later, the broken one that took him to Mount Orizaba.”

  I rip open the big bag of crisps, offer the bag to Ixchel, then begin, slowly, to explain. There’s no point holding back information now – this is too hard for me to figure out by myself. It might even be too hard for both of us to think through together.

  I tell Ixchel what really happened in Switzerland. How I used the Bracelet and went back to where it was last used – the deep underground military base in Area 51 where my father was held in secret. He’d been chased and captured by the National Reconnaissance Office. They faked his death so that no one would come looking for him. Then kept him prisoner, in secret. Until one day he used the Bracelet. It transported him to the slopes of Mount Orizaba. But the Bracelet wasn’t working properly – the Crystal Key had been burnt out long ago. Without that, the time travelling part of the Bracelet couldn’t work. So he didn’t move in time, only in space.

  He was lucky not to die – Blanco Vigores warned me of the dangers of using the Bracelet without the Crystal Key. Without that crystal, the control circuit doesn’t work – there’s no way to know where you’ll end up. You could end up being teleported into outer space, or into the middle of a rock. Luckily for Dad, he suffered only one side effect of the Bracelet – he lost his memory.

  That burnt-out Bracelet without the crystal was the one Dad gave to me, just before he fell to his death in the ice chasm.

  “Amnesia is a big problem with this kind of transportation. I dunno why. That’s why my dad begged me not to start using the Bracelet. Just to use it once, to get out of the Area 51 base. Then never again. Amnesia is why Arcadio wrote himself all those notes in an old book, and tattooed himself with the reference to the book. Messages from himself to himself, in a book that had been around for almost 200 years. That was his protection – his only protection against the nightmare scenario.”

  “The nightmare scenario?” Ixchel takes another handful of crisps and crunches them slowly, one by one.

  “Yeah – when the crystal burns out and you get hit by the amnesia. That’s the worst – if that happens then you’re trapped in time. Marooned. You can’t fix the Bracelet, you don’t know how. You don’t even know who you are. Like I say – a nightmare. That’s why Arcadio had the tattoo; that’s why he left all the notes. If he ever lost his memory and the crystal burned out, he could make the Crystal Key.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this,” she observes.

  “I’ve had months to think it over. About what Vigores told me. About what my dad told me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this right away?” Ixchel watches me keenly.

  I turn red. “I’m sorry,” I say in a low voice. “I just. . .”

  “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”

  “I keep certain things from you . . . for your own protection.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “No . . . no! Of course I do. It’s. . .” I stop talking and breathe heavily, blowing a stream of air through my lips. “Wow . . . this is hard to say.”

  She looks at me expectantly. Neither of us speaks for a moment.

  “It’s this Arcadio thing. You think I’m him. And. . .” I stare at my knees and swallow. “And you think that I’m, like . . . going to abandon you. Start travelling in time and forget all about you. It’s what you said the other day.” For a second I glance up, accusingly. “That’s why you prefer Benicio to me.” I close my eyes, feeling ridiculous. Ixchel touches my arm. When I open my eyes she’s gazing at me with a soft expression.

  She says, “I’m sorry.”

  I can only nod. Ixchel speaks carefully. “Josh . . . do you think that you’re Arcadio?”

  “I just . . . don’t know! I don’t know anything about my future. Montoyo once met Arcadio, but he couldn’t tell me if I’m him. My dad, he’d met Arcadio too, years and years ago. I think that my dad was afraid I’ll become Arcadio. But did he know for sure?” I shrug. “Who knows? The worst thing, though . . . is having everyone make these assumptions about who I am and what I’ll do. Cos none of that has anything to do with me, does it? I’m just me, just living my life day by day. I don’t even get to make plans. Not my own plans, anyway. It’s like I’m living out some kind of plan, but no one ever really asked me.”

  “It’s like that for all of us in Ek Naab,” Ixchel agrees. “So I know what you mean about living to someone else’s idea of your life. That’s why I left.”

  “But you went back to Ek Naab,” I say. “Why? Was it cos of Benicio?”

  Now Ixchel is the one lowering her eyes and blushing. “It’s complicated. But maybe now you understand why I felt trapped.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I lean against the tree trunk, stretch out my legs. “I get why you left. I want to know why you came back.”

  Might as well hear it now. Did she come back for Benicio? Is that how much he means to her?

  Very softly she says, “I came back for you.”

  We stare at each other. She keeps talking, very quietly now, glancing down every few seconds. “The way your dad died. You seemed so heartbroken. The way . . . things were between us . . . on that trip.” She gazes at me intently. “You didn’t feel something?”

  I nod, just once.

  “I couldn’t leave Ek Naab again. I knew you’d try to fix the Bracelet. Yes, I wondered whether one day you’d become Arcadio, forget about me and leave. It got worse the more I thought about it. Then you and Benicio came back to live in Ek Naab. He came looking for me right away, you know, Josh.”

  I say sullenly, “I bet he did.”

  “He told me he’d been waiting for ages to ask me to be his girlfriend. That he had given me a chance to see if I liked you – he didn’t want to spoil the arranged marriage plans, after all. But since I didn’t like you. . .”

  “You said that?”

  She looks flustered. “No. But I kept thinking about Susannah St John and Arcadio, how crazy she was about him when they were younger. I thought about how difficult it would be
to be. . .” She swallows. “To be . . . the girlfriend of a time traveller. It’s just not normal! I really didn’t think I could handle something so strange. And there was Benicio. I’d always liked him.”

  Inside me a mixture of emotions are bubbling away. A minute ago I felt ready to make some grand declaration to Ixchel, to go all out and get properly soppy. Now she’s talking about Benicio again. I really can’t stand to hear another word.

  “I’ve never met Arcadio and already I can’t stand him. He’s ruining my life!” I get to my feet. “You can’t judge me by what Arcadio does. He’s not me, even if he is me. You know what I mean. He forgets about you and goes off with someone else and that is something I would never do.”