The Five Greatest Warriors: A Novel

by Matthew Reilly

  They were about halfway down the enormous structure and it was already 2:11 a.m.

  It had taken them twenty minutes to get this far, and now they only had twenty minutes to get through the bottom half. It was going to be close.

  ‘Go left!’ Stretch yelled into his radio. ‘No! Left! Left!’

  Out on the rooftops, the twins spun, disoriented.

  If they hadn’t had Pooh Bear and Stretch to guide them, they would have got hopelessly lost by now and been swept to their deaths by the cascading torrents of water coming down behind them.

  Instead, they were still in the game, only saturated and shivering, their red hair plastered flat against their scalps, rivulets of water running down their faces and off their chins.

  Julius hurried to the left-hand gap in the guardrail of their current rooftop.

  ‘Yes! That one!’ Stretch’s voice yelled over the radio.

  Julius stopped at the precipice, turned.

  Behind him, Lachlan was struggling. Although they were identical in looks—and in many tastes, hobbies and other things—they were not identical in fitness. Julius was far fitter than Lachlan. He ate better and sometimes he even joined Jack and Zoe on their morning runs. Lachlan ate a lot of junk food and did little exercise.

  And now it was showing.

  Lachlan was lagging behind, heaving for breath.

  ‘Boys! Look out—!’ they heard Pooh Bear shout.

  With startling suddenness, a drenching waterfall came slamming down on top of the twins, engulfing them completely.

  Both were hurled against the guardrail and Lachlan almost fell down the newly created waterfall beside it, but Julius threw out a hand and clutched his wrist at the last moment. He hauled him back to safety and they straggled over to the correct gap.

  ‘Thanks, brother!’ Lachlan shouted.

  Julius didn’t answer.

  ‘You know, this may not be the right time, but I’m really sorry about Stacy Baker!’

  Julius just said, ‘Come on, we have to keep going!’

  Down the side of that tower they went, clinging to the wall ladder cut into its side.

  DIEGO GARCIA (5TH VERTEX)

  Jack and Lily zoomed round the enormous spiralling roadway of the Fifth Vertex on their motorbike.

  As they rode, they swept past the remains of a variety of vehicles strewn across the road: evidence of the violence this trap system could unleash.

  Using the symbols on the upper edge of the golden plaque, they’d successfully crossed five of the chasms cutting across the roadway without setting off the master trap.

  It was 5:11 a.m. and, with twenty minutes to go, they’d barely made one full circle of the giant descending spiral. It was slow going. Too slow, Jack thought. We need to get cracking.

  To this point, the green arrows and red Xs spray-painted onto the bridges had been correct; the result, Jack guessed, of deadly trial and error by his French, British and American predecessors over the years. He noticed, however, that the spray-painted advice ceased at the next chasm.

  He and Lily came to it and stopped. Two bridges spanned this one.

  While there were a couple of wrecks in this chasm, Jack suddenly noticed that there were no more vehicle-wrecks on the road beyond it. ‘This is where all our predecessors lost their way. Until the Americans started using cranes, no-one ever got past here—

  Oddly, neither of the two symbols carved into the ground before this chasm’s bridges matched the next symbol from the golden plaque. The next symbol on the plaque was:

  whereas the two symbols on the ground were:

  —Suddenly, an ominous rumble echoed out from somewhere above him.

  ‘Uh-oh. . .’ Jack snapped to look up.

  It had come from the uppermost section of the spiral, from the large tunnel up there.

  ‘Oh, damn,’ Jack said.

  Bonaventura’s voice came over the radio: ‘You fool! You’ve set it off! The master trap is about to go off!’

  ‘We didn’t set anything off,’ Jack said. ‘We didn’t do anything.’

  ‘That symbol looks like a pillar. . . ’ Lily said.

  Jack was really worried now.

  ‘We’ve missed something,’ he said softly. The rumbling from above grew louder.

  ‘I told you to use the cranes!’ Bonaventura was panicking.

  But Jack wasn’t.

  He spun, looking back up the curving road behind them, his eyes searching—

  —and he spotted something on the ground underneath an upturned 1930s British jeep back there.

  He swung the motorbike around and gunned it back to the overturned jeep, where he jumped off, slid to the ground and peered at the roadway.

  Carved into the stone roadway was the familiar image of the Machine:

  And it was lifesized, its rectangular depictions of the Pillars were the same size as the Pillar in his pack. And while five of them were simple carvings, one was fully indented into the road.

  Jack had seen this before, back at the First Vertex at Abu Simbel. He snatched the Pillar from his pack and jammed it into the indented rectangle in the carving.

  The rumbling from above stopped instantly.

  Silence enveloped the cavern once again.

  ‘You did it . . . ’ Bonaventura said, amazed. ‘No-one’s got past there before.’

  ‘What can I say, we’re specialists,’ Jack replied. But in his mind, he was thinking about the advanced technology at work within this place: technology that worked in concert with the Pillar.

  ‘Now the symbols on the golden plaque make much more sense,’ Lily said.

  ‘See, there’s a Pillar-symbol every so often. At those times, we have to place the Pillar in a carving like this. Otherwise, the system’s master trap goes off. No wonder no-one could get past this bridge. They would always set off the big trap.’

  ‘Like I said,’ Jack turned to her, ‘you’re not allowed to cheat in a place like this. If you can figure it out, the system lets you pass. That’s why it was built: to allow the knowledgeable to enter and keep the pretenders out.’

  Armed with this knowledge, Jack and Lily made rapid progress through the lower half of the spiral.

  Travelling in this way, they encountered no more difficulties and ten minutes later, arrived at the lowest and innermost ring.

  Coming to that ring, they saw a long tongue of stone stretching out to the peak of the inverted pyramid. Cut into the ground near its starting point was one last carving of the Machine.

  By Lily’s count, they had used all but two of the symbols from the plaque. After they placed the Pillar in that carving of the Machine, there must be one more choice to make.

  As Jack rounded the final ring, still twenty yards away from the tongue of stone, the basket from the second crane slowly lowered itself into view.

  Felix Bonaventura and Iolanthe were in it, along with General Dyer.

  Bonaventura was ecstatic. Stepping out of the basket onto the last few feet of the spiralling roadway, he opened his arms and smiled broadly. ‘Well done! No-one’s managed to tame this place the way you have!’ He took a step onto the long tongue of stone leading to the pyramid’s peak. ‘Now all we have to do is—’

  ‘No!’ Jack skidded to a halt and leapt off the motorcycle. ‘Wait! Not yet, stop—!’

  But it was too late.

  By virtue of its advanced sensory mechanism, the Vertex knew that someone had crossed that last carving of the Machine without the Pillar in their possession.

  From the upper regions of the cavern, the ominous rumbling echoed again.

  It sounded like thunder.

  Jack snapped up, so did Lily and Iolanthe.

  Both Bonaventura and General Dyer looked upward in horror, since they knew what this place looked like when its master trap went off.

  ‘Dear me, no . . . ’ Bonaventura whispered a moment before the Vertex was plunged into absolute mayhem.

  It came exploding out from the wide tunnel in the uppermo
st section of the spiral: a huge whitewater wave, seven feet high and sixty feet wide, taking up the full breadth of the roadway.

  It thundered down the descending roadway, sweeping around its curve, bounded on the inside by the stone guardrail, galloping forward like a stampede of buffalos.

  The rampaging wave blasted past the entry archway, shooting by it, before it smashed into the concrete harrier protecting the upper crane. Unexpectedly, the wave completely collected the barrier within its mass and hurled it into the crane itself, knocking the crane over!

  As he watched the crane topple, Jack wondered if previous occurrences of the massive wave had been weaker. Perhaps, since this wave had been set off by a transgression at the very epicentre of the Vertex, it was bigger, stronger, more deadly.

  Either way, Bonaventura’s thick protective concrete barrier had been picked up by the wave as if it weighed nothing at all and the upper crane now tumbled along within the angry wave.

  What followed was as spectacular as it was horrifying.

  Jack turned on the spot as he watched the giant wave sweep around the perimeter of the cavern, roaring as it went. It wound quickly downward, a raging foaming river that sped down the descending curve of the spiral, bounding over the chasms as if they were minor inconveniences, charging angrily toward the intruders at the centre of the system.

  ‘You stupid, stupid man!’ he yelled at Bonaventura.

  They were completely screwed.

  When that wave hit the innermost ring of the spiral, it would bounce off a final wall and shoot out across the thin tongue of stone: sweeping away whoever happened to be standing on it at the time.

  The second crane was an option, although not a great one, since the upper crane hadn’t been able to withstand the rushing body of water.

  Bonaventura and General Dyer figured it was better than nothing. Before Jack or Iolanthe could stop them, they scrambled back into the basket and started rising up the crane’s vertical cable.

  ‘Hey!’ Iolanthe called.

  But it didn’t save them.

  Moments later, the speeding wave slammed into the base of the second crane and ripped it off its mounting, causing the whole crane, still stretched out over the innermost ring, to lurch sickeningly and topple downward—into the abyss! Bonaventura and the general fell into the darkness, screaming, with the entire crane falling after them.

  ‘No-one likes to see that,’ Jack observed drily.

  He checked his watch: 7:28 a.m.

  They had to plant the Pillar at precisely 7:31 a.m. They had three minutes to go. But the rampaging river would he on them in less than one.

  He keyed his radio. ‘Pooh Bear! How you doing!’

  ‘The twins are almost at the Vertex! They’re going to get there with about thirty seconds to spare! You?’

  ‘Things just got really nasty here.’ The whitewater wave was past halfway now. ‘We’re at our Vertex, but waiting at the peak is gonna be a problem! Let me know when the twins are in position! We’ll only get one shot at this!’

  Jack turned to Lily and Iolanthe. ‘This way.’

  Gripping the Pillar in his hand, he led his two female companions out onto the tongue of stone, to the peak of the great bronze pyramid.

  The descending wave was three-quarters of the way down the system now, galloping downward at frightening speed.

  At the very end of the tongue of stone, Jack searched for something, something he couldn’t find, completely ignoring the stupendous pyramid two feet in front of him and the chaos all around him.

  ‘What the hell are you looking for!’ Iolanthe shouted.

  ‘Lily, there’s still one symbol on the plaque we haven’t used yet, right?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I checked three times.’

  Iolanthe saw the incoming wave sweep into the lowest ring of the spiral. It looked incredibly powerful and it was almost on them.

  To her complete incomprehension, Jack wasn’t even looking at it. He actually lay down on his belly and peered over the very end of the tongue of stone, looking at its underside.

  ‘There it is!’ he called triumphantly. He sprang up. ‘Lily, Iolanthe, over the edge, now. There’s a series of handrungs carved into the underside of this half-bridge and they lead to a pair of tunnels cut into the wall of the abyss: the last choice. Go!’

  As the charging whitewater wave came round the final curve of the spiral, the three tiny figures of Lily, Iolanthe and Jack lowered themselves over the end of the long tongue of stone.

  Then the deadly wave hit the wall at the bottom of the spiral and bounced out over the tongue of stone, spraying across it, all the way down its length, showering off its edges in a spectacular three-sided waterfall.

  And there, hanging from the handrungs cut into the underside of the narrow stone tongue, dangling above the bottomless abyss, glistening curtains of water falling all around them, were Jack, Iolanthe and Lily.

  LUNDY ISLAND (4TH VERTEX)

  Julius Adamson’s watch ticked over to 2:30 a.m. as he and Lachlan raced out onto an open forecourt at the base of the Fourth Vertex’s mini-city, between two obelisks before dashing down a flight of steps that gave access to this Vertex’s half-bridge and pyramid.

  The mini-city above and behind them was now literally teeming with waterfalls: a complex network of streams that twisted and turned, at some times diverging, at others converging, on their inexorable journey down the watercourse toward the forecourt that the twins had just crossed. Once the water hit that forecourt, there was no way back for the twins.

  From their position on the spotting platform, Pooh Bear and Stretch had guided the twins expertly through the maze, always one step ahead of the water chasing them.

  They now watched tensely as the two tiny figures of the twins raced out across the half-bridge at the base of the mini-city, arriving at the peak of the inverted pyramid.

  Julius got there first, clutching the Pillar. Huffing and puffing, Lachlan peered back up at the waterfalls chasing them.

  ‘We’re here!’ Julius yelled into his radio. ‘How about you, Jack!’

  His watch hit 2:31 a.m.

  DIEGO GARCIA (5TH VERTEX)

  Jack’s watch beeped as it struck 7:31 a.m.

  Clear curtains of free-flowing water continued to stream off the tongue of stone from which he hung. Beside him, Iolanthe had looped her belt over a handrung and strapped it round her right wrist to help her hang on. It was a smart move that Lily had copied.

  Jack pursed his lips in thought.

  There was only one way to do this, he figured, and that required doing something he wasn’t so happy doing: trusting Iolanthe.

  ‘I need your help!’ he yelled. ‘I have to swing up through that water curtain to plant the Pillar—but as soon as I lay the Pillar, the water’s gonna take me down into the abyss. I need you to hold my belt and catch me!’

  His eyes locked on hers. The beautiful British royal stared hack at him with her mesmerising green eyes, water dripping down her face. She was inscrutable. She gave nothing away. He couldn’t tell if she would help him or not.

  ‘Okay!’ she yelled back.

  ‘Right . . . ’ Jack said, unsure, but with no other choice. He needed an adult to hold him. Lily wasn’t strong enough.

  He shuffled to the very end of the stone tongue, directly underneath the pyramid’s peak.

  Into his radio: ‘Okay, Julius! On my mark! In three—’

  He glanced at Lily and wondered if this would be the last time he saw her.

  ‘—two—’

  LUNDY ISLAND (4TH VERTEX)

  Julius brought his Pillar up to within an inch of the peak of his pyramid. Behind him, the roar of the many waterfalls was deafening.

  ‘—one—mark!’

  Julius jammed the Pillar into its matching slot in the pyramid.

  DIEGO GARCIA (5TH VERTEX)

  With a heave that took all his strength, Jack swung himself up t
hrough the curtain of water flowing over the tongue of stone above him.

  He burst up through the flowing stream, water slamming into his face, opened his eyes and saw the peak of the pyramid right above him. He reached out and thrust his Pillar up into the pyramid’s peak.