“You mean someone’s intestines are in this?”
I plucked the lid off and held the flare closer. Whatever the jar had once contained had dissolved into some sort of goo. Maybe it was flammable. I flicked the flare, so a spark dropped into the jar, and flames rushed up.
A new torch.
“Jake! That was a priceless ancient artefact.”
“Right. Sorry.”
“Try not to touch anything, OK? Archaeologists need to come down here to catalogue everything and take photographs and—”
“You mean, after we’ve found the mummy whose guts these were and stolen it?”
She either didn’t hear or chose to ignore me as she carried on her study of the grave goods. I wanted to protect the tomb, too; the more time I’d spent in Egypt, the more interested I’d become in its history. But the fact was, we were here to rob the place. We had to, for Mum and Dad, but since we were stealing the mummy, why not pinch a few other bits and bobs too? There was no way anyone would let us keep any of this stuff – two kids who’d smashed up the place and killed a rare species of giant snake. And besides, no one else knew what was or wasn’t there…
That’s how I reasoned it then, anyway. But the truth was, the urge had taken control again. I’d forgotten all about my promise to Mum and Dad.
I grabbed a handful of jewels from a basket.
“Finders keepers,” I muttered.
I was about to shove them in my desert suit when my hand froze. Above us, something moved in the tunnel. I heard the crunch of boots stepping over rubble.
“Someone’s up there,” I whispered.
A rush of wind caused the flare to flicker in my grip. I dropped the jewels back into their basket. We had something far more important to steal.
“Come on,” I said.
Pan followed me into the next chamber of the tomb. This room was packed with grave goods too, although not much of it was gold. There were baskets filled with folded white robes and leather flip-flops. One wall was piled up with wooden furniture – thrones inlaid with ivory, painted wooden chests. Another was stacked with weapons: spears, shields, battleaxes and bronze daggers.
Only one thing here was made of gold. One big thing in the middle of the room.
A solid gold box, the size of a large bath, sat on a granite plinth. There were carvings across the side – Osiris and the winged figure of Isis that I recognized from Mum’s amulet. A golden lid sat half-on and half-off the box.
“Another treasure chest?” I asked.
“No, Jake!” Pan was so excited she could barely talk. “That’s a sarcophagus. The outer box that holds the coffin and the mummy.”
She may as well have picked up one of the daggers and stabbed me in the heart, because as soon as she said that, I knew something was badly wrong.
It didn’t make sense that the lid was half-off the sarcophagus.
I edged closer, praying I was wrong. But when I looked inside, I felt a cold chill of failure. What I saw meant that our parents were as good as dead.
What I saw was nothing.
The sarcophagus was empty.
The coffin was gone.
22
“Where is it?”
Pan’s cry rang around the burial chamber. “Where’s the coffin?”
She took the torch from me and leaned into the sarcophagus, as if a closer inspection might reveal something. The flickering light showed a thick sheen of dust covering the base of the golden box.
She turned and kicked a pile of grave goods, forgetting in her rage that they were priceless ancient artefacts. Her curses rang around the burial chamber’s painted walls.
“Kit got here before us,” she said. “Or the black suit. One of them took the coffin. We have to find it.”
She sounded convinced, but that made no sense. No one could drag a whole coffin away alone. We’d been beaten to it, but not by either of them. Something else was going on here.
Reaching into the sarcophagus, I ran a finger across its base.
“It’s full of dust,” I said.
“Great, Jake. We found dust. Let’s try to swap that for Mum and Dad’s lives.”
She was about to kick the grave goods again, but stopped. “What about it?”
“Don’t you see? Whatever was in this sarcophagus was taken a long time ago. Someone else took it, not Kit or the black suit.”
For someone so smart, it took Pan a few seconds to realize what I meant. When she did, she grabbed me, her rage replaced by a massive grin. “So we could still find it.”
It was a long shot, but it was something. We weren’t expert tomb robbers, archaeologists or historians. But we’d made it this far. Maybe there was still a chance.
I crouched, my eyes drawn to a small mound of dirt, like a molehill, by the side of the sarcophagus’s plinth. I pulled off a glove and rubbed the dirt between my fingers. It was fresh and warm. Someone had dug there, and recently. There was another hole on the other side of the plinth, and another at the corner. But the room was full of treasure. Why would someone dig for more?
“What are they?” Pan said.
I got down lower, trying to see into one of the holes. “There’s something down there,” I muttered.
I slid my hand inside. “It’s small, metal…”
I don’t know what I expected – treasure of some sort, I guess. What I brought out was neither ancient nor beautiful.
“A bomb?”
It was one of Kit’s explosives, or at least it looked like the device Kit had used to blast our way into the pyramid. There were at least a dozen piles of dirt around the chamber. Was one of these buried in each of them?
“What’s it doing here?” Pan asked.
She snatched it from my hand and the screen flickered to life. A keypad appeared, and a countdown: 25 minutes; 24 minutes, 59 seconds; 24 minutes, 58 seconds…
This was not good at all.
“Jake?” Pan said. “Can we get out of here in twenty-five minutes?”
We had no idea how we were going to get out at all, let alone so fast.
“Wait,” Pan said. “I know the code. I saw Kit type it into the bomb outside. Maybe it will stop the countdown.”
“This is a different bomb, though.”
She tried anyway, typing four numbers into the screen.
ACCESS DENIED
She swore, tried again.
ACCESS DENIED
“Let me try.”
I took the device and was about to type random numbers when a voice roared across the burial chamber.
“Do not touch that!”
The black suit stood in the entrance, silhouetted against the dying light of the torch. His mask muffled his voice, so it was hard to hear him properly. His words, though, were deep and urgent. He wore a utility belt with gadgets like Kit’s, and digital information crackled across the corners of his smart-goggles, which were darker than ours, and more like swimming goggles.
His black combat suit was thick with armour padding, making the figure appear bulky, almost clumsy. But I’d seen how fast he was at the museum. There wasn’t much point in trying to run. And besides, where would we run?
I raised the bomb. “Get back or I’ll throw it.”
The black suit edged back.
“No!” he barked. He reached to his mask. “Listen to me, look…”
“Keep your hands down!” Pan warned. “You think we’re stupid? You’ve got weapons all over that fancy outfit. You put all these bombs here.”
“No…”
“Don’t believe him,” another voice said.
Kit stood on the other side of the chamber. He’d lost his rucksack and gloves, and his hands looked oddly clean against the dust and dirt that coated his camouflage suit. Fresh cuts glistened across his face. However he’d got here, it looked like his journey had been as tough as ours.
“There are bombs buried all over this place,” I said.
“Of course,” Kit replied. “He planted them. The Cult of Osi
ris wants to destroy all this to protect the secret of the tomb.”
“Don’t listen to him,” the black suit growled.
“I know that type of explosive,” Kit continued. His voice was stern, deadly serious. “You have to key in an override sequence.”
I glanced at the device.
23 minutes, 30 seconds…
“Do not listen,” the black suit insisted. “You’ve typed in the code wrong twice. A third will reset the timer to five minutes and you can’t deactivate it.”
“You know that because they’re your bombs,” Pan said. “Kit only had three, and the other two are still on his belt.”
“He must have had others in his bag,” the black suit replied. “Listen to me. There is no deactivation code on those devices, no override.”
“He’s trying to stall you,” Kit said, edging closer.
“But … he’d kill himself too,” I said.
“He’ll do anything, Jake, to stop this tomb being discovered. That is all the cult exists for, to protect this secret. Listen to me, son. The override sequence will remotely deactivate the others too.”
22 minutes, 12 seconds…
Who should we trust? Kit, who had helped us, or the black suit, who had attacked us and kidnapped my parents? Usually that would be a no-brainer. Only I’d just seen something.
A glove. A sand-coloured glove, high on a pile of grave goods.
It was covered in dirt.
I gripped the device tighter. “Kit, where are your gloves?”
“What? They tore. I was better off without them.”
“Tore? They’re made of BioSteel, the toughest material there is. And your hands are clean. You took the gloves off in the last few minutes.”
“What were you trying to hide on the gloves?” Pan asked. “Maybe the dirt from digging those holes to plant the bombs?”
“Kids,” Kit said, “don’t do anything stupid. That person took your parents. I’m trying to help you get them back. We still can. You just have to do the right thing.”
Instead, I did something stupid again.
Like, really stupid.
I was convinced that Kit had planted the bombs around the tomb. I didn’t trust the black suit either, but I believed him when he said the explosives would go off no matter what. Pan and I had to get out of these caves, and we had no idea how. I guessed the black suit had a way, but he wouldn’t help us if he had time not to. So I decided not to give him time.
I punched four more random numbers into the screen.
The countdown changed.
4 minutes, 59 seconds…
I hurled the device at Kit and grabbed Pan, and then we were running, charging towards the black suit.
“Why did you do that?” he yelled.
“Just get us out of here!” I screamed. “We have five minutes! You can get us out, can’t you?”
We ran to the dead snake. The black suit pulled what looked like a toy pistol from his utility belt and fired it at the hole in the ceiling. A wire shot from the gun and a metal dart dug deep into the rock. He clipped the weapon to his belt.
“Grab on!” he barked.
There was no point arguing. Whoever this guy was, he was our only hope of getting out. We grasped his shoulders and the line began to pull us all up.
“But why?” Pan said. “Why would Kit blow up the tomb?”
“I don’t know yet,” the black suit replied as we rose. “We’ve been trying to stop him. Now you’ve done it for him, Jake.”
Pan scrambled through the hole in the ceiling, grabbed my arm and helped me through. “Come on,” she urged.
The black suit unclipped the line from his belt. At the same time, he twisted his body and kicked his legs, firing himself up through the hole. I’d never seen anything like it, not even in Olympic gymnastics.
Who was this person?
“Go!” he yelled.
We staggered down the tunnel, past the shattered painting of Osiris.
“This leads back to the pit,” Pan wheezed. “It’s blocked, there’s no other way out.”
“Please tell me you have a plan!” I yelled at the black suit. “That was my plan: for you to have a plan.”
“There’s always a plan,” the black suit replied. “If you clear your mind and think.”
There was no panic in the muffled voice behind the mask. “Remember the wind?” he asked.
“The wind…” I said. “Yes, there was a breeze through the caves. Maybe it’s coming from a crack in a wall.”
“We’ve only got two minutes,” Pan said. “We won’t find it in time.”
“We don’t have to,” the black suit replied. “Torch.”
Light shone from the side of his goggles. He directed the beam at the ceiling. “They will.”
“The bats?”
“If they fly in,” the black suit said, “they fly out.”
Before I could stop him, he tore my comms bud from my ear, and then Pan’s. He pressed them together, causing a scream of electric feedback so sharp that I felt it in my bones.
The bats went berserk, flapping and writhing. One flew down and swooped away. All at once the rest followed and a screeching darkness fell. They swirled and swooped around us. Leathery wings flapped at my head. Claws scratched my back. Furry bodies smacked into my face.
They were on the move, a black river rushing down the cave. We ran among them, swatting them away from our faces.
“Stay with them!” the black suit called.
Pan screamed as claws caught her hair. I couldn’t believe how many there were, everywhere at once. The sound was like breaking glass.
Now something even louder boomed around the tunnel, a blast as loud as cannon fire. The ground jolted and we staggered forward. I recovered my balance but something slammed against my back and sent me tumbling.
A blast of energy had rushed through the cave, knocking us over like skittles. Rocks fell from the roof, shattering around me.
“What was that?” I yelled.
“The bloody bomb, of course!” Pan cried.
Another explosion shook the walls and more rocks fell. The other bombs were detonating.
“Get up!” the black suit hollered. “Get up and move!”
Pan helped me scramble up as blasts echoed around the cave. Each new explosion caused the ground to shake, and sent us staggering.
“Keep going!” the black suit roared. “Don’t look back.”
Of course I looked back. The roof was caving in!
“Go!” I screamed.
My legs ached from the effort of running and my heart was out of control, but fear and adrenaline kept me going. I shot another look over my shoulder. The darkness was chasing us. The cave-in was getting closer.
“There! Look!”
The bats had thinned into a stream, flowing through a crack high in the rock. They filled the exit, forcing their way to freedom. The black suit shoved me up towards it, but I resisted.
“Pan!”
“Just go!” my sister screamed.
She was right; there was no time to argue about who went first. I was the closest, and my speed would decide whether the others survived.
Scrambling up, I drove myself among the bats. They scratched my face, tore at my chest and neck. I managed to force an arm through the crack, grasped rock on the other side, and pulled.
I burst out among a swirl of bats and sand and curses, into the desert and the night. Scrabbling around, I saw that I’d fallen through a ridge of rock, the cave roof jutting from the desert floor.
I grabbed Pan’s hand as it reached through the crack, and tugged until she tumbled into my arms. The black suit followed, diving headfirst into the sand. A second later the crack filled with rocks, and the bats stopped appearing. The caves had collapsed.
We lay in the sand, enjoying the feeling of not being dead. Fires blazed in every part of my body. My head felt as if someone was trying to punch a way out of my skull.
The black suit lay on his
back, breathing hard into his mask.
Pan and I rose to our knees, gasping and leaning against each other. We were fifty metres from the Great Sphinx, looking back towards the pyramids.
The Giza Plateau was shaking.
We watched in disbelief as zigzag cracks spread around the pyramids. The cracks widened, letting out thin streams of smoke. The tremors across the desert floor grew stronger and the pyramids swayed like ships on a choppy sea.
A floodlight at the base of the Great Pyramid collapsed. The quaking ground caused it to break-dance, so its beam spun around the pyramid’s side. It flashed glimpses of a stone block falling down the pyramid – one of the pyramid’s stone blocks. It tumbled like a Slinky down the side and thumped to the sand. Now another, then another.
Thump, thump, thump.
Security guards fled, shouting frightened questions and frantic commands. And then, the light stopped dancing.
The blocks stopped falling and the ground stopped shaking.
A thick plume of smoke and dust rose over the plateau, engulfing the pyramids and rising high into the night. Beneath the Giza Plateau, the lost tomb was destroyed.
“It’s … it’s gone,” Pan gasped.
But I could only think about my parents, and Kit. The whole time, he’d been using us to find the tomb, just to destroy it. Why?
At least someone could give us answers. I turned to confront the black suit, but the words caught in my throat.
He was crying.
His chest heaved as he stared through cracked goggles at the smoke and dust cloud, the site of the lost tomb we’d just blown up. He spoke between gulping, gasping sobs. The words grew clearer as he reached and pulled off his mask.
It had, without doubt, been the strangest day of my life. But compared to what happened next, everything up to then seemed normal.
The black suit tossed the mask away and looked down at me.
“Mum?” I said.
Her eyes remained on the plateau, wet with tears. “I knew we should have gone to Cornwall,” she said.
23
The day you discover your mum isn’t the boring person you thought she was but is an expert ninja tomb robber – that’s a big day.
Jake Atlas and the Tomb of the Emerald Snake Page 10