“How do we get across?” Jake asked loudly, risking being heard but needing an answer.

“The question is not how, Jacob … but who.”

Jake frowned. He must not have heard that correctly. “Say that again.”

The answer came back stuttering. “Since this is … river of time, only someone outside of time … cross safely.”

A sharp spat of static cut off the rest, then the phone went dead, the last of the battery’s charge gone. Jake closed the phone but held it.

“That didn’t make any sense,” Pindor said. “If your father’s watch isn’t the Key—”

Jake shook his head, realizing the truth. “It’s just a compass. Engineered and imbued with alchemical power to lead us to the lost timestones. But that’s all it does.”

He recalled his journey to this land. When he jumped from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, the compass must have drawn him here, pulling him toward the timestones. The magnetite wristbands then drew the others in his wake. But, in the end, it wasn’t the watch that had let them all pass through the barrier unscathed.

Only someone outside of time …

The truth turned Jake cold. They had all followed him. There was only one person here outside of time.

“The Key of Time is not my father’s watch,” he said, staring dumbfounded at the others, knowing it to be true. “It’s me.”

28

A SANDY GRAVE

Being buried alive seemed like a poor escape plan.

Jake lay on his back in a shallow pit, hastily scooped out of the sand. The milling bodies of the other captives hid their actions. Sand already covered him from the neck down. To either side, his three friends faced the same predicament. Pindor fidgeted as Nefertiti pushed a mound across his friend’s neck.

“Quit wiggling like a sandworm!” Nefertiti scolded.

“It itches. I’ve got sand up my …” He stammered, blushing. “Up everywhere.”

“You’ll survive.”

Jake hoped that was true. Turning his head, he shared a worried look with Marika. She seemed just as doubtful about this plan. Next to her, Bach’uuk simply sprawled flat on his back, resigned, knowing they had no other options.

If they were to stop the Skull King, Jake had to attempt to cross the storm barrier. To do that, he needed a distraction, some way to escape the noose around the camp. Nefertiti had come up with this plan. It was crazy, but he couldn’t come up with anything better.

The princess returned from the stack of desert survival gear salvaged from the Breath of Shu. She dropped to a knee in the sand next to Jake. “Quick now. Some of the guards are getting suspicious.”

She reached down and pulled a leather hood over Jake’s face. With sand weighing down his body, he had a momentary flare of claustrophobia, as if she were pulling a death shroud over his head.

Then her hands adjusted a set of goggles built into the leather hood. She fitted it over his eyes, and firelight flared as he peered through a diffracted spyglass built into the garment. It was one of the same hoods used by Nefertiti’s hunting party to ambush the velociraptors. It had allowed her and her hunters to hide under the sand.