Spode was only steps away, sprawled on a bed of neon-orange mushrooms inside a topiary crypt. Olivia could still see his aura, but it was rapidly fading.

“He’s alive, but not for long,” she said quietly.

Harlan released her hand. “Don’t move. I can’t risk losing sight of you. The fire is moving fast.”

She nodded her understanding and watched him go into the crypt. Cautiously he leaned down and turned Spode onto his back. Spode swallowed a mouthful of neon-orange mushroom and peered up at Harlan with eyes that were already glazing over.

“The oracle was right,” he whispered. “She said I was a dead man walking in a dying garden.”

“My mother,” Olivia said.

“She did something with the camera right before I grabbed it. It was as if she took my picture, but I felt a shock. I realized later that’s when she murdered me. Just took a year to finish the job.”

“Anything you want to tell me for the Foundation archives?” Harlan asked. “I can already promise you that you’re going to be famous. You’ll become part of the legend of Vortex.”

Spode grunted. “So will you and LeClair. You’re my last two kills.”

“Is that right?” Harlan asked.

“You’ll never find your way out of here, not without the nav-flash. The fire will get to you long before a search party. Just a couple of dead people walking through my dying garden.”

“Oh, right,” Harlan said. “About your navigation device.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out an artifact that looked identical to the one Spode had tossed over the burning topiaries. “Your friend, Barrow, gave me his. He also told me there is more than one way out of the maze.”

“Barrow.” Spode closed his eyes. “Can’t trust anyone these days, can you?”

The last of Spode’s aura winked out. Olivia knew he was gone.

Harlan picked up the recorder, dropped it into the pocket of his jacket and walked out of the crypt. “Ready to leave?”

Olivia looked at the body of the man who had murdered her mother. She turned back to Harlan.

“Yes,” she said. “But how?”

He activated the small navigation artifact. A beam of light appeared. “I used this to find the path through the maze. It will guide us to the nearest emergency exit.”

“There really is more than one way out?”

“Yes.”

He aimed the navigation device down an aisle of hot greenery. They started forward.

“Why the gun?” Olivia said. “You knew it wouldn’t work in here.”

“Distraction. People see what they expect to see, and they usually go with it.”

“Spode saw the pistol and concluded that a man who carried a gun into this maze wasn’t going to be much of a problem.”

“Something like that.”

“And the knife?”