‘Fine. At least plug your air hose into your nostrils and set your regulator. Remember, there’s no oxygen on Xibalba, just carbon dioxide.’

Breathers in place, they exit the vessel and head for the lake’s edge. Jacob points to the domed facility on their right. ‘The posthumans’ genetics lab.’

‘Yes, but what happened to it?’

‘I don’t know, but I get the feeling there’s a lot the Guardian prefer we didn’t know.’ Jacob stops at the silvery shoreline and closes his eyes.

Several minutes pass, and then, a mile out, the once-tranquil surface begins to froth.

Dominique watches an enormous wake build, rising higher as it moves inland.

‘Okay, you handle it.’ She hurries back to the pod as the head of a monstrous alien being emerges, its viperous head dripping silvery ooze as it looms thirty feet over Jacob.

The genetically enhanced biological resembles a monstrous alien serpent, the creature’s girth as wide as a train, its skull as large as the mixer on a cement truck. The beast regards Jacob with two of its cybernetic eyes—vertical slits of gold, surrounded by incandescent crimson corneas.

A thunderous snort causes Jacob to jump backward as the serpent expels a stench-laden breath through its synthetic nostrils. The frightening jowls part, revealing rows of ebony, scalpel-sharp teeth.

Jacob returns the creature’s gaze, refusing to yield. A surreal moment passes as man and beast contemplate one another—

—and an overwhelming sense of déjà vu washes over Jacob’s brain.

The suddenly docile creature lowers its head to the ground, keeping its right eye focused on the twin.

Jacob stands. He steps forward, placing both palms against the creature’s oily, scalelike emerald green feathers, registering the being’s deep, intense reverberations of breath—

—as a white haze envelops his mind …

*

Jacob’s consciousness soars across time and space.

He remote-views the Nile River.

Moves inside the hidden chambers of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Enters the Queen’s Chamber.

Gazes up through a viewing shaft, its thirty-nine-degree angle aimed precisely at the brightest star in the evening sky … Sirius.

‘Jake!’

The sudden intrusion startles him. He opens his eyes, his ears buzzing with energy.

To his surprise, he is lying on his back. His mother is by his side, the alien sky now filled with stars, the red super-giant directly overhead.

The great head of the alien serpent remains onshore, the rest of its 110-foot-long body still submerged in the exotic silvery liquid.

‘Jake, what happened? You’ve been unconscious for hours. Are you okay?’

He sits up, still in a daze. Dominique notices that his entire body is trembling.

‘My God …’ He stares at the creature, tears forming in his azure-blue eyes.

‘Jake? What is it?’

‘Those bastards … those manipulating fubishitting sons of bitches … they lied to us.’

‘Who lied? The Guardian?’