Wherever I am, it’s impervious to time. You say you’re seven?

Yes.

My own journey … it also began when I was seven. In fact, it was at seven that I first encountered evil.

Teach me, please! Tell me how it began for you.

I‘ll try. The memories … they’re very powerful, so vivid. I can still recall inhaling the scent of the rain forest, registering its heaviness in my lungs. I can hear its nocturnal symphony playing in my ears. And the Peruvian desert … as I recall the desolation of that awful Nazca plateau, I can almost feel the blood pooling in my extremities as the afternoon heat baked my skin in its searing embrace.

That was my childhood, Jacob, an existence spent in Mesoamerican jungles and on the harsh plateau of Nazca. My parents, Julius and Maria, your paternal grandparents, they had been archaeology students who had first met at Cambridge. Their love blossomed on their own journey as they set out to resolve the mystery of the Mayan calendar and its two thousand-year-old doomsday prophecy. Me? I was the result of their fateful union, born, like you, as destiny’s victim.

I don’t feel like a victim. Most of the time I feel like Superman.

Careful, son. Even Superman has his kryptonite. Although my Hunahpu genes were not as developed as yours must be, I also felt superior. By the age of seven I had grown into quite the brat, rebelling against everything my parents were attempting to teach me.

You said you encountered evil?

Yes. At the time we were living in a one-room, stucco dwelling in Pistè, a tiny village outside of Chichén Itzá. I remember the day it happened, a typical morning in the Gabriel clan. Julius had just grounded me for swapping a pair of his best binoculars for a baseball glove and ball, and I was furious, stomping and cussing up a storm. The moment my parents left for the ruins, I packed a small bag, my passport, and a few pesos borrowed from my mother’s purse—and I headed out to begin my life anew.

You ran away?

I had to. I felt boxed in, unable to cope, unable to just be myself. But I had a plan. Merida and its airport were seventy-five miles to the west. Somehow I would stow away on board a plane bound for America. Even though I was only seven, I had already aced my high-school equivalency test and was being recruited by several universities. If I could just get to the States, I knew I could survive.