Mendoza snorted. ‘You really know nothing about this place, do you?’ He pointed up. ‘My master has a keen sense of history, and that up there is the most crucial examination in this labyrinth. For it is in that cage that one faces the ultimate judge and discovers if they are truly worthy.’

He uncocked the safety on his rifle—

—just as the golden cage lowered fully into the temple and with a subtle but heavy boom, touched down in the centre of the stone circle.

It was a breathtakingly beautiful thing.

Made entirely of gold, it was twenty feet high, with a gold pyramidal roof, four gold pillars and a thick gold floor. It hung from a superthick golden chain that reached straight up for two hundred feet before delving into the hole in the ceiling.

The arrival of the striking gold cage had made Mendoza pause.

He went on. ‘But you need not concern yourself with such matters, because you will not live to—’

‘You know,’ another voice said, cutting Mendoza off. ‘I’m really tired of the way you assholes give speeches.’

Mendoza whirled.

So did Zoe, Lily and Alby.

And each of their eyes widened in shock at who they saw standing there at the edge of the tower, at the top of its supersteep stairway.

Jack West Jr.

Wearing his helmet and back from the dead.

Mendoza swung his gun around but Jack was already moving.

He leapt forward, snatched the rifle by its barrel and used it to yank Mendoza around, causing the cardinal to go stumbling onto the floor of the golden cage.

Quick as a whip, Jack unleashed a blow with the butt of the rifle, knocking the cardinal out. Mendoza lay unconscious on the floor of the cage, bloody and still.

Alby just stood there, speechless.

But Zoe and Lily raced over to Jack and embraced him simultaneously.

Jack sagged in their joint grip, still breathless from scaling the steep staircase.

His helmet was a wreck: half-melted on one side, its shield streaked with dried fibreglass and splattered all over with blood.

And yet Jack was okay.

Still alive.

And back.

Near the destroyed cupola. Minutes earlier.

With a snort, Sphinx tosses Jack’s helmet to the ground and he and Mendoza hurry off toward the tall black tower, away from the cupola.

Like Zoe, Lily and Alby, they do not notice the broad round stone podium with the broken obelisk on it.

Mounted on its grey podium of stone, they have dismissed it as simply a nameless shrine that has been smashed by the falling of the cupola’s domed roof following the devastating explosion of the orbs.

They do not know that this ‘podium’ was until recently a shallow pool of water.

So Sphinx and Mendoza don’t hear the muffled whump come from within the podium under the obelisk.

Whump.

Whump.

They do not see the subtle but distinct vibrations come from inside it.