Zoe, Lily and Alby edged back while Jack stepped onto the golden cage, gripping Mendoza’s assault rifle.

Cardinal Mendoza still lay slumped to one side of the cage, groaning, unconscious.

Jack wasn’t sure how the cage operated, but after years of encountering ancient tunnel systems and booby traps, he had an idea.

He stepped onto the image of the All-Seeing Eye in its centre . . .

. . . and the cage rose.

Against the immensity of that cavern, the gold cage looked tiny as it was lifted by its chain off the top of the black tower and up toward the hole in the ceiling.

And then, with Jack West Jr standing on it, the golden cage passed into the ceiling.

Fifth Test of Worth: The Colossus

The Chamber of Judgement

29 December, 0432 hours

34 minutes till Omega

Jack rose into a truly splendid space.

It was a slim, narrow cavern but unbelievably high.

And dominating one wall of it was an enormous—enormous—statue of a goldman.

Jesus, Jack thought. It must be as tall as a forty-storey building.

His cage kept rising, infinitesimally small against the gigantic scale of the statue.

It rose past the statue’s mighty golden legs.

It was, quite literally, a colossus.

Jack found himself thinking of the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; indeed, it was the first of the Wonders that he had found. He remembered discovering its giant head inside a booby-trapped cavern in Sudan.

He wondered if, like many of the ancient objects he had found whose original reasons-for-being had been lost, the Colossus of Rhodes had been built in honour of this statue.

Only this colossus was an order of magnitude larger.

Jack’s cage kept ascending, slowly and ominously.

It rose past the huge golden statue’s waist and chest and neck until finally the cage came level with the colossus’s shining gold head . . .

. . . where it stopped.

There was no sound.

Jack West Jr stood before the gargantuan golden head, gripping his rifle, dwarfed by its sheer massiveness. The eyeless head, with its fearsome bird-like beak, must have been four storeys tall.

Aware of what had happened to others who had looked at a goldman, Jack kept his eyes downcast.

He had never felt so small—

Suddenly a piercing sensation shot through his head and he reeled, dropping the gun.

He couldn’t tell if it was some kind of ultra-high-frequency soundwave or a shot of electricity. He winced in pain and clutched at his ears.

At his feet, Cardinal Mendoza also evidently experienced the same sensation, because he suddenly lurched awake with a shout, wailing as he grabbed his ears.

Jack heard a rising, intensifying noise and abruptly there came a blinding flash of light and he squeezed his eyes shut as the noise reached a crescendo and—

Silence.

Total silence. No more soundwave or electric shock or intensifying noise.

Just . . . nothing.

Jack opened his eyes and found that he was somewhere else.