All Rastor had to do was run out the clock and hold them off till 5:06 a.m., now only sixteen minutes away.

As more bullets slammed into the altar beside him, Jack assessed the space around the castle and below Rastor’s position.

Far below the castle, the bridge and the pylon, he saw sandy yellow ground, which heaved and rolled with barely perceptible waves, like windblown ripples on a lake.

Jack had seen this before. Quicksand.

Don’t fall in, he thought grimly.

One other thing of note was happening as Jack arrived at the site of the second throne.

The cavern’s soaring domed roof was opening.

Jack hadn’t seen this occur at the other throne and it was quite a sight.

The huge hemispherical greystone ceiling above the black castle was retracting in eight gigantic pieces. Those pieces withdrew down into the rim of the space’s high circular wall.

As the roof retracted ever further, the brilliant pre-dawn sky could be seen outside, purple-pink in colour and shot through with high-altitude clouds.

Seen underneath the eerie discoloured sky, the dark and angular castle somehow seemed even more fearsome.

If Jack had been outside the dome, up on the desert floor, the sight would have been perhaps even more amazing.

Just as the previous dome had risen up from the seabed, this dome had, moments before, risen up from beneath the sandy desert floor.

Located about ten miles due east of the Labyrinth’s entrance gates, the great grey dome had pushed up through the desert soil like some kind of subterranean leviathan.

Sand and rocks had fallen off it, tumbling to the ground as the mighty greystone dome emerged from the Earth and rose to a colossal height until it stood there on the barren plain like an oversized sports stadium, unimaginably huge and magnificent.

As the dome opened fully to the sky and Rastor’s tracer rounds impacted all around them, Sphinx shouted to Jack: ‘Well! We’re out of ammo and pinned down! Got a clever solution for this, Captain?’

Jack looked from Sphinx to the wide-open roof and the dawn sky above it to Rastor in his sniper’s nest and then back to Sphinx.

He checked the time: 4:51.

Fifteen minutes.

‘No!’ he called back.

No, he didn’t have a solution, and time was running out.

New York City, U.S.A.

Iolanthe and Nobody roared through the night-time canyons of New York City in their chopper, chased by the two military attack helicopters that had arrived above Central Park just after Iolanthe had snatched the Blue Bell from within the fallen obelisk.

Nobody gunned the throttle, guiding their Jet Ranger at crazy speed through the empty city streets.

In the passenger seat, Iolanthe gripped the Blue Bell—the unique and precious Siren bell that could wake millions from their slumber—while peering anxiously back at their pursuers.