The thrumming grew and grew and grew, intensifying to a mighty crescendo until with a resounding boom of ungodly scale . . .

. . . a bolt of incandescent white light shot up from the pinnacle and lanced away into the sky at many times the speed of light.

It was a stunning thing to behold.

As he saw it shoot skyward, Jack realised that this was Einstein’s quantum pulse: informing the advanced beings who had built this place that the inhabitants of Earth were worthy of continued existence.

But then, as he sat on the throne, enveloped in the raging wind and looking up at the spectacular quantum pulse, Jack felt the light shoot through him.

His body spasmed.

His teeth clenched.

It felt like every fibre of his being was being disassembled and then reassembled by the light: ripped, wrenched, jerked, pulled, yanked, torn apart and then put back together, when suddenly—

—silence.

He was in the black void again, soundless and empty, the alternate plane of existence or whatever it was.

The roar of the wind was gone.

The blazing whiteness of the light was gone.

The electrifying of his body was gone.

And in a distant corner of his mind, Jack wondered if Sphinx had been telling him the truth, that he had overlooked something, something important he’d been supposed to do before he’d sat on the Throne of the Tree of Death.

He wondered: Am I dead? Did I just die?

Life is rule. Death is life.

It was the same voice as before, deep and authoritative.

Tell me, am I dead?

You are being reborn.

Reborn as what?

As you but different.

How will I be different?

All will obey you.

There came another flash of light and everything went white and . . .

. . . Jack blinked . . .

. . . and suddenly he was back in the real world, on the summit of the pinnacle, sitting on the throne in the sculpted arms of the goldman, underneath the purple desert sky.

The wind stopped blowing.

The otherworldly light went out.

Sphinx lay on the silver floor in front of the throne, staring up at Jack in wide-eyed, absolute, petrified horror.

‘Oh, my God . . .’ he stammered. ‘You . . . you did it. You stopped Omega.’

Jack breathed in hard and deep.

‘Bet your ass I did it,’ he said.

Sphinx was still gaping at him in awe.

‘Please, I must know, do you feel it? The power? Do you feel it?’

To be honest, Jack didn’t feel any different, at least not from how he’d felt before he’d sat on the throne. His broken nose and cheekbone still hurt like hell.

All will obey you, the disembodied voice had said in the black void.

Jack thought about that.

Then he said to Sphinx, ‘Stand up.’

And Sphinx, to his own evident surprise, instantly stood.

‘Put your hands by your sides,’ Jack said.

Sphinx immediately did so, his eyes bulging with astonishment.