Easton went next.

Jack and Smiley didn’t stop running as they came to the fallen obelisk and raced out across it, closely followed by Zoe.

Jack and Smiley leapt off the end of the horizontal obelisk onto the intact far section of the exit bridge.

When it happened.

The gigantic upside-down skyscraper of stone fell away from the ceiling of the cavern.

It was a momentous event, shocking in its sheer scale.

Weakened by the repeated impacts of Rastor’s rocket-propelled grenades, the great mass of stone—millions of tons of it, an awesomely heavy thing—tore away from the ceiling and fell.

It looked like it dropped in slow motion, but that was an illusion created by its size.

It dropped at an angle, tilting as it fell.

Standing on the far section of the exit bridge beside Lily, Easton and Smiley, Jack turned to look up at the sight.

It filled his vision.

His last two palemen, the other two silvermen, even that dying Omega monk embedded in the greystone on his bridge would all be taken down into the darkness with the great stalactite.

Then Jack glanced down . . .

. . . to see Zoe still running across the horizontal obelisk, with maybe seven feet to go.

It might as well have been a mile.

For as the gigantic inverted skyscraper of stone fell, it took the horizontal obelisk with it and in the blink of eye, Zoe was gone.

Jack lunged forward, diving for the edge of the bridge.

‘Zoe!’ he shouted.

But it was no use.

In that final terrifying split second, their eyes met and, for Jack, everything really did slow.

He saw the terror in his wife’s eyes, the horrific realisation that she wasn’t going to make it across and there wasn’t a damn thing anyone could do about it.

She was going to die.

And in the infinity of that moment, Jack saw the years they had spent at each other’s side.

Studying together under Wizard at Trinity College.

Seeing her at that meeting of nations in County Kerry, Ireland, in 1996, just after Lily had been born.

The time she and Lily had coloured the tips of their hair in matching hot pink.

Morning coffees, just Zoe and him, on the porch of their desert farm in Australia.

The time Zoe had attended the careers day at Lily’s school dressed in full combat uniform.

Her gorgeous Irish blue eyes.

The freckles on her nose.

Her beautiful smile.

And then she fell out of his sight, along with the obelisk, replaced by the immense bulk of the skyscraper rushing by in front of Jack with a tremendous whoosh.

It was only blind luck that Jack and the others weren’t taken down as well, but they were just out of range as the tower streaked by.