‘And it looks like that’s exactly where the bad guys are headed with Aloysius and Alby,’ he said. ‘Well, what are we waiting for, Rufus, let’s go after our friends. And maybe in the process, find out exactly what this surface point to the Labyrinth is.’

The two pilots hopped onto the only vehicle in the area that still worked: Jack’s abandoned motorcycle-with-sidecar.

The bike kicked up sand and gravel as it peeled away from the gates of the Labyrinth, leaving the ruined battlefield behind it as it raced westward toward the Red Sea coast.

Worldwide

26 December

In the hours after Jack entered the Supreme Labyrinth and the various players left the battlefield outside its gates, Sphinx’s forces moved steadily around the world, ringing Siren bells and putting more major cities to sleep.

Sweeping across the United States: Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston.

In Central and South America: Mexico City, Panama City, Rio de Janeiro.

Europe: Zurich, Geneva, Lyon and Marseille. Munich, Vienna, Budapest.

Asia: Hong Kong, Macau, Taipei, Manila, Jakarta.

And Africa: Tangiers, Lagos, Nairobi.

They were all deliberate, calculated sweeps from city to city, designed to silence the power centres of each region.

People cowered in terror, fearing that their metropolis might be next.

The entire internet was shut down. Television signals had been hacked using the Emergency Broadcast Satellite System so that every single TV set in the world showed the same sinister phrase:

YOU

WILL

WAKE

AS

SLAVES

Various military forces around the world also made sudden moves.

Sensing opportunity, the armies of Brazil, Thailand and Venezuela seized all the government offices in their countries.

A Chinese strike force quickly stormed Taiwan, only to see both the local population and their own men drop as a bell was rung over Taipei shortly after.

And an entire Russian aircraft carrier group sailed from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea.

The Russian government said the manoeuvre was simply to protect some Russian-owned oil rigs located in the northern half of the sea.

Western military observers—those who were still awake—labelled it an opportunistic play by Russia to use the current crisis of the sleeping cities to seize control of the Suez Canal, something Russia had long desired.

But those in the secret royal world knew differently.

Aware of Sphinx’s historic mission at the Supreme Labyrinth at a location somewhere in or near Egypt, they also knew that the Russian military—and all its nuclear missiles and hardware—was commanded by officers loyal to him.

And since they now knew that the Supreme Labyrinth was somewhere near there, they saw the arrival of the Russian carrier group in the Red Sea as a move in preparation for Sphinx’s glorious emergence from the maze as the undisputed ruler of the planet.

In the United States, with the internet and the airwaves down, rumours flew among the citizens hiding in towns and suburbs.