As his men’s flashlights illuminated the buildings nearest to them—towers surmounted with obelisks and exotic-looking temples—Sphinx inhaled sharply.

‘We made it,’ he said.

Mendoza was similarly awestruck. ‘Good Lord, we did it.’

Sphinx aimed their most powerful light across the space, illuminating the incredible structure in its middle: a spectacular white-and-silver castle with many spires extending out from it like branches on a tree.

In the dark shadows, he saw the pinnacle reaching upward from the summit of the castle.

‘The Life Throne . . .’ he said softly.

Aiming their flashlights further upward, they saw that the entire city-maze—a space that must have been at least a mile across—was covered by an immense hemispherical dome. All by itself, this dome would have been an architectural wonder, but next to the city and the castle that it covered, it seemed merely functional.

Sphinx stepped forward . . .

. . . landing on a trigger stone in the floor . . .

. . . and setting off an ancient alien mechanism that literally made the earth shake.

THE RISING OF THE LIFE THRONE

AND THE CITY-MAZE

A thunderous rumbling sound echoed out from deep within the Earth.

The ground shuddered so hard that Sphinx and Mendoza were almost thrown off their feet.

They looked all around themselves, unsure but also excited.

And then they felt the ground on which they stood begin to rise.

It wasn’t just the rooftop they were standing on.

It was the whole space—the city-maze, the castle and the dome—all rising as one on some gargantuan mechanism buried in the ground beneath it all.

Indeed, under the vast space, three gigantic pistons built aeons ago by a long-lost civilisation, pushed the whole thing upward, out of the seabed and up through the waters of the Red Sea.

First the great dome created a giant bulge in the seafloor as it pushed up mud and dirt.

Then, with a monstrous rush of water, it breached the surface of the Red Sea—the huge grey dome rising out of the waves in between the oil rig up there and the Russian aircraft carrier group.

It was night-time outside and massive waves rolled outward from the emerging dome, making even the mighty aircraft carrier rock on the surface.

Seawater cascaded off the dome’s outer flanks, running in rivulets down its surface, glistening in the moonlight.

The oil rig—the Red Horizon Star-4—was tossed every which way.

It swayed wildly. Some men on its helipad and lower levels were thrown clear off it into the sea, so rough was the rocking.

Its anchor cable, long attached to a concrete plug in the seabed, was torn free and the rig rocked on the mighty waves created by the emergence of the colossal structure.