The sniper—mortally wounded but not yet dead—unleashed more withering gunfire at Ezekiel, pinning him down.

‘Fuck! I can’t blow the charges!’ Ezekiel yelled in frustration. ‘I can’t stop Sphinx getting to the Throne!’

From his position on the carrier’s flight deck, Jack saw all of this: saw Ezekiel down at the base of the castle, taking cover as Sphinx’s rearguard sniper kept him pinned.

Then he looked up to see Sphinx and Mendoza appear again at the summit of the castle, at the base of the pinnacle leading up to the Throne.

Sphinx gripped the first handhold.

He was going to make a climb for it.

Rastor’s men fired at him, but their bullets whizzed harmlessly past Sphinx, protected as he was by his Warbler.

And suddenly Jack knew.

There was nothing to stop Sphinx.

He was going to get to the Throne, sit on it, and rule the world.

‘No . . .’ he gasped. ‘There has to be a way to stop him.’

He bit his lip, thinking hard, his mind racing.

And then, as he looked out at the magnificent castle in the centre of the gargantuan space, he noticed the pattern of its window-balconies.

‘The castle is the Tree of Life,’ he said aloud.

And then he whispered, ‘Life is rule, death is life,’ reciting the line that appeared on both Imhotep’s skull and on the metal wall they’d seen barring the Emperor’s Route.

Now, the Labyrinth performs its role, the Thoth glyphs on that metal wall had said.

In it, as outside it, Life precedes Death.

Ascend the pinnacle of Life or sit in the embrace of Death, it matters not to Omega.

The realisation hit Jack like a bolt of lightning.

‘There are two thrones in here. The Tree of Life is one throne. The Tree of Death is another . . .’ he said softly. ‘The Throne of the Tree of Death was the throne that the Emperor’s Route would have taken Sphinx to. But you can also reach it by going the long way round, through the whole Labyrinth. Only when you do it that way, Life precedes Death: the Life Throne comes first and the Death Throne comes later. And you can sit on either one to avert the Omega Event, since Omega doesn’t care.’

He recalled tracing a spiralling path around the tattooed map on Imhotep’s skull earlier:

The path he’d traced had gone right through the symbol of the Tree of Life at nine o’clock: where this Throne lay.

Jack blinked in shock.

There was another Throne that he could get to.

He was still in this.

He could figure out the details later.

Right now, he had to stop Sphinx from sitting on this one.

He looked desperately around himself, searching for something, anything, he could use to—

And he saw it.

Oh, Jack. Are you that crazy?

No choice.

No time.

Do it.