And then the water was nipping at his heels and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to outrun it, but then suddenly he came to level ground and he dived full-length onto it and—amazingly—the body of rising water that had been about to catch him suddenly abated, stopped, pulled back, just below this section of level ground.

Jack gasped with both relief and exhaustion.

He’d reached sea level.

He let his head fall against the ground.

In the heavy silence that followed, he heard footsteps in the darkness ahead of him: the sounds of his rivals racing away into this second half of the Labyrinth, but now in a new order.

Rastor and his Serbian troops.

Then Sphinx and Mendoza.

And then Ezekiel and one remaining monk.

All still ahead of Jack, but no longer by very much.

He was back in the game.

Jack looked back at the lapping waves of seawater filling the tunnel behind him, blocking it off from any more contenders but also from his teammates.

Sure, he was back in the game, but now he was in it totally and completely alone.

The Red Horizon Star-4

Thirty minutes earlier

Around the same time that Jack arrived at the megastadium and looked out over the city-maze within it, a Russian transport chopper was flying toward the oil rig known as the Red Horizon Star-4.

The chopper had taken off a few minutes earlier from the temporary airfield on the shore.

Inside it were Alby Calvin and Aloysius Knight, flex-cuffed and guarded, prisoners of the Knights of the Golden Eight.

Having been held in their cages at the airfield for two nights, they were now being taken to the oil rig.

The chopper flew low and fast across the short stretch of turquoise water between land and rig.

Even though it was a big helicopter, it looked positively tiny as it passed over the gargantuan megastadium that had risen up from the waves of the Red Sea during the night.

Both Alby and Aloysius peered in awe at the colossal grey ring-wall and the many buildings of the city-maze. The glittering gold Throne of Life poking up from its exact centre looked absolutely majestic.

Alby even glimpsed tiny armed figures racing across one of the bridges down there.

‘Shit just got real,’ he said softly.

‘You can say that again,’ Aloysius agreed.

Minutes later, the Russian chopper landed on the helipad of the Red Horizon Star-4 and Alby and Aloysius were shoved out of it by the two Squires guarding them.

As he was marched across the helipad, Alby looked back at the megastadium: from up here, he could see over the grey wall and down into the maze.

One of his guards jabbed him with the butt of his rifle, making Alby face forward again and he saw who was waiting for them.

Jaeger Eins, the leader of the Knights of the Golden Eight.