‘Albert,’ Jaeger Eins said, ‘it’s so nice to see you again.’

He nodded at Alby’s new artificial left hand. ‘I don’t mean to be unkind, but I must say I preferred your original hand.’

Alby clenched his jaw.

Jaeger Eins smiled nastily. ‘I also liked your friend, Mr Adamson, at least before I cut off both of his hands and drowned him in his cage.’

Alby’s eyes blazed with rage.

He remembered very clearly how at the Golden Knights’ fortified headquarters at Aragon Castle on Ischia Island, Jaeger Eins had tortured Julius Adamson: cutting off Julius’s hands with a supersharp ancient filament weapon before dropping poor Julius into the water to drown.

Eins had then given the filament weapon to Dion DeSaxe and he had calmly cut off Alby’s hand with it.

‘I liked Julius a lot, shithead,’ Alby said.

‘What’s this rig?’ Aloysius cut in. ‘Some secret royal observation post?’

‘It’s more than that,’ Jaeger Eins said. ‘The company that owns this rig is a royal company that owns many drilling rigs, including all the ones in this part of the Red Sea. It has sat here for years, drilling small amounts of oil but in truth watching over a strange and enormous formation of greystone under the seabed that, according to ground-penetrating radars, was hemispherical in shape. And then, today, it rose up all by itself, this glorious city containing the Throne of the Tree of Life.’

Jaeger Eins indicated the gigantic ringed city.

‘We are about to be witnesses to history. Lord Sphinx, the new emperor of the world, is about to ascend the Throne of Life. The universe will be spared and he will become the undisputed ruler of every person on this planet.’

‘And you want us to see it?’ Alby said.

‘Oh, no. Not at all,’ Eins said, calmly pulling a small velvet box from behind his back.

Alby froze at the sight of it.

He felt a visceral response at seeing it.

He knew that box: it held the small, hand-wielded, harp-shaped filament weapon that Eins and Dion had used on him and Julius.

Eins said, ‘Albert, Albert. After all the excitement at the gates to the Labyrinth, I had a few things to do. But I was informed that you had been captured, along with Captain Knight. Now that I have some time, I ordered my men to bring you here, so I could have a little fun with you before I killed you. Albert, because you have been such a consistent bane to our plan. And Captain Knight, because of those times in the past where you captured targets that I would have been paid a lot of money to kill.