The One Impossible Labyrinth
About The One Impossible Labyrinth
About The One Impossible Labyrinth
THE END IS HERE
Jack West Jr has made it to the Supreme Labyrinth.
Now he faces one last race-against multiple rivals, against time, against the collapse of the universe itself-a headlong race that will end at a throne inside the fabled labyrinth.
AN IMPOSSIBLE MAZE
But the road will be hard.
For this is a maze like no other: a maze of mazes. Uncompromising and complex. Demanding and deadly.
A CATACLYSMIC CONCLUSION
It all comes down to this.
For it ends here-now-in the most lethal and dangerous place Jack has encountered in all of his many adventures. And in the face of this indescribable peril, with everything on the line, there is only one thing he can do.
Attempt the impossible.
Title page
Dedication
This one is for all of my
loyal readers.
You’ll soon see why!
CONTENTS
CONTENTS
Cover
About The One Impossible Labyrinth
Title page
Dedication
Endpapers
Epigraph
Previously . . .
First Test of Worth: Entering the Labyrinth
The Secret Royal World: The Battlefield, The Bell and The Royal Banker
A Man Named Jack: Part I Zoe
Second Test of Worth: The Endless Tunnel
The Secret Royal World II: Troy, The Royal Redoubt and the Red Horizon Star
A Man Named Jack: Part II The Schoolyard Fight
Third Test of Worth: The City-maze
A Man Named Jack: Part III After the Schoolyard Fight
Fourth Test of Worth: The Four-sided Maze
The Secret Royal World III: The New York Obelisk and the D.C. Rendezvous
A Man Named Jack: Part IV Basra, 1991
Fifth Test of Worth: The Colossus
Final Test of Worth: The Throne of the Three of Death
A Man Named Jack: Part V The World After Omega
Acknowledgements
An Interview with Matthew Reilly
About the Author
Also by Matthew Reilly
Copyright page
Newsletter
Endpapers
Epigraph
Sometimes what people think is your greatest weakness can actually be your greatest strength.
Jack West Jr
A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.
Robert Browning
Previously . . .
PREVIOUSLY . . .
At the end of The Two Lost Mountains the fate of all life in the universe hung in the balance.
A dozen cities around the world lay silent, their populations gripped by the mysterious sleep of SPHINX’s Siren bells.
A wild battle was fought at the entrance to the Supreme Labyrinth as JACK WEST JR and his friends blasted their way through thousands of bronzemen guarding the Labyrinth’s entrances.
At the very last moment, using a side-turned ejection seat, Jack managed to get inside the Labyrinth with ZOE, LILY and EASTON.
Now, with THE OMEGA EVENT—the collapse of the universe—only three days away, everything depends on what happens inside the Labyrinth.
If someone sits on a fabled THRONE inside the Labyrinth, the collapse of the universe will be prevented, all life will be saved, and that person will rule the world.
But if no-one sits on the throne in time, the entire universe will stop expanding and rush inward, crushing itself and extinguishing all life in a mighty instantaneous singularity.
AT THE LABYRINTH
Five separate groups entered the Supreme Labyrinth.
Team 1, 24 hours ago: SPHINX and CARDINAL MENDOZA, escorted by three KNIGHTS OF THE GOLDEN EIGHT and eight cannibal VANDALS.
Team 2, 24 hours ago: BROTHER EZEKIEL and five of his monks from the Order of the Omega.
Team 3, 12 hours ago: DION and three SQUIRES OF THE GOLDEN EIGHT, coming to assist Sphinx.
Team 4, ten minutes ago: GENERAL RASTOR and seven of his fanatically loyal Serbian commandos.
Team 5, right now: JACK, ZOE, LILY and EASTON, plus four PALEMEN (bronzemen splashed with pale blue paint who obey Easton because of the ring of command that he wears).
JACK’S PEOPLE
The Two Lost Mountains ended with Jack’s larger team split into four subgroups:
SUBGROUP 1: THE FOUR IN THE LABYRINTH
JACK and his group at the Labyrinth.
SUBGROUP 2: EN ROUTE TO ITALY
IOLANTHE and her former mentor, the Jesuit named BERTIE, headed to Italy with NOBODY BLACK in search of the BLUE BELL—the long-lost Siren bell capable of undoing the sleep—and someone named ‘Albano’s Emissary’.
SUBGROUP 3: ON THE BATTLEFIELD
During the battle outside the Supreme Labyrinth, ALBY CALVIN, ALOYSIUS KNIGHT and RUFUS ejected out of Rufus’s Sukhoi Su-37 just as it was overwhelmed by bronzemen.
Where they landed is as yet unknown.
SKY MONSTER was last seen inside the smashed remains of a C-5 Super Galaxy cargo plane that he had deliberately crashed onto the battlefield as part of Jack’s Russian Doll plan.
SUBGROUP 4: THE ROYAL HUNTERS
When Jack and the others had headed off from Cairo International Airport for the Labyrinth, POOH BEAR and STRETCH had departed from Cairo with SISTER LYNDA FADEL and the ear/bell specialist DR TRACY SMITH, to find out where the royal families of the world would go in advance of the Omega Event.
We rejoin our story inside the Supreme Labyrinth . . .
First Test of Worth: Entering the Labyrinth
The Entry Tunnel
26 December, 0903 hours
Three days till the Omega Event
Holding a glowstick above his head, Jack West Jr stood at the top of a long square-sided tunnel that plunged into darkness.
Lily and Zoe stood beside him, while Easton and his four palemen stood at the rear.
They all peered down the entry tunnel.
It descended at a steep angle, with broad steps going all the way down its length and walls of solid stone.
A dim orange glow could be seen at the bottom end, two hundred metres away: a small square of light.
And then they heard them.
Distant sounds, coming from down there.
Screams. Shouts. Gunfire.
The sounds of battle.
Amid the gunshots and shouts, a voice wailed, ‘Kill me! Oh God, please kill me!’
‘What the hell are we walking into?’ Zoe breathed.
‘The final battle in a winner-takes-all war,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s move.’
He edged down the tunnel, leading with his glowstick and Desert Eagle pistol—
—when with a shrill squeal a small red figure sprang out of a wide shaft in the ceiling, landing on Jack’s shoulders and quickly trying to bite his face off.
Jack caught the attacker at the last instant, grabbing the short man by the throat as they both fell back onto the steps in a jumbled heap.
As Jack desperately held him at bay, the little man snapped and snarled savagely—his red tattooed face a vision from a horror movie—his sharpened fangs, filed to deadly points, clamping together inches away from Jack’s nose.
Jack leaned back, his eyes widening in revulsion and . . . recognition.
He’d seen a man like this once before.
In the Underworld.
Hades’s sinister jester, Mephisto.
The one who had toyed with minotaurs before he killed them for the entertainment of the royal guests.
The one who had stowed aboard Jack’s plane when Jack had departed from the Underworld after the Great Games and who had tried to murder Jack while he slept.
But Jack had turned the tables and caused Mephisto to be sucked horrendously out through one of the plane’s windows, killing him.
This little bastard looked exactly like Mephisto: short in stature but lean and muscled, with tattooed red skin that was spiked in places with horns that had been surgically implanted subdermally.
And like Mephisto, the little fucker could fight.
He produced a short curved blade that Jack caught as it came rushing at his throat.
And those teeth, razor sharp and slashing in a manner that was more animal than human—
Boom!
The little man’s head snapped back in a burst of blood, blown almost completely off his shoulders, as Zoe fired her pistol from point-blank range.
The attacker’s body, its fingernails still clinging to Jack’s jacket, went limp and Jack kicked it off him.
‘Goddamn,’ he gasped. ‘A nasty little welcoming party Sphinx must have left behind.’
Lily slid to Jack’s side. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah. Just some scratches.’
Zoe looked distastefully at the dead attacker. ‘Who the hell is this? What the hell is this?’
She hadn’t been at the Underworld for the Great Games.
Jack said, ‘He looks like that jester from the Underworld. Mephisto.’
‘He is Vandal,’ Easton said, appearing beside them.
‘A Vandal?’ Lily said. ‘Like the ones who sacked Rome in the fifth century?’
‘Yes,’ Easton said.
Jack said, ‘Sister Lynda mentioned Vandals once. She said Sphinx brought some to Novodevichy Convent in Moscow when he came for the Siren bells.’
Easton said, ‘Vandals are small warrior race. Fearsome and fierce, like rabid dogs. Use teeth in combat. Eat flesh. But Vandals very rare now. Only the richest royals keep them.’
‘Like Hades kept Mephisto?’ Lily said.
Easton nodded.
Zoe said, ‘As I recall, Sister Lynda mentioned Sphinx had eight of them.’
‘Seven now,’ Jack said.
He frowned in thought. ‘Speaking of numbers, we need to take stock. Figure out who’s here and when they arrived.’
He ticked off each group on his fingers: ‘Okay. Sphinx got here first, twenty-four hours ago, presumably accompanied by his advisors and military muscle. He’s a whole day ahead of us.’
Zoe nodded. ‘Second were the Omega monks led by Brother Ezekiel. We saw their crashed jet outside.’
‘Third was Dion, with some Squires of the Golden Eight. We overheard Sphinx ordering him to come here from Mont Blanc to help. And finally, Rastor and us.’
Lily said, ‘We’re behind again—’
A loud noise from the low end of the entry tunnel cut her off.
An explosion.
Jack spun instinctively, ready to run, but he caught himself.
He didn’t want to rush around inside this place. Who knew what traps and snares lay in it.
He looked at the tunnel around them.
Its stone steps stretched from wall to wall.
Lowering his glowstick closer to the ground, he noted that one of the steps was not cut from stone.
It was made of some kind of metal. It shone dully.
‘A shining stair,’ Jack said softly. ‘Lily. You translated some of those phrases on Imhotep’s skull before. What was it you said about a shining stair?’
Lily looked at the mummified skull in her pack, the head of the Egyptian architect and thinker, Imhotep, covered in tattoos:
She read one set of Thoth glyphs on it.
‘These markings say, Once you pass the shining stair, there is no going back.’
Jack frowned. ‘It’s a threshold of some ki—’
‘Captain Jack,’ Easton interrupted a little urgently.
‘Yes?’
‘One more thing about Vandals. Mephisto was unusual Vandal. Lived alone. Killed his partner as joke. Usually Vandals work in pairs.’
Jack spun, alarmed. ‘Wait, what?’
He snapped to look up at the dark recess in the roof of the tunnel above them just as a second Vandal came leaping out of it, teeth bared, knife raised and shrieking in animal rage!
The small red-faced assassin slammed down on top of Jack and the two of them went tumbling down the stairs, bouncing on the metal step—
—and instantly an ominous groaning sound came from within the recess in the ceiling.
The sound of stone grinding against stone.
Booby trap.
Lily and Zoe looked up at the noise, while Easton dived to help Jack.
The diminutive Vandal was a ball of ferocious energy. Knife in hand, it hissed fiercely as it leapt at Easton, only to be caught in mid-leap, literally snatched out of the air by—one of Easton’s palemen.
It was the paleman whose eyeless metal face had been scratched as it had rolled under the lowering stone slab closing off the Labyrinth, leaving a curved mark that resembled a crooked smile.
The emotionless automaton held the writhing Vandal three feet off the ground with one robotic hand. Its grip was vice-like.
‘Kill it,’ Easton commanded.
The paleman obeyed immediately, squeezing its fist, breaking the Vandal’s neck with a sharp crack, killing the little assassin. It dropped the corpse to the floor.
Jack clambered to his feet, looking from the dead Vandal to the paleman with the scratched smile.
‘Thanks, Smiley,’ he said.
The grinding sound from within the recess above them grew louder.
‘I think I just crossed the shining stair and triggered a trap. We need to move. Go! Go!’
They bolted.
They were thirty metres down the tunnel when a massive cube-shaped stone dropped out of the recess into the tunnel—filling the square-shaped passageway perfectly—and began to slide down it after them.
Down the tunnel they bounded, running for all they were worth.
Jack led the way, eyeing the square-shaped opening at the bottom.
It still glowed with dim light. As he came closer to it, he saw that it was actually a full-sized doorway.
The others raced down the tunnel with him, while behind them the big square stone rumbled as it slid, grinding against the steps, gradually gaining speed.
The thing was huge.
It must’ve weighed thirty tons. And it filled the tunnel completely.
Imhotep had been right: once you crossed the shining stair, there was no going back.
Jack reached the doorway at the bottom end of the tunnel and he stopped with a lurch.
‘Uh-oh . . .’
Zoe arrived at his side. ‘What’s the hold-up—oh my.’
Jack stole a glance back at the thirty-ton stone block sliding down the tunnel behind them. ‘We got a serious problem.’
The problem: their tunnel just ended.
The staircase simply stopped, its bottommost step dropping away to nothing but thin air, leaving them standing on a small ledge cut into a colossal underground cliff overlooking a larger cavern . . .
. . . in which a wild battle was already taking place, with bullets flying and grenades exploding . . .
. . . all while the sliding stone accelerated down the stairs behind them, coming to hurl them off the cliff.
JACK’S ENTRY TUNNEL
AND BRIDGE
THE FIRST CAVERN
Jack figured he had about twenty seconds.
First, he took in the enormous cavern.
It was unlike anything he had ever seen before.
Its walls, bridges and other surfaces were made of three substances: rough uneven rock, smooth concrete-like greystone and a burnished bronze-coloured metal.
Jack and his team were high up on one side of a gigantic abyss that plummeted away into fathomless darkness.
The main feature of this space was a colossal stalactite hanging from the ceiling that was the size of a fifteen-storey skyscraper.
Up at the top, where it was widest, this upside-down skyscraper appeared to be made mostly of natural rock. But as it stretched downward and became narrower, it was fashioned from the two added-on materials: metal and greystone.
Five bridges—superlong and made of the strange bronze metal and sporting low gutters—radiated like spokes on a wheel from the upper reaches of the skyscraper.
Each bridge was aimed at one of five entry tunnels—all identical to Jack’s—that opened onto the vast space.
Only the bridges didn’t reach all the way to the entry tunnels.
They ended six feet short of them and about six feet below them.
Jack looked down at the wide gap of empty space between him and the tip of the half-bridge facing him.
The intention of the gap was clear: it was designed to stop anyone from jumping back to the entry tunnel after they had leapt across—
Jack froze.
There was someone on his half-bridge.
Right in its middle, blocking the way.
Wait, no, it wasn’t a person.
It was a statue. A stone statue, tall and man-shaped.
But then the statue began to shudder, as if it were cracking from within, and suddenly its outer shell of stone fell away in many tiny flakes to reveal a figure previously encased inside it.
A silverman.
One of the elite automaton guards, one level higher than the bronzemen.
And this one stood guard halfway along the bridge, barring the way.
‘We are so not in Kansas anymore,’ Lily whispered.
‘Jack . . .’ Zoe urged.
The big sliding stone was grinding down the entry tunnel behind them, gathering speed.
Jack’s mind raced.
This was all happening too fast.
He wanted to know more about this place before he jumped across onto some guttered half-bridge with a silverman on it, but the sliding stone bearing down on them was making the decision for him.
He was processing all of this when a hideous scream from nearby made him turn.
‘Somebody kill me!’ It was the same voice they’d heard before.
Jack spun to his right and saw the source of the cry over on the next half-bridge.
It was an Omega monk.
Jack swallowed in horror at what he saw.
The lone Omega monk was lying on his back on the half-bridge . . . only his guttered bridge was filled to knee-height with solidified greystone and the monk lay half encased in the cement-like substance.
He must have fallen into the greystone when it had been in liquid form, for his hands, waist and mid-section were sealed in it while his head was above it.
Only that wasn’t the horrific part.
The horrific part was the pair of Vandals currently crouched over him and taking slashing bloody bites out of his exposed face and shoulders.
They were eating him alive.
‘Please Lord, kill me!’
Jack stared in horror. Sphinx must have left more Vandals at the other entrances.
Near the two feasting Vandals stood another silverman, the one evidently assigned to guard that bridge. It stood on the greystone, not in it, and it just remained there impassively, doing nothing about the gruesome cannibalism taking place in front of it.
‘This is messed up,’ Lily said.
‘Jack . . .’ Zoe said again.
The huge sliding stone behind them was moving fast and almost on them.
‘Lily, Zoe, quickly, jump across, now,’ Jack ordered. ‘Onto the half-bridge. We’ll follow behind you.’
The two women leapt out from the open mouth of the entry tunnel, flying briefly across the gap above the abyss, before landing on the metal bridge in identical crouches.
Jack checked on the sliding stone. It kept rumbling down the entry tunnel.
Easton went next, with his palemen.
Then it was Jack’s turn.
The oncoming sliding stone was only a few feet away when Jack jumped, launching himself from the mouth of the tunnel, out over the void—
—just as the sliding stone came roaring out of the tunnel behind him, flew off the edge and dropped away into the abyss.
Jack landed on his stomach on the half-bridge. Lily and Zoe hauled him up.
‘There’s no going back now,’ Lily said.
‘No,’ Jack agreed.
From his position at the end of the half-bridge, he looked out over the cavern.
And spotted what he was looking for.
The exit.
Far below them, level with the bottom tip of the upside-down skyscraper, was a striking ultra-long bridge decorated with an avenue of obelisks.
This obelisk bridge led to the only apparent exit from the cavern: a high decorative arch framing a tunnel that burrowed into the wall down there. But there was a problem with that bridge.
It was broken in the middle.
Someone—probably Sphinx—had blasted away a segment in its centre, presumably to prevent later arrivals from crossing it.
But the strategy hadn’t completely worked.
For Jack could see something on the obelisk bridge, spanning the exploded-open gap.
A military bridging unit: a long plank of telescoping carbon fibre that had been laid over the gap.
Then, abruptly, Jack saw a group of eight tiny figures emerge at a sprint from the bottom tip of the skyscraper and run out across the bridge and the bridging unit.
He recognised their leader instantly. It was hard not to, he was such a huge man.
It was General Garthon Rastor.
Rastor.
The insane yet brilliant royal general. The man who had murdered Jack’s mother at the Falling Temple in Jerusalem. The man who wanted to see the Omega Event happen and watch the universe end.
Rastor and his forces had arrived at the Supreme Labyrinth shortly before Jack’s team had.
As Jack had been charging through the ranks of bronzemen outside, Rastor had been entering the Labyrinth through another gate and he was now about ten minutes ahead of Jack and already at the exit.
As if sensing Jack’s presence, Rastor turned and looked up at him.
He gave Jack a mock salute and then, with the help of his men, kicked the bridging unit off the broken bridge and into the abyss.
The obelisk bridge now had a fifteen-foot gaping void in it.
‘Son of a bitch, as if this wasn’t hard enough,’ Jack whispered.
‘I think it’s about to get harder,’ Zoe said.
She jerked her chin at their feet and Jack saw a rush of flowing water wash over his boots and begin to pool at the end of their guttered entry bridge.
He hadn’t noticed it before, but the knee-high gutters of this metal half-bridge extended not just down its sides, but also across its end, making the whole hundred-metre bridge essentially a superlong tray.
‘Water?’ Lily said, confused.
‘Not just water,’ Jack said. He nodded at the bridge beside theirs, the one with the Omega monk embedded in a shallow layer of greystone being eaten by the Vandals.
He then looked straight up . . .
. . . and saw some inverted mini-pyramids sticking out from the ceiling of the cavern directly above their half-bridge.
‘I’m guessing that some greystone pellets are about to drop out of those little pyramids up there and into this water and turn it solid,’ he said. ‘We have to get past this silver guy before that happens or else we’re gonna end up like that monk.’
Their guttered bridge was filling quickly.
The water was pouring out of a spout at its far end, positioned above a trapezoidal stone doorway set into the upside-down skyscraper.
The steady flow funnelled down the length of the half-bridge, passing the feet of the silverman, before pooling around Jack and the others at the end.
‘What do we do?’ Lily said. ‘I don’t think that silverman’s gonna just let us pass.’
Jack glanced over at the Omega monk being torn apart by the Vandals . . .
. . . at the exact moment that one of the Vandals looked up from its gorging and spotted him and his group.
The Vandal froze . . . and grinned.
Its mouth was smeared with blood and flesh.
‘Why, hello, hello, hello!’ it called in a shrill voice.
‘New meat!’ the second one squealed in delight as it also saw them.
Like hyenas that had spotted fresh prey, the two Vandals leapt away from the monk and nimbly swung hand-over-hand down the length of their bridge—gripping its gutter with their fingertips and thus skirting the silverman on it—heading for the central skyscraper.
‘Oh, shit . . .’ Jack said, seeing them go.
His mind was reeling, once again trying to keep up.
Not only did he have his own bridge to traverse—a bridge that was filling with water, water that would soon become greystone that would solidify over his group’s feet—he also had his own silverman to get past.
And now the two Vandals were on their way over.
Keep calm, he thought. Keep calm.
Break down each step, then figure out your plan.
Okay.
First step: get past this silverman.
Jack drew his pistol. It still had a clip full of specially-tipped rounds in it: bullets with shavings from the sword, Excalibur, that Easton had painstakingly attached.
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