Callsign: King (Jack Sigler) (Chesspocalypse #1)

Actually, I did, she thought.

“Atlantis is just a . . .” Lancet looked to Mira, perhaps for confirmation that he was not going insane, but stunned by her own inability to detect Atlas’ hidden agenda, she could offer no such assurances.

He’s been looking for this all along. He knew what it was. He knows what it means. Suddenly the potency she had sensed from afar took on a dire implication. “Mr. Atlas, I think we should proceed with a little more caution.”

“Nonsense. We must find a way inside, and quickly, before the looters get wind of this.” As if to emphasize his newfound urgency, his next cut exposed the edge of a doorway. Beneath the artistically executed arched lintel, utterly unlike anything she had ever seen in her brief experience with Mayan ruins, the passage was choked with rubble. But even this did not slow Atlas down. Sheathing his knife, he reached in with both hands and began pulling out broken blocks of cut stone that were twice as large as his own head.

Lancet tapped him on the shoulder. “Take a break, Mr. Atlas. I’ll get this.”

The billionaire, red-faced and panting, mopped his brow with a shirtsleeve. “Very well, but you must hurry. We’re so close.”

“We’re too close,” Mira murmured, but even in the grip of her newfound anxiety she was not immune to the thrill of discovery. After all, it wasn’t every day that a person found proof that Atlantis really existed.

*

With half of the blockage cleared away, it became apparent that the passage beyond was wide open. Eager to be inside, the billionaire squirmed his massive body through the narrow gap. A tiny spot of light blossomed in the darkness beyond and immediately began moving deeper into the interior.

“Damn him,” Lancet growled before scrambling through the aperture in pursuit of his headstrong employer.

Mira’s slight form slipped through without even significantly shutting out the sun’s rays, and in the circle of daylight that illuminated the first few feet of the passage, she caught a glimpse of Lancet, already on the move.

Like the others, she carried a tiny squeeze light clipped to a breakaway chain around her neck. The powerful light-emitting diode threw out a brilliant cone of illumination, but as she hastened after her companions, she felt such a sense of familiarity about the place that she probably could have negotiated the buried ruin in total darkness. She was starting to think that Atlas probably could have done so as well. Despite his bulk, he was flat out running ahead of them, drawn inexorably toward the center of the temple.

There was no time to examine the halls and rooms through which she now raced. Flashes of light danced on the walls, revealing brightly colored human figures, veristic images, faintly reminiscent of the style found on the walls of Pompeii. The constant motion and vibration at the source of the illumination made it seem like the pictures were coming alive, and then it occurred to her that perhaps the movement glimpsed in her peripheral vision had nothing at all to do with the interplay of shadow and light. She hastened on.

The tunnels wound back and forth through the underground complex like a mystical labyrinth, and while she often lost sight of the flickering lights carried by the two men, she never faltered in choosing her path through the maze. But there was no escaping the grim reality that Atlas would reach the goal—the unknown prize at the heart of the ruin—before she caught up to him.

Then, inexplicably, she skidded to a stop. The goal, she realized, was not merely at the center of the ruin. Storm Jaguar had called this place Xibalba, the underworld, and just like Orpheus and Dante, his journey had taken him far beyond the first level of Hell. The prize Atlas sought lay somewhere below, in the bowels of this ancient subterranean temple. More importantly, there was a shortcut.

Whether Atlas knew about it or not was irrelevant. The most direct route to the temple’s core had not been constructed for the purpose of passage. It was a vertical shaft less than two feet in diameter that stabbed through the center of every layer of the temple, allowing sunlight from the surface to filter down into the deepest catacombs. The ancient architects had not designed this to be a ruin, but rather a living place of worship, and such a place needed light. The roof of the superstructure had long since collapsed, shutting forever the oculus, which had permitted the sun’s rays to enter, but the shaft remained.