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

She was trapped.

Panic washed over her and with it a surge of adrenaline. She had never experienced fear on this level. Her preternatural intuition had always provided ample warning of dangerous situations long before they reached a critical stage, but that sensory organ had been muted by . . . by whatever it was that she was supposed to find down here.

She took a deep breath, remembering how her abilities had guided her here in the first place. There had to be a way in and out of this chamber. Atlas knew it, and when she had been on the upper levels, she had known it as well.

When I’ve got what I came for, the way out of here will be obvious, she told herself. Then she laughed as she realized that this was probably how all those gamblers felt as they put their last chip on the table. An all-or-nothing bet. . . . Luck, be a lady tonight. No, it’s nothing like that. I was meant to be here. Something called me here. That’s what I need to focus on.

It was the crown. It had to be.

She turned back to the upright sarcophagus, looking past the life-like effigy, scanning every inch of its surface for some indication of where the lid had been sealed into place, but found nothing. There was no way to open the tomb. Frustrated, she hammered her fists against the unyielding stone and was rewarded only with a dull pain in the heels of her hands.

Think! It brought you here. It wants to be found. There has to be a way.

Willing herself into a state of calm, she attempted something she had never before tried; there had never been reason for it. With her eyes closed and her breathing deep and steady, she attempted to reawaken her quiescent sixth sense. Whether or not it worked, she could not say, but after a few moments, it dawned on her to look for some kind of mechanism.

She returned her attention to the sarcophagus, now using her fingertips as well as her eyes to search for the trigger that would unlock the ancient casket. As she did so, she realized the answer was staring her in the face.

The crown.

Or rather, the carved likeness of the crown that adorned the face of the statue. She reached up to the hexagonal shape in the center and pressed firmly.

There was a grating sound followed by a whoosh of air, and the entire block of carved stone began to move, sliding down into the floor. She took a step back and then directed her light into the depths within.

“You don’t look anything like your pictures,” she muttered as the beam illuminated the mummified remains of the Atlantean king. Indeed, the handsome, athletic figure had become merely a leathery, discolored shell. His skin had dried out and was stretched taut over his skeleton. His strong nose had shrunk into his skull. And where once he had gazed out at the world with intense dark eyes, there were now only empty sockets. There was one element, however, that remained consistent: the mummy still wore the silvery circlet with its single strange jewel.

Breathless with anticipation, Mira reached for the crown. . . .

Time abruptly jumped forward—how far she could not say—but in that lost bubble of memory, everything changed. She was no longer standing before the remains of the king, but instead lay supine in near total darkness. An instant later, pain stabbed through her skull, and was especially intense in the area just behind her right ear. When she gingerly probed the spot, her fingers felt something damp—her own blood.

A light flared off to one side and she reflexively turned toward it, wincing as the motion brought another throb from her wound. She fumbled for her own light, still turned on but hanging uselessly from the neck-chain, and raised it just as Curtis Lancet burst through a breach in the tomb wall. The opening had not been there before, she was certain of that. Someone had opened it from the outside, the same person that had cold-cocked her from behind. And if Lancet was only now arriving, that meant . . .

She twisted around just in time to catch sight of Atlas’ grotesquely fat fingers closing around the mummy’s neck.

“I promised you this day would come.” His words were for the ghost of the king alone. He was oblivious to everything else. “My hands at your throat once more, but this time, I will triumph. The Trinity is mine.”

Through the fog of pain, something clicked in Mira’s mind, and she realized why the figure struggling with the king in the mural looked so familiar. Atlas! But that must have been thousands of years ago.

For just a moment, Mira thought she saw the mummy’s hands start to move, as if to wrestle free from Atlas’ grasp. No, she told herself. It’s just an illusion, caused by Atlas shaking him.