Sand cascaded into the cavern.
In seconds, Zac was buried up to his knees. And the sand was still falling!
Zac heaved his feet free, almost losing his shoes. He raced back out of the stone room and into the long, dark tunnel.
Caz was ahead of him, sprinting along with the piece of IRIS.
The sand was rushing through the tunnel behind them like a giant wave. Zac dashed forwards, trying to escape the sand and catch up to Caz at the same time.
Caz looked over her shoulder to see where Zac was. But she wasn’t looking where she was going, and she tripped on a rock that was sticking out of the ground.
THUD!
Caz went down. The piece of IRIS went flying out of her hands. Zac raced over and scooped it up. It was cold and heavy in his hand.
The wave of sand was still rushing up behind Zac and Caz. It was almost on top of them now. Zac bolted along the tunnel. Over his shoulder, he saw Caz scrambling to her feet. ‘Give me that back, Power!’ she yelled, as sand rushed up behind her.
Zac saw light up ahead, and seconds later he burst into the cavern’s entrance. He tried to run up the steps to get out, but the sand was rising around his legs, pulling him down.
Zac remembered Leon telling him once that you could drown in sand, just like you did in water.
SNAP!
Suddenly, the sticky hand of a Goo Lasso appeared in front of Zac’s face.
Without even thinking, Zac grabbed it. He’d never been so pleased to see a sticky hand in his life!
The Goo Lasso dragged Zac out of the cavern, through the rushing sand.
He looked up and saw Grandpa sitting on his camel, pulling him free. Grandpa reached out a hand and lifted Zac onto the camel’s back. Zac showed him the IRIS piece. He had done it. He’d beaten Caz.
‘Great job, kiddo,’ said Grandpa proudly, clapping him on the back. ‘You OK?’
‘Yeah,’ Zac panted. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ Just three pieces of IRIS left to get! he thought, his heart still pounding from the run.
WHOOMF-WHOOMF!
Zac’s eyes flashed up to the sky. A shiny black BIG helicopter loomed above. Blackwood threw a long rope down into the cavern entrance. Zac saw Caz grab hold of the rope just a second before the sand buried her completely. Blackwood pulled Caz aboard the helicopter.
They were shouting at each other, but Zac couldn’t hear what they were saying over the noise of the chopper blades.
Then the chopper turned around and flew away across the desert.
‘South-east,’ said Grandpa, following the chopper with his eyes. ‘They’re headed for the Misty Ruins.’
He shook the reins in his hands and the camel started galloping back towards the village.
But the camel was no match for a BIG helicopter. Zac and Grandpa would have a lot of catching up to do when they got back to the jet.
‘How do you know where they’re going next?’ asked Zac, holding on tight as the camel thumped along the sand.
‘Because the Data Orb will tell them that the Misty Ruins has the next closest piece,’ replied Grandpa.
As they rode along, Zac examined the IRIS piece. All this fuss over a scrap of metal, he thought.
It looked like it was moulded to fit a person’s hand. And there was that little hook in the middle of it, almost like…
‘A trigger!’ said Zac out loud. ‘That’s what this piece is, isn’t it? IRIS is some kind of weapon!’
Grandpa looked over his shoulder at Zac. He had a strange look on his face, like he was trying to decide something important.
‘Yes,’ said Grandpa, at last. He pulled on the reins and the camel slowed to a trot. ‘IRIS is a weapon. IRIS stands for Intra-Retinal Intuitive Sleep. It’s a sleep ray. It slows down brain activity and forces people into a deep sleep.’
‘Huh?’ said Zac, raising an eyebrow. ‘IRIS just makes people go to sleep?’
Grandpa shook his head. ‘It makes people go to sleep permanently. Like going into hibernation. And IRIS is powerful enough to be used on a whole city at once – but there’s no cure.’
Zac’s eyes went wide. ‘Does it kill you?’
‘No,’ his grandpa said quietly. ‘But once you get hit by IRIS, there’s no waking up. You spend the rest of your life asleep, just wasting away.’
Zac gulped. With that kind of power in their hands, BIG would be unstoppable. All they’d need to do was point IRIS at GIB HQ, and…
That would be the end. Of everything.
Grandpa stared at the BIG helicopter as it disappeared into the distance. ‘I should’ve told her it was a bad idea,’ he whispered. ‘Why did I even let her start building it?’
‘Who?’ asked Zac. ‘Wait. You mean Blackwood?’
Grandpa nodded.
‘Blackwood was part of GADGET?’ exclaimed Zac. ‘She’s the one who built IRIS? But then why is she bothering to put it back together? Why doesn’t she just build herself a new IRIS?’
‘Because she can’t,’ said Grandpa heavily. ‘She didn’t build the original IRIS by herself. It was two GADGET agents working together, remember?’
‘So who was the other agent?’ Zac demanded.
He felt furious. Blackwood was the most evil spy in the whole world! Who in their right mind would help her build a weapon like this?
Grandpa pulled the camel to a complete stop. He turned to face Zac properly.
‘It was me,’ said Grandpa. ‘The agent who helped Blackwood was me.’
TO BE CONTINUED