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Maddock scrambled back, sidestepping a few larger chunks of debris and ignoring the smaller pieces that brushed against his feet. Bones, closer to the collapse, was knocked backward. He twisted as he fell, throwing his arms wide in a desperate attempt to keep from being swept all the way down. The slide quickly overtook him, partially engulfing him as he slid past Maddock and continued down. Jade, closer to the wall, managed to dance out of the way, but Rose’s attempt to dodge the slide took her dangerously close to the edge of the steps.
Fearing that she was about to go over, Maddock threw caution to the wind and, braving the onslaught, charged back up the steps to pull her back. He caught hold of one outflung arm and drew her away from the precipice, but as he did, a large block of stone crashed painfully into his left shin. He pitched forward as his legs were cut out from under him, taking Rose down with him in the fall, and then they were both sliding, caught in the relentless current of crushed stone.
“It’s not stopping!”
Jade’s shout was barely audible over the ongoing tumult, but Maddock had already realized the truth of her words. The destruction of the stone block had triggered a runaway collapse. Each block that fell out of place dislodged one or two more above it.
The side of the pyramid was collapsing. Worse, the impacts were fracturing the stairwell, obliterating the steps that they would have to ascend in order to reach the surface.
“Keep climbing,” he shouted. The admonition was as much for himself as for the others. If they didn’t get through that opening quickly, they would be cut off, and in all likelihood, carried down into the depths of the pyramid, entombed forever. “Push through!”
He caught a glimpse of Jade shaking her head, and then she was moving, head ducked low and covered with one upraised arm as she scrambled over the rubble. A moment later, she was gone, vanishing into the dust cloud that still swirled around the opening.
Maddock winced as another rock struck him in the shoulder, but pushed himself up into an awkward kneeling position and crawled forward, putting himself in front of Rose, using his body to shield her. He glanced down the stairs and saw movement in the rockpile. “Bones! You coming?”
A dust-streaked figure emerged from the rubble. “I ain’t even breathing heavy, yet.”
Maddock just shook his head. Humor—the raunchier the better—was Bones’ defensive shield against the universe, but Maddock didn’t think it would protect him against the avalanche. He swung his gaze forward again and measured the distance to the now gaping hole in the pyramid’s wall.
The damage was spreading out in both directions, collapsing portions of the wall ahead as well as the one to their immediate right, and as they crumbled, everything above fell inward. The buried pyramid was transforming into a sinkhole.
He leaned close to Rose, shouting to be heard over the din. “Keep moving. Don’t stop for anything.” Then he started forward, crawling on all fours up the rubble pile. As he neared the top, he could see the opening more distinctly. Jade was crouched just inside, still warding off falling rock with one hand, urging him on with the other. Unfortunately, between him and it was a whole lot of nothing. The last few steps to the opening were gone, fallen into a fissure. It was only about two feet across, but growing wider with each passing second.
Maddock brought his feet up under him in a crouch and then launched himself across the gap. He landed easily, but when Jade reached out with a steadying hand, he did not refuse it. After a moment to catch his balance, he turned and reached out to do the same for Rose.
But in that brief instant, the spot from which he had leaped crumbled away into the fissure, doubling the width of the gap, forcing Rose to retreat.
“Jump!” Jade shouted.
Maddock didn’t like Rose’s odds of making it across, but seeing no alternatives, he seconded Jade’s suggestion and added, “We’ll catch you.”
Rose’s face went slack with trepidation, but she took a deep breath, bent her knees and swung her arms back, gathering momentum for her leap of faith.
Then, seemingly from out of nowhere, Bones appeared beside her. His bare chest and face streaked with dust, he looked more like a giant golem—a creature of living rock—than a man. Without preamble or explanation, he scooped Rose up in his arms, and then propelled her out across the gap.
Maddock caught her easily, pulling her into the relative shelter of the opening. As soon as she was clear, Maddock returned to the edge, “Bones! Jump!”
But Bones was gone.
The woman said nothing; she merely regarded Kismet with a bland, unreadable expression as he climbed into the vehicle, followed by Hauser. Kismet, too, remained silent. One thing he had learned early on in his brief first career as a military intelligence officer was that interrogation was a two-way exchange, with every question, every microexpression, revealing information to the subject.
Yet, even in silence, he knew his reaction had betrayed him.
In truth, he did not think of her as “mother.” The circumstances surrounding his birth were shrouded in conjecture and family lore. He was reasonably certain that she was his actual biological parent, but if his suspicions were true, she had served merely as a surrogate—a womb in which he and Ulrich Hauser had gestated. Subsequent events amply demonstrated that she felt no sense of motherly affection or duty toward him. He was simply a variable in some bizarre, secretive experiment. A pawn in the Promethean chess game.
It was true that she had watched over him, shielded him from mortal danger. Hauser had admitted as much in that first encounter. But had she done this because of her feelings for him, or because it advanced her agenda? He suspected the latter.
Even her recent overtures to him, backchanneled through his adoptive father, seemed driven more by her needs—or rather the needs of the traditionalist faction of Prometheus—than by a desire for reconciliation.
The old wisdom about the enemy of his enemy being his friend did not necessarily hold true where Prometheus—or this woman—was concerned. He wasn’t yet sure what he wanted her to know about his motives or his loyalties.
Hauser ordered the driver to depart, and as the convoy pulled away, he made a show of adjusting his position, as if trying to get comfortable in preparation for a long trip. After a few seconds of this, he raised his eyes to the woman. “Mother, look who turned up.” A glance to Kismet, then back to the woman. “Wait, have you two actually met?” He laughed. “It’s funny, Nick. I got to have her as a mother, but you got to keep her name. I’m not sure which one of us got the better end of that deal.”
Kismet once more fought a losing battle to hide his reaction. His unusual surname was one more piece of family lore he had largely taken for granted. Now, at least, he had one answer.
The woman flashed an irritated look at Hauser, but said nothing.
“Mother,” Hauser went on. “I brought Nick here in the hopes that he could convince you to tell me how to find Olympus.”
She stared at Hauser a moment longer, her eyes narrowing contemptuously. Then she turned to Kismet. “I know what he wants,” she said. “What do you want?”
He weighed all his possible answers. Did hedare tell her the truth? Reveal that the lives of Maddock and the others hung in the balance? Would she understand that he was just biding his time, waiting for an opportunity to turn the tables on Hauser? Would she believe that the last thing he wanted was for his psychotic twin brother to gain possession of the elemental artifacts and all the other secrets in the Prometheus vault?
He decided to answer with a different truth. “I want answers.”
The corners of her mouth twitched and began to curl upward. “So, my boys are finally getting along. It’s about damn time.”
“Bones!”
Maddock leaned out of the tunnel opening, searching the dust-shrouded steps for any sign of his friend, but as he did, he felt the edge of the opening giving way beneath him. He scrambled back a fraction of a second ahead of the collapse. The passage filled with dust. The tumult reached a deafening climax, the floor under him shaking in a sustained tremor.
And then all was still.
Maddock crawled forward into the settling dust cloud until he reached the edge. “Bones!”
He waved his hand, trying to swat the cloud away. Somehow, he had managed to hang onto his phone and now shone its light into the emptiness beyond. The motes swirled away, affected more by gravity than anything he was doing, but after a few seconds, it cleared enough for him to see what lay beyond.
There wasn’t enough left of the hollow pyramid to recognize what it had once been. The stone blocks that had formed its walls and the long descending staircase now lay mostly in a jumble on the floor of an enormous cavern—or rather a sinkhole. Without the pyramid to support it, the roof had collapsed in. Looking up, Maddock could see starlight.
Movement from below caught his eye, drawing his attention back to the ruin of the cavern. A hand had appeared from just beyond the edge of the passage opening, fingers splayed out, trying to find purchase on the rough surface.
“Bones!” Maddock cried again, his earlier desperation washed away with a flood of relief. Though he couldn’t fathom how Bones had managed to accomplish it, the big man had evidently leaped across the spreading fissure and onto the exposed cavern wall where he had clung to the bare rock, riding out the violent collapse of the pyramid.
Maddock gripped his friend’s wrist in both hands and leaned back, giving the big man an assist. Bones’ other hand came up and then with a dynamic heave, his upper torso rose into view, allowing him to wriggle forward onto the floor of the passage where he collapsed and lay motionless for several seconds. But despite his obvious exhaustion, behind his mask of dust and grime, Bones was grinning.
“Well,” he said, “I think that finally settles the question of who’s the best climber.”
Maddock gaped at him in disbelief. “Seriously?” He shook his head. “Don’t you mean luckiest?”
“Aw, you’re just jealous, ‘cause you couldn’t have solved that problem.”
“Bones, you caused the problem.”
“You know, that’s always been your problem. You see a silver lining and you start looking for the dark cloud. We made it out of there.” He straightened, evidently remembering something. “Oh, speaking of silver linings...”
He reached to his back pocket and produced the hatchet head. The metal gleamed brightly, without a single scratch to mar its surface. He handed it to Rose. “I think this belongs to you.”
“And speaking of dark clouds,” Jade put in, “What are we going to do now?”
“Do?” asked Bones. “You mean aside from crawling out of this hell hole and heading back to the hotel for beer, a shower and a bed?”
“We have to help Nick.”
“Help him?” Bones snorted. “After what he did? Not a chance.”
“Bones, even you can’t be that thick. He did that to save us.”
“If you call leaving us buried alive ‘saving us’?”
Maddock jumped in. “She’s right. And there’s an even better reason to go after them. We need to stop Hauser from getting his hands on that fourth relic.”
“How are we supposed to do that? We don’t have a clue where it is.”
Maddock considered this question for a moment. “I think I know someone who might be able to help with that.”