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The computer beeped:

DATAMAP IMAGE: 02-1476
IMAGES CORRELATE TO 0 PREVIOUSLY MAPPED IMAGES.
ANALYSING INDIVIDUAL COMPONENTS. PROCESSING…
INDIVIDUAL COMPONENT MATCH.
COMPONENT:

MATCHES 3 PREVIOUSLY MAPPED IMAGES:
1. WARRIOR'S NOSE ORNAMENT (62.3%)
2. TREE (41.0%)
3. WATER BUFFALO (34.9%)

   'Warrior's nose ornament,' Chase thought aloud. She turned to Kenny. 'Could be a societal heirarchy.'
    She arranged the tablets based on the faces they represented-warriors, laymen, children-sliding them into the slots in the shiny black floor. The raised + sign in each slot fitted into each tablet perfectly, like keys.
    The only problem was, Chase was wrong.

THE PRICE OF FAILURE
The last tablet slid into place and, instantly, Chase saw movement out of the corner of her eye. She leapt backwards, away from the doorway.
    It was lucky she did so.
    In a flashing nanosecond, two large square slabs of shiny black obsidian came shooting inwards from the walls on either side of her-twin piledrivers-and banged together like a pair of gigantic cymbals in precisely the spot where her head had just been!
    But it wasn't over yet.
    The black stone floor beneath Chase dropped away-a trap door-and she fell, screaming, into blackness.
    She fell fast, before-- whack!-- her buddy rope to Kenny snapped taut. Kenny was almost yanked into the square hole after her but he just managed to garner a foothold, bringing Chase to an abrupt jolting halt.
    An inch in time.
    In the dim lamp-light that filtered in from the trap door above her, she saw a glistening forest of golden spikes just below her feet.
    And impaled on them: a bloodied broken body, shot through with spikes. Chase saw the wide-eyed look of horror on the victim's face--
    And then she recognised the face.
    It was Hans Ziegler.
    Professor Hans Ziegler. Her old heiroglyphics professor from the University of WA. The man who had taught her everything she knew.
    The man Haynes had asked her about before…
    The realisation hit Chase like a hammer blow.
    Haynes had brought Ziegler here before her.
    And it appeared that Ziegler, the esteemed professor, hadn't been able to decipher the tablets either.
    And then a stark image entered Jessica Chase's mind. An image of something she had seen earlier, a sentence scrawled on the whiteboard upstairs.
    '7 MEN LOST: 4 WOUNDED, 3 DEAD…1 BEING A CIVILIAN.'
    One being a civilian.
    Jesus.

THE SECOND TRY
The Delta men hauled Chase out of the square hole a moment before it reset itself.
    'Are you okay?' Kenny asked.
    But Chase was already striding back over to the tablets in the floor.
    'Damn it,' she said to herself. 'Stupid. It isn't a face at all.'
    She set the tablets in a new order before anybody could even think to stop her. If she was wrong this time, she was dead. She lay the tablets in the following order:

    The last tablet slotted into place.
    There was no cymbal-clash this time.
    No dropping of the trap door beneath her.
    Chase smiled.
    It hadn't been a face.
    It had been far simpler than that. It had been a glimpse of nature, a glimpse of life: the horizon underneath the sun and the moon; then the planting of a seed; then the seed being affected by changing weather, the sun and the rain; then the growth of a tree amid that changing weather; then finally, in the fifth and last tablet, the finished tree, standing in the original constant environment.
    Life.
    There came a low rumbling from within the pyramid, and then, with grave slowness, the obsidian doorstone slid smoothly and gently down into the floor, revealing a wall of murky blackness beyond it.

A GLIMPSE OF THE PRIZE
Chase just stared into the darkness beyond the doorway, her eyes adjusting to the low light.
    And then, like a veil being lifted, she saw it.
    'Holy sh--' she breathed, at exactly the same moment as someone grabbed her roughly from behind and tore her eyes away from the sight.

EXPELLED FROM THE GARDEN
Haynes' demeanour changed instantly.
    'Coleman, Reiger,' he said to two of his men. 'Take Doctors Chase and Georgeopoulous back to that spiked pit upstairs and throw them in. We won't be needing them anymore.'
    'What!' Chase said as a pair of flex cuffs-- a thick plastic strip not unlike the plastic tie one puts around a garbage bag-- were snapped into place around her wrists. Kenny was similarly cuffed.
    Chase turned to Breslin. He just shrugged.
    'I'm sorry, Jessica, but my bargain with General Haynes requires secrecy-- absolute secrecy. Which unfortunately means that you and Doctor Georgeopoulous can never be allowed to leave this mine alive.'
    Chase was speechless.
    Kenny's mouth just hung open.
    They were marched down the steps of the pyramid, flanked by two armed Delta commandos.
    'What the hell did you see in there?' Kenny asked.
    Chase recalled the image she had seen. She'd never forget it.
    She'd seen a pedestal in a dark stone room. And on that pedestal stood a glorious silver ornament cut in the shape of an isosceles triangle.
    'It was the Visitor's Stone,' she said.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END
Suddenly, things began to make sense.
    Leonard Breslin-- multi-billionaire, close friend to the President, sponsor of archaeological digs all over the globe. What would someone like Breslin want more than anything?
    The ability to stay alive indefinitely.
    And the US Government?
    No doubt, only a small elite knew about the discovery of this mine. A small elite-- including Breslin, the President, Haynes, and maybe a few others-- who would share the power of the Stone, and make a killing doing so.
    As Chase was led back over the moat, she turned to look at the enormous underground pyramid.
    She saw the military men up on the obsidian tier-- saw four of the Delta soldiers, led by Kowalski, enter the pyramid.
    'Greedy bastards.'
    She reached the archway, beheld the square floorstones of the tunnel beyond it-- the tunnel featuring the shadowed honeycombed ceiling.
    She remembered the key to this tunnel. Don't step on the front edge of the square floorstones.
    The front edge…
    And then it hit her.

NOT A MINE
Memories of the mine and its booby traps shot through her brain at high speed.
    The well-shaft near the surface-- perfectly sheer, with no fingerholds. Odd for a mine.
    The piledriver near the well-shaft-- it came down only when you stepped on the wide trigger stone.
    The trap-door in the ultra-narrow passageway-- it had only operated, after a momentary delay, when Kowalski had touched a floor panel at it innermost end.
    And this tunnel-- its traps went off only when you touched the edge of the floorstones that was nearer to the main cavern.
    'Oh no…'
    Chase turned to see one of the Delta men emerge from the pyramid, holding the Visitor's Stone in a clear-plastic specimen jar. He handed it over to Breslin.
    'Kenny, get ready to run.'
    'What? Why?'
    'Because this mine isn't a mine. It's a vault. My guess, a converted prison-- Xutu prison, most likely-- that was converted into a resting place for the Stone. And remember what guarded Xutu's lower levels--'
    'How do you know?'
    'Because the booby traps have been going off behind us as we've moved inward. Kenny, those traps aren't designed to keep intruders out. They're designed to keep someone-- or something-- in.'
    Just then, as if right on cue, there came a shrill, ear-piercing scream from the obsidian tier.
    It came from inside the open doorway, and was followed by a short burst of automatic gunfire which stopped almost as soon as it had begun.
    Then suddenly-- shockingly-- a ragged round object came tumbling out of the pyramid's doorway, bouncing end-over-end like a soccer ball.
    It rolled right past Haynes and Breslin before it thudded clumsily down the stairs behind them.
    Chase and Kenny saw it clearly, and their blood went cold.
    It was a severed human head.
    It was Tank Kowalski's head.
    'I think this is going to be painful,' Chase said.
    She was right.

WHEN ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE
The creatures came storming out of the pyramid's dark obsidian entryway like bats out of hell.
    They moved like lightning, propelling themselves forward off powerful hind limbs while grabbing onto the floor in front of them with clawed forelimbs-a method of movement that was part-kangaroo, part-gorilla.
    They were big, too-- man-sized-- and hairy, covered in black-brown fur, that spiky brackish fur of rodents the world over.
    But it was their heads that provided the most frightening image. Evil black eyes glared down sneering weasel-like noses. And their teeth-- all canines and carnassials-- betrayed seriously carnivorous intentions.
    They honestly looked like a cross between rats and velociraptors.
    Rodentus carnifex.
    The Central American giant rodent.
    And the guardians of the lower levels of the legendary Xutu prison.
    The first creature to emerge from the obsidian entryway launched itself at Haynes. It clasped its thumbed foreclaws around his skull and sank its teeth deep into his throat, cracking his neck with one horrific bite.
    Blood sprayed everywhere.

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE
From their position over by the archway, Chase and Kenny didn't have time to ask stupid questions like how the hell does something like that survive for over a thousand years inside a subterranean pyramid?
    They just stared in stunned silence as the creatures-- dozens of them, hordes of them-- burst forth from the ancient structure en masse, like demons set free from the bowels of the earth.
    They could see Leonard Breslin and the three Delta soldiers who had been up on the obsidian tier dashing down the stairs on the side of the pyramid, heading for the bridge over the moat, closely followed by the army of hairy black monsters.
    One of the Delta men tripped and fell, and a cluster of the creatures fell upon him. He screamed, but only briefly.
    Two creatures, however, actually overtook Breslin's group.
    They had seen Chase's gang standing in the archway, and had taken it upon themselves to go after them.
    They moved with shocking speed, covering the distance between the bridge and the archway in seconds.
    The two Delta men standing with Chase and Kenny bolted, charged off down the tunnel.
    Chase and Kenny-- still cuffed at the wrists and tied together by their rope-- took off after them.
    The two hairy creatures stormed into the tunnel a second later, squealing with rage.
    Chase-- running last of all-looked over her shoulder as she ran, and in a fleeting instant, she knew.
    They had her.
    And as she turned, wide-eyed, for a final glance, she saw the first creature move in close behind her and launch itself into the air, its jaws bared wide, and all Chase could do was shut her eyes and wait for the--

...Concluded in Part 4...

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