The Joshua Files - a complete box set: Books 1-5 of the young adult sci-fi adventure series plus techno-thriller prequel

by M. G. Harris

  It’s a largish house, but only two of the four upstairs rooms are made up as bedrooms. There’s a double room, which is so spotlessly tidy that it looks totally unused. A second large bedroom, also with a double bed, is obviously Ollie’s. She’s messy – clothes are draped all over the floor. A pristine school uniform hangs against the wardrobe. The desk is totally devoid of any school books or anything that looks like it belongs to a schoolgirl.

  The other two upstairs rooms are offices. One is packed with high-tech equipment – in a quick sweep my eyes take in computers, cameras, video machines. There’s more, though – electronic equipment I don’t recognize. The other room is stacked with books. More books about the Maya than even my father has, but also books about linguistics and ancient writing from all over the world.

  And a grey metal filing cabinet.

  I open the drawers and start going through the folders. The alarm is blaring, a massive distraction, but I try to ignore it and press on. Somewhere in the second drawer, I find the familiar copied pages of the Ix Codex. I check the rest of the drawers for any sign of photocopies, and when I’m sure there aren’t any, I stuff the pages into my back pocket. My heart is pounding with a mixture of elation and fear.

  Then I start on the computer in the other office. It’s in standby mode, and flicks back into action when I touch the spacebar. My luck is in – no password protection on the screensaver.

  I run a search for all files created in the last week. Then I look thoroughly through the image files. Four of them are scans, made two days ago – the same day the pages were taken from my house. I bring them up on screen. Bingo.

  I delete all four images of the codex pages and leave the room. All I need to do now is to destroy the original hand-copied pages, and that’s it – mission accomplished. No need to worry that Ollie and Madison’s group will be able to use any information from the Ix Codex.

  In the kitchen, I turn on the gas stove and set fire to the pages, watching them crumble to ash on the stove top. I can hardly believe I’ve got away with this so easily. I’m all set to leave the same way as I entered when I realize what an opportunity I’m missing. Her computer is totally accessible! This is my chance – maybe my only chance – to gather information about the enemy.

  I can’t pass it up. Even the NRO and Montoyo seem to know almost nothing about Madison.

  I go back upstairs, the alarm shrieking like a banshee – but the world outside is still oblivious, as I predicted. Back on the computer, I go to her email.

  The first thing I notice are emails from “Simon”. I read a couple – they’re short, telling Ollie where he is (Cambridge, Connecticut, Beirut), making comments about me – obviously responding to things she’s been telling him.

  But all I can see is the way they’re signed.

  Love ya baby, S

  I feel my skin burning red, whilst the pit of my stomach turns to ice.

  I push myself to look further. No other emails from anyone with familiar-sounding names. I read some of the emails to and from Tyler. It’s pretty standard, friendly stuff. There’s lots of speculation about what happened to me in Mexico, how “messed up” I am.

  And that makes me wonder if Ollie had Tyler on the go, too. Girls don’t usually send a guy that many “hi there” emails. For a brief second I wonder what he’d make of it. Would he feel as bad as me? I could spend hours just on their emails, but I press on.

  I look through her folders. No obviously suspicious names. I search for documents opened in the last week.

  I find a Word document which was in the Temporary folder. It looks as though it was received as an email attachment.

  It’s a list of place names. They could be towns in Germany, Italy or Switzerland – Andermatt, Wengen, Morcote, Ticino. Beside each is a sum in euros. It could be a list of holiday homes and their prices for all I can tell.

  The first page is followed by a long list of names, with nationalities. I punch the “Page Down” button a few times. There are pages and pages of these names; hundreds of names, from countries in every continent.

  It’s the letterhead design that really catches my eye. It’s a Mayan symbol, or looks like one. Not a glyph made up of syllables, but a logogram – a whole word. I don’t remember seeing it before, but then I’m hardly an expert. It looks something like the eye of a storm. I’m staring at it, when I hear the front door being opened. By someone in a hurry.

  I freeze momentarily, staring in dumb horror at the staircase, waiting to hear someone walk upstairs. The burglar alarm stops; the downstairs lights go on. I hear someone pace towards the kitchen. Then I hear Ollie’s voice: “Who’s there?” In half a second I’m out of the office and into the unused double bedroom, hiding.

  There’s going to be no easy way to explain my being in her house, alone, window smashed and lights out. My only hope is to stay out of sight until she assumes I’ve already left, and then go. I glance around the room, hunting for a hiding place. I climb into a wardrobe, amongst a rack of suits. I breathe slowly, stay perfectly still.

  Inside the wardrobe, I can’t hear so well. I don’t hear Ollie’s movements until the bedroom door opens. She can’t be taking more than a quick look around, because she closes the door a second later.

  Time passes. I wait. In the calm of this moment, it sinks in; what seemed like a paranoid nightmare has come true.

  It really was Ollie. But at least Tyler is in the clear.

  The minutes tick by. It occurs to me that I’ve maybe done a stupid thing. In here, I’ve no idea where Ollie is. She could be anywhere. I can’t leave until I know she’s safely tucked away in the bathroom or her bedroom. Slowly, slowly, I open the wardrobe door, praying that it won’t squeak.

  It doesn’t.

  I step out, then stumble slightly and lose my balance. I manage to land on the bed with a quiet thud. I stay rigidly still, waiting for the inevitable sound of Ollie at the door. But it doesn’t come. I stand, creep over to the door, where I stand listening. Faintly, I hear the sound of Ollie’s voice. She’s talking on the phone downstairs, quietly. With each passing second I’m getting more desperate to get out of this house, but I can’t risk going downstairs while she’s there.

  Another hour goes by, at least. I check my watch – 8.30 p.m.

  Then the front door goes again. I hear the sound of footsteps in the downstairs hallway and then Ollie’s voice saying “Hi”. There’s no answer from the new person. A door closes and I hear the TV switch on.

  I bite my lip, wondering what to do. I could risk leaving now, but they might suddenly leave the room. Or I could stay in this room until they go to bed. But that could be hours away. I still need to go home and pack a bag for Ek Naab.

  I decide to risk it. I pry the door open, then tread down the carpeted staircase, keeping my step on the less creaky edges. I reach the front door, try to turn the handle.

  Adrenaline spikes inside me and I gasp. The front door is locked from the inside. I turn around, expecting to see the living-room door open.

  It doesn’t. Cautiously, I pace across the hallway and into the kitchen, towards the back door. I reach it, almost leaping on to the handle.

  It’s also locked. A wave of absolute dread floods me. And just as I knew it would, the living-room door opens. Ollie saunters towards me, her expression somewhere between smug and disappointed.

  “You didn’t expect us to let you just leave?”

  We stand facing each other, me frozen with horror, Ollie seemingly calm.

  “Look at you, all dressed up,” she remarks, casting her eye up and down. “What did you think you were coming round for, hey?”

  I don’t answer; instead I’m looking for a way past her. She’s blocking the door, but I could take her down with a capoeira move. From there I’d have to make it to the broken window. I make ready to spring into action, when Madison appears behind Ollie. He pushes his way past her, stares at me for a second, his jaw clenched tightly, then throws a punch straight at my face. I
drop out of the way and launch a spinning kick, the armada, aiming for his face. I feel my heel connect with his head and hear a yell of anger. But when I land, I stop short.

  Ollie is aiming a pistol right at my heart.

  My eyes go straight to hers. I can’t help but look appalled.

  “Ollie . . . I thought you were my friend. . .”

  For just a second I catch the tiniest flash of regret. But as quick as she shows the emotion, she represses it.

  “Chill out, Josh. And . . . the dance-fighting isn’t going to get you out of this.”

  From behind, I feel a violent kick land hard against my ribs. The air rushes straight out of my lungs. I collapse to the floor. My arms sweep a container of cutlery to the floor as I crash. Knives and forks scatter. I try to grab one with my right hand, but Madison stamps on it, forcing a scream from me. Lying on the floor, I gasp uselessly, winded, trying to get my breathing going again.

  This time Madison speaks. “Get up.”

  It begins to dawn on me, just how bad my predicament is. I stand up slowly, sucking in air. Still holding the gun, Ollie pats my pockets, removes both phones. She passes them to Madison. He switches off my UK mobile phone and places it on the stove top, amongst the ashes of the pages from Thompson’s house. He doesn’t take his eyes off me until he opens the Ek Naab phone.

  “Who else knows about Ek Naab?” he asks, in a matter-of-fact way.

  I say nothing. Madison smashes the phone down against the sideboard, snaps it in two, then proceeds to bring his heel down on the two halves, until it’s reduced to fragments of metal and plastic, the internal chips exposed.

  “This time, Josh, they won’t find you,” says Madison, with malice. “Now. Where’s the new entrance to the city?”

  I say nothing.

  He shouts right into my face, “Where’s the Ix Codex?”

  That one, I answer. “It’s in Ek Naab.”

  The answer earns me another hard kick, this time to my right shin. I double over, groaning.

  “I know that, jerk. You think we don’t know all about your little trip? Where in Ek Naab?”

  Another blow, this time to my ribs, which by now feel as though they’re on fire from the inside.

  “You have any idea what you’ve cost me?”

  Then Ollie’s voice says calmly, “That’s enough for now, Simon. Save it.”

  My mind is working overtime. I don’t know exactly what they’ve got planned, but questions and more of Madison’s kicks seem pretty high on the menu. Without weapons, I’ve no chance against the two of them.

  I make a sudden lunge for Ollie’s gun. She yanks the pistol out of the way, but fires it anyway. The sound is deafening, and chunks of ceiling plaster crash down over us. Madison sweeps my legs from under me and I land on my stomach, sprawled over the threshold between the kitchen and the hall.

  The gunshot seems to have stunned them too. Madison recovers first. “Baby, you wanna give me the gun?”

  “I’m fine,” she snaps. “It’s just . . . I forgot how loud these things are.” Then she turns the gun on to me. “Get up. Hands above your head.”

  I do as she asks. Madison reaches into a kitchen drawer, grabs a fat roll of brown parcel tape. He twists my arms behind my back, wraps tape tightly around my wrists, over my shirt. He takes the gun from Ollie, turns me roughly around, opens a door that I’d assumed led to a pantry.

  But it doesn’t. This is serious. Behind the door are stone steps which lead to a dark cellar, smelling of damp. No one outside would hear anything from down there. They could kill me and no one would ever know.

  The cellar is empty, except for a small side table against one wall. There is only a tiny window, right up against the ceiling, no more than two feet wide. Madison pulls a cord, turning on a single, uncovered dim light bulb. He pushes the nose of the pistol against my cheek, softly.

  “On your knees.”

  I hesitate, then kneel on the concrete floor. He tapes my ankles together. I sit back on my haunches. Madison clicks his tongue.

  “Not like that. Kneel up. Straight.”

  It’s not easy to get up without my hands for leverage. I do it, slowly.

  “Josh,” he murmurs. “Look at me.”

  I stare at him in what I hope is defiance, but for all I know my face shows every bit of the terror I’m starting to feel.

  “One thing I do know about torture . . . is you gotta give a little sample. Now maybe you and me, being old friends, can miss that bit out. So first we’ll talk a little. If I like your answers, maybe I’ll stop there. But if I don’t like your answers, Josh . . . I may need to persuade you.”

  Madison places the gun slowly on the side table. His eyes turn cold, deadly, purposeful. I shut my eyes, steeling myself for the first blow, when I hear Ollie’s voice.

  “Let me try first. We should give reason a chance.”

  Madison stares at her. “He’s a liar!”

  “People lie under torture,” she remarks.

  “Soldiers lie . . . a kid like him isn’t going to lie to me, not after I’ve broken a few of his bones.”

  What Madison is saying is so unimaginably horrible that I can’t take it in. I blink, dazed.

  Ollie says quietly, “Josh. Why do you think this is happening?”

  My voice cracks slightly when I reply. “You want the codex . . . you want to get into Ek Naab? I don’t know. . .”

  “Well, let’s try asking about you. Why are you involved with all this?”

  I stare into her eyes. “The end of the Mayan Long Count . . . the galactic superwave. . . I don’t want the world as we know it to end in 2012. Do you?”

  Ollie sighs, as though this were an old, tired argument. “Hasn’t it occurred to you that saving people is the last thing we should be thinking of? What the world needs is fewer humans using up resources. Fewer humans – just those who make sensible use of what the planet has to offer. Fewer humans so that other species on the planet can actually live instead of being driven to extinction.”

  I’m stunned. “So . . . you want to just let millions of people die. . .?”

  She doesn’t seem to have heard me and continues, “We’ve made a mess of life on Earth. Climate change, wars, religious fundamentalism. One way or another, civilization is doomed. Why wait for it to happen painfully over the next century? I say we let it finish now, while the planet still has a chance to recover. Our civilization doesn’t need to be preserved – it needs to be recreated. By the right people.” Ollie throws me a meaningful look. “That could include you, Josh.”

  I find my voice. “Me? Why?”

  “You really don’t know? That Bakab gene is just the tip of the iceberg. Have you any idea what you’re capable of, if only we could unlock your potential?”

  “What Bakab gene?”

  “Don’t play the idiot. The one that gives you immunity to the Erinsi bio-defence.”

  “Erinsi?” I scrub my memory for the reference. I’ve heard it before. But right now I can’t remember where.

  “Josh, you’re forgetting how well I know you. Yes, the Erinsi – as in Books of Erinsi Inscriptions. The ancient people who actually wrote the writings in your precious Ix Codex – the Erinsi, the ones who actually invented all that clever technology they’re so proud of in Ek Naab.”

  “Itzamna wrote the Ix Codex. . .” I say, stalling.

  “He copied them,” snaps Ollie. “As well you know. Maybe you should stop underestimating me. I know that by now you’ve decoded the pages from the codex. You would never burn it to a crisp if you hadn’t. We’re not stupid either; we’ve decoded it too. I don’t know how much you know about the Erinsi, but I’m certain that you’ve heard of them.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know anything. I read the name, that’s all.”

  “Well, it’s not for me to tell you things that even your own people won’t let you know.”

  I say nothing, thinking angrily of Montoyo.

  “OK, here’s what we’re going to do
. Simon and I will leave you down here for ten minutes, give you a good chance to think through your options. Then I’ll come down, and Josh, you’d better start talking and fast. And I better like what I hear, or Simon is going to use his own methods.”

  I say quickly, “If I do talk, what then?”

  A hollow silence descends. After a few uncomfortable seconds, Ollie says, “It’s not my decision. It was your choice to come here. We were happy just to keep you under observation. Now, to be frank, I don’t know.”

  My head swims just thinking of the possibilities. I’m almost overwhelmed.