by M. G. Harris
Abruptly as it started, the scream stops.
Tyler, Ixchel and I stare at each other, horrified.
Mum.
We race back, flashing beams of light all over the foliage. When we see her, we stop hard in our tracks.
She’s on the ground, tussling among dry leaves. Three thick, muscular coils of a giant snake are wrapped around her. Mum’s eyes are wild with panic but she hardly makes a sound above a whimper.
Ixchel says in a loud but steady voice, “Eleanor . . . breathe shallow . . . try not to struggle. It’s gonna be OK, we’ll kill it.”
I’m not so calm; I push past, throw myself on to the snake and grab its head. With the sharp end of one of the drug pens I stab it in the throat, dragging the tip of the pen down in a slicing movement to tear open its flesh. I grit my teeth the whole time; I don’t flinch when the snake’s blood spurts out on to my hands.
I’ve never wanted to kill something so badly.
The coils are still rock-hard for several seconds, until finally they begin to slacken. I pull the beast off my mother and pick her up, hugging her tightly. Not surprisingly, she’s still shaking.
Me too. The violence of what I’ve just done takes me by surprise.
Ixchel puts a hand on my shoulder. “Josh,” she urges. “We really need to go.”
I wipe the snake blood on to my shirt and take my mother’s hand in mine. She grabs a few deep breaths and gives a flustered laugh. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the saints . . . I thought I was dead for sure,” she says, which makes me laugh too.
I love it when Mum’s Irish side comes out.
We press on, slower now, being even more careful to check everything in our path. It’s nerve-racking to make such painstaking progress, knowing the kidnappers are only a couple of minutes behind. I keep pausing to listen for any signs of them. But every time I stop, all I can hear is my own heart, pumping fit to burst.
Every now and then I steal a glance at Ixchel. It’s weird, being with her again yet managing not to look at her or think about her (much). I’ve somehow blocked the thoughts I was having about her – I have to, if I’m going to get through the next five minutes alive. But now I’m confused. Maybe I don’t like her so much after all? Maybe she’s just a girl running through a dark jungle beside me, again?
The next few minutes are pure concentration as we manoeuvre through a tangle of trees, creepers and leaves. With who knows what gross kinds of insects and spiders underfoot. . .
When we hear the rushing water of the river, we begin to breathe more easily.
Tyler speaks to Benicio, tells him to get the Muwan ready. We’re sticking like limpets to the compass bearing. Any minute now we’ll break through the jungle, on to the narrow riverbank. Anxiously, I look at my mother. She’s hardly said a word, not even glanced at me since the anaconda. Is she scared? Or still angry with me for what I said that day on the dunes?
I mean, she can’t still be angry. Can she?
We arrive at the riverbank. We’re just in time to see the Muwan being slowly lowered to a few metres above the river. A rope ladder hangs from the side. I’ve no idea how we’re all going to fit inside the craft – there are only two passenger seats.
I guess Ixchel and I can share one. . .
Under the blue-white landing lights of the Muwan, I spot another problem – Tyler. He’s bent double with exhaustion, barely able to stand. His side is soaked in fresh blood – just looking at it makes me shudder. He’s fading fast.
From about thirty metres upriver, there’s a sound: the rustle of leaves. Then footsteps. I flash my torch to see four men rushing towards us. Gaspar’s among them – I catch the glint of his fair hair in my torch beam.
One of them begins to shoot.
We break out in panic. Mum leaps up, grabs the end of the rope ladder. Tyler tries to reach but staggers and Ixchel has to catch him.
“That’s it, Tyler, get over here,” Mum instructs. I watch her in amazement. Despite the fact that she’s hanging from a rope for dear life, Mum’s voice sounds pretty steady.
“Get your arms around my neck. Properly now. Hold tight. Now don’t you worry, I’ll hang on for the both of us.”
If Tyler even thinks about grumbling, he doesn’t. My mum can be pretty tough to argue with.
The guards are almost upon us. Bullets zing into the river and trees around us. Benicio’s already starting to float the Muwan away. There’s only enough room on the ladder for one more pair of hands. I grab hold and tell Ixchel, “Do like Tyler. You hang on to me.”
Rushing footsteps tell me that the kidnappers are almost here. Ixchel wraps her hands tightly around my neck, clinging to me as the Muwan begins to climb. Glancing up, I’m dazzled by a stream of light. I can see the effort in Mum’s face as she struggles to grip the ladder. And Tyler looks ready to drop.
Just a few more seconds.
Then there’s confusion. Ixchel’s grip becomes a bone-breaking tug around my neck, a deep pain in my shoulders. Ixchel screams. I can feel her fingers loosening around my neck. I clench my jaw, trying not to yell from the effort of keeping my neck muscles rigid. My head’s bending from the weight: Ixchel’s being tugged hard from below. I lower my eyes, terrified. There are two guys grabbing each of Ixchel’s legs, pulling her back down to the riverbank. With Ixchel, me.
The Muwan lifts slightly, wrenching another agonized scream from Ixchel. Mum and I are yelling at Benicio to stop lifting the craft.
There’s one last, wrenching cry from Ixchel.
Then her fingers unravel, sliding over my neck and shoulders.
Ixchel drops.
She drops and I’m still hanging in mid-air. I’m yelling at the top of my voice, back for one terrible second in the chill of that moment, gripping the ice claw, feeling the weight of my father’s body suddenly vanish as he falls to his death.
Below us, something unbelievable is taking place.
One of the guards grabs Ixchel and holds her, screaming with terror, at the brink of the river’s edge. I glimpse flashes of white water under the lights – the river crashing over her feet.
A voice shouts in the darkness, staccato words, like gunfire. It’s Gaspar. “The girl goes into the water, Josh. Unless you let go. Now.”
“No, Josh, no,” Mum shouts desperately. “Please. . .”
I stare directly ahead. Then slowly, down.
My fingers slacken. There’s a tight ache in the knuckles. I open my hands, head ringing with Mum’s imploring cries.
I can’t let them hurt Ixchel. That would be simply . . . impossible.
So I drop.
Arms catch me, hands muffle me. There’s a cold bite of pain – a needle slamming into my arm.
A drowsiness washes over me. I sway, trying to catch sight of Ixchel.
The last thing I see before my eyes close is the silhouette of my mother and Tyler, dangling from the rope ladder. Around them, a halo: the glowing lights of the Muwan.
They sail lazily upwards, like a hot air balloon. I can’t hear them any longer – there’s a roaring in my ears. Even the air slows down.
Everything fades.
I open my eyes from what feels like a long night of broken sleep. There are flashes of dreams left in my memory – but nothing that makes any sense. For the first few seconds of being awake I’m aware of fading images of people carrying me, of smooth, curved metallic walls, of an almost deafening roar. Another needle is pushed into my arm the minute I open my mouth to scream.
I was drugged. We were taken somewhere – where? I woke up at least once, I’m fairly sure of that. But now there’s no sign of Ixchel. The last I remember seeing of her is her drugged body, tied up and next to mine in . . . where were we?
Then the image-memory makes sense to me. We were in the freight section of an aeroplane.
Now I’m alone in a room – looks like a hospital room. Could be anywhere. I seem to be wearing a hospital gown. I try to sit up and immediately, something chafes hard against my wrists
. With steadily mounting terror I realize that I’m strapped to the bed. I can’t move either arm.
The second I realize that, I begin to struggle. I don’t care how much it hurts. There’s something absolutely electrifying about being strapped to a bed. I struggle, I yell for help.
Within minutes, the door opens. A nurse strolls calmly towards me, totally ignoring the fact that I’m making a racket. She grabs my shoulders and forces me to stare into her eyes.
“Josh Garcia. Yes? Be quiet now. You won’t be hurt. The Professor is on her way to see you. Try to remain calm.”
The woman speaks with a French accent. She has short red hair and pink cheeks – she doesn’t look much older than me. But when she talks to me, she’s expressionless. I gaze back at the woman, silenced by her words.
“Where am I?”
“I can’t tell you.”
I have an idea, though – a terrible idea. As time passes, I’m starting to remember things, put everything together. The Professor – the woman from the Sect of Huracan. The one Camila told me was in charge . . . the woman who Ixchel and I spied on in the Revival Chamber in the tunnels under Becan.
“The Professor. . .” I repeat. “What’s she doing here?”
For the tiniest second, the nurse’s bland expression changes – she almost smiles. “Ah . . . so you do know who she is. . .?”
Before I can answer, someone else comes through the door. A woman, probably in her late forties, very elegantly dressed in soft fabrics in grey, black and white. Her hair is shoulder-length light brown with amber highlights. All very stylish. She looks like one of the mums who pick up kids at the posh private schools near my house, in their massive cars. Good-looking, I suppose, for a woman that age.
Yet definitely familiar. I’ve seen her before. But where? Immediately, I start racking my brain.
She sidles up to the edge of my bed. She actually smiles.
“Josh,” she says softly. “It’s good to meet you properly. We didn’t get a chance for a real introduction that day in the tunnels.”
It’s the Professor – the scientist who was with Marius Martineau the day that Ixchel and I stumbled across the Sect in the ancient Revival Chamber.
I scowl. I kind of doubt that meeting her is good for me. But I daren’t say anything cheeky. I mean, you don’t. Not when you’re strapped to a hospital bed.
“Where’s Ixchel?”
The Professor makes a shushing sound. “She’s fine. She’s done what we needed, led you to us.”
“If you’ve hurt her. . .”
“I don’t blame you for being angry with me,” she drawls in her American accent. It’s definitely her – listening to her voice, my memory goes right back to that morning in the Revival Chamber. “After all, I did bring you here against your will.” She gives me a meaningful stare. “I doubt you’d have volunteered, though, would you? Even in the interests of science.”
I return her gaze with as much hostility as I can muster. But still I say nothing.
Then, to my surprise, she removes something from the pocket of her flowing grey cardigan.
The Bracelet of Itzamna.
Her eyes meet mine. “You were wearing this on your arm,” she says lightly. “What is it?”
I roll my eyes. “As if I’d tell you,” I say, after a long while.
“Well, sure, I didn’t expect that you would. Even if you actually knew.”
I feel sweat break out on my forehead. My breathing quickens.
She’s not going to torture me for information about the Bracelet – is she?
The Professor rolls the Bracelet around her wrist for a minute or two. “It’s Erinsi, isn’t it? The ancients who were really behind the Books of Itzamna and all that incredible technology in Ek Naab.”
I’m about to say something vague, when she continues, “Don’t bother to lie, I can see perfectly well for myself that it is Erinsi. I’ve seen this kind of writing before. And you know where, don’t you?”
Slowly she regards me, as if sizing me up. For a second or two I remember Blanco Vigores’s words about the Bracelet being activated by accident. I fantasize that the woman before me will suddenly vanish into a wormhole in space and be zapped into the molten centre of a volcano.
But it’s not that easy. I’ve had the Bracelet for months – never yet managed to activate it accidentally.
“I wonder how much you saw in that Revival Chamber,” she muses. “Do you even know what the Chamber is for?”
I shake my head. It’s the truth – I really don’t.
“If you saw as much as I think, then you’ll remember this: my colleagues and I in the Sect have been hoping to get your help with some experiments. For as long as we’ve known about you, in fact. It’s not that we’re short of males with the Bakab genes. As you must have realized by now, Josh, you’re not unique. Except in Ek Naab, where they’ve been throwing away one of their greatest resources for hundreds of years.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell her stubbornly.
She smiles. “Josh, don’t be silly. I know that you do. Your friend Ollie told me – you had quite a discussion with her about the Sect, didn’t you? And she told you that all but the first-born Bakabs were eventually exiled from Ek Naab, before they grew old enough to learn the secrets of the city.”
I find myself wondering if this woman has any idea how secretive Ek Naab really is. I doubt that even the Bakabs who stay really get any idea of the big picture.
I know I don’t.
“What kind of society does that, Josh, to children? Can you imagine what those boys have gone through, throughout the ages? Being sent away when their older brothers became the Bakab? Do you think anyone in Ek Naab ever asks themselves what becomes of those boys and their families?”
She’s confusing me on purpose. No one in Ek Naab’s ever told me that it happened like that. I don’t want to believe her.
“Well, they come to us; to the Sect. I’ve found them, their descendants. I’ll tell you all about it if you survive the genetic modification, Josh.”
If I survive?
She stares once again at the Bracelet, and then at me. Carefully, she puts it down on my bedside table. “You’ll get this back, don’t worry. Then perhaps you’ll be kind enough to tell us how it works.”
“I’ve got no idea,” I tell her.
The Professor looks deep into my eyes. “You might be telling the truth, I suppose,” she says absent-mindedly. “I guess we’ll see.”
Who is she?
It’s seriously starting to annoy me. There’s no doubt that hers is the voice that I heard in the tunnels under Becan that day with Ixchel. But when I look at her face, my mind keeps thinking of Oxford, strangely enough.
“Don’t I know you?” I say.
For the first time she looks slightly disconcerted. Like something might not be going according to some great plan.
“I doubt that. We hardly move in the same circles.”
She’s lying, I can tell. She’s been in Oxford. I concentrate hard, trying to remember. It’s something to do with my dad, and Oxford. Somehow, amazingly enough, there’s a connection.
I remember. “You’re Melissa DiCanio,” I blurt. Too late, I realize my mistake. Her mouth hardens into a straight line.
She’s Professor Melissa DiCanio – that scientist from Oxford who runs the pharmaceutical company in Switzerland. The one from the news story: I recognize her from the photo. She’s supposed to be dead – killed by Simon Madison.
Her voice a low, menacing purr, she almost whispers, “Well, no one is as free as the dead. . .”
The Sect faked her death. Now she can do anything she wants.
She pauses, gazing at me with an unmistakable air of threat. “You’ve got lovely eyes, Josh. I hope they’re as fetching after the experiment.”
The blood drains from my face.
What are they going to do to my eyes?
I pull against the wrist straps again, even tho
ugh I know it’s useless. DiCanio keeps watching me, interested to see my reaction but entirely without pity. As if I were just some lab rat.
I’d love to reply with some tough talk but I can’t find my voice. The sheer ludicrousness, the horror of the situation is nauseating. It’s like some nightmare James Bond thing . . . I literally can’t believe it’s happening to me. Yet there’s nothing vague, weird or dreamlike about anything. It’s all too starkly cold and real.
