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

  “The chief’s guys didn’t find the entrance. I bet that’s because the Sect buried any sign of it.”

  “But now, thanks to quite astonishing ingenuity, Ixchel, my dear Josh, we have their maps. . .” Lorena seems delighted. “You really are such an asset to Ek Naab.” Quite without warning she throws her arms around Ixchel. “I’m so proud of you! It seems no time at all since you were a little girl, wandering around the library!”

  I stand very still, hoping I’m not about to get the same treatment. After a moment Lorena releases Ixchel, who’s turned a bright shade of pink.

  Lorena folds the computer printout with the hip33 sequence into a neat square. She drops it into the top pocket of her lab coat, a huge grin on her face.

  “My dear young friends, this settles it, don’t you think?”

  “Settles what?”

  “We must tell Carlos and the chief right away. I see absolutely no reason now why we should kowtow to the NRO. Even if they revived Cleopatra herself in those sarcophagi!”

  Ixchel gasps. “If we can activate the fifth Revival Chamber, we can find our own Erinsi survivors . . . we won’t need help from the NRO!”

  I gulp down a huge breath. Loren’s and Ixchel’s enthusiasm is infectious, but I can’t forget the absolute ruthlessness of the Sect. Yes – I stole their Adaptor from Simon Madison. They won’t be able to get into the Australian chamber. But I wouldn’t put it past the Sect to find another way to destroy any chance of reviving the Erinsi.

  “Could be a long shot. But you’re right. We have to try.”

  “I’ll need to send medical aid,” Lorena says. “To take care of any survivors you revive.”

  “I’ll bet,” I say. “Seventy thousand years in suspended animation must give you a terrible pain in the head.”

  But Ixchel’s expression has turned suddenly pale. She stares past me, at the computer screen.

  “Lorena . . . what’s that?”

  A message has popped up on the computer screen.

  YOUR IP ADDRESS IS BEING TRACED.

  Lorena leans over the screen. An uneasy look enters her eyes. “Our computers can tell if someone is trying to trace an IP address. It means that going on to this website has triggered some kind of alarm. And now whoever owns that site is trying to locate the origin of your browser query. They’re trying to find Ek Naab.”

  “Is there any chance that they can actually find the city from this?”

  “Hopefully not,” Lorena says. “That’s why we install the IP tracing detection software.”

  “We’ve tripped a wire. . .” Ixchel says.

  Lorena pulls the network connection out of the computer. “That’ll put a stop to it.”

  I say nothing, try to bury the gnawing sensation of fear that’s growing within.

  The Sect know we’re on to them. There’s no time to spare.

  It’s one thing to get permission to go to the fifth Revival Chamber. But Benicio was right; after what happened with the Muwan Mark II, there’s no way that Chief Sky Mountain will allow me to pilot the Muwan.

  “Let me fly Josh there,” insists Benicio.

  The chief stares pointedly at the brace on Benicio’s leg. “You’ll be confined to the cockpit. It’s not safe.” He’s not happy about having his authority questioned.

  “What, this old thing? Chief, you worry too much. If I need to get out super-fast, I’ll eject!”

  “Ixchel needs to come too,” I insist. “I’m useless with those ancient inscriptions. If there’s an inscription that means ‘self-destruct’, I’d be the one who presses it.”

  “You need a co-pilot,” the chief mutters.

  “But with Benicio, Lorena’s medic, Ixchel and me, the Muwan is full!”

  “All taken care of. I’ve requested Diego Ka’an,” says Benicio. “He trained for the Sky Guardians before he became a medic. And there’s always Josh.”

  The chief puts both hands on his hips, surveying his domain: the Muwan hangar bay. “I see. You seem to have this operation all planned.”

  “That’s right,” Benicio agrees, cheerily. “Josh, Ixchel, Diego, me. The crack team that’s going to bring us back the last of the Erinsi.”

  Diego arrives, Lorena’s Head of Surgery, a guy in his late thirties who I often seen training in the gym. He’s wearing a heavy-looking backpack. From the tips of his fingers, Diego hands me a transparent zip-top bag. Inside I see the outline of the Adaptor.

  We’re really doing this: I’m going to activate the fifth chamber.

  Diego relaxes when I accept the bag containing the Adaptor. He’s relieved to be rid of it – the Adaptor is Erinsi technology that has the highest level of protection: one of the deadly bio-toxins. A single touch will release a poisonous gas that will asphyxiate anyone in a three-metre radius.

  Anyone without the proper genetic protection, that is. I always assumed it was the Bakab gene. But now that I look at the Adaptor again, for the first time in over a year, I wonder. Tyler’s words return to me.

  Can any blue-blood use the Bracelet?

  There’s more to the Erinsi genetics than I’d imagined. And the Sect of Huracan seem to have worked that out, quite a while ago. They’re way ahead of Lorena and her team. The Sect are recreating Erinsi abilities in their members. They’ve realized that those abilities are the key to using ancient technology.

  We climb aboard. The Muwan hangar bay doors open. Benicio swoops the craft up high – so high that for a moment I wonder if he’s going to try the Stratosphere Dive. But it’s clear he’s going even higher. Watching the pressure levels drop, Diego opens a panel under the co-pilot seat and removes three helmets with oxygen supplies.

  “It’s OK,” Benicio breathes. “We’re only going to be up here for a minute or two. Plot me a course to that Australian chamber, OK, Diego? I’ve downloaded the maps into the on-board computer.”

  Ixchel stares in wonder through the glass. “You can see the curve of the Earth. . .”

  I want to look too but all my attention is taken up peering at the holographic projection of the maps of the Revival Chamber’s location. It’s in Western Australia, close to the mouth of an estuary. I watch Diego programme some landing coordinates, then take a closer look at the map. An entrance is clearly marked. But there’s another tunnel that leads from the underground chamber. Has the Sect constructed a new entrance?

  Turning, I find Ixchel looking at me in silence. She intertwines her fingers with mine. We don’t say anything. Benicio is mumbling to himself, anxious. The tension needs to be broken so I plug in my iPod and select American Idiot by Green Day. Within seconds we’re feeling better, buoyed along by positive energy. We listen to the whole album twice, and then just for luck, the International Superhits! album. I only switch to something different when Diego finally starts to complain.

  At this height the land below looks like a gigantic, curvy atlas. The blue of the Pacific Ocean extends as far as the eye can see. After a couple more hours scattered islands come into view, dotting the blue to the south. Another hour passes before the eastern coast of Australia stretches far below, gradually disappears behind us as the country opens below, desert, unending desert in every direction until it fills every corner of the view beneath us like some impossible vision. Over the next two hours, lakes appear now and again, glittering in the red dust, sometimes white, sometimes pink.

  Ixchel and I are dozing against each other, half asleep, when the holographic viewer springs into life; the route lights up, leading the Muwan to the location of the Revival Chamber. There are no landmarks, nothing.

  In the middle of nowhere.

  Benicio lands the craft and opens the cockpit. A blast of heat smacks down on us, hotter than anything I’ve ever felt. The exterior temperature gauge on the control panel reads 49 degrees Celsius.

  “You couldn’t have found some shade?” I mutter. Benicio shrugs. He’s right – no sign of shade whatsoever.

  We grab some sunglasses, remove our jackets and climb out of th
e Muwan. The sky is vast, deep blue with wisps of cloud like shreds of cotton wool thrown at random. The land burns red, like fired mud or the planet Mars.

  There’s no sign of anything or anyone, not even a road. Benicio stretches out an arm, holds his phone for a signal, following the image of the map. I cross-reference with a satnav programme on my own phone. The four of us begin to walk, shoes crunching on crusts of soil that hasn’t been walked over for tens of thousands of years – if at all.

  We easily find the original entrance to the chamber – an opening, about two metres high, in a rocky mound, as if leading to a cave. There’s a door, metallic, rusted. It swings open at one push.

  “This door isn’t thousands of years old. . .” Benicio says.

  “It’s the fake door.”

  “I suspect whoever built it has long gone,” Ixchel says.

  Now we orient ourselves with the new map data; looking for the second, secret entrance. Did the Sect build the fake entrance? Or did they discover it? The metal door doesn’t look all that old, just a bit weathered. Did someone else get there before the Sect?

  So much time has passed since the Erinsi built these chambers. Millennia. How could they hope to keep a plan going for so long? Were the survivors of each chamber meant to take care of the others, so that eventually one group would last long enough? How much damage did Bosch do when he revived all the survivors of the Mexico chamber?

  The sun blazes with implacable heat. The skin of my face and arms sizzle; the itchy beginnings of sunburn. We’re searching a red desert for the hidden entrance to something that’s been lost for an unthinkable period of time.

  We continue, tracking the map until we arrive at an opening in the ground, barely wide enough for a person to enter. Benicio takes a torch from his toolbelt and shines it inside.

  “We’re going to need rope.”

  I say, “How deep?”

  “No idea,” Benicio says. Sweat rolls into his eyes. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. With the toe of his boot he scores a line in the dust, near the opening. “See all the scuffs, the markings? Rope. Someone’s been here. Not too long ago, either.”

  Diego steps forward. He’s clearly come properly equipped. Diego whacks climbing posts into the rock and runs thin rope through the narrow pins. He ties the rope around his waist and hitches a couple of tidy knots. He hands me his medical backpack and one end of the rope while I watch him, conscious yet again of my inexperience. Every time I think I know what I’m doing, a guy like Diego or Benicio comes along to show me how much I still have to learn. It’s kind of irritating.

  We stand around the hole, casting short shadows in the unrelenting sunlight. As Diego disappears into the darkness, I clutch the Adaptor inside its protective plastic. One way or another, I’m going to have to go inside. Do what only I can do and use the Erinsi technology to activate the ancient Revival Chamber. And finally meet one of these ancient survivors of the Erinsi civilization.

  The People of Memory.

  We wait. The only sounds are the steady scrapes of the rope on the edge of the gap, the occasional caw of birds. Very high overhead, two aeroplanes cruise by and their vapour trails cross. My eyes meet Ixchel’s. I have to go down there, I know. Not her, not Benicio, just me.

  Then Diego’s voice calls. “Now, Josh, Ixchel.”

  We enter the hole and I grip the thin rope, steadying my feet against the rock. The descent is short, no more than five metres. Then I’m on solid ground. Diego is there, with a torch. He flashes it down a tunnel that leads north. Ixchel follows, her hand gripping my jacket.

  Diego says, “It’s down here. Do you know what to do?”

  “Did you bring the Crystal Key?”

  Diego takes a plastic tube from his pocket. He unscrews the blue lid and removes a wad of polystyrene. Underneath is a small crystal, no bigger than a tiny necklace bead.

  “You put this into the Adaptor, and the Adaptor into the Container in the chamber.”

  “Like it says in the Ix Codex,” I murmur, remembering the few pages that I managed to decipher all by myself.

  “Let me check first,” Ixchel says. “Just give me a few moments to read the inscriptions.”

  Diego hands Ixchel the torch and she pushes ahead, down the tunnel, into the chamber. After a second her body blocks out the light of the torch.

  “I’ve seen it done,” Diego tells me, “but naturally, I can’t touch the Adaptor myself.”

  “You’ve seen it done?”

  “Sure. The Revival Chamber in Mexico. It’s empty, as you know.”

  Staring I ask, “But who . . . who opened it?”

  “We’re not supposed to discuss that.”

  “Come on, Diego, I’m practically on the ruling Executive. I’m supposed to know! Who opened the chamber?”

  With some reluctance Diego replies, “Blanco Vigores.”

  “Did you say Blanco Vigores?” I say. I can’t believe my ears.

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He sent for me once. He became ill . . . I can’t really share medical details, Josh. I’m a doctor.”

  “I’m sorry.” In the darkness, I blink rapidly. “This might sound like a stupid question but . . . are you sure Blanco actually used the chamber?”

  “My guess would be that he did.”

  “On himself?”

  In the shadows, I see Diego’s shoulders bob up and down. “I can only assume.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  “Without seeing the chamber in functioning mode, I can’t answer that.”

  “Does the ruling Executive knows about this?”

  “They do.”

  “Blanco has been . . . hibernating?”

  “So it seems.”

  I think for a moment. “No wonder the ruling Executive have stopped asking questions about Blanco Vigores. Do they also know where he went?”

  “All I know is what I just told you: Blanco Vigores used the chamber, at least once. Not long before he disappeared. And the Ruling Executive recently became aware of this.”

  Benicio’s voice interrupts us as it travels down the pitch black tunnel. “Come on, you guys. What’s holding you up?”

  Ixchel calls back, “Just another minute . . . I’m trying to understand the syntax here. It’s a bit complicated and I don’t want to make a mistake.”

  I whisper, “No pressure, Ixchel. But . . . the Sect know we hacked their website. It can’t be long before they come looking for us.”

  She turns around and shines the torch beam in my face the whole way back.

  “OK. Here’s what you do. Crystal Key goes into the Adaptor, and the Adaptor into the Container in the chamber, just like Diego said. You wait.”

  “How long?”

  “It didn’t say. The inscriptions say something like: Modify the Adaptor, insert into Container. Wait. Stand by with Fire Air.”

  “Fire Air?”

  “Oxygen,” Diego says. “I have a supply in the medical pack.”

  “To help resuscitate?”

  “Exactly.”

  “OK.”

  Ixchel pushes past me in the tunnel. “OK, Josh. Your turn.”

  Trailing fingers along the rock wall, I follow Diego along the narrow tunnel. Why a second entrance? Who made it? It’s not the original entrance, according to the Ix Codex. The Sect must have dug it themselves and blocked off the original entrance, once they realised other people knew about the chambers. Luckily though, we hacked into the Sect’s secret website . . .

  What if it’s a trap? Without the Adaptor, there is no way that the Sect could have opened the chamber.

  But I know the Sect well enough to know that they wouldn’t give up so easily. As far as they’re concerned, the world after 2012 is theirs for the taking.

  My pace slows; my pulse quickens. What have the Sect left down here for us?

  Diego comes to a stop before an entrance. He raises the torch, throwing a white glare around the cham
ber. Holding my breath, I take two steps forward and enter, for the second time in my life, that deepest secret of humanity’s existence on the planet. The Erinsi. Holders of an ancient secret; the cycle of cataclysm that will be visited upon civilization.

  I can’t stop thinking about the words of those skeletal spectres from Mexico’s Day of the Dead:

  Como me ves, te veras. As you see me, so you will see yourself.

  Our torches circle the octagonal chamber, identical in every aspect to the one Ixchel and I discovered under the Depths near Becan. Seven walls, each containing three sarcophagi carved from the same smooth-alabaster-like material as the Adaptor. A central altar, waist high. And everywhere, inscriptions; inscriptions that flow into each another, networks in a precise pattern.

  The altar, too, is octagonal, inlaid with twenty-one stone tablets, each covered with similar markings as the lids of the sarcophagi. In the middle of the altar is a small depression.

  Diego points. “OK Josh, this is where Ixchel and I have to stop. It’s not safe to get any closer without the protective gene – or a gas mask. That’s the Container. You place the Adaptor in there.”

  He hands me his torch. “Ixchel and I are going to hang back now, Josh. Don’t touch the altar, especially the Container, until you hear my voice. OK? We need to be at least five metres away to be out of range from the bio-toxin.”

  He disappears back into the tunnel until there’s only a brilliant point of light in the thick black.

  “Make sure Ixchel’s safe too,” I call after them.

  Diego hisses, “Obviously! OK. Now, Josh.”

  I open up the plastic bag and remove the Adaptor. My hands tremble very slightly as I fit the tiny Crystal Key into the small depression at the end of the Adaptor. Carefully, I turn the Adaptor around, until the intricate pattern of markings is facing me. Then I insert it into the Container.

  For a minute, nothing happens. The minute stretches.

  Like the inscription said: Wait.

  The next moments are reduced to a jumble in my mind. It begins with a faint pinkish iridescence from the inscriptions. The writing becomes projected into the air. The torch in the tunnel goes off; there’s nothing but the pale light of those glowing inscriptions.