Jake Atlas and the Tomb of the Emerald Snake Read online

  “Locating tombs,” another of the holograms replied.

  “Tombs?” I said. “You mean the emerald tablets. We know about them.”

  I felt the tablet in my pocket and prayed they didn’t know it was there.

  The snake lady slowly stroked her hair. “Of course you do, you little cherub. We left the tablet in the coffin for you to find. It is our way of introducing ourselves – our handshake. You may hand it over to me and find out more as you begin to work for us.”

  “And if we refuse?”

  “Oh, Jake darling, don’t make me say something mean.”

  “Why bother working for you?” Pan said. “All you want to do is find stuff and destroy it. But why? Why wipe out history?”

  “A history,” one of the silhouettes replied. “There is more than one history of the world. That which you are taught at school is simply one interpretation of evidence.”

  “You mean … it’s wrong?” Pan said. She hated these people as much as I did, but she was fascinated too. “You’re saying that the Ancient Egyptians didn’t exist?”

  “Of course the Ancient Egyptians existed,” one of the silhouettes replied. “They built the pyramids, and their temples.”

  Another of the holograms continued. “You are taught that their civilization was the world’s first. Their language, art, gods. But what if that were not true? What if Ancient Egyptian civilization was in fact … a legacy? A hand-me-down from something much older?”

  “Hand-me-down?” Pan scoffed. “You’re all crazy.”

  “And yet you have seen the evidence for yourself,” replied another shadow. “Did you not wonder who was in the coffin you discovered?”

  “Osiris…”

  The snake lady shook her head. Her voice had lost all its fake sugariness. She sounded serious, professional. “Osiris is a god,” she said. “A legend. You saw a body. A very ancient person who was later remembered as Osiris. But that person was real.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Did you not see maps in the lake tomb? Maps and carvings of places that Egyptians could not possibly have known? The tomb was sealed, so those carvings could not have been added later.”

  “How?” Pan asked. “How could they have been there?”

  “How, indeed,” one of the shadows replied.

  The snake lady flapped a hand, signalling to the mercenary controlling the holosphere. He pinched and flicked several hovering files, causing images to project all around the cave – holograms of the pyramids, towers, stone circles and temples we’d seen on the tomb walls. Between them, the same symbol repeated over and over.

  The snake eating its own tail.

  The snake lady’s eyes gleamed in the light of the projections. “What if there was a culture on this planet long before the Egyptians built their pyramids? Something far more advanced. A culture that did not survive. But before it disappeared, its people travelled. They left mythologies, mathematical principles, expertise in architecture and art, a legacy that is reflected in ancient cultures all around the world: Egypt, Indus Valley, China, Peru…”

  “Who?” Pan asked.

  “You have seen them,” the snake lady replied, “in the crystal coffins.”

  Pan reached out and touched a projection close to her, of a serpent.

  “The People of the Snake,” she said.

  The snake lady smiled again, ruby lips and pearl-string teeth. “That is not the name we give them,” she said. “If you work for us, we will tell you more. That and a hundred other secrets about the true history of humankind.”

  “But why destroy it all?” I demanded. “Why not tell everyone?”

  One of the hologram silhouettes replied. The voice was deep and deadly serious. “For your own good. The People of the Snake, as you call them, vanished. We have reason to believe that they were made extinct by a particular event. It is possible that that event might return. If so, it is us – all of humanity – that would be wiped out.”

  “What event?” Pan demanded. “Tell us.”

  “We have already told you too much,” the silhouette replied.

  “Too much?” I asked.

  “For you to leave,” the shadow figure added. “What Marjorie means is that you do not have to be our enemy. You have the will to oppose us, but not the resources. Instead, why not work with us?”

  “Wait,” I said, turning back to the snake lady. “Marjorie? That’s your name?”

  She looked thrown. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s just not very evil. We’ve been calling you the snake lady. Marjorie sounds like a grandma in a knitting circle.”

  I burst out laughing so hard that I staggered to Pan and leaned against her for support. “Marjorie!” I repeated.

  My sister looked as bewildered by my outburst as the snake lady. She didn’t realize it was fake. I mean, it was a stupid name for a villain, but the reason I laughed was to get closer to Pan so I could see the tracker. She’d tucked it into her palm to hide it from the snake lady. Now I saw that the third signal was on top of the other two, right above us.

  The snake lady came closer, holding out pale, waxy palms. “Oh, dear Jake, darling Pandora. It seems that your little game is finally over. Jake? No more clever plans?”

  Her hands glowed in the sunlight that poured through the opening in the mountain. Then, just for a second, the light broke. High above, something moved across the sky.

  I stepped up to the snake lady, wiping away tears of fake laughter. I made it look like I might actually hug her.

  “You’re wrong about something, Marjorie,” I said.

  “Wrong?”

  “There’s still one clever plan left.”

  Right then, two wires dropped from the sky behind me and dangled in front of Pan. High above hovered Sami’s extraction drone. He’d homed in on my tracking signal, and he’d sent presents. Hanging from each line was a utility belt.

  The moment the wires dropped, the mercenaries opened fire. Stun darts shot into the ground; one hit the snake lady in the leg. Whatever drug was in the thing worked fast. Her scream became a moan and she slumped forward, unconscious.

  I grabbed her as she fell and wrapped my arm around her neck. With my other hand, I reached and slid one of Sami’s explosive devices from a utility belt hanging on the wire. I remembered what Sami had told us about these mercenaries. They were just hired thugs. They’d all lose out if the snake lady died.

  “Stop shooting!” I screamed. “Or I’ll blow us up, and your boss too. Then how are you all going to get paid?”

  I dragged her limp body back, making sure the mercenaries didn’t fire at Pan either.

  Quickly, Pan unclipped the utility belts from the wires. She fixed one of them around her waist, then grabbed the snake lady as I strapped on the other. The belts were fully kitted with flares, smoke bombs, explosives and, of course, a pair of smart-goggles.

  “Jake?” Pan yelled. “What now?”

  “Make a smoke shield,” I replied.

  She pulled a smoke bomb from her belt and hurled it to the floor. In seconds black fumes engulfed us.

  The mercenaries shouted in different languages, a tornado of noise around the cave. The hologram figures roared orders too, but it was impossible to pick out individual voices.

  “Don’t shoot!” I cried. “I’ve still got the bomb.”

  “Jake,” Pan hissed. “What now?”

  I yanked the snake lady closer, trying to sound frightening. “Where are our parents?”

  Her eyes rolled, but she was too drugged to reply.

  There were at least a hundred doors in the walls up the side of the cave, but the smoke was so thick that we couldn’t even see them any more.

  I reached to my belt and pulled out the smart-goggles. I gave them an order as I slid them on. “Thermal.”

  My view changed from swirling smoke to the heat map of a thermographic camera. I saw glowing heat signals from all the mercenaries surrounding us in the c
ave. Above them, in a cell across the cave, two glowing blobs huddled together.

  “Pan, I think Mum and Dad are over there. We’ve got to get to the ladder on the other side.”

  At least the mercenaries couldn’t see us through the smoke. Pan moved even closer to me and we shuffled through the black cloud, dropping smoke bombs in our path. We inched our way across the cave and towards the ladder.

  One of the mercenaries couldn’t control his trigger finger. A stun dart whizzed through the smoke, missing my head – and the snake lady’s – by inches.

  “Do you want me to blow up your boss?” I screamed.

  “Jake, we’re at the ladder,” Pan said.

  So far, so good, but this was as far as it could be good. The snake lady was slim, but we wouldn’t be able to carry her up the ladder. As soon as I let her go the mercenaries would blast us with every stun dart they had. And even if we could get up there, we’d no idea how to open the door to the cell. We didn’t even know for sure that our parents were in there.

  Think. Think!

  “This is the last smoke bomb,” Pan said, hurling it to the floor. Its black cloud rose and thickened. As soon as it cleared, we’d become target practice for a hundred well-trained mercenaries. They’d take us out with stun dart sniper shots.

  “What now, Jake?” Pan called.

  The smoke grew thinner. The shapes of the mercenaries became clearer. We had seconds left…

  42

  The smoke thinned into a dusky grey haze. I pressed back against the ladder, my grip tight around the snake lady’s neck. She was still unconscious from the stun dart and I held her against me as a shield. But that wouldn’t matter to the mercenaries. As soon as they could see us, they’d shoot.

  “Jake?” Pan called. “What’s the plan?”

  I looked up to the cell door, behind which I thought Mum and Dad were being held. I tried to think of any plan other than the one in my mind, but nothing better presented itself, and there was no time to wait.

  “How many more bombs have you got on your belt?” I asked.

  “Three,” Pan replied. “Why?”

  “Grab them, and mine too. That’s six in total. Set the timers for twenty seconds and throw them to the top of the ladder.”

  “All of them? But what if Mum and Dad are up there? We’d blow them up.”

  I knew that was possible, but I didn’t think it would happen. These mercenaries weren’t about to die for the snake lady and her secrets. Once those bombs landed, they’d hurl as many away as they could. But twenty seconds wasn’t long enough to get them all. One or two would still detonate – enough explosives to blow that cell door open and free Mum and Dad.

  “Hurry, Pan,” I urged.

  She fumbled with the explosives, tapping screens and setting times.

  The first countdowns began.

  The snake lady’s eyes fluttered open. She was dazed, her head lolling. “Wait…” she groaned. “No…”

  Pan’s hands shook. She glanced at me and I knew she wasn’t sure about this plan. She was right not to be, but I had to trust my instincts. I’d once been ashamed of those instincts. But I wasn’t a troublemaker. I was a treasure hunter. And this plan would work.

  “Throw them, Pan.”

  “Jake…”

  “Now, Pan!”

  She threw three bombs at once, then three more, up towards the cell door. The smoke was still too thick to see exactly what happened next, except for the panicking shapes of mercenaries grabbing the bombs and hurling them across the cave. They fled with seconds left, shouting warnings, boots clanging on the gangway.

  And then the bombs exploded.

  One blast thrust us back against the cave wall, causing me to release the snake lady. The emerald tablet fell from my pocket. I reached for it, but another explosion came from the side, flinging me to the ground.

  Pan and I grabbed hold of each other as more blasts shook the cave. The ground trembled and rocks crashed down around us. The holosphere figures disappeared as the projection screen shattered. Sparks sprayed. Gantries and ladders collapsed. Mercenaries fell screaming to the ground. Smoke and rock dust swirled around us, as if the sandstorm had raged its way into the heart of the mountain.

  I looked up, struggling to see through the smoke. Only a couple of the devices had detonated there, but the damage was much worse than I’d expected. The entire upper floor had collapsed, a cave-in of rocks, rubble and twisted metal from the fallen gantries. I couldn’t see Mum or Dad anywhere. Were they… Were they buried under the rubble?

  “Mum!” Pan screamed. “Dad!”

  I scrambled up and staggered across the cave, swatting away smoke and leaping over fallen mercenaries. I felt sick with fear. My arms were shaking and my vision was blurred from smoke and tears.

  We clambered over the fallen rocks, shoving them aside in a desperate search. “Mum!” I called. “Dad?”

  I grabbed another rock and tried to lift it. “Pan, help me with this—”

  I stopped, staring.

  Two dust-covered figures rose from the rubble.

  Mum shook chunks of broken rock from her shoulders and rubbed dust from her eyes. Dad stood beside her. His face was shadowed with stubble and cuts glistened on his cheeks, but he looked like a movie hero. It had only been a few days since he’d vanished in Cairo, but so much had happened that it felt like years.

  “Dad!” Pan cried.

  We ran to him, and he scooped us both up in a wide grasp. Mum joined in, so we were one big hug of a family. I forgot about the mercenaries, and that we had no plan whatsoever to get out of this place. I forgot about the snake lady and that I’d dropped the emerald tablet. I just hugged my mum and my dad and my sister, and they hugged me back.

  This had been a brilliant holiday.

  Dad pulled away and looked at us. He saw my head bandage, the cuts and bruises all over Pan, but he still smiled that big goofy smile that caused his whole face to crease up.

  “Your mother says you’ve been busy,” he said.

  I looked at Mum, hoping she might smile too, but her face was set like stone. Was she angry that we’d come after them, or still worried about our safety?

  She opened her mouth as if to say something, but at that moment a curtain of smoke parted and six mercenaries charged for us. Beyond them, a dozen more aimed stun guns.

  Mum and Dad ran at the mercenaries, deliberately drawing their fire away from Pan and me. A few of the guards turned and legged it, but most stood their ground. They were good fighters, but Mum and Dad were better. Mum was all leaps and jumps, ducks and swipes. Dad’s style was more basic, but still effective. He took more blows, but gave them back much harder.

  Now the stun-gunners opened fire, even hitting some of the other mercenaries. Mum and Dad were hit all over too, but somehow kept fighting. It seemed impossible. How were they even still standing?

  A stun gun slid across the floor. Pan grabbed it and began firing at mercenaries around the cave. She was such a good shot. Every dart hit its target, and black-clad figures dropped from ladders and from up on the gantries.

  “Jake! What’s the plan?”

  Mum was asking me!

  I was battered, bruised, cut and exhausted, but I’d never felt as alive as I did right then. Mum and Dad were doing their bit and Pan was doing hers. Now it was time for me to do what I did best.

  I turned, looking through the chaos of smoke, stun darts and running, crawling and collapsed mercenaries. My mind was like Sami’s holosphere: a dozen spinning thoughts, with possible escape plans. I flicked some away, discarding them, thinking faster.

  Four tunnels led from the cave. Those were the logical ways out, but we had to be smarter. They were unknown paths; we had no idea what sort of security, traps or surprises we might come up against. But there was another way out, a way that we could see, which would let us know all the dangers that we would face.

  “Over there!” I called. “We have to get up that ladder.”

 
; “But where are we going?” Pan called.

  “Up. We’re going up.”

  Pan scrambled ahead of me up the ladder. Mum and Dad didn’t question my plan; they just followed, plucking stun darts from their limbs as they climbed.

  “How didn’t those darts knock you out?” I yelled.

  Dad pulled another from his neck. “They’re loaded with a drug called xylazine. Your mother and I built up immunity to it about twenty years ago.”

  “Keep moving!” Mum screamed.

  We ran across the first gantry, jumping over the bodies of fallen black suits. A mercenary came at us from behind, but Dad pinned him against the wall, pulled a dart from his own arm and jabbed it into the man’s neck.

  “Pan, six o’clock!” he shouted.

  Two mercenaries raced up behind Pan. She whirled around, grabbed a stun gun and took them both out.

  “Jake, behind you!” she called.

  Another black suit came at me, fists whirling. I ducked a punch and managed to rugby-tackle the guy to the gantry. Reaching beyond the platform, I grabbed one of the wires hanging from the drone and clipped the end to the mercenary’s utility belt. As he tried to get up, I shoved him back so he swung in the air.

  “Mum, to your left!” I warned.

  Mum twisted, avoiding a kick, and then flipped the mercenary over and ninja-pinched his neck, so he passed out. She snatched the stun gun from his hand, leaped from the platform and swung on the drone’s wire as it lifted her into the air. As she rose she fired darts at the last few mercenaries left standing.

  “Move!” she cried.

  We were moving, up ladders and along gantries, towards the circle of daylight. We reached the highest level, about ten metres from the opening in the top of the cave.

  Dad grabbed Pan, turned her around and pulled a gadget from her belt. He fired it at the opening in the mountain; it was one of those super-strong wires that Mum had used to lift us out of the tomb at Giza.

  “Grab hold,” he said.

  We did, and the line raised us up among a cloud of smoke and dust. As we neared the top, Dad gripped the rock edge with both hands.

  “Climb up me,” he grunted.

  Pan went first. Pressing her feet against Dad’s side, she used him as a ladder to scramble onto the top of the mountain.