Ixchel doesn’t reply. She steps over the body and looks at it from the other side.
“You still want to keep going left?” Ixchel says.
“You want to go back?”
“I think maybe we should.”
I pause. Ixchel actually sounds nervous. I say, “If we go back, they might be there.”
Ixchel nods. “Yeah. But if we go deeper, who knows what we’ll find?”
“Maybe we’ll find the other way into Ek Naab. We know there is one.”
“You’re sure?” Ixchel says.
I point to the skeleton. “How else do you explain him?”
“Chances are we’ll never find it.”
“No, we should keep going,” I insist. “Until we come to a dead end; then we go back. That’s the rule of the labyrinth.”
Ixchel sighs. “All right.”
“We have to have a system.”
“Okay.”
But she’s obviously unhappy.
Somewhere along the trail I notice that the ground becomes moist, then damp, then soaked. Pretty soon we’re sloshing through a few inches of water. Ixchel’s sandals are soaked; my sneakers start to squeak. The sound of water echoes all around.
“There was no water before,” Ixchel points out.
“I know, I know.”
“This isn’t the way we came.”
“Think I don’t know that?” I shout.
“Nice going, Josh,” she says bitterly.
I clench my jaw. I’m sick with worry about getting out, feeling bad that I can’t tell Ixchel what I know about what might be going on with the Sect. I can tell she’s completely bewildered by what we saw and heard. It doesn’t seem fair.
“Look, for what it’s worth, Ixchel,” I begin, “I think you’re on to something. But I still don’t understand how it all fits together. How come no one in Ek Naab knows about the room with sarcophagi, if it’s so close to the city? Who else is in this Sect of Huracan? Back in Oxford, I found a list with names on it. There were hundreds of them! Ollie told me that they want all the civilizations of the world to collapse. Leaving just them! Can you even imagine that? Why? Why would anyone want that?”
“That’s how it sometimes feels in Ek Naab,” Ixchel says. “Like we’re the only people on earth. Like no one else really matters. Maybe the Sect wants to feel like that. Maybe they want the whole planet to themselves.”
“They believe they’re some kind of superior race,” I agree, thinking of how Ollie had tried to persuade me. “And it’s something to do with the Bakab gene.”
“But the Bakab gene doesn’t give you any special powers, does it? Just the ability to resist the toxin from the codex.”
“And from the Adapter,” I add.
“Yes, that too.”
“And from whatever other … ancient technology we might find,” I say, taking care not to break my promise to Montoyo and mention any secrets of the Ix Codex.
“You think there’s more?”
“There has to be,” I say. “The NRO has some of it—we know they have Muwans. The Sect has some of it. Both groups know there’s more out there. And you know what? I think it’s a race between us all, to get control of the pieces we need to stop the galactic superwave in 2012.”
“But the NRO … they must want to save civilization. They work for the American people, after all.”
“You’d think! But what if they’re just clueless? Maybe for them, it’s just about grabbing useful technology. Stuff that they can sell or use for themselves.”
“And where do you fit into all this, Josh?”
“Me?” I pause. “Honestly, I just want the truth about my dad.”
After another four hours in the tunnels, trying to keep track of the options we’ve tried, losing count of dead ends, the tunnel opens into another cave with smooth walls about ten yards by five. Ixchel shines her flashlight into every nook and cranny of the cave. There’s no visible way out.
By now we’re tired, hungry, and parched. And obviously lost.
The floor of the cave is uneven, with occasional lumps of rock raised above the water. Ixchel sits, arranges her body on three dry spots, and manages to lie down.
She whispers, “I’m so tired …”
Aching for rest, I cast my eye around for some other bits of dry land. My jeans feel uncomfortable now, stuffed with my dad’s iPod and the Adapter in its plastic wrapper.
Ixchel and I end up about a yard apart, facing each other, two bodies contorted across the dry land, little human islands in a vast puddle.
“These caves are filled with echoes,” she murmurs. Her eyes are closing. “Don’t you hear them? Footsteps ahead of us, behind us. Faint voices, like a radio in a far-off room. Air that feels used up.”