Walker let out a long whistle.

Ben was in the central avenue, in the dark. He laughed out loud. “It’s funny how we found the entrance to the Library all those years ago because we sat on a stone, and now we find this because I sat on another stone. I hope one of us sits on the exit to this place!”

She laughed back, but quickly stopped when she realised Ben had fallen silent. He was staring ahead, towards the far end of the immense hall. His face was frozen in a look of utter terror.

“Ben, what’s wrong?” she asked. “What is it?”

“Turn the torch off,” was all he managed to say as he continued to stare fixedly into the darkness.

Walker snorted. “Why the hell would I switch the flashlight off, what –”

“Do it!” Ben almost screamed.

He obeyed, and they all followed Ben’s gaze. Now in pitch black, it took a few moments for their eyes to adjust.

And realise that they weren’t in complete darkness.

For right in the centre of the wall at the other end of the hall was a pinprick red glow.

It was the kind of light that you would normally find on an electronic device on standby; it wasn’t the kind you would expect to find in an ancient tomb in the middle of the desert.

And as they all stood there holding their collective breath, the red light turned green.

Chapter 73

On the count of three, George and Manu heaved with all their might to lift one end of a large stone slab while Leena inserted the broken beam from the ruined roof underneath it.

As it slid into place, they let the slab drop, exhausted, and staggered back.

There were now two large piles of rubble and debris on either side of the old entrance to the Library, which had mostly been cleared. All of the rocks that they could carry had already been removed, and they had reached several large blocks that until a couple of hours ago had formed part of the ancient staircase’s ceiling.

“If we can remove these,” George said between breaths, “then we might be able to make a hole big enough to crawl through.” He was bent over, hands on knees, and his face was covered in dust streaked with rivulets of sweat; the late afternoon sun was still appreciably warmer than a hot British summer.

Zahra, having passed the gun back to Tariq before making good the job of tying up their prisoner, had returned from Ben’s Toyota with a five litre container of water, which she offered to them.

George drank last. The warm liquid mixed with dust as he swilled the first mouthful around, spitting it out with distaste. He then drank thirstily, gulping down rapidly until his stomach complained by contracting, and he suddenly felt an strong urge to go to the toilet. Passing the container back to Zahra, he suppressed the desire to urinate and went back to their excavation of the stairs.

After a further thirty minutes of persistent leverage from Leena using the beam, their combined strength pulling against the only exposed edge, and several failed attempts at lifting it fully, the first stone slab finally rose up on its end and they toppled it over triumphantly, exposing the two stones it had been pinning down.

Getting down on his hands and knees, George clawed at the mixture of sand and rubble that filled every hole in the heap, keeping the Library beneath them airtight.

“Lift this one,” he said pointing to a large slab the general dimensions of a kitchen table, “and we should be there.”

They wasted no time attacking the second stone, and their eventual success and experience gained in lifting the first stone, despite this one being larger and heavier, meant that within twenty minutes they had upended it.  The ground shuddered as it fell away onto its side with a thump.

George dived into the dirt, and seconds later he was rewarded with a small hole, big enough to fit his arm through. He pushed his face against it and started shouting.

“Hello!” He listened as his voice echoed down the stairs, past the corner and into the ante-chamber of the Library. When no reply came, he cupped his hands against the sides of his head and tried to peer through. The build-up of dust coupled with the bright daylight behind him made it almost impossible to see anything, but he was almost certain he could detect artificial light. “Hello! Gail?” he shouted again, to no avail.

Zahra pulled at his shoulder. “George, they may be too weak to talk, or injured, unconscious, we don’t know. We need to make the hole bigger, so we can get to them and help.”

He shouted one last time through the opening. “We’re going to make the entrance bigger, we’ll be with you soon…” he hesitated, before adding, “I love you Gail!” Standing up, he looked down at the stones they still had to move; they had uncovered one even bigger than the first two, and he could see that the deeper they got the more difficult it would be to use leverage on the stones. Nonetheless, in his mind’s eye it was simply a matter of time and effort to clear everything that stood between him and Gail, no matter how heavy and unyielding it might first seem.

He wiped his face with the back of his hand, clearing away the sweat and tears that were making it difficult to see. He then turned away from the others for a moment to take a couple of deep breaths, before returning to work with renewed vigour and passion.

I’m coming Gail, he thought as he threw a couple of small rocks behind him blindly with both hands. I’m coming.

Chapter 74

It was a long time before anyone said anything. They stayed completely motionless, in the darkness of the hall, staring at the solitary green light; and despite the fact that it lit up nothing, it seemed to them as bright as the Sun in the centre of the Solar System.

Eventually, and predictably, it came to Walker to break the silence.

“Something just turned itself on,” was all he said. He turned the torch on and pointed it directly at the green light, promptly rendering it invisible.

It took only a few seconds for them to reach the bottom of another steep staircase. The mirror image of the one they had descended on their arrival, at the other end of the hall. Looking up, they could see no doorway, though as they started to ascend the stairs the green light became easier to make out inside the warm glow of the torch’s beam.

“Inscriptions!” Gail said in wonder.

They reached a platform roughly ten feet deep and double that across, and Walker ran the beam across the whole of the wall in front of them. It was covered in symbols and pictures engraved into the stone.

“They’re not Egyptian, and I think that this might be one of your friends, Henry,” Gail said, pointing to a man in strange clothing reaching for the skies. He was wearing a triple-pointed crown, his face lifted skywards, his staff held aloft.

“Xynutians!” Patterson exclaimed.

Walker was examining a small indentation in the wall, from which the green light continued to glow. “It may look just like an LED from over there,” he said. “But it isn’t.”

“Don’t touch it!” Patterson warned.

Ben stood back as far as he dared in the darkness without getting too close to the edge of the platform.

“What’s going on here, Gail?” he asked suspiciously. “Who are the Xynutians, why is this not Egyptian writing, and why is there an electronic LED in a tomb that’s been sealed for thousands of years?”

She poured her hands over the engravings, trying to feel for their meaning and significance.

“This place,” she began, “is proof that Nefertiti and Akhenaten started this city, the Royal city of Akhetaten, because they had received a warning. They passed that warning on to us in the book of Aniquilus, the book that we found in the Library. It tells people how to live their lives peacefully and how to interact with the world around them. The fact that they built this underground storage area shows how seriously they took not only the warning, but also the threat.