But, if King was right she knew, those waters contained a secret they had kept hidden since the dawn of time. And they were about to loose it upon an unsuspecting world.
“Ben, we need to talk.”
Those ominous words had cut through King’s ‘daydreaming’, though whether it truly was a daydream, or in fact another echo of his experience with the Moon Mask, he wasn’t sure.
The experience had been incredibly intense. It had been as though he was flying above the earth at astonishing speed, looking down at it all, seeing it all, yet still being unable to understand the enormity of it. He’d seen the city of the Bouda, just like he and his father had always imagined it. He’d been transported back to the heyday of Xibalba, watching the fantastic ceremonies of an ancient culture that had learned to live below ground. He had travelled through the wonders of Ancient Egypt in a time when they were still young, seen Djoser’s famous vizier, Imhotep, administer advanced surgery on dying patients with the knowledge that his piece of the Moon Mask had given him. He’d seen the primitive face of a nameless man on a Pacific island glance at the deformed piece of a vaguely face-shaped lump of metal and, from that, carve and erect the first of the island’s towering moa.
And he’d seen a gleaming city, centred around a step-pyramid. Yet he was not in Egypt any longer, but in a far away land, looking on in horror as an enormous wave barrelled towards him.
He had recognised the city from his father’s research and brought the team here, based on nothing more than a vivid dream that was, minute by minute, drifting back into the obscurity of his mind.
“What’s the matter?” he asked Sid. In response, she took his hand and led him below deck and into one of the vacant cabins. He could feel the slight tremble in her grip, the sweatiness of her palms. She closed the door and looked at him, her beautiful features serious.
“Sid—”
“It’s over, Ben.”
With those words, all the distant tendrils of his experience with the mask evaporated. Reality slapped him in the face.
“What? What do you-?”
“You know what I mean,” she cut him off. A flood of tears suddenly overwhelmed her. He stepped closer, reached out a hand but she pushed him away.
“No,” she said with determination, forcing back self-control. “It’s over. I can’t do this anymore.”
King felt the world swirling around him. Nausea pulled at his gut. “I—”
“You lied to me, Ben!” she snapped out her reasoning. “And you nearly died because of it!”
“It was the only way to find the mask—”
“Fuck the mask!” she shouted. “I don’t give a damn about the goddamn mask. All I care about, all I’ve ever cared about, is you!”
“And you’re all that I—”
“No!” she snarled, her voice turning into an angry, hurt growl. “Don’t you lie to me again! Don’t you dare say that I’m all you care about! Because I’m not! All you care about is the mask, and the Bouda and the Progenitors! I’m just… what? What am I? An added accessory? A distraction for you to lie to me and tell me what I want to hear—”
“No,” King cut her off, his own anger rising indignantly. “You’re going to be my wife! That’s who you are. The mask, the Bouda… everything. None of that matters. Only you matter!”
Sid laughed bitterly. “How many times have you said that these last few days? Huh? How many times have you promised me that I am your whole world?” She shook her head, grimacing to hold back the flood of emotions. “You’ve seen your mother, your sister and your father all die because of this obsession of yours—”
“I’d never let anything happen to you—”
“It’s not about me! It’s about you! You, Ben, you!” She choked on her words. “This obsession is going to get you killed. And that’s the last thing I want in this entire world. And it almost happened. And it will happen again. But I can’t be around to watch it.”
“We made a promise to the United Nations that we would find the mask. Once we do, I’ll wipe my hands of it.”
“And then what? We live happily ever after… until your next great obsession comes along. What will it be next time? Atlantis? El Dorado? Whatever it is, it will consume you and, one day, you’re not going to come back from some expedition, just like your father; or you’re going to do something idiotic like place irradiated material against you thick skull, and I’m going to be a widow! People like you, you’re not supposed to be pinned down by marriage and children and responsibility—”
“I can change,” he argued, his voice cracking and tears breaking their dams. Sid placed one hand gently against his chest then ran her other one over his now smooth scalp. A thin smile broke her lips. Her eyes were glassy with moisture. The heat of their body contact was electrifying to one another.
“But I love you just the way you are,” she whispered. “I can’t change you. I don’t want to change you.” Her lips trembled, her voice became a sob. “But I can’t be with you, either.”
Their lips found one another, hungry and desperate. Whatever world King had seen from high above the earth, through the eyes of the Moon Mask, had all shrunk down to this one cabin, this one moment in time.
They needed each other. Their bodies, their minds, their hearts and their souls yearned to strip away their clothes, to strip away the obstacles of life. But, they both knew that once that moment was over, those self-same obstacles would be there still.
Their lips still welded together, she ran her hand down his head, his neck, his arm, and took his hand. He gripped tightly but she wormed her way loose and, just like that, it was over.
She stepped away from him. “We agreed to see this thing through to the end,” she said. “And that’s what I’ll do. But once we’ve found the mask…” she stumbled on her words. “You won’t see me again.”
He opened his mouth to argue but words would not come out. He felt as though he had been paralysed and all he could do was watch as the woman he loved turned, opened the door, and walked away.
His body shook as he looked down at what she had deposited in his hand, knowing already what he would find.
The engagement ring. For so long it had been in his pocket, for so brief a time it had been on the hand of the woman he loved.
He took several deep breaths, each one more difficult than the last, as though he had unbuckled himself from a life-support machine he didn’t know he needed.
He felt the boat judder to a stop, heard the rattle of anchors being dropped. Somewhere in the inky waters below him lay the final piece of the Moon Mask.
Forcing himself to control his shaking body and pounding heart, he returned the ring to his pocket and headed back up above deck.
50:
The Dive
A face in the gloom. A hand reaching out to him.
Sunlight pierced the temple, blazing down through holes in the ceiling. The shafts of light grew narrower, refining to a single laser-like beam until that too was gone.
Darkness.
Such utter darkness.
Then noise.
The roaring of a beast that could never be stopped.
It echoed all around, it pounded against the temple walls, it began to break through.