Free Exodus Code by John Barrowman, Carole E. Barrowman

old woman with white hair, and…’ Jack’s voice drifted off as he tried to find words to get back what he couldn’t remember.
    The ground rumbled again, this time freeing two large triangular stones loose from the roof, crashing them onto a wooden trunk, cracking its lid open, exposing an array of ceremonial knives. Renso picked one up, admiring the jade inlaid along its hilt. No point in leaving al of this to be raided by poachers before the vil agers return, he thought. Plus some evidence might encourage investors to sponsor a return trip. He slipped two of the gem-encrusted knives under his belt.
    Jack rubbed the heel of his hands against his bloodshot eyes. ‘Man, I’m fried. I can’t get my brain to focus on anything for more than a second.’
    Renso stepped to the fire pit, kicking over some clay pots as he did. He lifted one, and shoved that into his pocket.
    The mountain roared. The ground trembled. A fissure shot across the stone wal s.
    ‘Why are we here, Jack? This morning I survived a plane crash. I real y would rather not be buried alive in the middle of the night. I need a shot of tequila and sleep. Make that a lot of tequila.’
    ‘And I,’ said Jack, getting up off the pil ows with some difficulty, bowing slightly, holding the edges of his tunic, laughing. ‘I want some trousers.’
    After a few minutes of digging in the baskets and wooden trunks around the chamber, Jack found his coat in shreds under a mat next to the fire. He held up one of its sleeves.
    ‘Looks like someone took a sword to your coat.’
    ‘Thank God I’ve got more than one,’ said Jack.
    A deep rumble knocked both men to the ground, the smel of sulphur getting worse, smoke and ash drifting in through the opening in the roof.
    Jack scavenged around his shredded clothes, finding none of them in one piece. His boots, on the other hand, were wearable. He sat down next to the hissing fire and pul ed them on.
    When he stood, even Renso couldn’t contain his laughter. ‘You look like you’ve escaped from a sanatorium.’
    Jack looked down at his boots, at the deep scratches, like claw marks on his legs from the Indian woman and a strange feeling of déjà vu came over him, snagging part of his mind and focusing it. With an urgency that he couldn’t explain to Renso, he knew he had to remember the feeling, remember what had happened today, if it had happened today. The mountain, the woman, the old woman, the sun in his eyes, the cave… Already the memory was peeling off, drifting away like ash.
    He had to write down what he could remember. It was important. He didn’t know why, but he could feel in his bones that it was.
    As the mountain shook, Jack rifled through remains of his coat, feeling some sadness at its destruction.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘I need to find something to write on before I lose what happened completely. This mountain is doing weird things to my brain.’
    ‘Maybe not just the mountain,’ said Renso, lifting a bowl layered with cacao leaves.
    ‘I know that’s part of it, but I feel different, like I’m watching myself think.’
    ‘Here,’ said Renso, pul ing Jack’s notebook from his breast pocket, handing it to Jack. ‘Use this.’
    ‘How did you get my notebook?’
    ‘I found it when I was looking for you – after the Hornet crashed.’
    Jack opened to a blank page, scribbled across the pages, not sure what he was writing but feeling an intense need to put his thoughts on the page, to capture al the weirdness that was flitting across his mind. Jack made notes about the two women, about this chamber, the crashing of the Hornet and the strange seduction inside the mountain. He wrote while al around him was crumbling because at that moment, in that place, Jack believed he had lost al sense of what was real and what was not.
16
    AN EARTH-SHAKING CRACK shook shards of rock from the stepped roof of the temple, pelting both men. Renso grabbed the notebook from Jack’s hands, shoved it into his