The Three Secret Cities (Jack West, Jr. Book 5) by Matthew Reilly

Author:Matthew Reilly [Reilly, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2018-12-04T00:00:00+00:00

It’s so nice to reunite you with my dear brother,” Yago said, glancing at Hades. “In the royal world, punishment is clear and severe. It is the only way to ensure respect for the existing order.”

He removed the leather strap that covered Jack’s mouth.

Jack stared helplessly at Hades.

Yago said, “I believe you once also met my dear friend Vladimir Karnov, the former King of Land, known to some as Carnivore.”

Jack nodded.

“I heard you killed him,” Yago said. “Is that true?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t say that he’d shot Carnivore to death with a wave of heavy-bore antiaircraft rounds from almost point-blank range.

“To be fair, you didn’t know he was a king at the time,” Yago said. “He was a fine man, Carnivore. Firm. Strong. A man of deep conviction. I miss him. You know, he used to keep those who wronged him in formaldehyde tanks. Few know it, but Carnivore was actually inspired to do that by a visit to this place. But formaldehyde, well, it doesn’t act in the same way liquid stone does.”

Jack’s hand truck was stopped in front of a rectangular stone tray about the size of a large bathtub.

Inside it was water.

The two guards pulled Jack from the hand truck, tore off his shirt, and laid him horizontally on his back in the water inside the stone tub.

Jack lay faceup in the water, his arms still tied behind his back, the water rising to just below his ears.

Then Yago stepped up into his field of vision.

He held between two fingers a pinch of gray-black powder. It looked like gunpowder, only finer, much finer.

“This is what we mine here,” Yago said. “It is an old and rare substance, found only in six places in the world, the core ingredient of liquid stone. In dry form, both visually and in chemical structure, it is easily mistaken for fine volcanic soils like picrite basalt and pitchstone, but it is capable of so much more than they are.

“It has been called stone dust, gray matter, graystone, and, my favorite, Gorgon Stone. It is how the ancients built their colossal structures, from Hades’s mountain-palace to my castle here to the six temple-shrines of the Great Machine that you rebuilt. Allow me to show you how it works.”

He sprinkled a few grains of the gray-black powder into the water of Jack’s tub.

Jack felt the reaction instantly.

The water around his body began to press against his sides and somehow thicken.

It was a terrifying sensation and Jack began to breathe faster.

He turned his head slightly and saw that the clear water around his body had become an opaque black, and as it changed color, it also changed form: from liquid to solid.

It was becoming denser, heavier.

“I would advise you not to turn your head too far, Captain,” Yago said. “Whatever position your head is in will, very shortly, be its final position. I’d hate for you to spend the rest of your life with a crick in your neck.”

Panting now, Jack quickly returned his face to an upward position and felt the gray-black ooze pinch around his head, legs, and rib cage.

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