Any second he might be decapitated.

The air, stale with rot and secrets, sent a thrill through him like in the old days before the mundane killed his spirit. Axel Horn crouched in the shadows and studied the ancient room. Overhead, space for a nasty razor to spin from the ceiling. Porous stone walls, perfect for poison darts. Cobwebs and dust obscured alien etchings on the ground and maybe a false floor.

“You sure the old man isn’t off his rocker?” Axel asked.

“What’s worse, being the fool or the fool who believes him?” June Lawton glanced over her glasses at him and back to the tattered map. She acted all snobbish, but he knew she was keen to prove the existence of an alien outpost as much as he was.

He moved the torch light closer. Nothing on the map meant a thing to him except a jagged X in the upper left corner.

“It should be just through that door,” June said, and he caught a whiff of her vanilla shampoo.

Axel Horn did consider himself a fool for bringing Marcus Graves’ prim and proper research assistant into the middle of the desert and the danger he lived for. Too late to help it now. She was the only one who could read Map X, or so she and the professor said.

“Damn the torpedoes, let’s go for it.” Axel grabbed her wrist and pulled her through the cobwebs and shadows. She coughed and wriggled free of his grasp, but her petite frame kept pace, her legs moving twice as fast to match all six-foot-two of his pure muscle.

Stones fell, blocking the open doorways at either end of the room. Axel smelled the moisture before he heard the sound of rushing water.

“The old drowning out the trespassers. Should’ve known,” he said to June, winking.

“I don’t find the situation amusing.” She looked at her boots, already submerged in water to the ankle. “I hate wet socks.”

“I hate a wet blanket,” he grumbled, running his hands along the rough stone. “There is always an escape lever somewhere. Help me find it.”

“You’re as bossy as Professor Graves.”

“Sure, darlin’, but better looking.”

She grumbled, but Axel decided not to tease her more since the water lapped at his knees.

The threat of danger quickened his heart. Most alive he’d felt since he joined the eccentric scientists three years ago to track rare tree frogs in the uncharted jungle.

If he died, it would be on his feet, not behind a cubical wall.

The stone numbed his fingers, cold from the water dropping the temperature around them. He knew the lever was nearby. Instinct and experience gave him a wisdom that the egghead and her prof severely lacked.

His fingers searched. The wall swallowed them. He drew his hand back with a gasp. Some kind of holographic projection. He wiggled his fingers. No damage. With more gusto than caution, he pushed his hand back inside. The hologram absorbed his arm to the elbow. His fingers grazed something slimy and round.

“Move, you oaf,” June barked. With meticulous care, she perched her glasses on her nose and read the etchings. Split her gaze between the wall and the map and put one hand on a hip half underwater.

“It says, here lies the gateway to the gateway.” Her brow furrowed, and her egghead looked kinda cute when she was puzzled. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means,” Axel said, tapping the scar on his forearm, “we’re getting out of this puke hole even if it means I have to stick my hand where the sun don’t shine.”

Axel wrapped his fingers around the slimy object through the holographic stone, grimaced when something slithered over his arm, and he pulled what he hoped was the lever.

The walls groaned, and the floor gave out beneath them.

Idiot. He should have seen that coming.

He landed hard on his backside, gravity forcing him into a narrow chute. Water pelted his face, and he struggled to find a grip. Smooth walls rushed by in darkness but carried a streak of something glowing and sinister.

He landed in sand and took a few deep breaths before rolling over and climbing to his feet. Grains clung to his wet shirt and pants and didn’t brush off as he tired.

June’s body was strung over the sand about five feet from him. He helped her stand while he took in their surroundings. The cage’s steel bars trapped them with an elegant shine, mismatched to the tarnish of the ancient ruins. Their cage rested on the edge of a cavern large enough to fit ten rocket ships aimed for the stars.

Across the cavern, Axel marveled at a thick ring of gold at least sixty feet high and etched with the same markings on the map and the ruins.

“Magnificent, isn’t it?” That voice. Familiar.

He turned, and June wrapped her hands around the steel bars.

“Professor, thank goodness! Get us out of here.”

The poor kid had no idea what just happened, but Axel knew.

“When I discovered this place, I knew they chose me for greatness,” Marcus Graves said, fingers pressed to the white stubble on his chin.

“Professor?” June asked.

Yep, she was getting a clue now. Axel closed the gap between them because he wanted her to feel him close by when the realization hit.

“If we bring them here, we will usher in a new era of humanity,” Marcus turned his dark eyes on June. “Unfortunately, it comes with a price.”

“Let me guess, Professor Nutjob needs a human sacrifice to open the portal,” Axel said.

“What?!” June backed away from the bars, and when she bumped into Axel, she stayed pinned against his chest.

“No one has to know what happened here,” Marcus said, “think of it, Mr. Horn. The ultimate thrill. The adventure of a lifetime, guaranteed to forever free you from the mundane.”

June shivered in her wet clothes; sand clumped in hair that still smelled like vanilla shampoo.

“If the mundane means keeping her around, I can live with it,” Axel said.

“Gee, thanks,” June mumbled.

Marcus sighed and moved to some kind of ancient control console.

“Then, I supposed history will remember you both as nameless casualties.”

Surprised Axel when the stones ignited like a computer circuit board. The gold ring on the wall churned in slow agonies, like the first rumblings of an awakening giant. Marcus hooked some wires to a port on the steel bars and disappeared around the console to finish the connections for whatever horrible fate he had in mind for them.

“He’s wrong about the portal,” June whispered. She adjusted her glasses, speckled with sand and water spots. She squinted across the cavern at the spinning gold ring and the alien markings on the walls. “That’s not how it works.”

“We’re not sticking around long enough to find out,” Axel said as he studied the trapdoor they tumbled through when they came out of the chute. The professor lacked an appreciation for physical prowess, or he would have placed the chain to the trap door further from the cage.

Axel hoisted himself to the overhead bars with a commanding leap—one arm supporting his weight. With the other, he squeezed between the gaps in the steel. His fingertips brushed the chain. His biceps screamed, dangling bulk kindling a fire in his muscles. He gritted through the pain and reached for the chain again. His fingertips caught hold, and he dropped—shifting his body weight all to the chain. The trapdoor flopped open with a clang.

Axel landed next to June and saw her cringe at the noise. He held his breath, but the spinning gold ring ramped in speed and sound.

“Lucky,” June shouted.

“I make my own luck,” Axel said.

She rolled her eyes, and he hoisted her through the trap door, hands cupped into a foothold. Marcus rounded the corner as Axel pulled himself through the trapdoor.

“No!” Marcus screamed and dropped the cables in his hands. The professor ran to the console and pushed a lever the same shape and size as the slimy one hidden in the wall.

“Don’t,” June yelled, but Marcus ignored her. Axel crawled off the cage and reached out for June. She jumped into his arms, and they retreated to the thick side of the wall between the steel bars and console.

A strange glow like Axel saw in the chute emerged within the circle. The light traveled through the peculiar markings and shot at them along the snaking wires. The cage exploded, but the light didn’t stop. Axel pitied the old professor, standing there like a lump as the alien power ripped its way to the console.

By the time Marcus moved, it was too late. The light jumped out of the console and into the professor. His body glowed red, and Axel readied to shield his eyes from the explosion. Instead, the professor’s flesh shrank inward, pulled into some tiny cosmic tear in the fabric of reality. His inhuman shrieks echoed in the cavern, and June covered her ears. Axel watched until nothing remained of the professor but a humming in the air.

Silence followed—filled the empty tomb—but the gold ring spun faster.

“Those markings say the portal only lets you in. No one ever emerges. If the professor read deeper, he would have understood the sacrifice was a trick to weed out….”

“What?”

“Evil.”

Axel shook his head, skeptical but amused.

“Don’t know about that. The cage exploded.”

“According to the markings, no innocent flesh will be harmed.”

“Yeah, right.”

June looked at the spinning gold ring and the narrow stone path across the cavern to its entrance. A look he knew too well. Same look that crept up on him when he was itching for a thrill.

“What do you say, Mr. Horn? Ready for another adventure?”

“Lady, you’re a whole lot crazier than I gave you credit for.”

She took off along the narrow stone path, turning at the halfway mark.

“Are you the fool or the fool who believes her?” She asked.

Yep, Axel lost his head in the ruins. He tapped the scar on his forearm for luck and chased after her. They disappeared together into the spinning ring of the unknown.