Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth by Christopher Golden Read Free Book Online

the time was not far off when the exhibit would make its debut. And what a debut it would be. He felt certain that crowds would flock to the museum to lose themselves in the labyrinth Dr. Cheney had built.
    What the irritated graduate student led them through was not a full-size labyrinth but only a tiny fragment created to give visitors the illusion that they were lost in a vast, sprawling maze. As they turned sharply angled corners and then doubled back again, Drake decided that Dr. Cheney had done an excellent job. In fact, being lost was no illusion at all. He imagined that when the exhibit was completed, there would be arrows or some other indicator to let people know if they were headed in the right direction, but he would have been lost without their guide, and he thought the same must be true of Sully and Jada.
    “Is there a Minotaur?” Jada asked.
    The graduate student glanced back at them over her shoulder and smirked. “No. But there will be a false turn that will be very dark, and you’ll hear a roar coming from it. Then the lights go out, and there’s a whole display about the legend of the Minotaur. We’re supposed to focus on history, not myth, but people who come to an exhibit on labyrinths are going to expect something on the legend.”
    Jada started to reply but never got the words out. Whatever she might have said was interrupted by a horrible scream that echoed through the labyrinth, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. A man’s voice, in panic and pain.
    “What the hell—” Sully growled.
    The graduate student froze. “Maynard?” she called, panic in her eyes.
    Drake and Jada exchanged a glance, and he could tell by the way she stood that they were doing the same thing: listening, trying to figure out the source of the scream. In the labyrinth, it might be impossible to pinpoint.
    “This way,” Drake said, taking a left turn.
    “No,” their guide said, grabbing his arm. “That’s a dead end.”

    She walked straight ahead, and for a heartbeat Drake thought she would collide with the wall. Only when she passed through it did he see the opening; an optical illusion had made it seem like an unbroken surface. Dr. Cheney had outdone himself in creating his labyrinth exhibit, but the time to appreciate it had passed.
    Drake, Sully, and Jada followed her through the opening and around a sharp turn that brought them to a fork.
    “Which way?” Jada asked.
    The graduate student seemed about to go right, but then there came a crash of glass and the thump of a heavy impact against the walls. Drake darted past the woman, down the corridor to the left. The sound had been close, and with the thud on the wall, there was no question about direction now.
    Drake darted around a floor display, brushed the fake stone wall, and took a jag to the right. It felt like he’d reversed direction; for a second he thought the maze had misled him, but then it split into two narrow passages, one in either direction, and he turned left again, rushing in the direction of the crash. He heard Sully, Jada, and their guide pursuing him but didn’t slow. That scream had been one not of fear but of pain. And more than pain. He had heard men scream like that only in the worst of circumstances, when blood had been shed and life was fleeting.
    “Nate, watch your ass!” Sully shouted.
    Drake slowed, taking heed of the warning. They’d heard no gunshots, but he had no way of knowing what waited for them ahead. He dashed past a yawning darkness to his right and wondered if that was where the Minotaur’s roar eventually would be heard. Then he reached a turn where the ceiling sloped downward to an arched entryway. He ducked through and nearly tripped over a man sprawled on the floor.
    “Damn it,” he muttered, regaining his footing.
    A quick glance at the man’s dull, vacant eyes—and the stab wounds in his chest and the blood staining his clothes and pooling under him—was enough to tell Drake he wasn’t