Read Online Herculean (Cerberus Group Book 1) by Jeremy Robinson, Sean Ellis - Free Book Online Page B

was no sign of the steps, but the floor beneath her feet was lined with evenly spaced grooves, each as wide as the treads of a stairway.
    The stairs had been rigged to collapse downward as soon as anyone stepped onto them. A trap, but not a lethal one. At least, not right away. She and Pierce were separated. He could still get out, maybe bring back some rope…
    He’ll have to backtrack through the maze, but I’ve got the pictures of the Disc. Wonderful.
    An arched doorway was the only way out of the room. Fiona flashed her light into the opening, but was unable to see much of what lay beyond. There were no Phaistos symbols on the black iron walls to indicate whether going through the door was the right course of action.
    “Like I’ve got a choice,” she muttered. Raising her head, she shouted up at Pierce. “There’s a door here. I’m going to go through it.”
    “No! Stay right there!”
    She ignored his warning and stepped closer to the door, checking the floor for pressure plates and trip wires. There was a wooden table at the edge of her light, holding something on its center. She couldn’t quite make out what the object was, but the overall presentation reminded her of the display cases at the Heraklion Museum.
    “I don’t think this is a trap,” she called. She stepped through the arch.
    There was a rasping sound behind her. She whirled around and saw that another opening had appeared on the opposite side of the small room. On the wall, just to the right of the new passage, there was another glyph with Phaistos symbols.
    “Freaky,” she said. She stuck her head back into the room and looked up. “Uncle George?”
    There was no sign of Pierce’s light. Instead, there was now a ceiling, just a few feet above head level, consisting of metal panels each about the same width as the segments on the floor.
    “What the hell?”
    The hissing noise came again, startling her back a step. The reflex saved her life. A wall of metal descended through the air just beyond the arch, and would have sliced her in half if she had not moved.
    Before she could recover her wits, an opening appeared at the top of the arch, growing larger as the wall descended into the floor. When it stopped, the second opening had vanished into the floor, and the room was configured again as it had been at first. There was just one major difference. Standing in the middle of the room was the somewhat bewildered form of Pierce.
    “Uncle George!”
    He raised a hand. “Don’t move.”
    She nodded, signaling that this time, she would do as instructed.
    Pierce’s eyes darted around, taking in the changes. He shone the light up, revealing smooth walls with no visible ceiling. “The steps were camouflage. This is some kind of weight-sensitive elevator. Step on it, and it goes down. Step off, and it rises back up. Probably works on magnetic repulsion. It’s a one-way trip though.”
    “I think this is where we’re supposed to be.” Fiona turned around and shone her phone’s light at the table. There were several more like it, dotting the floor and lining the walls of a circular chamber, which was at least fifty feet in diameter. Interspersed with the displays were several more arched openings, which presumably led back into the Labyrinth, but Fiona gave these only a cursory glance. Her attention was held by the contents of the room. “Uncle George, you’ve got to see this...but if you step off, we won’t be able to get back.”
    Pierce scratched his head, furrowed his brow, pursed his lips and then said, “We’re not supposed to leave the same way we came in. There are two sides to the Disc. Two routes through the maze. One way in, one way out, but it leads here first.”
    Pierce stepped through the opening and turned to watch the segmented floor rise, propelled by invisible lines of magnetic force. The passage was momentarily blocked, then opened up to reveal the second configuration.
    He joined Fiona at the central table. Resting