"The gears don't just turn," Kola warned as they approached the base of the Black Pyramid. "They pulse. Every thirty seconds, the friction generates a 'Void-Pulse.' If you're touching the metal when it happens, your nervous system will think it's being fried in a generator."
Amina looked up. The Pyramid was a mountain of moving obsidian, a vertical labyrinth of interlocking teeth. There were no stairs only the narrow ledges provided by the outer rims of the massive gears.
"I'll go first," Tunde said. He didn't wait for an argument. He leaped, his obsidian boots sticking to the rotating surface like a magnet.
Amina followed, her fingers raw as she gripped the cold, vibrating edges. Below them, the glass desert began to shrink. Above them, the sky was a swirling vortex of red and violet, centered directly over the Pyramid's peak.
"Tunde! Twelve o'clock!" Amina screamed.
From the rotating crevices above, three "Hollowed" Bureau agents dropped down. They didn't move like men; they moved like spiders, their limbs elongated and clicking against the metal. One of them was the man who had held the POS-style tracker in Mowe.
"Target... identified..." the agent croaked, his voice a distorted playback of a recording.
He leveled a tactical rifle, but the barrel wasn't firing lead. It fired bolts of condensed Void-energy.
Zap!
The bolt hit the gear inches from Amina's head, melting the obsidian into a puddle of black slag.
"They're trying to knock us off!" Tunde roared. He threw himself sideways, swinging around a rotating axle. He didn't use a blade; he used his own momentum. He slammed his shoulder into the first agent, sending the hollowed man spiraling into the dark abyss below.
But the other two were faster. They pinned Amina against a massive, slow-moving cog. The lead agent reached for her throat, his fingers glowing with the violet light of the "Hollow."
"You... are... the... Bridge..." the agent hissed. "The... King... wants... the... crossing... opened."
Amina felt her oxygen cutting off. Her vision began to swim. In the desperation of the moment, she didn't look for magic. She looked for the "Lagos" in her. She reached into her waist-bag and pulled out the one thing she hadn't discarded a heavy, rusted padlock she'd grabbed from her kitchen drawer in Mowe before they fled.
She swung the lock with every ounce of her strength, slamming it into the agent's hollowed eye socket.
CRACK.
The violet light flickered. The "Hollow" wasn't used to physical, mundane weapons. The agent stumbled back, his head snapping to the side.
"Tunde! Now!"
Tunde didn't just strike the agent; he grabbed the giant gear behind them. He forced his Star-Core energy into the mechanism, momentarily reversing the rotation of that single wheel.
The sound was horrific the screech of obsidian teeth grinding against their intended direction. The two agents were caught in the "munch" of the interlocking gears. With a final, distorted cry, they were crushed into the machine, their Void-energy absorbed by the very Pyramid they served.
Amina slumped against the ledge, gasping for air. Her hands were bleeding, but the blood was no longer just red it was flecked with gold.
"Are you okay?" Tunde asked, reaching for her.
"I'm fine," she panted, looking up. The peak was only a hundred meters away. The air was so thick with energy now that she could see the "invisible" threads connecting the Pyramid to the world back home.
She could see a faint, shimmering image of the Lagos skyline the Civic Towers, the masts at Victoria Island, the shanties of Makoko all reflected in the red clouds above them.
"The synchronization is almost complete," Tunde whispered, his face illuminated by the rising violet light. "I can hear the city, Amina. I can hear the millions of people breathing. It's like a hum in the back of my brain."
"Then let's go finish this," Amina said, her voice turning into a growl. "Before the 'King' decides to pay his rent."