Labyrinth, p.1
Labyrinth, page 1
Also by A.G. Riddle
THE ATLANTIS TRILOGY
The Atlantis Gene
The Atlantis Plague
The Atlantis World
THE EXTINCTION FILES
Pandemic
Genome
THE LONG WINTER TRILOGY
Winter World
The Solar War
The Lost Colony
OTHER NOVELS
The Extinction Trials
Lost in Time
Quantum Radio
Antarctica Station
LABYRINTH
A.G. Riddle
www.headofzeus.com
First published in the United Kingdom in 2025 by Head of Zeus Ltd, part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © A.G. Riddle, 2025
The moral right of A.G. Riddle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be: i) reproduced or transmitted in any form, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by means of any information storage or retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publishers; or ii) used or reproduced in any way for the training, development or operation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including generative AI technologies. The rights holders expressly reserve this publication from the text and data mining exception as per Article 4(3) of the Digital Single Market Directive (EU) 2019/790.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (PB): 9781035924998
ISBN (E): 9781035925001
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For every person who has lost something to the sands of time.
Contents
Also by A.G. Riddle
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Part I: The Numbers
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Part II: The Group
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Part III: The Labyrinth
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Part IV: The Road
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Part V: The Minotaur
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
Prologue
The first time I saw the numbers was at my wife’s funeral.
I remember looking at those fourteen digits carved in stone and thinking that I was hallucinating (and possibly losing my mind).
I was wrong about that. And a few other things.
Back then, I didn’t know what the numbers meant. I didn’t realize how much they would change my life.
And soon after, the world.
*
There are three things that stick out in my mind about that day: the rain, the ringing, and the numbers.
The rain began as a drizzle.
I sat under a tent by the graveside, listening to the pastor’s voice echo across the cemetery. Somewhere along the way, the clouds coalesced and drops started to fall.
By the time he finished speaking, the rain was a steady pitter-patter on the canvas above me, a fingernail tapping a tabletop, silently saying, “We’re waiting.”
And they were waiting for me.
I rose from the folding metal chair, but I didn’t get far. My daughter, who was sitting beside me, reached up and grabbed me and held tight—tighter than I ever thought a six-year-old child could.
I leaned over and kissed the top of her head, pried myself loose, and stepped out into the rain.
My feet sank in the soggy grass, and I shouldn’t have, but I looked over at the casket and that hole in the ground and my life.
The ringing started then.
I’ve had tinnitus for years. Usually, what I hear is a constant whine, like a tea kettle about to boil.
That day, the ringing in my ears was different. Instead of the shrill whine, I heard:
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
I remember thinking that it sounded like an unseen hand had grabbed three rocks, dropped them in a tin can, and started shaking it.
I kept walking, and that hand kept rattling those rocks, getting louder with every step.
My face was soaked by the time I reached the cover of the pastor’s umbrella, but I didn’t wipe the rain away. I reached into my pocket and unfolded the page that held the eulogy.
I knew every word by heart. I’d rewritten it a hundred times. But the sheet gave me something to do with my hands.
The rocks rattled in my ears, and the rain fell harder, and I told my family and friends that my wife had helped me rebuild my life when I was broken. And that my greatest regret was that I couldn’t help her when she was sick.
Every word seemed to annoy that unseen hand. It shook the can harder, clanging the rocks like it was taunting me.
In the battle that is my hearing, it won.
Halfway through the eulogy, I stopped hearing my own voice. All I heard was that abrasive rattling.
I kept going.
It kept shaking harder, the clanging ratcheting higher.
I getting ready to read the last paragraph, and wondering if people could still hear me, when I looked down at the page in my hand and realized that the wind had carried a few raindrops past the umbrella. Ink ran like blood from a dozen small cuts.
The unseen hand shook the rocks even harder, and there was a pop, as if it had slammed the can down on a table.
For a few seconds, the world was utterly silent. After the mind-numbing rattling, the void that followed was strange and disorienting. It felt like the seconds after that roadside bomb went off i n Afghanistan.
And like then, my world had changed in the blink of an eye.
Over there, the bomb mangled the Humvee I had been driving and killed two of my fellow Marines. It took one of my legs.
In the cemetery that day, what the deafening explosion claimed was time. I knew time had passed because the page in my hand was soaked. The ink ran together in a massive blob.
I admit, in that moment, a cold shiver of fear went through my body. It was like realizing that the unseen hand shaking the rocks had a power over me that I didn’t understand. It could take time from me. I had learned the hard way that time was life’s most precious currency.
I stared at the wilted page and heard the silence, and it was as if that unseen hand and I were facing off. Like it was waiting for me, daring me to start up again.
I made my decision.
I looked up at the mourners under the canvas tents, at the confused looks and the heads nodding, and I resumed speaking.
The can swirled, and the rocks began to clang, and I said the words my wife deserved.
When I was done, the rattling was in full rage. But that was fine with me, because I had finished what I had to do.
I felt the pastor’s hand on my shoulder, and I looked over at my wife’s tombstone. I read her name and the epitaph, and when I got to the dates of her birth and death, the rattling went hypersonic. The screech pushed against reality, and I thought the hand was going to slam the can down again and take more time, but it didn’t.
What happened was that the dates carved in stone changed. They morphed into:
12122518914208
And when I read that peculiar sequence of numbers, the clanging stopped. And the only thing I heard was raindrops falling on the pastor’s umbrella.
I
THE NUMBERS
1
10 Months Later
When I wake up, I’m lying on a concrete floor next to a dead man.
He stares at me with glassy, unblinking eyes.
My heart beats faster—not just because he’s dead, but because I don’t remember coming here, meeting him, or how he died.
I do, however, recognize him.
His name is Nathan Briggs. We were in the Marines together. A long time ago.
The last time I saw Briggs, he was throwing a punch at me. That was right before I threw a punch at him. And then another. And then the barracks erupted in shouting and fighting.
I haven’t had any contact with him since.
At least, I don’t think I have.
The last thing I remember is being at home and having a bad tinnitus attack. I remember going to lie down, and that’s it.
I heard the ringing in my ears.
I went to bed.
I woke up here.
I’ve lost time. This has only happened to me once before: at my wife’s funeral. That day, I lost a minute or two. This time gap appears to be far longer. And a lot more problematic.
I reach into my shorts pocket for my phone, hoping to check the time, but it’s not there. My wallet is gone too. I only feel a car key.
And then there’s what I don’t feel.
Lifting my head, I spot my prosthetic leg lying a few feet away.
Seeing it there, detached from my body, reminds me of the day I lost my leg. That day, I woke up like this—on my back, on a roadside in Afghanistan.
Back then, I saved my life by using a tourniquet to stop the flow of blood from the wound. Every second counted. I think it does now as well.
Moving quickly, I sit up and reattach the prosthetic. My body aches. There’s pain in my abdomen, neck, and back. I’m pretty sure I was in a fight during the time gap.
Scanning my surroundings, I realize I’m in a room in what looks like a construction site. It’s a commercial building of some sort. Maybe an office or retail space. The ceiling is tall, with metal ceiling joists and exposed air conditioning ducts.
I don’t recognize the place or recall ever being here before.
What occurs to me now is that during the time I lost, someone might have lured me here, knocked me unconscious, and killed the guy next to me. That person could still be around—and they could be planning to kill me too. I need to move.
As I get to my feet, I take in more of the room. And every single thing I see is like a bomb going off.
There’s a backpack sitting in the corner. I know that backpack. It’s mine.
I don’t remember packing it.
I don’t know what’s inside.
The second is a knife. It’s sunk into the dead man’s chest. It is, very likely his cause of death. Like the backpack, it belongs to me.
The third issue is that a series of numbers has been written on the concrete floor.
12122518914208
They’re the same numbers I saw carved into my wife’s gravestone.
But here, someone has written them in blood.
2
The numbers are a mystery.
The backpack is too.
The knife is a problem. So is the dead man, but as problems go, his body is by far my biggest problem.
It’s like a thermonuclear reactor melting down. The clock is ticking. Radiation is spreading, and it’s already all over me.
On some basic level, I feel like no matter what I do here, the police are eventually going to show up at my door with the crime scene equivalent of a Geiger counter and detect some radioactive isotopes and conclude that I did this.
The time gap is the root issue. If I knew what happened here, I’d have some idea of what to do. Depending on what happened, I’d probably just call the cops and wait for them, and we’d sort it out.
But I don’t know what happened here. On the surface, the optics are not great for me. The more immediate issue, however, is whether I’m alone. And in danger.
On instinct, I walk backwards until I feel the cold touch of a metal stud on my back. I wait and scan my surroundings and listen. I’m unarmed, but there’s only one weapon in sight. I’m not ready to pull that knife out of Briggs’s chest and put my fingerprints on it (assuming they aren’t already there).
I don’t hear footsteps. Or talking. Only the faint rush of cars in the distance.
I need answers.
And I need to get out of here. If this is an active construction site, workers could arrive any second. Plus, if the site has cameras—and it likely does—someone might already know I’m here.
Ignoring my aching body, I move to the backpack and unzip it. What I see inside ends any thoughts of contacting the police.
The bag holds two large bottles of bleach and a change of clothes (my clothes).
Only one type of person packs these items: someone planning to commit a crime—and then clean it up.
Holding the backpack, I notice something else. Blood on my hands. Most of it is on my right hand. In the palm. There’s a lot of blood on my index finger, too, but strangely, the tip of my finger is nearly clean.
I glance over at the numbers written on the concrete. I get it then.
I wrote the numbers. That’s why there’s no blood on the tip of my finger.
At this point in my life, with my wife gone and this bizarre thing happening, I would normally be inclined to simply sit down right here and wait for the construction workers to show up or the police to come around. I’d tell them the truth: that I don’t remember what happened. That I’m unwell. That I lost time, and that I’ll help them figure out what happened. I’d deal with the consequences. I don’t want to be a danger to anyone.
But I’m also a father.
And my daughter is what I’m thinking about right now. She is my first concern in this world. I don’t know how much time I’ve lost. And I don’t know what happened to her during that time. I don’t know if she’s been harmed or if the person who killed Briggs and knocked me out has her right now.
I do know that there is no individual on this planet who will fight harder for her than me. What I’m going to do now is find my daughter. And make sure she’s safe.
They can take me to jail after that.
If needed.
3
Stepping carefully around the pool of blood spreading out on the concrete, I lean over and search Briggs’s pockets. I find only a phone and a slim wallet.
The phone is turned off. I don’t dare activate it here (the location data might help investigators track him).
I’ll need to get into the device at some point. It might have pictures or video of me and whatever happened here. And if those photos are on the phone, they might be stored in the cloud as well. If so, that’s an even bigger problem.
