Chapter 27: Chapter 27

Detective Russo stands before the crime wall at the section where he has the sketches pinned to the board. He studies them while listening to the voice recordings, again and again.

Something is amiss, his instincts insist, and they have never led him astray. The drawings are too convoluted to have been drawn by a child, let alone a group of them.

None of them even have a history of taking any form of art class and even if they had, the penmanship behind these drawings requires mature skill.

Russo wanders back to his desk, removes his wireless headphones, and pauses the recording. He takes up his phone and calls Dr. Parker’s secretary to patch him through to her direct line.

“Detective Russo, I thought I got rid of you,” she says jokingly.

“Not quite,” he says, monotone. He turns back around to face the board. “I have the sketches the kids drew during your time with them. Are these the only ones?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re saying out of all those months, they only did one sketch each?”

“Yes,” she says with the same pitch level. “It was a rather abnormal circumstance. I asked each of them to draw what they remember of that night, if they couldn’t speak it. And it was like it triggered each of them.

“They took the pen and paper with this…vacant look in their eyes and they drew what you are seeing now. I wager that if you could show them the drawings now, they would have no recollection of ever doing them.”

“Right,” Russo says, stepping closer to the sketches. “The detailing in them is impeccable. Do you know what this could be? It looks like something they saw.”

A contemplative breath travels down the line.

“No. I, too, found it strange that they could draw something so convoluted with no formal experience and being so young.

“At first glance I thought it was…hieroglyphs. The markings within the lanes look like the Phoenician alphabet, but I’m not adept enough to advise you on that.

“Besides, where on earth would they have seen something like that in the woods or anywhere?”

Russo nods slowly, suddenly seeing it in a different light.

“If there’s anything else?”

He shakes head absentmindedly. “Not at the moment, thanks.” He hangs up.

Russo walks up to the board and reevaluates the symbols and distinct characters that dominate the quarter of each page.

He tilts his head to the side, his mind amusing the idea of it being hieroglyphics.

~It would be impossible~.

But there is no harm in finding out from someone who has extensive knowledge of all things history-related. He reaches for each page, unpinning and collecting them from the board.

***

Russo is teleported back in time, walking amid history as he ventures into the museum.

He enters through an overview of the epochs, combined with a chronological preview of items in the exhibition; wall remnants from ancient times to the Iron Age.

A woman in all white struts over to him, eyeing the badge that sits on display on his hip. Her clay-brown hair is gelled back into an eye-pulling ballerina bun with minimal jewelry to accessorize her outfit.

Something about her walk and presence bears a certain aristocracy.

“Good day. I’m Detective Russo.”

“Nina Sterling.”

They give each other a firm handshake in greeting.

“I was wondering if you could help me with something?”

She gives a Mona Lisa smile, drawing his gaze to the beauty mark above her lip. “It’s what I’m here for.”

He gestures to the folder in his hand and surrenders it over to her wordlessly. Nina takes it cautiously and turns it open, reviewing the sketches.

And her reaction invokes intrigue. Nina becomes unsettled, the confident air around her dissolving, her features twitching ever so slightly.

“Where did you find this?”

“What is it?”

She looks back at him warily, her silence implying defiance.

“I will not ask again, ma’am.”

Nina motions him to follow and they descend further into the past.

She leads him over the bridge that enables access to the excavation site with additional information provided by animated illustrations on the black glass walls that enclose the space.

The glowing blue and white lines are prominent in the dark, turning the area into a staged setting.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere the public has no entry.”

They descend deeper underground to a dimly lit mezzanine level with smoky scenes of derelict statues with interactive screens on the plinths, containing all the information gleaned about its history on display screens.

Nina and Russo go down the last corridor of glossy black walls to a singular exhibition at the end of the hall.

A wall of glass stands between them and an entire room-size compartment designated for this prehistoric remnant. Five tall stands hold up five relics that, held close together, form a circle.

Russo leans closer, recognizing that the elaborate markings within the relics are identical to the ones in sketches.

“What is that?”

“Akhmim tablets, writing tablets from ancient Egypt.”

He snatches the folder from her hands and opens it back up again.

“I don’t know where you got this, but it wasn’t from the internet or even private exhibitions.”

“Are you saying ~this ~is from ancient Egypt?”

“No.” She looks past the glass to the five relics. “Older. Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script, but then it evolved into the Phoenician alphabet.

“The Egyptian script is ancestral to the majority of scripts in modern use: Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, and Arabic.”

Russo flutters the folder again in disbelief. “You’re saying that it’s older than the Egyptians?”

“Everything has its origins, detective. The Egyptians learned their language from somewhere, as did the English. English is a West Germanic language that originated from Ingvaeonic languages brought to Britain by the Anglo-Saxons.

“The origins of ancient Egypt are the tip of an iceberg.

“There are instances of early Egypt-Mesopotamia relations, but given the lack of direct evidence for the transfer of writing, no definitive determination has been made to ascertain the origin of hieroglyphs.”

“So you have no idea what it means or what it’s saying?”

Nina points at the right side to the left of the circle.

“The Demotic structure includes single-constant characters representing morphemes and determinatives.

“It speaks of a circular narrative, a story that ends how it begins, which can be interpreted as history repeating itself. A possible forecast of a future event.”

“So, like a prophecy?”

She gives him a long, considering look.

“Yes, exactly like that. We have been working with overseas analysts and experts to decipher the text. And they have, for the most part.

“If you can leave your contact information with me, I can act as the middleman and relay relevant information between you and the institutions.”

Russo’s eyes swing between the folder and the relics, finding disturbing similarities.

“Why haven’t you shared these findings with the public?”

“Numerous reasons. Mainly because it was an order that came from above the board.

“These findings challenge what we know about ancient Afro-Egyptian roots and Africa is the cradle of mankind, where all life began for humanity. This discovery puts all of that to question of who was really first.

“There’s a lot about ancient Egypt that science cannot explain already. If the Egyptians learned what they knew from another civilization or power, who were they, and what happened to them?”