Chapter 30: Chapter 30

Detective Russo walks up to the front desk.

The man behind it speaks amiably to the client on the other end of the line, his attention is on his monitor, reserving a booking for a family of four. He confirms their reservation and puts down the phone to address Russo.

“How many tickets? How many adults and children?”

“Not here for a tour. I’m Detective Mark Russo and I have a meeting with Nina.”

The man looks up at him as if distressed that they are on a first-name basis. “You’re the detective meeting with the museum’s chief archaeologist?”

Russo bops his head cluelessly. “The one and only.”

“I will show you to Dr. Sterling’s office.” He stands up and informs his partner who snaps a nod. “Right this way, detective.”

He takes him to the main offices upstairs.

Nina’s all-glass office presides over the excavation site, with an unobstructed view of the people below touring the grounds. Russo enters, and she gestures to the open seat opposite her.

“I would have us meet at the café again, but if you’re going to delve deeper into this. I would rather be safe than sorry,” she disclaims.

“I have no quarrel with it.”

“Before we begin,” she says solemnly, dressed in all-white, her hair held up in a flawless chignon. “Can I ask again from where you got those illustrations?”

“As I told you before, I can’t.” To lend her cold comfort, he says, “Don’t worry, the ones who drew them have no intent of leaking them out into the internet, if that’s your concern.”

Her eyes spark with a revelation. “So more than one person drew them? Fascinating.”

She stands up and activates the interactive table interspaced between them. The screen blinks awake and she sashays around the rectangular surface to stand at his side, heels clicking on the porcelain tiles.

She inputs her code and pulls up a new window, bringing a spec to the center of the screen with the whirling motion of a finger.

“There’s something you should know about the relics.” She maximizes the image of them put together to form the circular tablet with the inscriptions enlarged for better visibility.

“The ones we have here replicas. The authentic ones are being held at the Acropolis Museum in Athens for a more in-depth analysis and study. There were…inconclusive results with the preliminary examinations.”

“What does that mean?”

“The inscriptions were etched on an undiscovered rock species that’s not native to ~any~ part of the world.”

Alarmed, he connects their gaze. “If it’s linked to the Egyptians, wasn’t it found there?”

“Just because it was found there doesn’t mean it’s ~from~ there,” she elucidates. “The stones the Egyptians used as writing tablets were from quarries in the Nile valley.

“Silicified sandstone came only from the Aswan area and Gebel Ahmar near Cairo. Rock gypsum and rock anhydrite were obtained from Egypt’s Red Sea coast.”

“So Egypt is not its place of origin?”

“~No~,” she utters slowly, as if vexed by his incompetency.

“The relics have undergone a stringent identification process and have unknown characteristics such as the arrangement of grains, and structures like scale features, such as layering or discontinuities.”

“English.”

“The geology is alien to earth,” she says bluntly.

A hollow breath tumbles out of his ajar lips.

She gives a dignified shrug at his anticipated reaction, straightening up to fold her arms.

Russo takes a moment. And then another ensues.

“Detective?” she prompts. “Do you need a glass of water, perhaps?”

He blinks fast, raising an unsteady finger. “~That’s impossible~.”

“Then why does it exist?”

“The museum must have had a systems error or something.” Grappling for a plausible theory, even though this field of work is far from his expertise.

“I don’t have to be an expert to know that by logic and science, that is impossible.”

“Whose logic?” she challenges calmly. “And whose science? Every scientific breakthrough we’ve had since the dawn of man is a continuity of what we have been told.”

“And ~proved~ by science,” he argues. “Gravity, Newton’s laws. Next thing you’re going to tell me is that the world is actually flat.”

“Don’t be absurd, Detective,” she chides, extremely level-headed. “I’m telling you the facts. Those relics do not belong to this planet.

“They are not sedimentary rocks. Neither are they metamorphic rocks that started out as another type of rock, but have been substantially changed from their original igneous, sedimentary, or earlier metamorphic form.

“Those relics are not from here, which is why you can understand my intrigue as to how you got masterful sketches of them.”

Russo drops against the seat, freeing an explosive breath, his mind rebelling against the information.

“Now do you understand why this is the world’s best-kept secret? If people were to find out, it would send a raging panic. Besides, this is the only concrete proof we have. There are no other foreign discoveries like this one.”

“How did they end up here?”

She manages her exasperation expertly and diverts his attention to the image on the screen.

“You will tire yourself trying to figure it out. Deciphering the inscriptions was problematic enough. Fundamental assumptions hampered progress since it was conducted without the possibility of verification.

“We don’t know how the Egyptians came into possession of this, but it’s their elucidation that gave us insight for a crude interpretation.”

She pokes one of the relics and, like a magnifying glass, it zooms into the minute details, giving vision to even the most granular nuances of the inscriptions.

“The mythical nature of the writing is what confounds even the foremost archaeologists in my field.

“The writing can be understood in diverse ways as determinative and semantic reading. It’s differentiated by not reading it as a singular phonetic constituent.”

“Dr. Sterling,” he emphasizes, wrestling with his patience, desperate to flee. “I apologize for being forthright, but what exactly is written on the relics? No fancy terms. What is the direct translation?”

“That’s the thing.” She sighs again and leans closer. Her finger scrolls through each of the five thoughtfully.

“These symbols are like phonograms, whose meaning is determined by pronunciation. Think of the rebus principle, the picture of an eye. In English it could be the eye, but its phonetic equivalent is the first person pronoun ‘I’.

“There is no way to be sure. The language is multifaceted like no other dialect in human history.”

“Humor me. What is the current interpretation of the prophecy?”

She hovers her hand above the table and with a knifelike movement over the screen. It switches off. Nina reverses and returns to her seat, rolling in closer, setting him with a pensive stare.

“When the rift has been torn and the first five seals have been broken—the Assecla will be summoned, conquest, war, and death, with them. The Assecla shall bring the Apocalypse.”

A nameless dread dug its claws into his gut. “Apocalypse like the rapture?”

She gives him a condescending head shake.

“Christian eschatology draws heavily from ancient Hebraic prophecies in the Old Testament. No, this foretelling is not about the return of the Messiah. This foretelling speaks of a holy decimation.”

Russo’s eyes burn from being kept open for too long. “And the Assecla, what is that?”

She rests against the leather chair, her elbows on the arm, fingers interlocked.

“The root word is follower, derivative from the word ~disciple.~”

“Follower?”

“I deduce that whoever or whatever they are following is a greater peril worthy of being feared.”

Russo stands abruptly. “Dr. Sterling, thank you for giving me insight into the matter of the relics.” A question sprouts in his mind.

“But could it be that the Assecla follow not a person but an ‘it,’ a creature of sorts?”

The questions stuns her. A glimmer of irritation veneered by the shoal of professionalism.

“Detective, history is plagued by ancient prophecies about an Armageddon.” She narrows her eyes at him slightly. “I would take it so seriously. Many have claimed they knew when the world would end.

“Just look at the Mayans. December 21, 2012, marked the end of the first Great Cycle of the Maya Long Count calendar. Over five thousand years ago, their doomsday predictions emerged.

“End-of-the-world scenarios about giant solar flares, a planetary misalignment that would cause massive tidal catastrophes. 2012 passed a long time ago and here we are.”

Russo nods stiffly. “So you’re saying the relics have no validity?”

“Of course not. If any of those aged prophecies were true, humanity would be wiped out by now, but each of them has gone unfulfilled.

“Many claimants predicted mass extinction, usually a religious catalyst to subdue people through fear just like Pope Innocent III, who died in the twelfth century.

“He predicted that the world would end six hundred and sixty-six years after the rise of Islam in 618. People even thought the Black Death was the sign of the end times.”

“Understood,” Russo says tersely. “Thanks again, Dr. Sterling.”

He sees himself out of the office. After, she draws out her phone and speed-dials a number, putting it on speaker.

“Status?” she demands.

“In his office. He was telling the truth. I’m looking at his crime wall now and he has different profiles linked to the sketches. The kids of the Erin Lockwood case are responsible for the drawings.”

She releases a deep breath through her nostrils.

“All of his files are here. I can torch his office, set a fire that will engulf the entire sector so it won’t look like an isolated incident.”

Nina swivels around on the chair to face the excavation site below.

“No, Detective Russo will not find the timing a mere coincidence. Send a unit to watch him but keep him in play. His findings may be of use to us.

“But we should consider turning our attention to those kids. I want to know everything about them. Observe and report. Do not engage and stay out of sight.”

“Will you apprise the Vesturium?”

“In time. I cannot go to them without knowing ~everything~. So I need to know what they know before deliberations of complete liquidation can be had.

“There are too many variables in Braidwood. I know that the Vesturium will order for all threats to be neutralized.”

“Yes, because Braidwood needs more mysterious disappearances.”

“It won’t be.” Nina checks her varnished nails. “More like a fatal accident or whatever cover story they conjure that won’t rouse too much suspicion.”