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Chapter 7 - Part 1

Chapter 7

Adam fought off panic at the sudden plunge into darkness. His stomach churned as if he’d taken too many trips on a carnival ride. As his eyes adjusted, he could see the outlines of Sara and Ani exactly where they had been when Ani struck the object.

He slowly looked about, taking stock of the situation. They were in a shelf-lined room. It smelt of essential oils and damp. Along the walls were stacks of towels. He could also see the hollow where the artifact was sitting, glowing a slight shade of blue. He could hear the sound of water and low voices from outside the room they were in.

“Everyone ok?” He whispered.

“I’m alive,” said Ani.

“Very not ok”, said Sara, “What the hell is going on?”

“So we’re all alive. Good. Ani, what did you do?”

“I don’t know. I felt this stream of energy from the artifact up my arm. It’s like I was barely in control. I just had to ring it. I mean to hit it. I don’t know.”

“Okay? What is this though? Did we fall? What happened?”

“I think I’m dead and this is my dying brain trying to process,” wheezed Sara.

Ani put her hands on her shoulders, “You’re not. I’m here. Adam is here.”

She was suddenly struck by how oppressively hot it was in the room, “Is it ridiculously hot in here or is it me?”

“It’s steamy,” Adam agreed, moving towards the front of the room. His eyes had adjusted and he could now make out a heavy wooden door. It couldn’t be, he thought to himself. It couldn’t possibly be. The walls, the dimensions, it all matched. He took a deep breath before speaking.

“Ani, this is insane. I feel like I’ve gone nuts.” He swung his arms and clapped once, wincing at how loud the sound cracked in the quiet space. Why was there a ceiling? As much as it pained him, he had to say it out loud. “Could this be the room we were excavating? The walls, the bricks, the mortar... it all matches. The only difference is that there was no door here.”

Ani looked around. “I’d say you’re nuts, but with all the craziness of the last few days, it could indeed be the same room. I don’t know that it matters that much. We need to get out of here and figure out where we are and where Nikolas is.”

Sara muttered to herself, “No, no. This is all a dream or a brain death sequence.”

“I’m right there with you,” Adam responded. “But it sure is unsettling we’re all having the same dream.” Could it be the same room? He said to himself and started to look around the room and sure enough, beyond the textures and dimensions, he looked down to see the hollow near the bottom of the wall. He knelt and picked up the artifact. The letters glowed blue, but he could see immediately the writing had changed. Not a letter adjustment he hasn’t been able to identify, but a new phrase altogether.

“Hey Ani,” he said, “Take a look at this. I may not be a linguist, but that text is different.”

Ani carefully took the bell from him. She’d begun calling it the bell in her own mind. The intense need to ring it had subsided, but she knew now deep in her bones that it was a bell. Her brain still couldn’t comprehend why such an object existed. But she’d accepted it was critically important that they pay attention to it.

She ran her thumb across the phrase which just moments ago had asked her to ring the bell. Now, that phrase was gone. In its place was a completely different statement carved into the metal.

ΣΩΣΑΤΕ ΤΗΝ ΟΔΟΝ

“Save the way,” she whispered.

“I wonder what that means,” answered Adam.

Sara interjected, “I think we have bigger fish to fry. Are we not going to acknowledge that a minute ago we were in an excavation and now we’re in a dark room. And where is Nikolas?”

Ani still held the bell, but somehow felt she didn’t want to. She slid the bell into Sara’s bag on the floor and began looking around the room.

“If it’s a dream, it’s the most real one I’ve ever had,” Ani said to no one in particular.

For a moment, she let herself imagine that she was really in the storage room of an ancient bathhouse. She ran her hand across the wooden shelves and rubbed the fabric of the towels in her hand. Was this what byzantine fabric felt like? The archaeologist in her was entranced.

As she felt around the room further, a piece of parchment caught her eye under a stack of towels. She lifted the towels to find a line of scrolls. Picking one up, she unrolled it. On the scroll was carefully printed Greek writing. A familiar greeting marked the top, it was a letter, similar to a few she had seen under bulletproof glass, in a museum.

“Oh my God,” she gasped.

“What is it?” Adam asked.

“It’s a manuscript. I can’t believe this. It’s a letter from the Apostle Paul… but not one I’ve ever seen or read about.” She sounded giddy.

Adam picked up another parchment, “There are a ton of these here.”

Ani couldn’t help herself. It felt so wrong to touch them with bare hands, but for so long she’d studied the handful of surviving manuscripts from the early church. So many documents had been lost over the centuries. These could rewrite swaths of history. She read another scroll.

“Good Christ, is this Timothy?” Ani said, picking up another before she froze.

“This is addressed to the House of Lydia. It’s from John. Adam, do you realize what these are?”

“I don’t know what the House of Lydia is, but my catechism classes from middle school are quickly returning to me.”

“Lydia was one of the first European converts to Christianity, she–” Ani cut her sentence off as she heard a noise.

A splash and a series of wet footsteps sounded from the other side of the door. The footsteps came closer, and the latch began to turn. Adam slammed his foot against the door to keep it from opening.

A man’s voice yelled through the door. Ani understood it. It was Koine Greek. “Hello? I need a towel,” she translated to herself.

The other two looked at Ani as she ran the words over again in her brain. She realized neither of them would understand the ancient dialect.

Without hesitation she said, “You must wait. We need a moment,” in what she hoped was passable language.

The man grunted and they heard footsteps plodding away before the sound of someone entering a bath. Ani felt real pride in her quick reply. A reply that miraculously seemed to have worked.

“What the hell was that, Ani?” asked Adam.

“Koine Greek… well, the spoken version. I’ve only ever read it,” she said nonchalantly.

Adam’s voice strained a bit, “And you’re just ok with that? For a minute I was lost in the moment too, but we’re stuck in a room in what really appears to be an ancient bathhouse.”

She was interrupted by an anxious whisper from Sara, “Yep. We’ve lost it. We’re nuts. But I guess I’m going to accept it for a moment, because we need a plan. Dream or not, we cannot sit in this room forever.”

“Agreed,” Ani and Adam said together.

Ani moved towards the door and gestured for Adam to remove his foot. She carefully lifted the latch and peered outside through a crack in the door. A noticeable puff of hot air came through the opening.

Sara immediately began covering her equipment, grabbing towels from the shelf. She needed both to protect it and obviously hide it. She tried in vain to ignore Ani opening the door toward god knew what. What she heard was unexpected.

“Wow. That’s a lot of penis,” Ani whispered matter-of-factly.

Adam moved behind her to look, “Yes, indeed. That’s a lot of nudity.”

What they saw outside was a steaming pool with several men both in and out of the water. There were also a few women and a number of robed, hooded servants. Ani shut and latched the door and turned around. She took a deep breath, lifting her arms up with her inhalation and then down as she exhaled, trying to be as calm as possible.

“The man spoke to me in Koine Greek, which I can read but don’t necessarily speak, because no one does. They haven’t in over a thousand years. I can’t tell you how or why, but we’re in 4th Century Greece.”

Ani stood for a moment, looking at her two friends, seeing if they’d say anything. They stared at her as if she was insane.

When they didn’t immediately answer, she kept talking, “I’m going to ignore the fact that it’s impossible, but somehow, we’re in the bathhouse that was once on this site, and I think it’s safe to assume we’re in the storeroom that we were excavating.”

Sara stared at her, her breathing shallow. “Ani, that’s not a theory. If we accept that, we’re accepting time travel and a litany of other impossible things. We’re in a bathhouse? In the fourth century? At this point, the only upside is that there isn’t a woman bound and gagged on the floor.”

“Sara, everything is ok. Let’s just take a moment to figure this out. This is clearly before the door was bricked up with the woman inside,” Adam responded.

“Before?! Of all the things you could point out, you chose the fact that there’s not a tortured woman on the floor? In that case, yes, I’m thrilled we’re not buried alive. But someone is going to walk through that door in thirty seconds, and are we going to ignore the fact that Nikolas is missing?” She slumped against a shelf, checking her phone out of pure habit, before her breath hitched. “And why the fuck does my phone have Wi-Fi?”

Ani put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, “Sara-jan. We’re all a little freaked out here. But the more we panic, the higher the chance someone comes in here and finds three people wearing nylon and hiking boots. I’d rather not have to try and figure out how to say that. Let’s get out of this room, and then we’ll figure it out.”

Adam, meanwhile, had fished his phone out of his pocket and checked for service.

“No shit, the phone does have wifi,” Adam said. He opened his settings to check the name of the network. “What is IFSET_NET?”

“What?! How? Your phone shouldn’t be connected to that. It’s my equipment network. The devices have to be paired and authenticated.” Sara said, “The handheld magnetometer creates a local network with my phone and laptop to feed data. But it’s local only. It can’t make calls.”

Sara froze for a moment. That couldn’t be. The base station created the local network, not the device, and the base station was most certainly not in the room with them.

She began spiraling anew, “No. It can’t work. The base station creates the network, not the tool. The base station isn’t here, so there can’t be a network.”

Adam swiped a few times, placed a call to Nikolas, and showed her. “Well, the local loop is looping. My phone is connected. Who knows, maybe we set up the connection a few weeks ago. I kinda remember we did some setup when I got here. Look, I’m calling Nikolas right now. Huh, now that you mention it, that probably shouldn’t work.”

Sara stared at the glowing screen, watching the seconds count upward on the outgoing call. “No. No, it’s a local data sync. It can’t make voice calls. It doesn’t have the routing architecture for it.”

The call, meanwhile, showed a failure after 20 seconds. Somehow, the failed call made her feel both better and worse.

“Really? IFSET?”

“Yes. Ion-Sensitive Field-Effect Transistor.”

Adam laughed, “Academics and their acronyms.”

“It’s also an Egyptian god. The god of chaos, if I remember right,” Ani responded.

“I did not name the network after an Egyptian god,” Sara hissed, though she was beginning to calm down. Phones tried and failed calls on bad networks all the time. It was a software glitch.

Adam interjected, “Well, my phone just called Nikolas. I sent him a text.”

“You did not send him a message. Can’t you let this go? It’s not a cellular network. It’s local,” Sara said before clenching her jaw and closing her eyes for a moment. “We need to get out of here. We cannot be found like this. I’m going to pack my equipment.” She began wrapping her gear into towels. She didn’t trust leaving all of the equipment in this room. While most of it was meant to be outside, it was not meant to take a steam bath.

“Let’s get the phones and equipment packed away. We’ll hide them in towels. Then we can figure out how to get out of here.

Ani meanwhile looked at Adam and shrugged, “I’m gonna go find some 4th Century clothes. I think we all need to go. I’ll go first, then Adam, then Sara. It’ll be weird if we all walk out together. If I remember the site layout, there should be another anteroom on the other side of the pool. We’ll steal something there.”

“Sounds good,” Adam responded.

“Steal something? Are you nuts? What are you gonna do, walk out there in your REI co-op shorts and boots?” Sara gestured broadly with her hands towards the door.

“Nope,” Ani said. She felt a sensation flare in her arm, like champagne bubbles rising through her skin. Somehow, she knew with absolute certainty what she needed to do. She needed to step out of the room with full confidence and find a way out. Without another word, Ani unceremoniously began removing her clothes.

“Jesus, Ani,” Sara interjected.

“Jesus has nothing to do with it,” Ani said, smiling at her, “but hopefully he’ll avert his eyes on this one.”

“But you don’t have to take all…”

Before she could interject further, Ani had completely disrobed, unlatched the door, and sauntered out into the bathing area. The door shut behind her.

New here? Check out the Chapter Index.

Interlude 2

“DOLOS!” came the shout as Dolos was summoned to The Halls.

Hmm, he thought to himself. He considered adjusting his attire, but decided hospital scrubs looked good on him. He really liked the official looking doctor’s coat, too, very authoritative. I wonder which one it is. Guessing Zeus, but could be Odin. He’d have to see what the next words would be.

“There is a truce! There are rules! We no longer interfere.”

Ahhh… Odin. Practically the founder of the pact. No more messing with the humans. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes humans need messing with. They’re terrible at running things themselves.

Next time: Adam, Ani, and Sara find themselves in a dark, steamy room surrounded by… Towels?

Image above is from the gorgeous Hanqavan village in Armenia. It is populated exclusively by Greeks who were moved there by the Ottomans in the mid-19th Century.

Side Note 1 - My super amazing editor (my wife) was unable to edit me this week, so it may not be up to snuff. But… It’s Monday, and the chapter must drop.

Side Note 2 - This is a long chapter. Too long? Please let me know. I can split them in the future.

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Chapter 6

The sun was nearly gone when Adam finally unwrapped the artifact.

Ani and Sara had joined him in the trench. Nikolas stayed above, ready to place a call to Menelaos to notify the ministry of a major discovery.

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Adam said, placing the object back in its hollow. He pressed it down into the dirt. Instantly, the hair on the back of his neck snapped upright. “Sara, do you have your handheld?”

“Yes,” she responded, pulling it out, her eyes widening as the screen came to life. “The field is back. It’s completely off the scale my equipment can read.”

“Ani?” Adam asked.

“Same tingle. Nothing super different. Wait…” She hesitated. A strange, irrational pull tugged at the back of her mind—intense and childish, like wanting candy or ice cream so badly it ached. “I want to ring it. I can’t explain why, I just do.”

“Don’t hit it, please,” Nikolas said from above, pressing send on his phone.

Ani looked at Adam. He shrugged and gave her a nod. Ani drew her hammer.

“Ani, DON’T,” screamed Sara.

The hammer in Ani’s hand felt right. All it would take was a flick of the wrist and she could ring it– she needed to ring it, just like it said. She struck the bronze. And the world went dark.

--

“Nikolas! Nikolas!”

Menelaos’ voice crackled from the phone.

Nikolas lay face down in the dirt, coughing, his ears ringing. His glasses were cracked, splitting his vision in two. He had no memory of hitting the ground.

Dust surrounded him. Through the haze, he could see the outlines of the basilica as well as scattered masonry.

“Nikolas! Answer me!” He heard Menelaos’s voice crackle from his phone again. Had he hit the call button? How was his phone connected?

He fumbled through the dust, found the phone, and forced the word out: “Hello?”

“Nikolas, thank God! Where are you? I heard an explosion!”

“I… We’re at the site,” Nikolas stammered, checking his extremities. Everything moved, but his head was spinning. “One moment they were excavating, I was calling you, we found something strange… and then I woke up.”

“Yes. Okay,” Menelaos responded, his voice turning away to shout at someone else in the room. “Call emergency services. To Saint Demetrios, NOW!” He snapped back to the line. “Are you injured? What about the others?”

“I’m okay, I think,” Nikolas tried to say, but his speech came out garbled. Hands grasped him by the shoulders and began dragging him away from the excavation. He could feel his heels dragging through the dirt.

Through the smoke and dust, he could barely see what was left of the site, a jagged crater where the excavation had been. The ancient earthen walls had sheared inward, burying everything under tons of brick and stone.

“Oh my God,” Nikolas stammered, trying to shake off the hands pulling him, “The pit collapsed. They’re buried!”

“Hold on. Don’t go near the pit,” Menelaos commanded over the phone, his voice clearly panicked. “Help is coming. I’m on my way. Keep talking.”

The hands pulling him gripped harder and dragged him through the dirt before laying him down. A man looked down at him, concern on his face. He saw others crowding around. He had to tell them to help.

“My friends are trapped down there; we have to start digging.”

“No, no, sir. There was an explosion and a collapse,” the man yelled over the noise, his grip tightening. “We need to get further away. It could explode again.”

The voice crackled again in his hand, “You must get away from the danger. Rescuers are coming. They will help.”

“They must be trapped. We have to get to them.”

“Yes. The first responders will. I’m on my way. Make sure you aren’t hurt.” The phone call disconnected.

All of a sudden, sirens began to break through the ringing in his ears, and blinding lights killed his ability to focus on anything. The stranger lifted Nikolas onto a wooden bench in the church courtyard. The air was a thick, chalky fog of pulverized mortar. All around him, onlookers were coughing, pulling their shirts over their mouths.

Two fire engines and an ambulance roared into the courtyard, tires screeching on the stone. Firefighters scrambled out, moving toward the pit with tools in hand. They hadn’t even reached the edge when a chorus of shrill, high-pitched alarms began chirping from the small detectors clipped to their turnout gear.

The firefighters froze, then instantly recoiled, violently waving the crowd back.

“The area is contaminated! Everyone, back two hundred meters! Team, establish a hot zone and call HazMat!”

As more first responders arrived, police began pushing the growing crowd further and further from the pit. A paramedic approached Nikolas.

“Sir, are you alright?”

“I’m ok. My colleagues… They were in the pit. You need to help them.”

“We’re helping. I need to check you out. You’re bleeding. Do you know where from?”

Nikolas noticed that his scalp and neck were damp. Patting it with his fingers, he found blood trickling from his ears and nose. Paramedics surrounded him, and he found himself being loaded onto a gurney.

Across the courtyard, another shout erupted from the edge of the crater. “We’ve got a reading! High gamma! Close off the area!”

Suddenly, Menelaos was there, pushing through the cordon, his face pale. “Nikolas, dear God.” He reached out to check Nikolas’s face before a paramedic firmly intercepted him.

“No, it’s alright,” said Nikolas.

“Sir, you need to step back,” the paramedic ordered.

A firefighter wearing a full respirator mask stepped up to the gurney, holding a yellow survey meter. He swept a probe over Nikolas’s clothes. The device ticked rapidly, but didn’t scream. “He’s clear of surface dust, but he was in the immediate blast radius. He needs radiological containment at the hospital. Now.”

Before Nikolas or Menelaos could speak, the gurney was slammed into the back of the ambulance. The doors clicked shut, cutting off the chaos of the courtyard, and the rig tore off into the night.

He still couldn’t hear properly, but the ringing began to subside only to be replaced by the blaring siren. The first responders had donned yellow suits and respirators.

Nikolas was suddenly annoyed again by his broken glasses. The impossibly bright lights blinded him further. He reached up to take them off, but a gloved hand firmly caught his wrist. The glasses were pulled from his face and dropped into a thick red bag stenciled with black biohazard warnings.

Through the muffled static of his ears, he could hear the ambulance driver barking commands into the radio over the roar of the engine. “Full decontamination protocol. Please confirm arrival bay.” A squawk of unintelligible electronic noise erupted from the dashboard speaker. “Understood. Will hold in the courtyard and await instructions.”

“Sir, tell me your name,” one of the masks said, the voice muffled through the filter of the mask.

“Nikolas.”

“Great. Do you know where you are?”

“I’m in an ambulance. In Thessaloniki.”

“Good, Good. My friends scanned you, and we don’t see any radiation on you currently, but we must take precautions to keep you and everyone else safe. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

They began a rapid-fire litany of standard triage questions, none of them touching on the excavation. Nikolas tolerated it for three blocks before finally cutting through. “My friends. My friends were in the pit.”

The second figure responded, “We know. The team will do the best they are able. Do not worry.”

Nikolas blinked, trying to focus his blurred vision on the speaker. That accent. It didn’t sound right. The face was completely obscured behind plastic and filters, but the cadence was bizarre.

“Yes. Ok,” he murmured, confused.

The paramedic squeezed his hand, “Yes. Good. Take courage. We are almost there.”

Take courage? Who says that? Also, the accent was definitely off. So was the word choice. The Greek was... absurdly, anciently formal.

Nikolas was an academic to a fault. He was regularly accused of being too rigid and formal in his own speech, but this was a completely different lexicon. A city paramedic simply shouldn’t talk this way. He knew Adam would skewer him for making such an elitist assumption, but he couldn’t help it—some of the syntax was almost Classical. The man was phrasing words like a text Nikolas would translate in a quiet library, not a conversation between first responders in a racing emergency vehicle.

“Where are you from?” Nikolas asked.

“From the wider world, xenos. Where are you from?” The voice still held that strange, melodic lilt, but the other paramedic didn’t even turn his head to look.

“Thessaloniki. I’m from here.”

“Good, good! Then you know, you will be mended well in the Asklepieion. Your friends are safe. Don’t worry.”

Asklepieion? And had he said ‘xenos’? Both of those terms were utterly archaic. Alarm bells went off in Nikolas’s mind. Did he have brain damage? Was he seeing things? He needed to focus. His friends needed help.

“How could you know? They were in the pit!”

But before he could get an answer, the ambulance screeched to a halt, jolting Nikolas against the restraints on the gurney. He was abruptly rolled out into the roundabout outside the hospital.

The courtyard inside the roundabout was a theater of chaos. Dozens of people were running in yellow and white suits, rolling huge negative-pressure machines across the asphalt. Others were frantically inflating a massive yellow decontamination tent that reminded Nikolas of a children’s bounce house. As the tent locked into its rigid shape, several technicians wheeled in aluminum carts of monitoring gear. Nikolas’s gurney was pushed right through the plastic flaps behind them.

Bright pen-lights pointed into his eyes. A technician with a pair of trauma shears began aggressively cutting through his clothes, slicing his shirt and jeans away. Pieces of each garment were immediately stuffed into separate, labeled evidence bags.

The technician then began swabbing his skin. “Sir, I need to get some samples from your ears and nose. Is that ok?”

“Yes. Yes.”

Cold cotton swabs invaded his nostrils and ears. Nearby, another figure began sweeping a long, cylindrical probe over his bare skin. He heard the telltale clicking of a Geiger counter, but no screaming noises. He decided that must be a good sign.

His thoughts swam back to Ani, Adam, and Sara. Were they buried alive? Could they have survived whatever happened? Would rescuers get to them in time?

It was then that a thought occurred to him. Radiation? That didn’t make sense. Historic city centers did not hold radioactive materials. For that matter, nothing in the trench could have exploded either. Had they hit an unmarked gas line? They couldn’t possibly.

He thought harder again, his memory still foggy. He tried to piece a timeline together. The team had arrived at the site. Adam was replacing the artifact. There had been some chatter. Sara’s scanner had flared. Then he’d woken up to Menelaos screaming through the phone at him.

“He’s clear,” declared one of the hooded figures, stepping back from a digital monitor. “Concussion. Some barotrauma and hearing damage, but no immediate danger. Let’s await the laboratory blood work to evaluate internal exposure. Move him to an isolation unit.”

---

Menelaos sat next to Nikolas, just outside plastic sheeting that surrounded his bed. The barrier was clear and Nikolas could see the standard hospital room around him. A heart rate monitor chirped regularly. He knew they wanted to monitor his vitals, but the wires attached to his chest were annoying.

The kindly old man looked at him worriedly. The doctors had finally let him in after a long, muffled shouting match in the hallway.

“Have we heard about them? Are they ok?” Nikolas asked, his voice strained.

As if on cue, a doctor stepped into the room wearing the most pristine lab coat Nikolas had ever seen. He had circular glasses and a smug smile on his face. “Your friends are safe for now. They are trapped in a hidden chamber underneath your excavation.”

“Thank Goodness!” exclaimed Meneloas, slumping in relief.

Nikolas froze. His ears were still ringing, but he was instantly struck by the doctor’s accent. It was the same bizarre, archaic speech pattern from the ambulance. The same hyper-formal syntax. Could this be the same person? More importantly, there was no chamber underneath their excavation. Sara’s scans were clear on that.

“But there was no layer underneath the floor. Our scans showed nothing underneath the floor of the room we excavated.”

“Worry not,” the doctor said, offering another smile, “the rescue teams have connected with them via cell service. They are shaken but otherwise unharmed.”

Nikolas searched his body for his cell phone before remembering his possessions had been removed in the ambulance.

Meanwhile, the older program chair had gotten out his cell phone, his older fingers clumsily trying to dial.

“Dear Professor,” the doctor interjected, putting his hand on Menelaos’ shoulder, “The rescue teams are using a local secure network for the first responders. Your phone won’t be able to reach them.”

“Oh, quite right, quite right,” responded Menelaos, slipping the phone back into his pocket. “Good, Nikolas, tell me what happened. On the phone, you said you’d found something before the collapse.”

“Yes, do tell,” said the doctor, crossing his arms.

Nikolas looked hard at the doctor. Why would a hospital physician care about the specifics of an archaeological find? Menelaos didn’t seem perturbed by the question.

“Well, we discovered the object causing the anomaly. An object made of bronze and another metal we’ll need to identify. Ani and Sara were investigating another anomaly on the other side of the room. They uncovered what appears to be a burial. We were getting ready to close the site and notify the ministry when the blast happened,” Nikolas recounted.

“So it was an explosion?” Asked the doctor, leaning in.

Nikolas narrowed his eyes, “Is there some reason you’re asking the questions?”

“Nikolas, stop being rude. The man is here to help.”

“I am adding specifics to your chart, fine sir. An explosion could mean any number of internal injuries we need to watch for.”

Nikolas opened his mouth to reply when there was a sudden announcement, “Veles, paging Doctor Veles. Code blue on the basement level. Code blue on the basement level.”

“Ah, that is me,” the doctor said, bowing slightly. “Before I depart, I thought you might want this back. It seems to have made it through the incident without any major damage. I have added my personal number to the digital registry, should you have need to reach me.”

He reached into his lab coat and handed Nikolas a smartphone, lifting up the plastic surrounding him briefly. It was Nikolas’s own device. The glass was intact, and the lock screen was lit up with a barrage of missed alerts and notifications, but when Nikolas pressed his thumb to the sensor, the phone refused to unlock.

“What extraordinary service,” Menelaos remarked, looking thoroughly impressed. “I have never heard of a hospital physician personally tracking down a patient’s effects like that.”

Nikolas stared at the locked screen of his phone. He looked up at the empty doorway where the doctor had just vanished. The man’s accent still rang in his ears. Veles. That was Slavic, wasn’t it? Maybe he was from the Balkans with an accent he hadn’t heard. But the same accent as a paramedic?

“Why would I need to contact him?” Nikolas whispered aloud, the paranoia finally taking root. “If I needed a doctor, couldn’t I just ask a nurse?”

“Sure, sure. But I think given the circumstances, the hospital wants a doctor dedicated to your case.”

Two men entered the room. Both wore a suit and tie along with a surgical mask covering their nose and mouth. Each also wore a badge clearly stating: Hellenic Police – State Security Directorate.

The older of the two men stepped forward. He had short-cropped hair graying at the temples and a cleanly manicured goatee. “Dr. Nikolas Vardas? Can we speak with you? Professor, we’ll need you to step out.”

Menelaos bristled and stood. “I am a well-respected academic and senior official in this city. This is my employee, and I have explicit clearance from the Ministry of Culture to -”

“It was not a suggestion, sir. The Ministry of Culture has no oversight in matters of national security,” said the younger man. His tone was polite but firm. “Please step outside. We will speak with you shortly.”

Menelaos looked at Nikolas, helpless and suddenly looking far older than his years. “I’ll be right outside, Nikolas. Don’t worry.”

The two men waited for the old man to leave before pulling two stools next to the bed, just outside the plastic sheet. Nikolas, unsure of how the conversation would go, slid the phone underneath him and out of sight.

The older man started, “I am Senior Inspector Katsaros, and this is Inspector Stephanos. Doctor Veles updated us on your condition. We want to give you some time to rest, but given the seriousness of the situation, we need to speak with you for a few minutes. Will that be ok?”

“Yes, of course. Can you update me on my colleagues? Have rescuers reached them yet?”

Inspector Katsaros ruffled his brow. “Unfortunately, no. Rescue teams are not yet cleared to enter the hot zone. We don’t yet have a status on your friends.”

“But Doctor Veles, he said that you were in communication with them.”

“I think he likely told you what he thought best, as soon as we know their status, someone will let you know. We have a local secure network, but no signals that we can detect yet. There is too much interference in the area. I’m sorry I don’t have better news,” replied Katsaros, a confused look on his face. “Now, can you tell me what you found in the trench? Any possibility of an explosive device?”

“No, no. A strange artifact. Made of bronze and a silvery material. I would guess polished tin, but they had only just uncovered it. Also a burial, which was unexpected but wouldn’t be unheard of.”

Stephanos spoke up, “Any possibility that the artifact was a modern device, maybe unexploded ordnance?”

Nikolas thought for a moment. His memory was still foggy. He also was keenly aware of the potential trouble the team could be in for removing the artifact and replacing it. “No, no. Dr. Gable is the best excavator I’ve ever seen. He tracked stratigraphy down to the object. It was in situ. Do you know what that means?”

“Yes,” smiled Katsaros, “We use the same word in police work. What was the purpose of this excavation? Saint Demetrios is an active monastery. I’m sure it must have been excavated multiple times.”

Nikolas paused; should he mention the anomaly? He couldn’t recall who they’d told about it. Maybe Menelaos? There was deniability there. Faulty equipment, maybe. Either way, he decided on the safe answer, “It has been. We were testing a new scanning technique. Sara, one of our post-graduate researchers, has developed some new techniques with electromagnetic scanning. We were excavating to verify her results. It’s all quite standard.”

Stephanos looked up, eyes intrigued, “Anything interesting in the results? Metal? Abnormalities?”

Nikolas internally smacked himself; these were investigators, not idiots. “Yes. There was an abnormality in the general area of one of the objects we found. As I said, we wanted to verify the results.”

“Ok. And do you believe the artifact to be the origin of this abnormality?”

“I do. That much metal would likely interfere with our sensors.”

“When you say that much metal, could there have been something else?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Any reason to believe that the object may have been explosive? That the object was irradiated?”

Nikolas thought about the artifact. It swapped between being magnetic and completely inert. The amount of energy it would take to either magnetize or demagnetize an object that size was enormous. It couldn’t possibly be a weapon. None of it made sense. But would they know if the object was giving off radiation? Sara’s equipment almost certainly would’ve been affected beyond just readings. He had to think.

“Nikolas?” Katsaros prompted.

“No, I don’t think so. Sorry, I was thinking. Since radiation was only discovered recently in archaeological terms, it isn’t something we test for if we aren’t expecting it. I guess it is possible though.”

“Possible, can you explain further? What era was this artifact from? Could it have been a bomb?” Stephanos asked.

“Again. No bombs. The area we were investigating was from the early Byzantine era.” Nikolas began, his mind racing. Could it be a bomb? Surely not. He was in strange territory here.

He took a breath before answering, “If someone in antiquity had found an object that was irradiated, they would have avoided it or attributed some other significance. Most likely, this material would have caused radiation sickness if it is as serious as you say. Is it possible? Sure. Unlikely though. There would be a historical record of unusual disease. And how was the radiation not detected earlier? Aren’t there scans done for this sort of thing?”

Katsaros laughed, “Kind of like you, my friend, we wouldn’t expect a radiation leak in the center of Thessaloniki.”

The laugh quickly released the tension that had been building in the room.

Katsaros continued, “Any resistance to your excavation? It’s unlikely, but at this stage, we need to rule out anything we can.”

“No, no resistance,” Nikolas said. He was deeply uncomfortable, knowing they had planned to fudge their paperwork. Wanting to lighten the mood, he continued, “An old woman yelled at Adam yesterday for digging in a churchyard.”

Both investigators laughed, “I think the yia yias yell at everyone for everything. But we may go ask her anyway. Lastly, we will need all of your scans and data. If you happen to have the computers, unfortunately we will need those too.”

The phone given to him by the doctor pressed into his side opposite the investigators. They hadn’t asked about it, but he wondered if they would want access to it. As if the device knew how nervous its presence made him, the phone buzzed into his side. Nikolas prayed with everything he had that the detectives wouldn’t notice or would mistake it for the hum of medical monitors.

“Yes, of course,” he responded. “Unfortunately, Ms. Bennett’s laptop was at the site. I’m not sure that it survived the incident. But when I am back in my lab, I am happy to give you anything you need.”

“Not to worry, Dr. Vardas. Rest up. We’ll get back to you when we need more information.”

“Ok, goodbye then,” Nikolas said awkwardly, before adding, “Can you get the nurse to page Dr. Veles? I’d like to speak to him. He was called to the basement.”

Both investigators gave him a strange look. “Sure, we’ll make sure they call him,” Katsaros said, “but there’s no basement in this hospital.”

As the two men turned and stepped out of the room, speaking in hushed tones, the phone buzzed three more times into his side. Nikolas pressed his arm tight against his ribs, smothering the vibration until they were well out of earshot.

Before he could even begin to process any of it, Menelaos rushed back in.

“Nikolas, I have already lodged a complaint with the police. This is an outrage.”

“It’s ok, Menelaos, really. There’s been an explosion in the city center. They need to investigate.”

“Ok. Yes. I guess you’re right.”

The phone continued to buzz into Nikolas’ back. Unsure what else to do, Nikolas blurted out, “I think I’m rather tired. Menelaos. Thank you for being here, but I’d like to get some rest.”

The old professor looked slightly hurt, but smiled at him, “Of course. Get some rest. Have a nurse call me if you need anything. I’ll go supervise the police at the lab. We don’t need those barbarians destroying anything.”

As soon as he was alone, Nikolas took out the phone. Oddly, his thumbprint suddenly worked and the phone unlocked.

He had several messages and two missed calls. All from Adam and Ani.

Next Time: Dolos gets yelled at in a super brief interlude.

Chapter 5

The lab was a standard space for a seasonal project – as in, it lacked any semblance of importance or permanence. Its thin, plasterboard walls sectioned it off from a repurposed loading dock attached to the side of the museum. The massive bay doors had been closed by cinder blocks that clashed with the original brick. Cheap linoleum covered the floor while mismatched cabinets and storage drawers lined the perimeter. Several chipped lab tables were haphazardly placed throughout the middle of the room. It looked like what it was, an extra space created out of necessity.

Its door opened onto a hallway leading to other research bays and a central storage vault packed with centuries of artifacts. Normally, because of the area’s controlled access, the lab door used by the Saint Demetrios team was left open to let some fresh air into the stuffy space. Given what was currently sitting in one of the drawers, Nikolas had closed and locked it before they’d left.

Nikolas and Ani arrived first. The cool, quiet halls of the museum were a welcome relief after the time in the sun. Their walk had been mostly silent, the longtime academic partners deep in thought as they listened to the noise of the city.

Ani broke the silence, “We’re in some weird territory, Nikolas. And what happened – I can only describe it as a vision. Am I going crazy?”

“No, Ani. This defies all logic and science. But looking at the common denominator, everything we’ve found today is strange. None of it fits into our normal reality. An impossible artifact? Visions? You and I have worked together for years—you know how skeptical I am about this kind of thing. But seeing your face back at the site? I could tell it was real to you. Coming back to regroup was the only logical option.”

They walked in silence for a moment. Eventually, Ani took a deep breath and composed herself. A woman has to keep a cool head regardless of the chaos around her.

“We’ll need to report it now. No hiding burials in Greece,” she said calmly.

“Yes. I hate it. I’m having trouble believing my eyes at this point, but we still need to report it. We’ll wait for Adam and Sara and plan for what to do next. Our next steps are known. We must talk to Menelaos and the ministry. But I’ll admit I may have to take a page from you and Adam and leave out some things in the report.”

They both tried to look casual as they passed the occasional scientist and curator. Eventually, they arrived at the door.

Nikolas checked the door handle, testing that it was still locked, breathing a sigh of relief when it was. Unlocking the door, Nikolas immediately pulled out a whiteboard. Ani sat on a lab table, swinging her legs and looking at the ceiling.

Under normal circumstances, Nikolas would just begin filling out the standard paperwork. In this case, they needed a plan. All four of them should have the same story, framed the same way. The artifact would draw significant scrutiny. Its composition, its provenance, and its strange properties would make it an instant sensation. The fact that it was found adjacent to a tabloid-worthy burial only complicated things further. The local paper would pick up the story, and from there such an interesting finding could be picked up nationally or even internationally. The team needed a tight narrative to keep control of things. No scientist wants to be on the cover of The National Enquirer. That is a quick path to being relegated to dubious History Channel documentaries.

Ani, for her part, was lost in thought. She tried to sort through the feelings of the afternoon. The strange feeling in her arm persisted, but the visceral feelings and vision she’d experienced at the site had spooked her. Her immediate pain and panic at feeling the violent death of an unknown woman had faded. It felt like an old memory, as if her mind had somehow already processed it. It left her distinctly conflicted. She knew Nikolas was probably in a tailspin, as was Sara. Whether she wanted to or not, she’d need to hold steady for them.

Taking a marker, Nikolas wrote ‘Declaration of Location / Discovery of Antiquities form’. He added two bullet points, one for the artifact and one for the skeleton. Underneath that, he wrote in bold letters: Explanation and Timeline.

“I hope you have a bottle of whiteboard erasing solution on hand,” Ani spoke casually, trying to lighten the dark look on Nikolas’s face.

“Or we could burn the whiteboard,” he remarked.

“You sound like Adam.”

Good, he thought. I’m at least fooling her. Maybe I can fool myself as well. If he was being honest, the banter about the situation did make him feel better. He continued, “With this particular situation, I think we all need to be thinking more like the American private sector than academics following antiquities law. I want to be able to adjust and erase what we come up with before we make it final.”

“I agree,” responded Ani.

“Let’s start with the basics,” Nikolas said, “Stratigraphy. Let’s review our layers.”

“Ok,” began Ani, “We can confirm with Adam if he has anything additional, but we have four strata: Modern, Late Medieval, Early Medieval, and Late Classical. The feature itself is Late Classical. Separating that stratum from the Early Medieval is a layer of rubble, likely from the collapse of the original building on the site. No artifacts of note in the first three layers.”

Nikolas listed the soil horizons on the whiteboard. Under Late Antiquity, he wrote ‘Burial’ and then paused.

Ani wrote ‘Unknown Metal Object’ underneath. She waited, watching Nikolas stare at her with concern before she continued, “It is, in fact, an unknown metal object.”

The door opened and shut behind them.

“And that’s what we’ll write on the report – unknown metal object,” stated Adam, walking in with Sara, “If I recall correctly, I unearthed it today and finished uncovering it, thinking it to be a bronze amphora lid. As I finished, Ani discovered the burial. Then we were cursed with doom for digging in a churchyard, and we all committed ritual sacrifices to clean ourselves.”

Ani laughed. She did appreciate Adam breaking the tension, even if she found his flippancy annoying half the time. “What? Doom?” she asked.

“Oh, you missed it. A Yia Yia told us we were doomed for digging in a churchyard. I’ve been yelled at by protestors all over the US, but Yia Yias are much scarier,” Adam replied. “Either way, let’s go with simultaneous discovery. We can leave out the old lady and ritual cleaning.”

Sara looked at Adam with a worried expression. “Will that fly with the antiquities police or whoever we have to deal with now?”

“It will,” replied Ani. “Remember, Sara, these are archaeologists like us. They’ll be as interested as anyone in understanding what’s going on here. Plus, everyone knows this little dig wasn’t supposed to yield anything but remote sensing verification. No one will be surprised if we were chasing a second magnetometer finding.”

Nikolas put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ve known George for years. Menelaos was my dissertation advisor. If we don’t advertise the less believable aspects of this excavation, they’ll take our word for it.”

“Nikolas the bad boy,” Ani poked at him.

“Nikolas the pragmatist, more like,” responded Adam. “He may be particular, but he’s still Greek.”

“Yes, to catch you up,” Nikolas began, reminded they hadn’t had a chance to tell Adam and Sara about the archive find. “Ani and I found an interesting manuscript in the archives. It mentions ‘The Lost Way’. Amazing, really; I’ve never seen it written down anywhere, just local legend. How this source was never connected to the site before is beyond me. The letter was written by a local bishop. He advocated for the erasure of the sect. This is strictly qualitative, but I believe, given Sara’s new scans, that there may be something to this. Possibly the murder of a sect leader. There was no mention of the object, though.”

As he was talking, Sara plugged her laptop into one of the large monitors and showed her experimental scan of the burial. Adam stepped in behind her to take a look. He’d seen Sara kick off the data processing before they left the site. The hope was that it would tell more of the story.

What he saw defied all expectations. On the screen was practically science fiction – stacked shades of gray defining the individual layers of soil. Various objects floated in the 3D model. They’d even been tagged and colored based on the most probable material the object was made of. In the medieval layers, chunks of ceramic and bits of animal bone dotted the matrix of the unexcavated area. The walls defining the edges of the room were clear. Chillingly, the brick that blocked up the door of the room stood in stark contrast to the stone walls around it.

More importantly, the unexcavated grave was plainly visible in incredible detail. To Adam, the look of the burial gave him new world vibes, more like something out of a Mayan sacrifice than something he’d expect in a late Roman-era storeroom in Greece. The arms were clearly bound behind the back and legs folded underneath, almost as if the body was a staged hostage or forced to kneel and worship in that position. If the grave were found in a cenote or high alpine cave, he wouldn’t think twice about it. Ritual sacrifice and move along. The jaw was open and the area a bit fuzzy. Could she really be gagged? Is that what we’re seeing here?

Not wanting to dredge up what could be traumatic for Ani, he instead complimented Sara. “This is incredible,” he said. “We’re gonna write so many papers.”

Ani had also come over to watch. “We’ll turn this scan over to the authorities as well. The fact that we used new tech to scan instead of digging more to verify that the bone was human will score us some points if there’s an investigation,” she stated.

Adam looked at her, but he couldn’t read her usually open face.

“What about the scans we did of the object itself?” asked Sara.

“We say the bottom is assumed to be polished iron. Since we found it today and never had it in the lab, we wouldn’t know the bottom is a modern material,” Nikolas stated seriously to Sara.

“Understood,” she said.

The three experienced team members in the room breathed a collective sigh of relief that Sara was on board with the plan.

Meanwhile, Adam had walked over to the drawer and opened it. “Huh, that’s not weird at all,” he said, looking at the contents of the drawer.

Nikolas groaned, “What’s not weird at all?”

The team walked over to the drawer. Instead of a jumble of objects, every object in the drawer was aligned in one direction, just diagonal to the orientation of the drawer. The pens had shifted together. Even the points were aligned. Pins and thumb tacks had done the same, the pointy ends pointing the same direction as the pens. A few of the tacks rolled slightly as Adam fully pulled the drawer open.

At the center was the bell, a full half-inch of space cleared in a circle around it.

Silence hung in the air.

Finally, Adam broke the silence. “I might live to regret this, but Sara, take a picture of that. We can check a map and compass if you want, but I’d bet my left nipple that everything in that drawer is all pointed directly back to the site.”

“Nope!” Sara interjected. “I draw the line right here, Mr. Folksy Southerner. No feelings. No… nipples. We deal in the physical world. The only answer is electromagnetic residue. That object clearly has some kind of magnetic charge that’s affecting the world around it. It needs to be studied somehow without all of us getting laughed out of a job.”

“Sara, the fucking pens are all pointed the same way,” Adam retorted.

“I don’t care! That thing isn’t trying to tell us shit. Objects don’t send messages. This is the real world, Adam. I thought you of all people would be on my side, but you’re out here playing Indiana Jones!” Her voice echoed off the thin plaster walls.

Everyone had heard her escalating tone. They were also keenly aware of how thin the walls were, and no one, least of all Sara, wanted the conversation to be overheard.

Sara tried to calm herself before continuing, “Really, Nikolas? Mr. Black-and-White himself? Adam, the guy who always says ‘If it’s not in the dirt it doesn’t exist’? I’d expect this from Ani, no offense, but you guys? I feel like we’ve gone off the deep end.”

Both men stood quietly, shifting uncomfortably.

“None taken,” Ani said softly.

Nikolas spoke, his voice quavering as if he could barely hold it together, “Sara, nobody is turning into a crackpot conspiracy theorist. I hate it as much as you do, but logic and facts left the room the minute we found out what that artifact was made of. I hear you. This is impossible, but if we lose our heads, we lose control of the narrative. As far as the ministry is concerned, we excavated, we cataloged per protocol. Nothing left the site.”

Sara couldn’t help herself. She was mad. She knew it was childish, but she spit it out anyway. “Except that we brought that thing back here and threw it in the junk drawer overnight.”

She finished and crossed her arms, suddenly uncomfortable. She’d noticed Nikolas looking intently at Ani. She looked at Adam, who was doing the same. It was suddenly there, that familiar, cold drop in her stomach, the feeling of being completely left out. She pushed down the feeling as best she could.

“What? Why do I feel like I’ve completely missed the boat here?”

Ani shifted uncomfortably. She began, “You didn’t miss anything. I’ve told Nikolas already, and I’m guessing Adam picked up that something was wrong. Ever since I hit the bell, I’ve –” She cut off, unable to keep her composure.

Adam gave her a moment before asking gently, “Ani, what’s going on with you? You said Nikolas knows. All I know is the Ani I know would have an opinion here. Instead, you’re sitting there quiet as a mouse.”

“Jesus, I feel like a crazy person,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “I know I’m more willing to entertain the more mystical aspects of history, but this is far off the deep end even for me.”

She took a deep breath before continuing, “Ever since I rang the bell, I’ve had feelings in my hand and wrist. At first, it was like I hit my funny bone. Then it faded to a deep thrum when we left the bell behind. But when we got back to the site, I could feel it change again the closer I got to the burial, even before we knew it was there.”

Ani stopped for a moment, wrapping her arms around herself. “When I touched that bit of exposed bone—it was like a flood through my body. Her presence. Pain. Exhaustion.”

She squeezed herself hard. Adam walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. She continued, “I felt the pressure of being tied up like that.”

She looked up at them. “I know that you guys find me a little out there, but this is so much more real than anything I’ve felt before. It’s like hitting the object that opened a door that I can’t close. That sounds crazy as it comes out of my mouth.”

Adam looked long and hard at Ani as if trying to see what was behind her eyes. He put his hands on his head and blew out a long breath. “That’s a lot,” he said.

Sara stared at her screen. She felt childish and isolated after making such a stir while Ani sat there having an existential crisis.

Nikolas removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. The room was silent for a few moments.

“Thoughts? Ideas? Toss me in the loony bin?” Ani asked quietly.

“I think when we look at the facts, I’m not willing to rule out anything,” Adam responded.

Nikolas thought for a moment before starting carefully, “I don’t think we need to advertise what’s happening with you. It might not be a bad idea to get yourself checked out to check for any nerve damage. For now, we get the artifact back to the site, and we button everything up. Then we turn things over as is to the ministry. Honestly, I’ll be content to have someone other than us continue the excavation.”

Ani sighed with relief, “Ok. Let’s do it. But I’m not touching the bell again. Someone else carries it.”

“I’ll take it,” Adam said, reaching for the heavy bronze object. It made a dull, metallic scrape against the stainless-steel table as he lifted it. He wrapped it carefully in a clean cloth before putting it into his backpack. “If anyone asks, I’m the only one to handle it directly outside of Ani ringing it. Let’s keep it that way.”

Sara stared at him in horror. “Wait, you’re going to tell people she hit it?”

She instantly realized that he was joking and wished she could take it back. Instead, she gave him an exaggerated sigh and half-smile.

He smiled, happy she’d figured it out. “Well yeah, if she dented the damn thing, I’m not taking the blame.”

Adam walked over to Sara and gave her a half-hug. He looked at her with a smile. “Hang in there, kid. We’re off in the Twilight Zone, but we’re in it together.”

Ani came over as well, put her arms around them both and held for a moment before taking Sara’s hand and leading her from the room.

When they’d left, Adam looked at his old friend.

“Weird shit, man. We need to put on a good face, but I hate it. I’d say someone is fucking with us, but Ani? She believes it was real through and through, whether it is or not.”

Nikolas nodded. “We start by making sure the site is picture-perfect. And that this conversation never happened.”

He picked up a felt eraser and, with a few heavy strokes, wiped everything off the whiteboard.

“Adam, go easy on Sara. She’s brilliant, but she’s still young. This project was her chance to shine and now it’s spiraled out of control. She doesn’t have the mileage you and Ani do—you can’t just steamroll her when she’s trying to process. ”

“I know. That was my bad, man. Even I’m just a little lost here. Come on, let’s get this over with.”

Adam reached for the wall switch and flicked it down, plunging the lab into darkness. Nikolas pulled the door shut and turned the key, locking the door behind them for good measure.

—

In the shadows of the lab, a silhouette emerged. The figure looked up to the ceiling with a smile.

“See, I told you he’d figure it out,” he said to the darkness.

Chapter 4

Adam and Sara arrived at the dig site in the shadow of the Basilica. Adam stood, staring at the tarp he’d used to keep prying eyes out. The morning was still cool and long shadows cast across the area from nearby trees and buildings. Overall, the area was quiet. The neighborhood had yet to wake up, but the occasional truck rumbled by delivering daily necessities across the city.

He started by uncovering the trench and took stock. The tops of stone walls of the ancient room were visible, showing a clear footprint of the room where they’d found the artifact. They looked ramshackle in comparison to the crisp two meter by one meter rectangle excavation pit that sank along one wall.

This view also showed the mortar and spacer stones that gave the wall its strength. The rough edges of the walls also showed where the ceiling had once caved in. Inside the hole itself, the smooth faces of the original interior walls were visible along with bits of white plaster.

“Ok,” started Adam, “I want to start with another scan. Now that the giant magnet is gone, it’d be great to get an idea of what we’re looking at down there.”

“Sounds good,” Sara said, beginning to unpack her equipment and prepare to start scanning. She changed from her boots into Crocs and removed her belt and hair clips, tying her hair with a scrunchy. The sensor on her magnetometer was extremely sensitive. Any metal on her or in the area she was scanning would ruin the results.

Her theoretical process, which had spurred the need for the dig to begin with, was that she could improve the resolution of the map created by her scans. The big trick she was hoping to prove was that she could provide insight into the depth and layering beneath the earth’s surface. Traditional magnetometry just showed anomalies. It was excellent for mapping out a site to find features like buildings, walls, or pits. The issue was that the two-dimensional nature of the results made it difficult to assess complex sites. The Basilica and its surroundings were perfect in that respect, as the area saw repeated use throughout history. She began scanning, covering an area that encompassed the entire anomaly caused by the artifact.

Adam looked on, glancing at the laptop screen as data came in. Before processing, it looked like the usual readings. He could see his trench clearly as it bisected the walls of the ancient room. Nothing of note yet, but Sara would need to further analyze the results.

As a private sector archaeologist, he focused on surveying and ensuring that no one was building a condo on a site like this. They used magnetometry and no small amount of sampling, but he wasn’t completely up to speed on the latest research. Out of curiosity he asked, “Why not just pull out a GPR? Could you integrate that as well?”

Sara grinned at him. “Because with all these rocks, compacted clay, and sixteen centuries of collapsed ceiling rubble, GPR is going to give us a mess of meaningless radar reflections. It works great in sandy pine flats in low-country Alabama, but here? It’d look like static. My algorithm isolates true 3D magnetic susceptibility—mapping the soil chemistry and burning, not just bouncing waves off buried rocks. Maybe I’ll integrate GPR for my post-doc, but for now, the math stands on its own.”

“Huh,” Adam thought, wondering how much he’d have to pay her to work for him. Then he heard a voice from behind him.

“It is bad luck to dig in a church,” came a voice in Greek. He turned around to an older woman, obviously a local. She wore all black, and a gleaming cross hung from her neck.

“I’m sorry, Yiayia, we are with the academy,” he attempted to respond in his vaguely passable Greek.

“Still, it is bad luck. Have you not heard of the legends of this place? To dig here is to invite doom.”

“We did not intend to dig, only to look under the surface. But something broke our tool,” he responded, doing his best to describe what had happened with his limited vocabulary. In years of dealing with locals who didn’t want archaeologists poking around, he’d always found it better to overexplain. She looked at him like he was an idiot.

Sara lifted her head, “What’s she saying?”

“It’s bad luck to dig here. She said to dig here will be our doom – I think,” he smirked.

The old woman looked on disapprovingly, finally crossing herself and moving on.

Adam turned to Sara. He’d taken her on as an intern at his firm in the early days. At the time, he didn’t have the money for his own magnetometer or an expert to use it, so he’d hired Sara for the summer to get him through. When he’d seen her talent, he had immediately introduced her to Nikolas, knowing he’d be able to give her real assignments with academic weight. But since then, he hadn’t spoken to her much. She still had a stiff, academic mindset. When even Nikolas told him she was too serious, he knew he’d need to try and get her to loosen up.

He decided today could be a good day to give it a shot. “Funny. My ‘doom’ sensor just hit the red. It tracks whether we’ll be the laughing stock of the academic community. You know what? She might be right. How do the initial readings look?”

“Nothing unexpected for me,” Sara responded, ignoring his quip. “I see the walls and the pit. The wall opposite our trench looks a little odd, but nothing else. I’ll run the spatial algorithm to try to look at the profile, and we’ll take another look.”

“Sounds good. I want to take another look at the trench,” Adam said, hopping down into the hole.

The ‘unit’, as it was technically referred to, was fairly standard. Two meters long and one meter wide, it was precisely measured and perfectly squared on either end. He’d begun digging it out over three days after they’d found the anomaly in Sara’s scan.

The ‘unit’, as it was technically referred to, was fairly standard. Two meters long and one meter wide, it was precisely measured and perfectly squared on either end. He’d begun digging it out over three days after they’d found the anomaly in Sara’s scan. Layer by layer, he had scraped away. They’d found a trove of 19th-century garbage first, then the mother lode of medieval garbage below that.

It wasn’t garbage in the modern sense of the word. Most people would be ecstatic to find a fragment of roman pottery or a Medeival button. But when trying to investigate something specific, all of was more junk to be bagged for later cleaning and study.

To Adam, the mechanics of how all of it got there were obvious. Sometime in the middle ages, when the larger bathhouse area had fallen into disuse, most of the building had been knocked down and built over. But for whatever reason, this room had been left. Eventually, the roof had collapsed and made a convenient hole for refuse throughout the ages. Sometimes, it was that simple. People built and rebuilt over an area, but the rectangular hole in the ground that was too small to repurpose became a perpetual garbage heap. From an archaeological perspective, that was great. It gave them excellent insight into the periods that the area was heavily used.

It amazed Adam that this whole time, people had been using the resting place of the most amazing artifact he’d ever seen as a dump. Such was history and archaeology.

The artifact seemed modern. It was too perfectly formed. Sara had even shown that the bottom was some kind of fancy modern metal. The problem with that was that, in his experience, dirt didn’t lie. He stared at the soil wall opposite where the artifact had rested and saw pristine, undisturbed soil profiles. Every layer was as compact as expected. He could still see the lines of refuse as they stretched in colored horizons like a ladder back into antiquity. If someone had dug a hole to hide this modern artifact as a prank, it would have been obvious — a deep, very different column of soil plunging into the older layers.

While waiting for Sara’s results, he decided to sketch the profile as it was so he could expand the excavation if needed.

As he studied the profile, he noted a distinct layer of rocks and wood ash below the block of Byzantine garbage. Those rocks and burnt timbers would have made up the ceiling of the original room. A rubble layer separating the original room’s contents from later periods had been expected. What was unexpected, now that he looked at it, was the thin layer of white along the floor. He hadn’t noticed it before, but missing it at the end of a long day of excavation wasn’t out of the question.

He took a few photos of the layer and then added a scale, documenting the half-inch layer of white. Pulling out his trowel, he scraped away a few grains of it and rolled it between his fingers. It was coarse and hard. Nothing like the clay and fine sand around it.

As he put it up to his mouth, Sara interrupted his thoughts. “Are you tasting the dirt again?”

“Tasting the dirt is a long and proud tradition in archaeology.1 The lick test is the best way to make sure you’re digging up pottery and not just shale.”

“It’s still weird,” she said with a hint of disgust in her voice.

To be dramatic, he placed a grain of the substance on his tongue. His face changed instantly. “It’s salt.”

“What do you mean it’s salt?” Sara asked.

“I mean, there’s a super thin layer of salt down here at the bottom of the soil profile. But it’s only here on this side of the room. There was none over there by the hollow. I didn’t notice it the other day. I guess maybe they’d add salt to the baths and accidentally spilled some? But—” He stopped to think for a moment before continuing. “The salt would’ve dissolved since then. It’d have to be a heck of a lot of salt to still show up in the soil like this. Nikolas will know. Any results yet?”

Sara looked puzzled, staring at her computer. “There are some. They’re puzzling, and I want your opinion.”

Adam hopped out of the trench and walked over to the computer. It showed a top-down view of the room. The interference from the magnet was now gone, revealing four walls.

“We can see the four walls now, but my new party trick is this,” Sara dragged her mouse to the walkthrough view, rotated so that a 3D rendering of the walls was visible. It was almost ghostly with the walls being fairly see-through. At the bottom of the back wall was the hollow space where they’d found the artifact.

“You just put me into retirement,” Adam said, only half joking. “That’s incredible.”

“Thanks,” Sara responded. It felt good to get praise from Adam. He’d given her a massive opportunity to prove herself before she really knew what she was doing. “Now you just have to dig it and prove the tech is right. But look at the entrance.”

She pointed. Where a door should have been, the scan showed a solid, reinforced wall. “And here, just behind where the door should be... more fuzziness. Just past where you found your salt.”

“I saw that too,” Adam responded. “It gets a little fuzzy over there. Maybe during a renovation, they closed it off?”

“And left a Roman bag of bath salts just for giggles?”

Was that a joke? Adam thought. This was good. She was loosening up.

“If it’s a bag of bath salts,” he said, “I’ll buy you a beer. Take some photos. I’m going to start digging.”

He began by measuring a two-by-two meter square, lining up with the back edge of the current trench. Then, each layer of soil, starting with the topsoil, was removed and bagged. Sara began sifting through the dirt, looking for any artifacts of interest. At the bottom of each layer, Adam took photos and measured the depth. He unearthed layer after layer of mostly historical junk until he came to the rubble of the collapsed roof.

Adam carefully lifted each stone and handed it to Sara to collect with those excavated the previous day. After the first layer of rubble, he used his trowel to scrape away and make a flat surface until he reached the next layer, which included bits of wood and plaster. He’d had his 4.5 inch Marshaltown pointing trowel since his first fieldschool in undergrad.

Experienced archaeologists have a complex relationship with their trowels. It is an extension of their body. Many are as passionate about the brand or size of their trowel as golfers are about the brand of ball they use. The reason they demand consistency is that they can often feel the nature of the dirt as they scrape it away. They can also detect the material of a buried object when they hit it.

As Adam prepped the area, the tool suddenly scraped across a familiar surface he wasn’t expecting. He froze when he felt it. It was too soft to be rock and too hard to be wood. It was bone. He took out his brush and began to carefully sweep away the loosened clay. Slowly, the unmistakable dark yellow, almost brown color of long-buried bone appeared. From the few centimeters that were exposed, there was only one thing it could be.

Adam stood up, putting his hands on his hips and sighed deeply. He quickly took out his phone and called Ani and Nikolas. When Ani answered, he spoke without preamble, “Y’all might want to get over. Shit’s getting weird.”

On the other end of the line, Adam could hear the hollow echo of the archives, followed by Nikolas’s dry, unmistakable voice in the background. Ani had him on speaker.

“If he’s tasted the dirt and called it weird, we’re in trouble,” came the crackle through the speaker. “Adam’s tongue is more reliable than a lab report, even if it is disgusting. Tell him to stay out of the unit until we get there.”

Adam looked down at the brown curve of the bone. “Too late for that, Nik. Just get here.”

--

When Ani and Nikolas arrived, Adam was setting up a pop-up shelter over the unit. Sara was tapping violently on her computer.

“Come on, you piece of shit, re-analyze! What good is AI if you’re not going to re-optimize my algorithm for that object density?” She yelled at the laptop.

“Easy, tiger. Those AIs are coming for us. Best to stay in their good graces,” Adam responded, trying to mollify the angry scientist. He looked at Ani and nodded his head at her.

Ani walked over and put her arm around Sara. “What wonderful thing has technology brought us today?”

Sara looked at Ani with an annoyed stare and went back to typing. “While you were on your way here, I started analyzing the readings from the stone walls. We were seeing something fuzzy on the scan. I thought it was interference, but then I thought, ‘What if that’s what bone looks like when I scan at this resolution?’ So I am working on an algorithm to try to reprocess, but the AI just keeps spitting the same code back at me. It’ll take days for me to rewrite line by line.”

“Or, I could just dig it up?” offered Adam.

“Not helping!” Shouted Ani.

Ani closed the laptop in front of Sara, who collapsed in her chair.

“Sara-jan. This is archaeology, not Anthropic.”

“Fuck those guys,” she fumed.

“Yes. Indeed, fuck those guys,” Ani continued, “But what I mean is, whatever is in that hole has been there for a really long time. We don’t have to be in a rush.”

“I know. It’s just that you guys gave me this opportunity and I have all these ideas...” Sara started before being silenced by Ani.

“Bringing you with us was brilliant. I’m so grateful you came. It’s exciting and a little scary to watch you work. Let’s all take a breath. I know that this is an unconventional situation, and you’re worried about our reputation. But nothing in archaeology moves quickly.”

“Except when Joe Developer puts a mini-mall on a cultural heritage site.”

“Yes, Adam, and we’re grateful for all you do,” Nikolas responded sarcastically. “But thankfully that isn’t the case here. Additionally, as Adam knows full well, we now need to register this burial with the Ministry. The stakes have now changed, and the excavation is no longer ours.”

Ani cut in, seeing Sara start to stiffen, “But remote sensing is fine. They’ll likely appreciate anything you can give them.”

Sara looked up at her, calming down, “Thanks, Ani. I’m just a little wound up.”

Nikolas helped Adam out of the trench, and the two men walked up.

“And that’s why we need to take all of this new information and make a game plan,” Nikolas stated, “Let’s start with you, Adam. What shit is ‘getting weird’ as you’re so fond of saying?”

Adam stared at the excavation unit, the sun bearing down. Three walls and half of the floor were completely uncovered. He had excavated down to the collapsed ceiling and had been working his way towards the ‘door’ which had apparently been walled up. Then he’d found the bone. It didn’t take a bioarcheologist to know it was the back of a skull.

“As you can see, there’s a burial in this storage room. And whoever put it there didn’t want it found. From the looks of Sara’s scan, the doorway’s been bricked up, Edgar Allen Poe style. We need a plan. I know what soil layers to expect, but I don’t know much about the orientation of the body just yet. It’s likely face down, head towards the back wall where the hollow was, but I could be wrong. I’m also guessing female based on the size and nuchal crest, but it could also be a juvenile.”

“Oh,” Adam continued, “And there’s a layer of salt on the floor. It starts just on this side of the burial. Because this storage room just wasn’t exciting enough.”

The three archaeologists stared at the unit. All three were thinking the same thing, but none of them wanted to say it out loud. It sounded absurd. There wasn’t enough room for the buried body to be lying face down. The burial was almost certainly prostrate. An artifact that would have been a world wonder, bricked into a storage closet, with someone worshiping it, was a concept from an adventure movie.

Not seeing a better course of action, Ani hopped into the trench and examined the bone, barely peeking out from the dirt. She looked at the soil profile from top to bottom. She reached out with her hand, feeling an intense pull towards the bone. Her hand reached out slowly, as if moving on its own, before Nikolas’ voice jolted her out of the trance.

“Why salt? It doesn’t make any sense. I’d expect there to be salt around the artifact as well. Was there any evidence of salt before?” He asked.

“Nope. It’s pretty distinct. There’s enough of it that the groundwater didn’t absorb it into the soil. Which brings up another question. How is it still there and not dissolved away? It’d have to be a ton of salt,” responded Adam.

Sara, carrying the handheld magnetometer, knelt next to Ani and began scanning the area where the body would be. “I want to try something,” she said.

Adam leaned over, “Sara, when did you think this up?”

“Just now.”

Adam, Ani, and Nikolas exchanged glances as the screen processed the scan data. Slowly, the blurred area came into focus. A ghostly shadow of bones in extremely high resolution. Their collective jaws dropped as Sara spun the image around, showing different angles.

“The body is prostrate, head towards the object. But look at the arms. They’re behind. Why should someone worship like that?”

Ani reached out, her hand again drawn to the burial. As she touched the bone... a wave of emotion flooded through her arm and seemingly into her chest. Her vision flashed, and she ripped her hand back.

“She wasn’t worshiping. She was bound and placed there, arms tied behind her back.”

“Ani,” Nikolas said, “We can make some assumptions, but it’s early to say it’s a woman. We haven’t even excavated the whole skull yet.”

“It was a woman. She was bound... gagged... and buried there alive. Her pain. I can feel it,” Ani looked up frantically at Nikolas, fear in her eyes, “How do I know that? How could I possibly know that? I couldn’t – but I do somehow.”

Ani’s heart clinched in her chest, her body suddently reacting as if it was her tied up and buried alive, not the woman in the burial next to her.

Sara looked at Ani with a terrified face as her colleague began to shake uncontrollably. Not sure what to do, she looked at Adam but couldn’t read his face which seemed oddly calm. He was looking directly at Ani’s arm. Nikolas had a similar expression, but said nothing.

“I’m covering the unit. Sara, finish the scan and pack up. Ani, we need to get you inside,” Adam said flatly, taking her arm and pulling her from the trench.

Ani didn’t object, just whispered, “Adam, how?”

Adam took a long look at the laptop screen. The fingers and hands overlapped. The shoulders were in an odd position. The jaw was set awkwardly. But it was also a skeleton from the 4^th century. What Ani said was plausible, but impossible to verify without excavating. Would a rope show up in Sara’s scan? He couldn’t see one.

“I don’t know, Ani,” he said in a comforting tone. “We will figure it. But for now we really need to get you inside. I certainly have hit my daily weridness quota. We also need a strategy before we file the report with the Ministry.

“Nik, help her begin the walk back. Take a taxi if you need to. I’ll get things buttoned up and head back with Sara.”

Nikolas put his arm around Ani and began walking back towards the lab, whispering calming words that Sara couldn’t make out. She turned to Adam, “Adam, what just happened? Why are you not freaking out? She can’t possibly know all that.”

“She can.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Did you ever meet my wife? Ever see her and Ani together?”

“No, why?”

Adam sighed and knelt next to the unit, covering the burial carefully, “I’m not a believer in this stuff per se, but when they were together, they had a weird connection. Ani gets that a lot. She gets these feelings. She and Mary could look at each other, and they’d somehow know what the other one was thinking. I always chalk it up to them knowing each other deeply. But sometimes, it was uncanny,” he paused, “This feels like that. Don’t ask me how, but it does.”

Sara looked frustrated, “Adam, that’s not science.”

“I agree. It’s not science. But I’d give it a 90% shot that it’s a woman. It’s also weird that the burial is so close to the door. Also, there’s the salt. It’s all too weird. When Ani gets weird like that, Nik and I have learned it’s best to regroup.”

“He didn’t balk at you calling him Nik.”

“I know. This time it was allowed.”

“You know you guys are crazy, right? Every time I feel like I know you three, something absolutely insane comes up.”

“Yeah, we’re a herd of cats, we are.”

“What? Does that make me the shepherd?” Sara countered.

“You’re project brought us all together, so I guess so,” he said, smiling at her, “Head on back. I’ll secure the site and catch up.”

Jumping back into the pit, Adam reached out and touched the bone in the dirt. He did not feel anything. He knew from her body language that Ani clearly had. What that had to do with her constantly rubbing her arm, he wasn’t sure about. He’d need to ask. He covered the trench, locked the gate to the fenced-off excavation, and walked quickly to catch up with Sara.

New here? Get caught up here! New chapters dropping weekly.

6 Months Earlier - Southeastern United States

“Come to Greece, Adam,” came Nikolas’s voice over the phone.

“I got your email. I don’t know, man. Business is good. They’re building a ring road with a spur to the airport here. I’m a shoo-in for at least 80% survey and mitigation work. There’s also a juicy set of mounds near the bypass that have been private property for years, being annexed as part of the project. That’s cash flow for the entire year, and maybe the state will let me publish something if we happen to survey the edges of the mound site. You know I still like to dabble in academia on occasion.”

“Then just join academia with me for the summer! I can pay you. And if Sara’s technique works out, you can write something with her.”

“Nik,”

“Nikolas.”

“Nikolas, I appreciate it, man, but I have employees who need paychecks and insurance. They’re kids. Just like I was.”

“If they’re just like you, one of them can handle the business for the summer.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“It’s an opportunity to see if Sara’s tech works. I met a man in post-grad who could never pass up novel ideas in stuffy old archaeology.”

“You didn’t mention that! How’s the whiz kid doing?”

“She might be smarter than all of us combined. I had hoped she’d tell you that we won a grant to test her technique.”

“Good for her. I told you she’s a rock star.”

“So come to Greece and do… I don’t know… Whatever people do for rock stars.”

“They play backup.”

“Yes. Backup.”

Adam sighed, “Ok. I’ll ask around to see if one of the other firms can help me out.”

“Good. I’ve taken the liberty of calling Gulf Coast Archeological Associates. They are willing to manage your contracts in your absence at only a 5% commission.”

“You called Lukas? Come on, man. That guy sucks.”

“That guy who sucks is giving you a good deal to come and run my excavation team.”

Adam paused.

“Adam, come to Greece. More than anything, I don’t trust anyone else to verify her findings. You shouldn’t either.”

“Yeah, and it’ll take forever. You academics dig like you’re brushing a doll’s hair.”

“If the expert says so.”

“I’ll send you my itinerary if I decide to come. Bye, buddy. “

“Good day, Adam. I look forward to seeing you.”

Nikolas hung up the phone. Ani did a little excited dance in the lab next to him. Sara stared at her two colleagues.

“Do you think he’ll come?” Sara asked.

“He’ll come.” Ani said, “He’s totally wasted in the private sector. He just needs a nudge. He’s got a soft spot for being the first to try something.”

“You really think so? He’s always talking about being rooted there.”

Nikolas crossed his arms, staring at the call summary on his phone. “He needs to get out of there. I’d hate to guess when the last time he took a day off was. Ani and I both hope this is the tug he needs.”

Chapter 4 is locked and loaded to drop Monday!

Welcome! If you are new to The Lost Way, this is the master directory. All chapters are free to read, dropping every Monday morning.

If you’re just jumping in, you’ll want to start at the very beginning below.

Chapter Directory

Chapter 1 - A Strange Artifact - Four scientists, a hole in the ground, and a 4th-century artifact that makes absolutely zero sense.

Chapter 2 - The Lab - The real mystery begins with what the team finds back at the lab.

Interlude - Higher Powers - They put it in a junk drawer, drawing the ire of unseen parties.

Chapter 3 - The Archives - Nikolas and Ani find a myth-shattering book while searching for records of the artifact.

6 Months Earlier - A bonus post. Nikolas and Ani call Adam to convince him to leave the daily grind.

Chapter 4 - Discoveries - The team discovers a chilling new aspect of the once boring site.

Chapter 5 - Decisions - The team must decide what to do next as the site gets stranger.

Chapter 6 - Boom - Ani gives the artifact a little tappy. A tap-tap-tapperoo.

Interlude 2 - Someone yells at Dolos.

Chapter 7 - Dark and Steamy - Adam, Ani, and Sara find themselves in a dark, steamy room surrounded by… Towels?

Chapter 3

Nikolas and Ani headed toward the museum archives. They wound their way through the maze of hallways that connected the various parts of the museum. The archives were in a semi-public section across from the labs, forcing the two to walk through several exhibit halls along the way.

Most days, Ani loved to walk among the classical artwork and artifacts from across early human civilization. To call herself a cultural anthropologist or an archaeologist would be an insult to both. She loved to marry myth to hard evidence and analyse the cultural imprint of both.

Growing up near Boston, a constant theme had been the separation of her Armenian community from their ancestral homeland. During her university years, she began visiting sites in eastern Turkey, trying to piece together fragments of her family’s destroyed history. What she found was a difficult and painful path without many of the answers she sought.

On that path, she found herself continually drawn to the spread of Christianity through the Caucasus, Anatolia, and Greece. She found her Sunday School lessons and high school history books left out a significant part of the story. In her search for the region’s “Hidden Armenians”, she also found a complex history of shadow religions, betrayal, and oddly enough, practicality.

She found that history’s transitional periods, be they religions or empires, were rarely clean breaks. While that was standard fare for the first day of an undergraduate history class, what fascinated her was documenting the games of survival, where old beliefs were folded into new dogmas to keep them alive. She learned to look past official narratives and hunt for the secrets that later cultures left hiding in plain sight.

Eventually, she’d been paired with Nikolas on a research assignment as a doctoral student. His tendency toward practical, evidence-based research paired well with her talent for understanding the ‘feel’ of historical events, making them a dynamic research duo. They’d spent field seasons together ever since attempting to unpack the complexities of myth and culture. One of her famous pastimes was to nitpick the displays of museums that hosted them for research.

On this walk through the museum, Ani was distracted. The pins and needles that had shot up her arm had not abated but had turned into a different sensation—almost as if her veins were filled with champagne. She shook her hand, trying to settle the hum of it. It wasn’t unpleasant, just disconcerting.

As she looked down at her hand, Nikolas startled her. “I must say. I am not sure where to even begin, Ani.” He paused, waiting for her to respond. Ani was never quiet, and yet they’d walked through several exhibition halls, and she had yet to say anything. When she didn’t respond after a beat, he continued, “You’re being exceptionally quiet. Usually, you’re pointing out the historical inaccuracies in the curation by now.”

“I could say the same to you. It’s a little jarring to see you so flustered. It’s not like you.” She smiled at him, glad he hadn’t noticed her rubbing her hand.

“I deal in the measurable, Ani, the documented. Adam is happy as long as he has a shovel and dirt to poke around in, and you—” He gestured towards statues taken from the frieze of the Arch of Galerius for preservation, “You’re happy to let the myths lead the way. I have to reconcile the two. And this?” He shook his head. “A magnet of that power would’ve been mentioned in the historical record. And a magnet that turns on and off? Out of the question. It doesn’t match science or lore.”

“Maybe the lore just hasn’t caught up yet,” Ani said.

“Or the science hasn’t,” Nikolas admitted, continuing to think about the strange artifact and the context in which they’d found it. It was a rare concession. He usually found meaning and evidence where others saw unrelated fragments, but this artifact had left him adrift. For the first time in his life, he felt uneasy about a discovery.

He’d known since childhood that he wanted to be a Classicist. Always at the top of his class, walking around the streets of Thessaloniki, he’d imagined what the city must have looked like throughout its history. By twelve, he was translating inscriptions he found along the streets.

That same year, his uncle was renovating their summer cottage only to find that one of the foundation stones had both Latin and Koine Greek writing on it. Nikolas had presented the findings to his class. While his classmates met the discovery with their usual eyerolls, the principal and a young professor at the local university ensured that the boy wonder was invited to lectures and given access to research.

From there, he was off. University in Athens. Graduate school in Oxford and post-doctoral studies at Harvard, where he’d met Ani and Adam.

Nikolas shook himself free of his spiraling theories on the object. They’d always been able to come to concrete conclusions on old mysteries. He spoke to break the silence again. “The Basilica and the area around it have been studied and pillaged for centuries. At best, we were supposed to get some insight into the older periods of the site. At worst, I’d hoped we’d just validate the instrumentation and methods Sara is so obsessed with.”

“You’re telling me. Every crackpot and treasure hunter this side of the Atlantic has picked it over. The legends about it don’t even match. It’s complex. That’s Europe for you. Layers of civilization atop one another. But this myth about the massacre, all of a sudden, is much more interesting. The events of 390 locally were about Roman imperial might, not clerical authority. It was the brutal massacre and overstepping of power that the church used to flex its authority over the empire.”

“We should start there. Let’s review all accounts of the 390 events and look for any mention of this site. In all honesty, it may just have been overlooked.”

“That doesn’t jibe,” countered Ani. “Why did no one find this thing before us?”

“You make a fair point,” Nikolas responded.

They stepped into the archive wing only to meet the local department chair just inside the door. The friendly old department chair, gray hair askew and glasses in his mouth, quickly shuffled his bundle to meet the pair.

“Menelaos, what a pleasant surprise,” said Ani.

“A surprise to see me in my own museum? I think you’ve spent too much time in the sun, Ani,” he replied.

“Yes, well,” Ani laughed, recovering, “you see, we want to do a bit of research on the site. Sara’s map has yielded a few interesting results. Nikolas and I are here to try and find some older maps if we can.”

“Well, well! Good show,” said the old man, a broad smile coming across his face. “Do tell, I dropped by, and it seems Adam is excavating a small room off the bath complex. What is so interesting there?”

Nikolas opened his mouth, but Ani quickly cut in. “Ah, it looks from Sara’s results that there might be something more underneath the Roman bathhouse and earlier temple foundations. Something older, perhaps.”

“Interesting. Interesting. Well, do keep me informed. Good day,” he said as he walked away from them down the hallway.

Ani quickly pulled Nikolas down the corridor toward the Roman archive room, leaving Menelaos behind.

“What was that?” Nikolas whispered, looking over his shoulder.

“Nikolas, you are a brilliant scholar, but you are a terrible liar and an even worse blabbermouth.”

“Really, Ani, you don’t think I could have a simple conversation and leave out certain facts, as opposed to directly lying to Menelaos?”

“I didn’t lie; I bent the truth,” Ani whispered.

Nikolas adjusted his glasses, looking genuinely pained. “Bending implies a curve, Ani. You bypassed the truth altogether. If the records don’t support ‘something older,’ I’ll have to spend three months writing a retraction just to sleep at night.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“I don’t joke about these things,” he said. Mostly, he thought to himself. He tapped his key card against the electronic lock and opened the door.

Inside were row after row of shelves and sealed drawers. Each shelf contained hundreds of priceless manuscripts and maps.

“You know, Adam would call this a waste of an afternoon,” Nikolas said, carefully opening a drawer. “He’d say if you can’t carbon-date it or hit it with a shovel, it isn’t real.”

Ani smiled, still rubbing her arm. “And you think it’s real?”

“I think Adam misses the soul of the site, and you...” he paused, glancing at her hand, “...you sometimes find too much of it. I’m just here to make sure the ink matches the story. Let’s start with the dispatches. See if there are any. In all honesty, the massacre isn’t something I’ve studied extensively. I’ve always focused on the pre-Christian period. This is your wheelhouse more than mine.”

“Agreed. But I know there are texts from Sozomen or Theodoret. They chronicled church history in the 5th century. I’m not sure how direct their knowledge would have been, though,” responded Ani.

Secondhand accounts from church history didn’t feel quite right to Ani, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. The Roman dispatches tended to be dry but factual. After all, one of the earliest historical records of Jesus of Nazareth had been a mundane local report from Jerusalem, dryly referencing a minor uprising and the execution of a local prophet. Maybe those dispatches would yield similar results?

“Can we check if there are any Roman dispatches? Maybe an official one related to the massacre? You check that. I’ll see if there are any church missives or letters.”

Both researchers went about the long and tedious business of pulling records. The cold, quiet environment of the archives was stark when compared to the street outside and the dig site. Instead of street food and car exhaust, the whole room smelled of aged leather and old vellum.

Nikolas, his hands newly sheathed with nitrile gloves, carefully separated pieces of vellum. Dispatch after dispatch. There were tax records, tax increases, tax compliance, and tax investigations. A lot of taxes. In addition to the tax documents, there were inane reports of troop strength and readiness. These would be expected. Bureaucracy is bureaucracy regardless of era.

“More taxes,” he muttered, his voice sounding oddly loud in the dead air of the room. “If the Romans were as efficient at governing as they were at counting grain, the empire would never have fallen.”

Ani didn’t look up. Two books that had seemed promising didn’t yield anything relevant. Finally, she’d opened a third book whose title practically sucked the breath from her body. It was inconceivable both that she’d never heard of the book and that it somehow sat in front of her at this moment. She hunched over the heavy, wood-bound volume—a 6th-century compendium titled Adversus Haereses Thessalonicensium (Against the Heresies of the Thessalonians). It was a secondary source, written by a Bishop named Dorotheus, who had clearly made it his life’s mission to catalog every “wrong” way to worship.

As she read, tracing her fingers along the words, she could feel the energy. She couldn’t say how, but deep down, each word she read made something click in her brain, as if something told her she was looking in the right place. The tingling in her hand changed as well–a cold sense that slowly crept up her forearm. As it reached her shoulder, a sort of pressure emerged, but she couldn’t discern what. Should she tell Nikolas? What might he say? She decided to read the passage to him instead.

“Nikolas,” she whispered, her finger tracing a line of faded, cramped Greek. “Listen to this. Dorotheus is ranting about a group he calls ‘The Servants of the Lost Way.’ He says they were an abomination, hiding their rites within the public baths near the Kassandreiotic Gate.”

Nikolas paused, a scroll halfway unrolled. “A bathhouse? Our bathhouse? You’re kidding.”

“No, it’s more specific than that,” Ani countered, her eyes widening as she read ahead. “He claims they didn’t just meet there. He calls it a ‘mockery of the holy mysteries’ because they performed their rites in the dark, washing the feet of the unclean.”

Nikolas moved to her side, his gaze locked on the page. “It couldn’t possibly be,” he muttered. “How has no one seen this before? You of all people would have been all over this in post-grad.”

“Trust me, I am as astonished as you that I’ve never heard of it. Look at the date, Nikolas. Look at when he claims their ‘final purification’ occurred.” Ani’s voice dropped, barely a breath. “He doesn’t mention the riot or the charioteer. He says the Goths were sent to the baths to ‘extinguish the light of the Way’ while the city was in chaos. He calls the massacre at the Hippodrome a ‘necessary veil.’”

Nikolas looked at the rows of shelves, then back at the manuscript. The administrative dryness of his tax records suddenly felt sinister. “The seven thousand,” he murmured. “They weren’t the target. They were the noise.” He looked at her, the realization hardening in his eyes.

She flexed her hand and rubbed her arm, which continued to feel icy cold.

“Are you all right?” asked Nikolas.

“Yes... no,” she responded, unsure of how to answer. The cold had moved toward her heart center, and she suddenly found herself filled with... what? Sadness? Despair?

She breathed out again, “Nikolas, I know you deal in black and white, but ever since I hit the artifact, the feeling in my arm hasn’t gone away. It keeps changing. This is out there even for me, but it’s like it awakened my ability to feel things from the text.”

Nikolas looked at her seriously, “Feel what things?”

“It’s like I feel the loss of the sect, but also the creepy evil of the bishop.”

“I deal in evidence, Ani,” he said, his voice dropping low. “And the evidence says that for sixteen hundred years, that room was sealed, keeping these two stories apart from being connected. It’s a lot to take in.”

“I know. It just feels like, I don’t know — more.”

He stepped closer, his shadow stretching long against the page. He reached out as if to touch her arm, but hesitated, his fingers hovering just an inch from her sleeve. Then he pulled back and straightened.

“Tell me of any changes you feel from here on out. And keep it under your hat for now. Maybe share with Adam and Sara if it happens again,” he put his hand on her shoulder and gave her a reassuring look, “We need to get back to the site. I need to see Sara’s new scans. We can’t jump to any conclusions, but we need to tell Adam that this dig just got more technical. We must do everything by the book from here on out. I don’t know how no one ever connected the dots before, but we’re on shaky ground if this isn’t airtight.”

New here? Start Here for a link to all published chapters.

Interlude

Inside the empty room, two previously invisible entities phased into shape. One was dim and hazy, only barely projecting his presence into the mortal plane. What appeared was a towering, purple humanoid, translucent and glitching slightly as if a hologram. The second was smaller and physically formed in the room. He wore modern street clothes, jeans and a Rage Against the Machine t-shirt, his thick brown hair, the only unruly thing about him. He leaned casually against a lab table.

“Your hand-picked team put the relic in a refuse drawer, Dolos,” said the translucent figure, phasing through a lab table to look into the drawer without opening it.

“Yes, yes, but only so no one would find it. In my view, that’s a win. And did you see the woman, Ani? She struck it. She’s felt it now. Deep in her bones. She knows it isn’t a hoax,” The second presence said as he stood and walked around the table and opened the drawer.

The purple light glitched as the two beings shared the same physical space momentarily. “I really wish you wouldn’t do that. As for the woman, she may feel it, but she does not yet understand what they have. What hangs in the balance must not be trivialized.”

“They are not trivializing it—” Dolos began, leaning in, scrunching his face and using his hands as if to mold his words so that the other being would understand.

“The physicist is already considering putting it back. At this juncture, that may be for the best.”

“She wouldn’t succeed,” Dolos countered. “Adam would notice, and Nikolas would never allow it.”

“You have much faith in these four.”

“They have it. Can’t you see?”

“What? The artifact? Yes. I am not an idiot.”

“You of all must know. They have ‘It’,” he said using his fingers as quotation marks.

A third presence coalesced in the lab, also transparent, but of a light blue hue. “He is correct. They harmonize. They connect. The resonance is undeniable. I have known Adam. I can still feel him… He has the will, and he will find the path.”

“Exactly!” Dolos beamed.

The now dark violet being cut in, “You knew him. Past tense.”

Reaching his hands out, the light blue figure gestured as if to calm the angering purple giant. For his part, the giant paused, collecting himself and suppressing his annoyance. He continued, “Either way, We tire of your ideas, Dolos. Maybe one of the other plans will work. This one is off to a poor start. Do you have an actual plan for these four or is this another of your games?”

The purple giant’s cold emphasis on the word ‘We’ sent a momentary shiver down Dolos’s spine. He straightened before speaking again. “Of course I have a plan! It’s a great plan.”

“He doesn’t have a plan,” he said looking toward the blue figure, color returning to a deep purple. Then, he turned to Dolos. “You gamble our design on a theatrical whim?”

“I do too have a plan! Look!” Dolos gestured to the metal objects in the drawer. “They’ll notice that for sure. Adam will figure it out.”

“Pray, let Us see if your little party trick yields results,” the large figure ventured as he phased out of the room.

Dolos looked at the light blue presence. “Interesting for you to drop in. You can’t stay away from him, can you? What’s so special about him?”

The blue figure didn’t respond, but focused intently on Dolos before intensifying and then fading away, leaving Dolos alone.

Dolos looked at the objects in the drawer before gently closing it and walking out of the room.

“It’ll work,” he said to himself. “Of course it will.”

If you just want to dig in, read here. I attached some profiles to the end of the chapter as well.

Also? Please tell your friends!

Chapter 2

“I still think we should hit it,” Adam said, taking a sip of beer and sitting down at the work table, “It is a bell after all.”

“We don’t know that,” responded Sara.

They’d left the site with the object shortly after finding it. There wasn’t much else they could do with it in the field. Sara had meticulously documented where they’d found it before Adam secured the trench for the night. They didn’t do anything to disturb the site, but after finding something so unique, they didn’t want any snooping or a rainstorm causing issues. Whatever the artifact was, it was going to upend the history of the site. It would also likely define their careers, assuming they could figure out what it was and why it was hidden in the wall of a bathhouse.

“You will not be striking it,” Nikolas stated flatly. “It is an artifact the likes of which we have never seen. The language suggests it’s 1st-century, but it was found in a wall built during the reign of Theodosius. That’s a three-hundred-year gap...”

Nikolas paused, turning the object around in his hands. His brow crinkled.

Ani continued as he stopped speaking, “It’s Koine Greek. The dialect matches the Pauline Epistles almost perfectly. Krouson ton kodona... Strike the bell.”

“But. It doesn’t...” Nikolas trailed off.

ΚΡΟΥΣΟΝ ΤΟΝ ΚΩΔΩΝΑ ΙΝΑ ΒΟΗΘΗΣΟΜΕΝ read the bell.

“That’s not what it said in the field,” Nikolas continued, his voice full of uncertainty, “I swear I read Omega there, but now it’s Omicron.”

Ani wandered over to take a look. She read the text, “We need to look at the pictures. I remember the Omega, too. Maybe it looked different after we cleaned it better?”

“Can one of you enlighten me?” asked Adam. “I know a lot of science, but I fall short in the differentiating ancient languages department. Omega versus Omicron? They do look similar.”

“They are,” explained Ani, “But in this case, the change makes a difference. It’s part of how we date these sites when someone wasn’t nice enough to leave a coin for us to find. By the 4th century, the language had changed enough that Omicron would have replaced Omega. So now the text actually makes sense in context, assuming the object was made at the time. With the old spelling, I assumed it was a relic that had been kept around for a while.”

“Relic or not, you and I both saw something different just a few hours ago,” Nikolas responded.

Sara had reached her limit. She interjected, “But what the heck is this magnet doing attached to it? In that era, no one had that sort of technology. It pegged out the field magnetometer. This thing should be pulling on our belt buckles, but it isn’t.”

As they argued, Nikolas continued to sit at the table, hunched over to examine the bell. He used a pen light and a magnifying glass to carefully examine each letter. They couldn’t be traditionally engraved; they were too perfect. The technology to make such even marks on the bronze would not have existed at the time. He tried his best to ignore that and focus on the words, rolling the idea over in his mind that the sun had indeed tricked him.

“She’s got a point,” Adam mused. He took the object from Nikolas, pulled out his pocket knife, and brought it towards the artifact to see if it would attract the steel blade. It didn’t waver in the slightest.

Sara snatched it from him, “Are you freaking kidding me? Have you ever seen the videos of MRI machines? That’s the kind of magnetism we’re talking about. Rip earrings out level. We have tools for this stuff.”

Adam dropped the knife and feigned checking his chest as if he had nipple rings that might be pulled out. Ani couldn’t help but laugh at the tiny brunette taking an object from the tall, broad figure of Adam.

“Is everything a joke to you?” asked Sara, frustrated. She placed the object safely in the middle of the table.

“It’s a defense mechanism from his inherent academic inferiority disorder. He left the ivory tower to follow a girl, and he’s been doing this schtick ever since,” Ani responded, trying to calm Sara.

Adam pointed an accusatory finger at her, but the grin twitching at the corner of his mouth gave him away. He set down his beer and leaned his chin on his elbows, looking at the two women.

“Sorry. Sara. Ani’s got me dead to rights. Either way, tell me the massacre story again? Maybe there’s something,” Adam mused, looking at the object on the table.

Ani began, “A famous circus charioteer from the hippodrome was arrested, a real crowd favorite. When the local Roman commander refused to release him for the andupcoming races, the city erupted and lynched the commander and several other officials. The Emperor Theodosius sent troops in and trapped citizens in the hippodrome on the guise that there would be a race. The soldiers then killed every man, woman, and child in attendance. This was seen at the time as an overreach and even drew the ire of Saint Ambrose, who told the emperor he couldn’t be a part of the church again until he did penance, which he did.”

“That was a huge moment,” she continued, “It is essentially when the church gained power over the empire. The Western World wouldn’t see another secular government for a millennium.”

Adam set his beer down with a soft thud, his casual demeanor slipping for a second as the brutal imagery hit. Nikolas just stared at the table, nodding slowly, intimately familiar with the dark history.

“And what does that have to do with this bathhouse?” Asked Adam.

“Ten years earlier, the Edicts of Thessalonica had enforced a strict interpretation of Christian dogma, demanding the removal of pagan iconography. Legend says the emperor sent the legion not only to punish the citizens, but also to ‘purify’”—she made quote marks with her fingers—”the city. This bathhouse was adjacent to the hippodrome and would’ve been one of the last remaining holdouts. There’s no Christian iconography on this object, which fits the timeline perfectly. Maybe a fringe group was using its weird properties to simulate pagan miracles?”

Ani took a breath and bobbed her head back and forth. She’d pulled her unruly curls into a ponytail that flopped back and forth as she did. She leaned in, her voice dropping. “Because the story goes that there was a group here called the ‘Lost Way’ that rejected the strict interpretation of Paul’s letters and stuck strictly to the gospel message of pacifism. The church allegedly used the chaos of the larger massacre to wipe them out. Some versions say they were hidden members of the elite; others say they were just servants working in the bathhouse. But every account ends the same way: a detachment of soldiers entered this building and slaughtered everyone inside.”

She shrugged, trying to lighten the mood. “There are still a lot of superstitions about the ruins. Locals claim they can smell woodsmoke and essential oils wafting out of the stones.”

“It also makes a fun story to keep kids out of the ruins and attracts amateurs to dig for fortune and buy beer in the tavern,” joked Adam while tipping his beer at Ani.

Ani countered, “Myths are always based on fact, Adam.”

“Yes, but a major confrontation between church and state was a cover to wipe out a pacifist network? Not likely,” Adam said. “ That’s some Dan Brown stuff. I love a good yarn as much as the next guy, but that seems like a stretch.”

“Not a front, a side mission,” Ani countered, leaning against the table and crossing her arms.

“So we’re doing ancient holy side missions now?” Adam smirked, looking up at her from his seat.

Ani smiled, “Some of us understand there’s more to the world than what you can see and wrap your hands around.”

As they talked, Sara walked over with two rugged, plastic cases.

“I didn’t know you were into handguns,” said Adam.

“Ha ha. They’re not handguns. They’re sensors.” Sara said, taking the first tool out. She pulled out a device attached to a long black wand.

Adam and Ani watched on as Nikolas paced. She set down the first tool and took out a gray device with a distinct handle and barrel from the next box.

“It’s a RAY GUN!” Shouted Adam.

“It is not a ray gun,” she sighed, “It’s a handheld XRF spectrometer. It’ll tell us the exact composition of the metals in the object.”

He sighed, “Sara, I’m just trying to lighten the mood. But you have to admit, it looks like a sci-fi blaster.”

“Do you want to get shot with an X-Ray device?” she said, pointing it at him with a raised eyebrow, the tension between the two finally breaking.

“I’d prefer not,” Adam held his hands up.

Sara pointed the device at the dome of the ‘bell’ as they’d taken to calling it. The device’s cooling fan whirred loudly in the sudden quiet as the team sat, waiting for the results. A high-intensity blink of light flashed against the green patina of the bronze. She stared at the results, scrolling on her tablet.

“88% Copper, 12% tin. Boring old bronze,” she said, re-aiming the device at the bottom magnet portion. Sara stared at the scrolling elements on her tablet. “It’s reading Neodymium? That can’t be right.”

She scanned it again. “Nikolas, somebody’s screwing with us. We need to bag this, seal it, and get the Chair on the phone. If this gets out, we’ll have the Greek Ministry of Culture banning the university from digging here ever again.”

Adam interjected, “Wait a minute, Sara. I’ve been digging for fifteen years, and the layers down there were pristine. We saw every layer of soil we should have, top to bottom, with nothing disturbed.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, Adam. This material didn’t exist until the Reagan administration,” Sara responded, her voice beginning to quaver, “You might like to thumb your nose at academics, but some of us are just starting our careers.”

Ani stepped in, “No one is going to publish anything about this. Sara, it’s ok. This all stays in the room for now.”

“It changed. It must have,” interjected Nikolas.

The three others stopped and looked at the tall, glasses-clad man.

“The orthography changed. It must have,” Nikolas said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “I don’t misread languages in this period like that, and neither does Ani. It struck me in the trench because finding a 1st-century object in that context, while not impossible, suggests it was important enough to keep for three hundred years and then be sealed up in a wall. Now, all of a sudden, it’s a perfect linguistic fit for the site.”

“Nik, it was hot out there. Easily 40C or whatever the equivalent of a hundred Fahrenheit is.”

“Nikolas. And it’s 37C.”

Adam sighed, “Nikolas, it was hot out there. The artifact was dirty. The letters are different, but they aren’t that different.”

“He’s right,” whispered Ani, “I remember it too. The change in letter changes the era of language.”

Sara interjected, “Just check the photos. We must have dozens, but this is a silly argument.”

The team all pulled out their various devices and began scrutinizing the photos. The room went quiet for a few minutes as the scientists scrolled and zoomed. Nikolas took off his glasses, squinting at the glowing screen of his phone, looking perturbed.

“See? Omicron,” said Adam. “Honestly, guys, I know that Classicists love arguing over what letter something is and what it means, but it’s the difference between a circle and an almost circle with two serifs on the bottom.”

“It was an Omega. I’d swear it,” said Nikolas.

Ani held up her hand. “I remember it too. The whole point of arguing over the difference is dating and meaning. I’m not Nikolas with Greek dialects, but I distinctly remember taking note that it would have been older than the room we’re excavating. It might sound crazy, but I’d already started writing a paper about this previously unknown holy relic.”

“Berenstein, Berenstain,” Adam shrugged.

“What does that mean?” Nikolas asked, looking puzzled.

Adam picked up his beer, grinning and taking a sip. He sat down on one of the tables before continuing.

“Have you ever heard of the Mandela Effect? Because, do I have an internet rabbit hole for you, my friend.”

Nikolas pinched the top of his nose. “Now is not the time for your American trivia.”

“You two must be the worst friends ever,” Ani laughed as she spoke. “I still have trouble understanding how this friendship ever came to be.”

“With great difficulty,” said Nikolas dryly.

“It’s tradition, and Nikolas needs me. His mom said so.”

Nikolas shook his head. “Need is not the word I’d use, and you’ve never met my mother.”

Adam smirked at him. “I’m here in Greece. Maybe it’s time you brought your long-lost brother home for a visit!”

Sara, meanwhile, had pulled out the second sensor, a handheld magnetometer that measured the magnetic force being produced by an object. In theory, the device would be able to measure the actual force, but there was something wrong. Either the device wasn’t working, or she was crazy. The display read zero. Deciding it was time to let physical science step in, she walked over to a cabinet and retrieved a bottle of iron filings.

Around her, the team continued their banter. She had to admit, bringing Adam on this summer gave them a real-world boost as far as technical excavation went, but it heavily highlighted that she was the new kid on the block with this crew. Stifling a sigh, she sprinkled the filings near the object, where they fell into a random pile.

Flustered, she went back to the shelf to retrieve a small stone—a piece of magnetite used to calibrate her sensor. She placed the magnetite on the table about a meter away from the artifact. She slowly brought it closer and closer, keeping a loose hold, waiting for it to interact with the artifact’s magnetic field.

Except it didn’t interact. Sara pushed it all the way against the object until there was a sharp click as the stone hit the metal. She frowned, lifting the magnetite and tapping it again against the bronze gently, as if she could force it to cooperate. Nothing.

“That just can’t be,” she said, puzzled. “It just can’t.”

“What can’t?” asked Adam.

“It’s not magnetic anymore,” Sara responded.

“That’s absurd,” said Nikolas, “A magnetized object that isn’t being powered by an outside force would never lose that level of magnetism so quickly.”

“What can I say? It just did.”

The ridiculous nature of the object grated on Sara. Magnetism was a property of the material’s atomic structure. Objects didn’t just ‘lose’ it like a battery charge unless you hit the Curie point, and she was pretty sure her hands weren’t melting away.

She picked up the filings again, waving the bottle over the artifact several times. Nothing. Is it a shielded field? she wondered. Some kind of Flux Compression? No, that would require a power source and a coil. The object was bronze and steel, not much more than purified rocks. Rocks didn’t have ‘on’ and ‘off’ switches.

TANG!

The whole team looked at Ani, who had just hit the bronze bell of the artifact with a tuning fork. The tone was flat and off-key, like a cracked bell, dying the instant she struck it.

Ani dropped the fork immediately, grabbing her arm. “Ow, goddamnit, that stings,” she gasped. There was a strong tingle in her hand that lingered, almost like the resonance was in her arm instead of the bell.

Sara yelled in surprise while Nikolas stood dumbstruck, mouth agape.

Adam smirked. “She followed the directions!”

“But... what if you broke it?!? And why do you carry that around?” Sara exclaimed.

Ani looked at the object. Bronze like that should have reverberated for several seconds. This didn’t. Sara had a good point.

“Maybe it is broken already,” said Ani, shaking her hand out. The pain was like a terrible funnybone strike. “Whatever it is, it defies logic. I feel like it rang me as opposed to the other way around. And as for the tuning fork, a girl never knows when she needs to assess the pitch of something.”

She continued to flex her fingers in and out of a fist. “Besides, let’s think about this whole thing for a minute. This artifact, or object, or hoax, whatever we want to call it, makes no sense. You said it yourself, Sara, this thing is so odd that it could either be the find of the century or the Piltdown man. I want to do more tests before we tell anyone. This one was… ill-advised. As of right now, the only thing anyone but us knows is that we were doing a routine excavation to follow up on an anomaly.”

“But you hit it… with a tuning fork?!” Sara exclaimed.

“I said it was ill-advised. I paid a price for it.”

“She hit it with a tuning fork,” Nikolas mumbled, looking completely dumbfounded.

Adam stepped in. “Agreed. We need a plan. In my mind, we go dig the rest of the room out. Whether the hidden space in the wall had this in it or not, it warrants excavating the rest of the room to look for other hiding places. We wouldn’t typically see spaces inside the walls from mag results.”

“Correct,” Nikolas said. “Given all the unexpected discoveries today, we need to see what else was in the room. Our permit allows us to dig in the vicinity for another few weeks. Adam is one of the best excavators in the field, and Sara can do additional scans as we go.”

“Nikolas, how about you and I hit the archives? An object like this must have some reference,” Ani suggested.

He nodded.

“And what about the artifact?” exclaimed an exasperated Sara. “Do you suggest we just throw it on the shelf?”

“Nope,” Adam said, opening a drawer and dropping the object into it. “I’m putting it in the one place no one will look - the junk drawer.”

The team milled about for a few more minutes before heading out of the lab. Ani was the last one to make her way out and looked back at the drawer as if called to it. She shook her hand out one last time and turned off the lights.

Inside the drawer, the device sat. The loose paperclips, keys, and screws around it did not. Slowly, they began to slide and rotate, aligning themselves in the same direction.

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And… Finally… The Promised Character Profiles

• Adam The pragmatic, linebacker-sized American field director. A veteran of the high-paying private sector, he has zero patience for academic stuffiness and treats digging like a sport. He’s the physical anchor of the operation, quick to use dry humor to diffuse tension, and famous for defending the ancient, dirt-licking tradition of field testing artifacts. To Adam, if you can’t dig it up or map it, it’s just chasing ghosts.

• Nikolas The classic, hyper-meticulous scholar. Though his passport says Greek, his Oxford education and rigid, black-and-white academic persona make him stand out in the dirt. He is intensely protective of antiquities, unyielding in his methodology, and absolutely loathes being called “Nik.” He deals strictly in measurable, documented evidence—leaving the wild theories to the rest of the crew.

• Ani The brilliant cultural historian and the true narrative soul of the site. Larger-than-life, fiercely sharp, and possessing a deep intuition for ancient languages, she is always ready to let local lore and myth lead the way. She shares a protective, twin-sibling dynamic with Adam, but her deep obsession with ancient texts puts her in a constant, playful battle with Nikolas over the “meaning of life” hidden in the history.

• Sara The uptight, high-strung data scientist and physics grad student. Dragged out of her clean tech labs and into the mud to test her experimental remote sensing algorithms, she is protective of her equipment and deeply worried about her academic reputation. Sara deals exclusively in high-resolution data streams and rational logic, making her the most visibly panicked when the archaeology team starts talking about hitting impossible artifacts with rock hammers.

Bonus: An image of a stairwell at Erebuni Fortress. It’s waaay older than 390, but it makes the tag for the post look nice.

“What the hell?” Adam grunted, contorting into the pit. Being the size of a linebacker did not lend itself well to a surgical excavation unit like this one. His trowel wobbled in his hands as he scraped away dirt.

The heat was getting to him. Mediterranean summers somehow had both the stickiness of the tropics and the dry heat of the Sahara. According to local legend, this was a bathhouse and temple from just after the time of the Roman conversion to Christianity.

A few amateurish digs looking for evidence of a rumored massacre yielded the usual assortment of common Roman artifacts. If he were being really honest, this site wouldn’t even warrant further excavation if it weren’t for the mag hit.

Nikolas and Sara were mapping the site using a magnetometer to experiment with her new techniques and found a large area consumed by a magnetic spike. Usually, a ‘mag hit’ is just a blip on the map—a coin or a scrap of iron. But this was a massive spike, the kind of reading you’d get from a steel beam or a cannon.

In a 4th-century bathhouse, that wasn’t just an anomaly; it was an impossibility.

The trowel wobbled again. Adam was exhausted. He ran his fingers through his sandy blonde hair in an attempt to keep the sweat at bay. Lying on his back for a minute, he shouted up at Nikolas, “Maybe one of Napoleon’s cannons flew all the way here when the Parthenon blew up.”

“That’s not funny,” he shouted back, “Find that blip!”

So that’s how they got there—a small dig to investigate a tech reading that shouldn’t exist. The site of the modern Basilica of Saint Demetrios was built and rebuilt. Layer on layer of ‘mystery’ that was more popular with conspiracy theorists than with real academics.

No one becomes an archaeologist or classicist for the money. They do it for the glory. At least that’s what he told himself. With that glory, of course, came digging holes. Oftentimes, just to find nothing. So often it felt like chasing ghosts. The only problem was that Adam had dug to the base of the wall and, alas, had found no iron, just a boring old wall, probably the back end of an ancient store room.

Adam stood up to chug some water from his canteen. Getting heat stroke would be embarrassing. Nikolas and Ani were staring at the site map. He always had to laugh at seeing Nikolas in the field. The man was tall and lean. His passport said Greek, but he looked like a slightly more tanned version of his classmates at Oxford.

Ani, for her part, had her usual larger-than-life posture, dark brown curly hair billowing about in the summer breeze. He knew he’d inevitably have to fend off some local suitors at the bar later; though they couldn’t pass for siblings, he treated her like a twin sister.

He scanned the area for Sara. He found the petite grad student had a standard metal detector, trying to see if any other iron bits were lying around. She looked flustered as usual, trying to keep her jet black hair out of her eyes. They’d break her out of that uptight academic persona soon enough—that’s just what happens when you drag a physicist into the dirt.

“Is there any chance that one of your students is screwing with us? Threw down a magnet, maybe?” Adam asked.

Nikolas sighed, “For the millionth time, no. I threatened them with a failure in the course and referral to the dean.”

“Even more reason not to admit it,” Adam replied, squatting back down in the hole. It was then that he saw it: a change in the rock pattern. There was a perfectly square flat stone built into the bottom of the wall.

“Hey, Sara, bring that detector over here.”

Sara walked over and hopped into the trench. She waved the detector over the area, and sure enough, it screamed as if the densest metal object known to man was hidden in the hole.

He reached down to scrape away the next layer of dirt when suddenly the trowel jumped in his hand and stuck firm against the horizontal surface of the stone.

“Holy shit!” Adam yelped. A magnet? Something strong enough to pull a tool through a piece of stone? That didn’t make sense. It did from the standpoint of the readings they were chasing in the first place. Something that magnetic would cause a giant hit. But in the 4^th Century, they wouldn’t have had anything remotely this strong. Would they?

Nikolas and Ani wandered over to check on the commotion.

“Question, Nik. Did the…”

“It’s Nikolas.”

“Did the Romans have lodestones, Nikolas?”

“They definitely knew about them. They would’ve called the magnes. Pliny the Elder wrote about them. He told a droll story about a shepherd named Magnes whose iron-tipped staff and nail-studded shoes got stuck to a rock on Mt. Ida. A bit dramatic, but classic Pliny.”

“Classic Pliny indeed,” Adam mused, “Did they use them for anything?”

Ani cut in, “Yes. They believed they could cure gout or be an aphrodisiac.”

“I would categorize the uses as parlor tricks,” responded Nikolas.

“If this is a magnet, it’s a hell of a magnet to grab onto my trowel through a rock,” Adam said as he reached back for his tool, “No way they would’ve had something this powerful, right?”

“Highly unlikely,” answered Nikolas, “But there can be a first for anything. Maybe a meteorite or similar. Either way, it would be exceedingly rare for something this magnetic not to be written about anywhere.”

Adam stared at the flat surface on the wall. He’d looked for the ‘halo’—the tell-tale staining that happens when someone digs a fresh hole into old earth. There was none. The mortar was a continuous, crumbly gray, identical to the rest of the 4th-century foundation. This stone hadn’t been tucked away last week by a prankster. Whatever was in there, it had been sealed behind the stone while the mortar was still wet, sixteen hundred years ago.

Adam continued to clear away dirt, “Well, no changes in the soil compaction. Everything on this layer of soil matches other areas we’ve seen from this time period. So whatever it is, it was buried at the right time. Hey Sara, can you take some pictures? I want to pull out this stone.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll stay up here,” she said nervously, “You may want to toss your phone and wallet. Magnetic fields that strong are dangerous. The closer you get to it, the stronger it will be. Also, take off jewelry or anything metal on you.”

Adam tossed his phone, wallet, keys, and wedding ring up and out of the trench. Sara snapped a picture with the scale. To say she was nervous was an understatement. Something that could set off her detector and attract Adam’s trowel through a wall could be incredibly dangerous. Forget forgery or embarrassment for being set up by a prankster. This could hurt someone.

The stone itself was about 15cm on each side and perfectly square. Adam slowly worked the trowel around the edges of the stone. Digging around whatever this was made it difficult to be careful. The trowel jerked as if by magic as Adam tried to dig further. Eventually, the stone came free, revealing a hollow half filled with dirt. A curved piece of bronze emerged from loose fill dirt inside the hole.

The team leaned in closer. Ani and Nikolas jumped down into the trench for a better view. Sara continued snapping pictures.

“What in the world are you?” Adam asked.

He took out a brush and a wooden dowel to more carefully pull the dirt away. Slowly, an object appeared. A bronze dome over a plate of dark steel. The dark steel plate had evenly spaced marks around the base and numerals still smudged with dirt. The dome had impressed writing, some iteration of Greek from the look of it. Sara took a few more in situ pictures before Adam carefully dislodged it from its resting place in the wall and picked it up.

Brushing it off, the text on the dome became clear.

ΚΡΟΥΣΟΝ ΤΟΝ ΚΩΔΩΝΑ ΙΝΑ ΒΟΗΘΗΣΩΜΕΝ

Nikolas took the object from Adam’s hands and stared at the inscription. Even without the magnifier, the symmetry was bothersome. This isn’t 4th-century work, he realized silently. The depth of the grooves is perfectly consistent. It looks like a CNC milling machine did it, not a Byzantine chisel. He swallowed the thought, hesitant to sound crazy too early in the analysis.

Instead, he nudged his colleague. “Ani, look at the lettering. Tell me I’m not seeing things.”

Ani leaned in until her nose was inches from the bronze surface. “You aren’t kidding,” she muttered, tracing a finger just above the metal. “Look—each letter is absolutely perfect. It could be stamping, maybe? But the edges look cut, not stamped. It’s almost... laser precise.”

Adam hovered just over her shoulder, his shadow falling across the artifact. “Is that even possible for this period?”

“I don’t know,” Sara interjected, standing a few feet back as if the artifact might bite. “It looks awfully manufactured. A little too perfect. Plus the magnetism? My sensors pegged out before I even got within a meter. That thing is putting out a field that shouldn’t be possible without a power source.”

Adam looked from the artifact to his teammates to the streets around the dig site, which were filling with cars and people heading home. He saw the panic in Sara’s eyes and the obsessive trance Nikolas was falling into. Ani was... well, she was Ani with any bit of antiquated language - Looking ready to devour the thing whole. He felt a sudden, sharp prickle of hair standing up on his arms—not just from the magnetism, but from the realization that whatever this thing was, their investigation had just gone from basic investigation to something else entirely.

“Okay,” Adam said, his voice cutting through the silence as he moved to cover the trench for the night. “Whelp, mission accomplished! We found the blip. To the laboratory! I need a beer, and we need a new plan. Because this just got interesting. If we keep standing here looking like a bunch of lovestruck teenagers, people will start to ask questions.”

“Yes. Honestly, I think we should get this back to the lab and close the dig site as quickly as possible,” Sara agreed.

Ani looked at Sara with a gleam in her eye. She pulled a rock hammer from her tool belt and asked Nikolas, “Can I see it?”

Nikolas, still dazed and mouthing the words, looked at her and held out the artifact. Ani reached out to grab it before Sara stepped in, “Absolutely not! Nikolas, do you not see the hammer she has? She’s going to hit it!”

“It has literal instructions on it!” exclaimed Ani.

Adam had sat down, pulling off his boots to put on sandals, “I’m with her, let’s hit it.”

“We cannot hit a priceless artifact with a rock hammer. I can hear it now, ‘Esteemed team of archaeologists destroy history-defining artifact,’ I’m not even sure if we shouldn’t bring this straight to the department chair with the documentation and let him figure it out,” stated Sara.

Nikolas nodded, “Agreed. We will not be listening to the glorified shovel bum and the woman who thinks every phrase, bird, and cat she sees in a fresco has the meaning of life. But to the department chair? We should do some tests first before jumping to conclusions.”

“Low blow,” exclaimed Ani, “I can only half tell if you were joking.”

Nikolas’ face was horrified looking at the trowel just inches from the base of the dome. “I never joke when antiquity is concerned. I...” He trailed off.

Thunk! Adam stuck his trowel to the shiny bottom of the domed artifact. It hung there. “I prefer the term Professional Archaeologist, thank you. And my years of field experience tell me that this is indeed a magnet; we can say that for sure,” he said, smiling wryly.

“I forgive you, buddy. Let’s get cleaned up, and I’ll buy you a drink with the real money I made digging holes for the private sector,” said Adam.

Nikolas’ face looked a cross between sheepish and indignant, but he carefully removed the trowel from the artifact and walked towards the car with Sara.

“Weird, right?” Adam asked Ani, staring down at the pit.

“The artifact or our robot colleague?” Jested Ani.

“Both, but the hole in the wall. It would’ve been towards the floor.”

“It was clearly a hiding place. Maybe for a sacred ritual object?” Ani said, her eyebrows raising, “The sort of thing that a mob would massacre a whole building full of cultists over.”

“Why the baths, though?” Adam asked, looking back at the trench. “If you’re a cult with a magic bell, you don’t hide it where people are scrubbing their armpits.”

“Maybe because the baths were the only place soldiers and church leaders wouldn’t think to look for a miracle,” Ani replied.

They were both thinking it. The Massacre at Thessalonica in 390. It was well documented, unlike the supposed goings on at this site. But the circus where the more famous massacre took place wasn’t that far from here. And with all the disturbance on the site, who knew how this object stayed hidden?

“I’d like to be Indiana Jones as much as the next guy, but that stuff doesn’t happen in real life. No bones, no weapons, nothing to indicate a battle happened here.”

“There’s a first time for everything.”

“There sure is,” Adam sighed, picking up his trowel and wiping it off, “All right, let’s go. I need to get out of the sun.”

One day, four scientists found something weird testing out a new field technique. Jeez, that kind makes me cringe but KEEP READING.

When they dug it up, the artifact they uncovered made even less sense in context. And did the text engraved on the side of it change?

Follow Adam, Ani, Sara, and Nikolas as they find themselves bounced across time and pantheons at the mercy of famously unreliable and squabbling benefactors.

Chapter 1 drops today and I have a backlog of chapters ready to go. The first 5 chapters will be free. I’m kinda hoping you’ll be interested enough to buy me a coffee or beer to keep reading. I’ll in turn use that to keep writing. If you really really like it, you can be like Keith and get yourself a character or some other fun gift by being a founder.

I’m excited to be in the comments and speculate with you! I know where the series is going, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make it zig this way and that.