The party spotted Oliver. The three men pushed aside their robes to reveal automatic rifles, which they shouldered and pointed at Oliver. They began shouting in Arabic for him to drop his gun and lay down on the ground. Behind them, a young woman wrapped her arms around the older woman she had been escorting […]
Oliver and Diana managed to identify seventeen possible locations for the temple. The tablet was running a mapping application containing high resolution satellite imagery of the entire country, which could be overlaid with a detailed topographical map to verify the contours of the desert. Diana estimated that the “three day journey” could be anywhere between […]
“…it mean?” The voice was strangely familiar, but Oliver couldn’t place it. “I don’t know. You’re looking at the ravings of a dead man. It might not mean anything.” Diana’s voice. She sounded afraid. Oliver’s head felt heavy. He was lying face down on a hard surface covered in sand. Another voice. This one also […]
Oliver threw himself back and twisted to the side just in time to dodge a sweeping blow from a long, bronze sword. He landed hard and skidded back across the sandy floor. By the time his body came to rest, his gun was up and Oliver had the doorway in his sights. The creature hurtled […]
The sun was just rising over the eastern rim of the canyon as Oliver stretched his sore muscles and examined the layout of Sephor’s estate through a pair of binoculars. After several minutes he lowered the binoculars and pulled a printed map of the exterior of the estate, drawn by the archeological team that had […]
When Diana finally pulled back, Oliver reached down to pull the seat lever. He leaned back in the soft cushion and scooted sideways to make room for Diana to lay beside him on the seat. She slid lithely over the center console and pressed herself against him, wrapping one arm tightly around his neck as […]
They hiked down the canyon, keeping to the shadow of the western wall as much as possible while navigating the wash of boulders and heaped-up sand strewn along the floor of the canyon. According to the archeological reports that Oliver had read, the canyon was thought to have once been the site of a small […]
Oliver secured a single small room at an inexpensive tourist hotel and stashed what supplies they weren’t bringing along in a locked case in the closet. He booked the hotel room for two weeks, though he expected them to return within four or five days. They spent one last night enjoying the fine food and […]
Oliver woke the next morning to find Diana already hunched over her laptop, silhouetted by the morning sun pouring in through the window. After a quick shower and a call to room service for some breakfast, he joined her and together they dug into the mountain of reading that lay before them. Diana had brought […]
Back in Oliver’s hotel room, they downloaded the video captured by the small camera embedded in the frame of Diana’s glasses. As soon as the file transferred she began stepping through the video frame by frame, translating what she could of the hieratic script written on the scroll. The process of translation turned out to […]