on the other hand, were a weapon worthy of a warrior. As the hours went on, and I filled syringes, my eyes grew bleary. Yet the drawing called to me.
There had to be an answer. Something had happened to Brynner’s mother. Even Director Bismuth believed these drawings held significance. But what the connection was escaped me.
I never liked doing translation.
It wasn’t for lack of skill. It was that in almost all cases, it was impossible to be certain. At some level, it always came down to interpretation. To assignment and testing of the meaning. What I wanted more than anything was to be certain.
And just for a moment, when I looked at the artifact, I caught a glimpse. A ghostly after-image, not formed by the lines of the other glyphs, but by the negative spaces between them.
Not a proper symbol. More of a suggestion.
The minutes turned to hours as I grasped at images just beyond sight. I thought of dead eyes, staring. Never blinking. Like them, I stared with weary eyes until the images floated before me. And when I closed my eyes, it hung in the air, imprinted before me. This glyph had no equivalent in true hieroglyphs, and yet the meaning burned its way into my mind. The words came unbidden, in the ancient language, a language not fit for human tongues.
Open the way, the paths of the dead, to Ra-Ame, the last sign exist? Arrive? Be. The fifth sign wasn’t a word, it was a concept, one of existence.
When I opened my eyes, the west half of my lab was gone. My hands and feet felt leaden, like I’d fallen asleep at the lab bench.
I picked up a wrench and tossed it a few feet past where the salt floor became bare rock. It bounced into darkness.
I knew right then I’d lost my mind. Fallen asleep at the machine. Or maybe snuggled up to Brynner in his car, having a nightmare. But my mind wouldn’t stop. The two stone slabs. One with five silver jars, each overturned. The other slab stood empty. I took a step inside and touched the ground. The dirt beneath my fingers felt real. Smelled real.
A scorpion skittered by, out of the tomb and into my lab.
It was very real.
I glanced up, looking at the stone figures at the corners. Tall wooden spears in their hands, with iron points.
Brynner had said they didn’t move until his mother touched the jar.
I thought of the knives. Four more of them lay on the second slab. Four knives to replace two lost. I ran for the slab, picking each up by their tapered handle. I kept my eyes on the guardians, who stood still as stone.
When I glanced over my shoulder, the lab wavered, like an image of the sky in a pond.
While my head was turned, a noise, like the whisper of rat’s feet came to me. I leaped, onto the second slab, into the air. I landed on my lab desk, knocking the air out of me and sending blades clattering.
Rolling over, I looked back to the tomb. And saw nothing. The lab stretched out like it had before.
The symbols on the ground had changed from red to burnt black, crumbling.
I gathered the blades from across my lab. Four perfect, amber-coated blades, with a streak of white where alabaster inset the blade.
They were real.
Which meant I was crazy.
I slipped them into an equipment box, slung the box over my shoulder, and carefully climbed up the elevator shaft to the lobby. After a few minutes of wandering, I found Brynner. “I need to talk.”
“Grace.” Brynner’s furrowed brow and crossed arms made me hesitate. “You were right. One of our clerks pressed a second card key for your room. Got paid a few hundred thousand for it.” He stopped, scanning my face. “What’s wrong?”
I began to shake as I fought to reconcile what I knew to be true and what I could deal with. “I think I need help.”
“Medic!” He stood and shouted, waving over a field medic from the line. I clung to Brynner when the medic asked him to leave.
The medic took out a penlight and looked into my eyes. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
I held up the box. “I’m having a mental breakdown.”
The medic pushed it aside. “Lady, given what you’ve done in the last month, you can have five and no one will blink.” He nodded to the box. “You didn’t”—he looked to Brynner—“cut anything, did you?”