The heavy silence in the room felt like a physical weight. Sara's last word—'Guardian'—still seemed to hang in the air, echoing with the weight of forgotten millennia. Jerome finally tore his eyes away from his laptop screen and looked at Mayra. She stood motionless, the mysterious metal seal held loosely in her hand, her eyes reflecting a storm of conflicting emotions.
"So… a lost fleet, a government conspiracy, a cryptic seal, and an anonymous text message," Jerome finally said, breaking the silence. His voice was a strange mix of nervousness and thrill. "This is starting to feel like a movie script."
"This is not a movie, Jerome! This is history, coming alive!" Sara exclaimed, her initial shock giving way to pure academic excitement. She had moved to the edge of her seat, her eyes shining with an intense fire. "'Celestial knowledge'… 'Guardian of knowledge'… these are stories I have only read in dusty, forgotten texts, tales that most scholars dismiss as pure fiction. But what if they are true?"
Mayra placed the seal carefully on the table, as if its weight was too much to bear. "Whatever the truth is, one thing is clear. We have stumbled into something far bigger than ourselves." She pointed to the message glowing on her phone's screen. "'The first step on the map'… what does that mean? Is this seal the map itself?"
"It could be," Jerome said, pulling his chair closer to the table. "And whoever sent this message knows we have this seal. They know we are here, right now." The thought sent a visible shiver down his spine, and worry lines creased his forehead. "I tried to trace the number. It is useless. It is a ghost number, routed through dozens of proxy servers across the globe. Whoever this person is, they are extremely sophisticated."
"Or perhaps they want to help us," Sara suggested, her voice filled with a hopeful tone. "Perhaps this is the 'Guardian'."
"Or perhaps they are luring us into a trap," Mayra countered instantly, her voice sharp with caution. "We cannot trust anyone. Not the government, and certainly not this mysterious texter. We can only trust each other."
The three of them looked at one another. An unspoken agreement passed between them. They were in this together, for better or for worse, until the very end.
"Alright," Mayra said, her voice imbued with a new energy. "If this seal is a map, we need to read it. Jerome, get out every high tech gadget you have. We need to examine every millimeter of this thing. There might be something hidden, something invisible to the naked eye."
A professional grin spread across Jerome's face. "Now you are speaking my language." He began pulling various devices from his oversized backpack—a high definition digital microscope, an ultraviolet lamp, and a series of strange looking sensors. "If there is a secret hidden in this thing the size of a needlepoint, we will find it."
Sara returned to her mountain of books. "And I will try to find more information about this 'Guardian' legend. The book where I found the reference is extremely old and incomplete. Maybe there is a mention of it in some other document, some other myth."
The small office once again plunged into a world of intense work. Jerome placed the seal under the scanner and connected it to his laptop. Mayra and Sara watched over his shoulder, staring at the screen where the surface of the seal was magnified a thousand times. Every scratch looked like a canyon, and every marking resembled an ancient glyph.
"Incredible," Mayra whispered, her face just inches from the screen. "Look at the craftsmanship. The precision. This was not made by hand. It is too perfect."
"You are right," Jerome agreed, his fingers flying across the keyboard, adjusting the focus. "The angle of the cuts, the depth of the lines... this is only possible with some kind of modern machinery. Yet this thing feels thousands of years old. How is that possible?"
Suddenly, Jerome stopped. His breath caught in his throat. "Wait a minute... what is this?"
He zoomed in on a section of the image. Right in the center of the five pointed star, there was a tiny, almost invisible, pinprick. A dot so small it was easy to mistake for a speck of dust.
"It just looks like a particle of dust," Sara said, leaning closer.
"No," Jerome shook his head, his eyes glued to the screen. "It is part of the metal itself, but it seems... different from the rest of the surface. I am running a thermal scan on it."
He entered a command. A moment later, a colored image of the seal appeared on the screen. Most of the seal was a cool blue, indicating it was at room temperature. But the tiny dot... the tiny dot was glowing a vibrant, pulsating red.
"It... it is emitting heat?" Mayra was stunned. "Without any power source?"
Before Jerome could answer, a faint sound came from the hallway outside their office. The distinct creak of an old wooden floorboard.
All three of them froze instantly. Their breaths hitched. Who could be here at this hour? The building was supposed to be empty.
Jerome's eyes darted to his laptop. With a few swift keystrokes, he switched his screen from the microscope feed to another window. The color drained from his face. He slowly turned the laptop so that Mayra and Sara could see.
On the screen was the black and white footage from a small, hidden security camera he had installed outside their office door.
A shadow stood in the hallway. The tall, motionless silhouette of a person. It was not moving, just standing there, facing their door. It was as if it knew. It knew there were three people inside, watching it on a screen.
Was it the government? Had they been followed? Were they here to take back the seal and silence them for good?
Or was it the mysterious stranger from the site, the one with the all knowing smile?
And the most pressing question of all—why was it just standing there, waiting in the shadows? What kind of game was this?