She took the artifact from Scylla and thrust it into my hands. It looked like she and Scylla had cleaned it; it was corroded and full of dust in the crevices, but the markings were clearly visible now. It was a flat trapezoid-shaped object, made out of a material I didn’t recognize. There were bits of metal attached, and what looked like hinges on all four sides. On one side there was an engraving of a corbeled arch, just like the one at Erick’s dig site. The same unfamiliar symbols as on the coin formed a triangle around the arch. In the center of the trapezoid, inside the archway where the human figure had appeared on the coin, was a shallow indentation, a few centimeters around, and coated with a discolored metal casing.

“It looks like something would fit here,” I said, running a thumb across the indentation.

Tamara nodded. “But look at this.” She flipped the object over. Its reverse was covered with etched lines and circles. In the lower left corner of the trapezoid were three interwoven letters: DRT.

“A monogram?” I asked.

“Sort of. That’s Mama’s maker mark. She uses it on her designs and stuff she makes with her 3-D printer.”

“What?” The word came out like a hiss. Tamara’s mom Delia was the lead hardware engineer at AresTec, but that company had only been around for a few annums. She’d worked at GalaX before that, but this thing looked older than Mama D herself. It looked… ancient.

I flipped the trapezoid back over, running my thumb over the green metal coating of the indentation once more. “Did you ask her about this?”

“She’s not home yet,” Tamara said. “She and Mom are at a fundraiser.”

“Now do you believe me about something fishy going on at that dig site?” Henry asked.

I glared at him. “I never said I didn’t,” I snapped, “but that doesn’t mean—”

“Yeah, can you guys figure this out later?” Scylla interrupted. “Because I’m more interested in figuring out what the heck is going on out in those hills. Let’s rewind.” She stood up and started pacing, counting on her fingers as she talked. “One, I’ve been digging out there for the whole semester. Lots of rocks, lots of little dead fish, lots of weird hunks of metal and glass that GSAF freaks out about and won’t let us look at. Two, you guys show up on a field trip and immediately get in trouble because Zak here wants to get up close and personal with that rock formation in Trench 9, which Erick claimed was just some kind of river rock thing but is suddenly turning up all over, Three, mysterious relics from Atlantis or some garbage? That, Four, at least two of your parents are somehow coincidentally connected to?”