“I am,” Ja’far said. And he told them of the stories handed down for centuries. Stories that gave his tribe the knowledge to be guides and guardians. And with that wisdom came the ability to channel a vibration that would illuminate the tablet in the darkness of the catacombs—a vibration in those who had been given the task to lead others here. Ja’far came from such a tribe, and Dominique and Julian were for whom they had been waiting. He knew about them. About their lives, their childhoods. He told her something she’d never shared with anyone: how during her near-death in that hospital room in Pittsburgh, the young Dominique saw herself as an adult and knew she would survive. “The Two Dominiques you called it.”

“How did you know that?”

“The desert has revealed many things to our tribe. It’s how we survived.”

Ja’far also knew of the young girl from Cuzco.

Something flashed in the distance.

“What’s that?” Dominique asked, startled.

“It’s white rock. Quartz that glimmers when it catches the light.”

“Where’s the light coming from?” Julian asked.

“Welcome to the guardian of the tablet,” Ja’far said, pointing proudly to himself.

They made their way toward the light at the end of the tunnel. They reached what seemed like a dead end and stood before a translucent wall.

Julian touched the wall and pulled away.

“Don’t be afraid. It’s testing your DNA,” Ja’far said. “It wants to be sure you are who you are supposed to be.”

“Am I?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid.”

Dominique touched the wall. She didn’t pull away. She felt a language in its pulse.

If she had to explain merging with the vibration in the wall…words failed. It was called a tablet, what she pressed her hand into, but there was nothing written on it.

Searing heat ripped through her body and she clenched in the pain.

Julian rushed to her.

Ja’far stood in his way.

Julian shoved him aside.

“Stop,” Dominique shouted.

Her voice rippled through the tunnels of the catacomb like the wrinkles a flat rock makes skipping over water on its endless glide.

The sound traveled like it would never end. That’s when they realized it was no longer the echo of her voice that filled the air.

The sound was coming from the tablet.

Dominique remembered what Kurt had said about the sound love makes traveling through time. Was this that sound?

“Yes,” Ja’far said in answer to her thought.

The sound carried with it the pain of centuries. The pain she’d caused. The pain inflicted on her. That she was strong enough to absorb the horror, and transmute it to what she could only call the love beneath, brought forth from this mysterious wall an energy that penetrated her with words. They were: “Evil is the greatest source of transformation.”