Sunlight shrank to a pinpoint behind them while widening up ahead. The tunnel emptied onto a barren field where ruts in the earth marked the places once occupied by giant mining equipment. Beyond that, a second quarry, not as deep as the first but twice as wide.
Frost drove the truck onto a road carved into the granite wall. The width suggested it had been constructed for much larger vehicles.
“Thank you.” The scent of rain and honeysuckle emanating from Seung’s skin offered another layer of relief to the rich earth clogging Reese’s lungs.
“For what?”
“For trusting me enough to go with us.”
“I don’t trust you. I owe Nash and Luca.” He owed Koda and his dead betas, too.
“You’re still brave.”
Reese laughed and it was bitter. “I’m not brave. I’m paying penance. There’s a difference.”
Seung brushed back Reese’s bangs, and what should have felt intimate offered comfort. “The only ones who should pay penance are the people responsible for the Anubis project.”
“I was a part of the Anubis project.”
“But you didn’t know it was all a lie.”
Reese squinted at her. “What are you talking about?”
“The Book of Anubis. The instructions in it were fake. The ichor was never supposed to be used that way.”
“That’s not possible.”
“She’s telling you the truth.” Johnathan added another couple of inches to the gap in his window.
“Dr. Markus validated the authenticity himself.” Reese had seen the photos, read the reports. “He’s a—was—a world-renowned Egyptologist. He’d never risk his career.” Or his ego.
“He didn’t know,” Johnathan said.
“How could he not know? He did every conceivable test: carbon dating, analysis of metal residues, the style of hieroglyphs. If it were fake, Dr. Marcus would have been thefirstto know.”
“Tests can be tampered with, and results can be altered.”
Reese scooted to the edge of the seat. “I don’t think you understand the level of modern forensics used to validate artifacts. If there was evidence, no matter how good the forgery, he would have eventually found out.”
“The artifacts, even the smoked glass vials were real,” Johnathan said.
“How can those be real and the wall be fake?” The ability to make clear glass didn’t even exist at that time.
“Because thewallwasn’t fake. What had been written on it was. Otherwise, Dr. Markus would have never been able to see it.”
What was it Paul said?“Dr. Markus was like you in a lot of ways. He thought he understood what that wall in Egypt meant, like you understand the ichor… But he could only read what was written there in stone, not what created it….”
“How do you know all this?” Reese said.
“Grey Dekker, my father, had been bribing the Egyptian government for the past two decades to allow his research teams to run DNA on mummified remains.”
“Why?”
“He was looking for bodies with remnants of the ichor.”
“He knew it existed?” Reese said.
“That ithadexisted. He thought it had been destroyed.” Johnathan exhaled a frustrated breath. “By the time my father got news that the tomb had been discovered by another scientist, everything was half a mile deep in the ground.”