Inside the small office, the air had become so thick it felt difficult to breathe. The unmoving shadow on Jerome's laptop screen was like a figure from a nightmare, a silent, patient predator waiting just outside their door. Mayra, Sara, and Jerome were frozen in place, turned into statues by a mixture of fear and disbelief. Thousands of questions raced through their minds, but not a single word could find its way to their lips. The only sounds in the room were the frantic beating of their own hearts and the faint, almost imperceptible hum of Jerome's high-performance laptop.
"Maybe... maybe it is just the building's security guard?" Sara finally whispered, her voice trembling. Even as she said it, she knew it was a desperate, hollow hope. The silhouette was too still, too deliberate. It did not carry the relaxed, routine posture of a night watchman on his rounds.
Jerome slowly shook his head, his eyes never leaving the grainy black and white image. "The guard comes at ten o'clock," he whispered back, his voice strained. "It is only eight now". And he always starts his patrol from the ground floor. We would have heard the elevator."
Mayra's gaze was fixed on the solid wood of their office door, as if she could see through it. Her heart was pounding so hard she could hear the rhythmic thumping in her ears. She gestured silently for Jerome to turn off the laptop, to cut their connection to the watcher in the hall. But Jerome refused with a slight shake of his head. He was terrified, but his curiosity and his need for information were stronger. He wanted to know who it was, and more importantly, what it wanted. Knowledge, for Jerome, was a shield. Not knowing was the real terror.
Just then, another sound echoed from the hallway, breaking the tense silence. Someone was knocking on the door, a slow and deliberate sequence of three distinct taps.
The knock was so quiet, so deliberate, it was as if the person outside did not want anyone else in the building to hear. It was not the threatening bang of a police raid, nor the impatient rap of an angry landlord. It sounded more like a question. A polite, but firm, inquiry.
No one in the room moved. No one breathed. They were caught in a terrible limbo, trapped between the instinct to hide and the need to know what lay on the other side of that door.
After a moment of profound silence, a small, folded piece of paper was slid silently under the door, appearing like a pale white tongue in the sliver of light.
The shadow on the screen was still there. Unmoving. Waiting.
Mayra took a deep breath, her fear slowly being replaced by a rising tide of anger. Whoever this was, whatever they wanted, she was not going to sit here and be terrorized like a cornered animal. She was Doctor Mayra Nassar. She had faced down corrupt officials, navigated treacherous political landscapes, and stood her ground in the face of history's most daunting mysteries. She would not be intimidated by a shadow in a hallway. She looked at her two friends, a silent resolve hardening her features. Then, slowly, she began to move towards the door.
"Mayra, no!" Sara whispered desperately, trying to stop her.
But Mayra did not stop. Her movements were slow and deliberate. She bent down and picked up the piece of paper. Her fingers felt cold and clumsy. She unfolded it.
On it, a single word was written in elegant Arabic script—"Amaan."
Amaan. It meant safety, security, sanctuary.
It was a strange message. An assurance instead of a threat. Mayra's confusion deepened. Was this some kind of sick joke? A psychological game? She stood there for a long moment, the piece of paper in her hand, the silent knocking still echoing in her mind. And then, she did something that neither Sara nor Jerome expected.
She unlocked the door.
The door opened inward with a low, groaning creak, the sound unnaturally loud in the silent building.
There was no one there. The hallway was empty. The shadow was gone.
Jerome and Sara stared at the screen, then at the open door, their mouths agape. "Where... where did it go?" Jerome stammered, pointing at the laptop footage. The screen also showed an empty hallway. "That is impossible!" To leave, it would have had to pass the stairwell or the elevator. We would have heard something! There was no sound!"
Mayra stepped out into the hallway and looked both ways. There was nothing. Just the dim, yellow light of the emergency fixtures and the smell of old dust. It was as if the person had simply dissolved into thin air. She stepped back inside and closed the door, locking it firmly. The fear on her face was now replaced by deep, analytical thought.
"This is no ordinary person," she said softly, her voice resonating with a newfound certainty. "They did not want to scare us." They wanted to tell us something."
"Tell us something?" Sara asked incredulously. "By sliding a piece of paper under the door and then vanishing? What kind of communication is that?"
Just then, Jerome's eyes went back to the thermal image of the seal, which was still displayed on one of his monitors. He nearly jumped out of his chair.
"May... Mayra... look at this!"
Mayra and Sara rushed to the screen. The tiny red dot that had been emitting a steady heat was now glowing brighter. But it was no longer just a dot. The heat was now spreading outwards in a series of incredibly fine, almost invisible lines, perfectly tracing the symbols engraved on the seal. It was as if someone had flipped a switch, activating the ancient object.
"How... how is this possible?" Mayra asked, her voice filled with awe. "We did not do anything."
"Maybe we did not," Jerome said, his eyes widening with a sudden realization. "But maybe someone else did."
He ran to the piece of paper that Mayra had thrown on the table. He picked it up with a pair of tweezers and placed it under a small, handheld scanner.
"Just as I thought," he said, his voice a mixture of excitement and fear. "This paper is coated with a fine layer of dust. This is no ordinary dust. It contains trace amounts of a radioactive isotope. A very low, harmless amount. But just enough to..."
"...to activate something inside the seal," Mayra finished his sentence, her mind working rapidly. "That person did not come here to threaten us. They came to 'turn on' the seal. That paper... it was the key!"
Now, the five pointed star and the symbols surrounding it were glowing with a faint, ethereal light, as if they were showing them a path.
"Now look," Jerome said, typing something on his screen. "Now that it is active, I can read the energy pattern inside it."
A flood of numbers and graphs filled the screen.
"This is not a language," Jerome said, his brow furrowed in concentration. "These are coordinates. Astronomical coordinates. It is pointing to the position of a star."
"Which star?" Sara asked.
Jerome performed a few more calculations. "It is not a single star. It is the position of five different stars... but not their position today. This is..." he paused for a moment, double checking his math. "...this is their exact position in the night sky one hundred and sixty three years ago."
"Eighteen fifty five," Mayra whispered. "The year the ships sank."
Silence descended on the room once more. This seal was not just an ordinary map. It was a map of space and time. It was a celestial chart of the very night when five ships vanished into the Tigris river.
Just then, another message notification chimed on Mayra's phone. It was from the same unknown number.
This time, the message was longer.
"When the maps of the earth deceive, look to the sky. The stars do not lie. Your next destination is where land and water once met, but now there is only sand. Find the old port of Basra. But be quick. You are not the only ones searching for this treasure."
A mysterious man who lived in the shadows. A seal that held the secret of the stars. And a race, that had now officially begun.
Mayra looked at her friends. There was fear on their faces, but there was also a glint in their eyes. The glint of discovery.
What did they know about the man who had shown them this path? Was he truly helping them?
And more importantly, who else was searching for this treasure?
Had they just entered a race that was impossible to win?