THE UNEXPECTED PACKAGE

  The late afternoon sun slanted through the windows of the British Museum's east wing, casting long shadows across Damien Hayes's cluttered office. Six months had passed since the Anubis incident in Egypt—six months of academic papers, lectures, and the persistent nightmares that followed him from Cairo. At twenty-eight, Dr. Hayes had become one of the youngest research fellows at the prestigious institution, his recent exploits earning him both acclaim and skepticism among his peers.

  Damien ran a hand through his dark hair, slightly longer now than the regulation cut he'd maintained in Egypt. His tie hung loose around his neck, and his sleeves were rolled to the elbows—a subtle rebellion against the stuffy academic dress code. The wall behind his desk displayed his credentials: a doctorate in Archaeology from Oxford, various expedition certificates, and a photograph of him standing before the Great Pyramid, taken just days before everything changed.

  A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.

  "Package for you, Dr. Hayes," announced Margaret, the department secretary, her gray hair pulled back in its usual severe bun. "Came by special courier. Had to sign for it myself."

  "Thank you, Margaret." Damien accepted the brown paper parcel, noting its considerable weight. No return address—just his name written in an elegant, flowing script he didn't recognize.

  "Another one of your mysterious artifacts?" she asked with a knowing smile. "The board of directors is still talking about that business in Egypt, you know."

  Damien offered a noncommittal shrug. "Probably just a book from a colleague." The less people knew about his ongoing research, the better.

  After Margaret left, Damien carefully placed the package on his desk, examining it from all angles before retrieving a letter opener from his drawer. The paper came away easily, revealing a wooden box beneath, its surface carved with intricate geometric patterns that seemed strangely familiar yet unlike any specific cultural style he could immediately identify.

  The brass latch opened with a soft click.

  Inside, nestled in faded red velvet, lay a book—or what remained of one. The binding was cracked leather, its edges frayed and discolored with age. Across its cover, barely legible, were symbols inlaid in what appeared to be tarnished gold, forming words in a script Damien couldn't decipher despite his extensive linguistic training.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  But one phrase stood out in clear Latin characters, added perhaps by a more recent hand: "Liber Atlantus"—The Book of Atlantis.

  "Good lord," Damien whispered, his fingers hovering over the cover, afraid that even the slightest touch might cause it to crumble to dust.

  A small envelope had been tucked beside the book. Damien opened it, finding a single card inside with just eight words: "You were right. There's more out there. Find me."

  The handwriting matched that on the package, but there was no signature, no clue to the sender's identity.

  Damien's mind raced back to a heated debate at last month's Antiquities Conference in London. He'd presented a controversial paper suggesting connections between ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, and South American architectural techniques—positing a shared source of knowledge that predated all three civilizations. The academic ridicule had been immediate and merciless, with only a few colleagues offering support for what the department head had dismissed as "imaginative conjecture."

  With trembling hands, Damien carefully opened the book, wincing at the crackling sound of the ancient binding. The pages were brittle, some torn, others fused together by time and moisture. The text was written in multiple scripts—some sections resembling ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, others appearing more like Phoenician, still others completely unfamiliar.

  The illustrations, faded but still discernible, depicted structures unlike anything in the archaeological record—buildings of impossible proportions, strange mechanical devices, and maps of landmasses that matched no known geography.

  Damien checked his watch—nearly six in the evening. The museum would be closing to visitors, but he knew many of his colleagues worked late. He needed equipment from the conservation department, reference materials from the restricted archives, perhaps even access to the new spectrographic analyzer in the basement laboratory.

  The responsible approach would be to alert the department head, to follow protocols for unregistered acquisitions. But something—instinct, perhaps, or the memory of being laughed out of that conference hall—made him hesitate.

  Instead, he carefully closed the book and locked it in his desk drawer. Tonight, he would return with his own equipment. This discovery—if it truly was what it appeared to be—could change everything. Not just for archaeology, but for human history itself.

  As he prepared to leave, gathering his tweed jacket from the back of his chair, Damien noticed something peculiar. A dampness on his fingers where he had touched the book—not ink or dirt, but a residue that seemed to shimmer slightly in the fading light.

  Outside his window, the London sky had turned a deep shade of indigo, threatening rain. Somewhere in the distance, a clock tower chimed the hour.

  Damien Hayes, who had spent his life searching for answers in the past, had no way of knowing that the greatest adventure of his career—of his life—had just begun.