C1 Alex Stone

You may be wondering what a girl like me is doing in a place like this. Dark. Damp. Filled with mummified corpses too old to name. Creepy crawlies that you don't even want to know about. *Crunch* Ew. I think I just crushed one with my palm.

Give me a sec while I wipe the goo off my hands.

Even the dust smells like it's lived and died a thousand times since the last human stepped foot in here.

And yet here I am, cobwebs in my hair, bug goo oozing into the cracks of my fingers despite my best effort to rub the crap off on the stone, crawling on my hands and knees through a narrow tunnel that should lead me to a cavern.

'Should' being the operative word here.

Well, let me set the record straight. First, I'm not a girl, I'm a woman. Notice the date on my driver’s license? Fully fledged grown-up. Also, those two PhDs at the end of my name are hard to come by as a girl. Factor in that I got my degrees by the age of twenty-five, and you can perhaps understand why I don't like being called girl. I graduated high school at sixteen. College at eighteen. Two PhDs in six years seemed a bit behind the curve, to be honest. I'm still bummed about that.

But life is full of little disappointments, isn't it?

The question is, will this tomb be a disappointment as well, or will we finally find what we've been scouring the world for?

"See anything, Alex?" Trevor's voice startles a critter near my foot, who makes a dash for my legs and tries to shimmy up my pants. Jokes on him, though. I learned long ago to keep that shit tucked in tight. That was a life lesson best not repeated. I still have the scars as a reminder.

Not finding a way in, the little beast screeches and scurries away. Probably to tell his friends all about the two delicious morsels waiting in the wings.

Trevor and I being those morsels, in case that was unclear.

"Nothing yet," I answer, trying to keep my voice low so as not to disturb whatever else might be living here.

While my partner might not believe anything that science can't definitively prove, I've seen enough to know we don't know everything. In fact, we don't know much at all. And not to toot my own horn, but I know a whole hell of a lot, so that's saying something.

Trevor's never been on an excavation like this before. He has no clue that's the real reason his company hired me. He thinks I'm here to fulfill some kind of PC vagina quota. That we're just searching for a rare artifact worth a lot of money. Something that museum's worldwide will drool over. Something that will unlock a few more secrets of the past.

Nothing wrong with that (err..., except for the vagina quota bullshit. I refer you back to my double PhDs). For the rest, well, we've all got to start somewhere.

But, I know better.

I know what we seek holds power. Real power.

Power I can't let Global Tech get their hands on. Which is the only reason I took this gig. To double-cross them.

I know, not very sportsmanlike. But if you knew what was at stake, you'd do the same. Trust me.

Plus, they're not the only ones after it. Dr. Vane's team—an archaeologist of questionable repute who has beaten me to more than a few precious finds—is en route as we speak, according to sources who know shit. I can't let that old man get his hands on this. Way too dangerous for someone with ties to not-quite-legal organizations who are known to smuggle rare artifacts into other countries and sell them to private collectors on the black market. If I ever meet the greedy son of a bitch in person, I have a few choice words to share with him. But, alas, he keeps a low profile.

I do too, but not for nefarious reasons. I do it mostly for my reputation. As young as I am, I look even younger. I'm working at reaching 5'5", but can only manage with heels, I'm compact—or what some would call 'scrappy' and my short pale blonde hair usually features a few fun colors. I get carded a lot. My look doesn't help instill respect and clout in a middle-aged white dude's club. So, I stay off social media, keep my pictures out of newspapers and online write-ups, and let my work speak for itself. Most people mistake me for a middle-aged white dude. Imagine their surprise!

I squint as the darkness that edges around the thin beam of light from my headlamp begins to brighten, and I feel a shift in the air around me. "We're coming up to something," I say.

Trevor grunts in response, and a few more critters frolic around our hands. Something bites the thick part of my palm, and I hold back a curse and smash the bastard against the stone, feeling it's small bones break. I can't move my head enough to look at my hand, but I feel blood pooling. I'll have to get something on that soon. Who knows what kind of infections these creatures carry.

I slow my pace, knowing I could be crawling into a trap. And then I stop completely and suddenly, my heart a drum against my ribs. Trevor bumps into me.

"What's the holdup?"

I look down, and my light doesn't carry far. If I'd kept going, I would have crawled off the edge into total darkness. "We've got a bit of a problem," I tell him. "But I have a plan."

It's not a great plan. But it's a plan. I explain it, and though I can't see his face, I know the look he's giving me.

He didn't like giving up control of this excavation to a 'girl.' He was also expecting a dude. But we worked it out. And in the course of things somehow ended up in bed.

Probably a mistake. But a fun one, I will admit. I'd like to say it had nothing to do with his sculpted body, dark bedroom eyes and wicked grin, but I'd be lying. I'm still a woman, after all. I have needs.

And in a job like mine, I take the fun where it can be had.

Still, our roll in the hay didn't erase the sharp edges of misogyny embedded in Trevor's DNA. So this plan isn't an easy sell.

Fortunately, I don't need his permission. He can join, or stay on his hands and knees and wait for me to discover the artifact and claim the credit. You want to bet he'll stay and wait?

Didn't think so.

I pull out two climbing picks and prepare for the crazy part. This is where it gets tricky, because I have very little room to maneuver, I don't know what's below us, and all manner of shit could hit the proverbial fan.

In one fluid movement, I slam the picks into the rock, launch myself out of the shaft I'd been crawling through, and spin around so I'm now facing a wall of stone as I hang from the picks for dear life.

"I'm going down," I tell Trevor, who's now watching me from the position I was just in. His eyes are wide, pupils slightly dilated, though that could be the headlamp shining directly into them. He's definitely never been on a dig like this. He fancied himself Indiana Jones. It didn't occur to him I would be the hero in this story.

Okay, so this next part isn't very exciting. Show don't tell. I know, I know. But seriously, do you really want to hear about how I pull out one pick, move it down an inch or two, ram it back into the stone, and keep doing that over and over as my muscles burn and sweat drips down my face and pools under my arms, and in just about every other crack of my body? Yeah, it's not glamorous. If they make a movie, it'll be a lot more exciting, I'm sure. Until then, let's skip to the good part.

By the way, I totes want the young Lara Croft actress to play me, okay? She's a total badass. Now that we've got that handled...

My foot finally lands on something solid. This is where shit gets real. "You're almost there," I tell Trevor, who looks like he needs some encouragement. He only has one PhD, so, you know how it goes.

I'm just kidding about that. Most PhDs I know can't do this. Wouldn't want to do this. No matter how many they've collected. This is crazy. I'm crazy. But you probably figured that out already.

And Trevor isn't so bad. He's a product of his own privilege for sure, but then who isn't?

The key is some degree of self-awareness. Being woke, as they say. Trevor is anything but woke.

With both feet finally on solid ground, I exhale gratefully, letting my legs take more of my body's weight as I ease up on my arms. But I don't let go of my picks.

Not yet, anyway.

Why, you ask?

Clearly you've never been in a situation where the ground fell out from under your feet and the only things that saved your life were the climbing picks you held onto. But I don't hold that against you.

Even my closest friends think I'm total craycray.

So I hold on as I let more weight drop onto the floor beneath me. Another critter crunches under my boot. I feel no pity or remorse for its demise.

I pull one pick out of the stone while keeping hold of the other one with my right hand. "So far so good," I tell Trevor, who hasn't dared venture this close to the ground yet. "I'm going to let go and see if it holds."

"You sure about that?" he asks.

"Sure as I'll ever be."

And so I pull my other pick out but stay close to the stone wall, ready to slam my picks back into the rock the moment I feel the earth beneath me shift.

It doesn't. Hooray for me.

Carefully, I turn around to face the cavern.

I never know what to expect. Every discovery is different. Will this have monsters? Treasure? Dust bunnies? A little bit of each? It's anyone's guess.

This one is... empty.

Empty?

I squint, searching more carefully.

Yup. Empty.

Well, shit.

"Um, Trevor, we might have another problem."

He lowers himself next to me, still facing the wall. His body is so close our shoulders brush against each other, and I wait to see if I feel that zing of attraction I felt before.

Nope. Fizzled already. Ah, well. These things never do last long.

"What problem?" he asks, breathless.

"See for yourself."

He turns slowly and then curses. "There's nothing here."

"That was my first thought too. But... we might be wrong." An idea is forming in my head. And so I slide my picks into their custom-made slots in my pants (what, yours don't have those?) and creep forward, into the center of the circular room. The wall reaches higher than I can see, with a great black emptiness above us. There are small crevices that break up the wall, like the one we snuck through, but otherwise it's giant and unending. The floor is a series of square stones in different shades of ochre and gray.

I find the center of the room and stand there, staring at my feet.

Trevor stays by the wall, presumably to be helpful, I'm sure. "See anything?" he asks, a nervous tremor in his voice.

Again, not judging, just reporting it like it is.

But I don't respond, because in fact, I do see something. The outline around the center stone is deeper and the grooves are more prominent compared to the rest of the floor. And that makes me wonder.

So I pace around it, my brain whirling, as pieces fall into place. Colors. Puzzles. Lines. Differences. Everything I observe clicking into a new order as I move the information around in my mind.

Until it snaps together and I laugh out loud. "Of course! Like in Budapest only with color."

"Budapest? What the hell are you going on about, Alex?"

I wave a hand at him dismissively and get to work, stepping on different stones in different configurations as I suss out the puzzle.

It takes time, but I am patient (oh, shut it. I am. When it counts.) Trevor paces impatiently (see, that's what it looks like to not be patient. Very different from moi, no?) Finally, I solve the riddle and jump back as the center stone begins to push itself up from the floor.

Under the stone is a compartment that holds the glowing fragment of what was once a perfect orb. But this is only a piece of the original orb. Global Tech thought they were getting the whole thing. Bam! Instant power. But I knew we would only find a piece.

How, you ask, could I possibly know that?

Because... I have one of the pieces. Shh... that's a secret no one but you and I know. I first discovered it after my parents were murdered when I was twelve. It was in a hidden vault under our Malibu mansion.

Which leaves a few more pieces out there. This is my life's work. This is what my parents died protecting and what I will risk my life to find.

I pull a canvas bag of rice out of my pocket. It happens to weigh exactly what this orb piece weighs. What an unlikely coincidence. Taking no chances—because of course I've seen Indiana Jones—I transfer the rice bag to the pedestal as I remove the orb, holding my breath and moving with cat-like grace.

When the transfer is complete, I look down in awe at the pulsing moon-like crevice slightly larger than my hand as the power it holds begins to pour through me. Closing my eyes, I open myself to its history.

Here's where I tell you my real secret. Promise you won't tell? Especially Mr. Wanna-Be-Jones here? Okay. Here it is.

I don't think I'm entirely human.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I look as human as they come. All the parts in all the appropriate places.

And I have the full range of human emotions.

But... I also can do things other humans can't.

Like read objects. I can touch an object and see its history. Where it's been. What it can do. What it's done.

It's my cheat. The reason I'm the best at what I do.

So, now you know. Hopefully we can still be friends. Cuz I dig you.

Get it? Dig you. Little archeology joke there.

So back to the orb. It's singing to me. Telling me its secrets. Showing me where I can find the last piece. But before I get the whole story, its voice is silenced.

As Trevor yanks it out of my hand.

I open my eyes and glare at him. "What the hell?"

He's now staring at it wide-eyed. "What makes it glow?"

"You know how rude that was?" I reach to take it back, but he pulls it away from me.

"Just give me a sec," he whines—and there is nothing more attractive than a grown man whining, am I right, ladies? "Besides, shouldn't you figure out a way out?"

Well, he's got a point there. If I rely on him, we'll die together in here, and I'm not spending the rest of my life—and all of my afterlife—with a one-night stand.

I glare at him a moment more, my instincts screaming at me to take the orb back and tuck it away safely where it belongs. But he's been working hard to find this thing, and I'm going to be ruining his career when I steal it from both him and Global Tech, so... whatever. I'll let him have his moment of glory.

As he said, I need to find a way out. Preferably one that doesn't require us scaling the wall we climbed down and crawling through the hall of bugs again.

I'm guessing there's another trick that will open a door. So I study the tiles and put my thinking cap on. Meanwhile, Trevor's eyes are glued to the orb piece.

I have a lightbulb moment and wonder if it's too simple to work. But worth a try, am I right? I reverse my walk on the tiles that opened the secret compartment, and the middle tile returns into the ground. As it does, a piece of stone wall grinds against itself, peeling open a door that hadn't been there before.

Voila. We have an exit. I hold out my hand for the orb, and Trevor gives it back to me reluctantly then follows me to the door.

"Careful where you step," I say. "There are likely many booby traps still lurking around here."

"I'm not an idiot, Alex. I know what I'm doing."

Someone's getting testy. But I hold my tongue. See how diplomatic I can be? But of course, as he steps out of the chamber, pushing in front of me to do so, he nearly triggers said booby trap. One of the tiles is a different shade than the rest. I grab him and pull him back, then point. "That could have killed us," I tell him harshly, all patience wearing thin.

"You don't even know that's a trap," he says with more whine. Want any cheese with that, dude?

"Do you want to risk it when we're this close to getting out of here?"

He frowns at me. "Are we really that close?"

I nod and point down the corridor we just entered, showing him how this is where we started. "Just down that hall is the ladder we climbed down from the surface."

He smiles, and there's a glint in his eyes I don't like.

I don't see the knife in his hand until it's too late.

Until it's pushed into my gut. "Sorry about this, Alex. But I can't let you get all the credit, or turn this over to Global Tech. There are buyers willing to pay big for whatever this glowing bit is, and I intend to retire in wealth."

He pulls the artifact out of my pocket and pushes me backwards, onto the discolored tile I just warned him about.

Then he runs, coward that he is. He runs down the path I had to point out to him, while I fall, a knife sticking out of my gut. He makes it out just as my heel pushes on the tile unleashing the trap I knew was there.

Rushing water fills the cavern.

Oh joy. I love the suspense of how will Alex die today? Blood loss, internal injuries, or drowning?