For the Tomorrow People

The rain over the Cloud-Spire Range did not fall so much as hang in the air, a hot, gray suffocating mist that turned red earth into grease. Dr. Imani Okoye knelt beneath the sagging blue tarp of Field Station 4, brushing camel-hair bristles over the slate-gray basalt tablet. Her knees ached with the familiar damp throb of forty-five years well-spent in trenches, but her hand remained surgical.

"Look at the glyph clusters around the outer ring," Teo said, leaning over her shoulder so close she could smell the burnt chicory coffee on his breath. He tapped his pen against a waterproof notepad. "It’s not an inventory ledger. Marcus Vance was wrong. He logged this site six years ago as a grain depot and walked away because there were no gold funerary masks to slap his name on."