“I know what you are,” she said, and her voice came out as a chord of light.
“Now,” Elara whispered, “we add the fourth.”
Then Jenner, the junior linguist, had a strange idea. “What if the test isn’t the stone? What if the stone is the test?”
The tent lights dimmed. Holographic copies of the three known texts flickered in the air around her, translating one into another in an endless loop: Greek to Demotic, Demotic to hieroglyphs, hieroglyphs back to Greek. A closed circle of meaning.
The unknown script glowed amber. For a moment, nothing. Then the holograms shattered.
That led them here. Elara pressed her palm against the cool surface. “Activate Rosetta Protocol.”
