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THE ARCHAEOLOGIST WATCHES his team pull up the mysterious box, his excitement warming him despite the tundra's icy cold. The whole thing takes longer than he would like on account of the thick layers of ice, but the box is now ready for transport.
He rides in the back with the box, unwilling to leave its side. Wild fantasies of what it could contain run away in his mind. Ancient jewels and treasure, perhaps. Or perhaps something mundane, the detritus from a long-ago life.
It takes more effort and time to unload the box, to get it in the lab and thaw it, but finally it is ready. The box stands on an exam table, longer than a man, the aged wood water-logged and warped with time. There is an inscription on the lid, a script that could possibly be Mesoamerican. He isn't sure, but the inscription has already been photographed and uploaded, the appropriate experts called in to work.
The archaeologist admires the box in its unsullied state a final time before his assistant gently pries the lid open. The rotting wood falls away, revealing a strikingly modern-looking metal box. Shock turns to fear, which then turns to dread—please, oh please, don't let this be an elaborate hoax.
He reprimands himself, tells himself who would plant a hoax out here? The cost alone. Reminds himself that the wood is genuinely old, so this metal box must be at least that old too.
The urge to run his fingers along the box overwhelms him, so awed is he by the seamless joints, the manufactured perfection. What is this box? Where did it come from? Who made it? And why? And how? Questions of time and place crowd in his mind, jostle for space.
He notices another inscription engraved in the metal. It looks like no language he's ever seen, except maybe Cuneiform? Scratches of lines and what could be pictograms (is that a sun?), too orderly to be anything but some sort of written script. He makes a mental note as he leans in close, his hand absently reaching out to his assistant for the camera. His breath fogs up the metal inscription, so he waits for it to condense and dry before he begins to document the box.
A groan shudders through the research lab, unsettling the two men. Just when they're ready to resume, another groan ripples through the room, causing their supplies to rattle and shake.
"An earthquake?" the assistant wonders, ignoring the fear of the box building inside him.
The archaeologist shakes his head. "Didn't really feel like one." He gets back to his documentation process.
A third groan erupts through the room, this one forceful enough to make things fall from the shelves. It's immediately followed by the ear-shattering screech of metal on metal and an angry, pneumatic hiss. The men rush to the phone on the wall near the door, ready to figure out what's going on. Volcano? Lab explosion?
Wheezing breaths from the box's direction sends shudders of fear more cold than their Arctic home down both men's backs. They turn around at the same time.
A girl sits up in the box, unlike any girl they've ever seen. She is taller than both men, to start, with dark hair and dark skin and dark eyes that shimmer and ripple in the light, her color a morphing, changing thing. The rainbow on an oil slick. Perhaps it is the goo that covers her, plastering her hair to her head. Her large eyes stare at the men in horrified wonder. She opens her full lips, but coughs up phlegm when she tries to speak. She tries again, and in a strangely lyrical voice that is almost too high for their ears, she says, "Hunter?"
The men hear only a musical tone.
"Holy shit," the assistant says.
Amara hears only a guttural growl. But she does hear, which means she is not dead after all.
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