Chapter Seven: The Proposition

Elias woke to the feel of tears cooling on his cheeks. He couldn't distinguish the room—the smell of smoke still clung to him, faint and ghostly, like a fading scent on a lover’s pillow. He forced a slow breath. Then the world around him settled into focus: the worn walls of the studio apartment, the low ceiling crossed by a beam, the thin curtains that filtered pale light from a gray New York morning.

He exhaled, long and slow, and lay back down.

The dream still burned behind his eyelids. Not a nightmare, not this time—something softer, bittersweet. He remembered the fire in the hearth, the wooden walls of a house built in snow, the faint scent of pine and smoke, the warmth of a woman’s body beside him. The way she had spoken to him, called him by a name that felt foreign yet familiar. He had known only nightmares, and their violent awakenings, whenever dreams came. Yet, for the first time, he woke in peace.

He turned to the side, staring at the empty space beside him on the mattress. The faint imprint where someone might have lain seemed to mock him. The warmth of the memory lingered like an aftertaste—comfort and ache mixed in equal measure.

Her name was still on his tongue.

“Sigrid,” he whispered.

The sound filled the small room and dissolved into silence. It was strange—how clear everything was. Every word she had said, every flicker of light across her face, the story she’d told him of the chosen ones and their duty, of the forgotten order that protected mankind. He remembered her laughter, her breath, the warmth of her hand against his chest. And he remembered his own words, that foolish wish to die beside her and meet again in Valhalla.

He pressed his palms to his eyes. “What’s happening to me…”

His mind was a storm. Every memory of Clara, every grief, every unanswered question collided with this impossible clarity. He should have felt rested, but instead he felt hollow, like something vast had opened inside him.

From outside the room came the faint clatter of movement—voices, cups, footsteps. Someone laughed, a quick sharp sound that didn’t belong to any dream. Elias sat up slowly, rubbing his face, trying to shake off the heaviness. The smell of coffee reached him, mixed with the metallic tang of the city that seeped through the cracks in the old windows.

He glanced at his phone on the floor beside the mattress. 9:17 a.m.

He’d slept longer than he’d meant to.

Adjusting his shirt, he stood and took a deep breath before opening the door. The noise of the others grew clearer: someone was typing, another was pacing. Sunlight cut through the space, hitting the exposed brick walls in dusty streaks.

Naomi stood near the makeshift kitchen counter, pouring water into a kettle. She turned at the sound of the door. Her short dark hair was tucked behind one ear, and though her face was calm, her eyes carried that same distant focus he had seen before—like she was seeing two worlds at once.

“Morning,” she said softly. “You slept in.”

Elias nodded. His voice was rough. “Yeah. Guess I needed it.”

“How did you sleep?”

The question hung between them, casual but careful. He hesitated. The dream felt too sacred to speak aloud yet—like saying it might shatter it, reduce it to fragments. So he only said, “Better than I expected.”

Naomi studied him for a moment, as if weighing that answer, then smiled faintly. “Good. Coffee or tea?” “Coffee,” he said, automatically.

The others were scattered across the room. Marcus sat on the couch, assembling what looked like a drone or camera mount. The blonde woman—Reina—was cross-legged on the floor, tapping rapidly on a laptop, her metal bracelets clinking each time she moved. Valerie leaned against the wall, flipping through a small black notebook. Their voices dropped when they noticed Elias, but not out of hostility—more like tension.

Naomi handed him a mug, the steam rising between them. “Elias,” she said after a pause, “we need to talk.” He frowned, lowering the mug slightly. “About what?”

Her voice softened. “About why you’re here.”

Something in her tone made a cold knot form in his gut. “I thought we already covered that. You said you wanted to help me understand my dreams.”

“That’s true,” she said, setting her own cup down. “But it’s not the whole truth.”

The room went quieter, the air tightening. Even the soft rattle of Reina’s typing paused. Elias glanced around—everyone’s attention was on Naomi now, not him. He set the mug down on the counter, a prickle of unease crawling through him.

“What do you mean ‘not the whole truth’?”

Naomi took a slow breath. “When the professor Feldman first mentioned your name, we did what we always do with anyone new. A simple background check. Nothing invasive—just enough to know who we’re dealing with.”

Elias’s jaw clenched. “You ran a check on me?”

“Yes,” she said, evenly. “And that’s how we found out you work for Sentracore Global Security.”

He blinked, confused. “So?”

Naomi exchanged a look with Marcus, who nodded slightly before she continued. “We’re on a mission,” she said. “One sanctioned by the Order. I can’t tell you everything—it’s classified even within our circles—but what I can tell you is that it involves Sentracore… and one of its clients.”

He stared at her, waiting for a punchline that didn’t come.

“What kind of mission?” he asked slowly.

Naomi hesitated, then said it plainly: “A heist.”

The word hit him like cold water. “A what?”

“We’re planning to take something,” she said, her voice steady. “An artifact. It’s in the possession of one of Sentracore’s clients. We’ve been preparing for weeks, but we’ve hit… technical walls. The security systems are airtight. And that’s where we need your help.”

For a long moment, Elias didn’t move. The mug on the counter trembled slightly as he leaned back against it. He wanted to laugh, to ask if this was some sort of initiation prank. But none of their faces held even a trace of humor.

“This is a joke, right?” he said finally.

Naomi’s eyes didn’t waver. “No, Elias. It isn’t.”

He stared at her, his pulse climbing. “You brought me here for this? To help you rob someone?”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Then explain it.”

“I can’t. Not yet.”

He laughed once—dry, humorless. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He turned away, running a hand through his hair. “I came here because I thought you could help me understand what’s happening to me. Not drag me into—whatever this is.”

“Elias,” Naomi said, quietly but firmly. “Please. Listen.”

He didn’t. His mind was already spiraling, a storm of disbelief and anger. It had to be some kind of test. Maybe she wanted to see how far she could push him. Maybe the professor had set this up to gauge his reactions. Maybe none of them were who they said they were.

But when he looked back at them, their faces were all the same—serious, expectant, as if something monumental was being decided right there in that small room.

“You said the Order protects humanity,” he said finally. “That doesn’t sound like stealing.”

“The world isn’t as simple as you think,” Naomi replied. “Sometimes protection means taking back what was stolen first.”

Elias’s mouth opened, but no words came. He felt as though the ground had shifted under him, like he was standing on thin ice and every word she spoke was another crack spreading outward.

He shook his head. “I don’t even know who you people really are.”

Naomi’s expression softened again. “That’s fair,” she said. “You don’t have to trust us. Not yet. But the mission we’re working on—it’s important. More than you realize. And I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t critical.”

He stared at her, the word critical echoing in his mind. His thoughts were a blur—Clara’s face, Sigrid’s words, the burning village, the idea of a forgotten order that had existed for centuries. It all sounded like madness. But so had the dreams. And those had turned out to be too real to ignore.

Naomi stepped closer, careful, as if approaching someone wounded. “You said yesterday that your dreams have been changing. That they’ve started repeating. You’re seeing the same woman, the same life. Did she visit you again last night? Was it... different?”

He froze. “How do you—”

​“The drink I gave you last night,” she said, her voice low. “It helps you to remember, to see what your dreams are trying to show you.”

​Elias felt heat rise in his face. “Can I even trust what I saw? How do I know it wasn't a trick designed to make me do what you want?”

​“I’m not trying to deceive you, Elias. I’m trying to clear the path you were already on. But this,” she gestured vaguely toward the others, “this is part of what’s happening to you. You were led here for a reason.”

He almost laughed again, but there was no strength left for it. “You think my dreams led me to you?”

“I don’t think,” she said softly. “I know.”

He looked down, trying to focus on the worn wooden floor, the chipped paint on the counter, anything real and solid to anchor him. His breathing was shallow, his mind screaming for something that made sense. But nothing did.

He thought of Sentracore. The long nights, the digital hum of security feeds, the sterile glow of servers. He thought of Clara—her hospital bills still waiting on his table back home. The way her hand had felt, cold and small in his, the last time he saw her.

And now this. A group of strangers asking him to betray the very company that paid his rent. To become a criminal for reasons they wouldn’t even explain.

He looked up at Naomi, his voice low. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am,” she said. “Deadly serious.”

His hands curled into fists. “Why me?”

“Because no one else can get us in.”

She didn’t say it with pride or manipulation, but as a simple truth. And somehow that made it worse.

He exhaled slowly. “You said the Order protects people. Then explain how this does that.”

Naomi hesitated again. “I can’t tell you everything. Not yet. But believe me—this isn’t about greed or power. What we’re after… it belongs to us. To the Order. And if the wrong people get it—” she shook her head. “It won’t just be treasure hunters who pay the price.”

Elias rubbed his temples, trying to slow the pounding in his skull. “I can’t believe I’m even standing here listening to this.”

“I know,” she said. “And I’m sorry. I know this is a lot.”

The kettle on the counter began to whistle, shrill and sharp, cutting through the silence. Naomi turned off the heat, letting the steam curl into the air. The others remained still, watching him but saying nothing. Marcus’s expression was unreadable, Reina’s eyes sharp but not unkind. Julian’s restless hands had stilled for once, his lockpicks motionless between his fingers. Valerie stood pinned to the wall, arms folded, but her gaze never left him. Even Samuel, whose presence usually carried the weight of calm authority, was silent now, his eyes fixed on Elias as though weighing every breath.

The air felt tight, stretched thin by the quiet scrutiny. It was the kind of silence that wasn’t empty but heavy—every glance a question unspoken, every heartbeat loud enough to be heard.

Elias swallowed. His voice came out quieter than before. “If this is real—if any of this is real—then you’re asking me to risk everything. My job, my record… my freedom.”

Naomi nodded. “I know. And I wouldn’t ask if we had another way.”

He studied her for a long time. Her face was calm, but her eyes—there was something behind them. Not calculation, not even desperation, but conviction. The kind that made people do impossible things.

The kind Clara used to have.

He felt something in his chest twist.

“I need some air,” he muttered.

Naomi didn’t stop him as he turned toward the door and stepped out onto the narrow fire escape. The city stretched below, the earlier sun now obscured by a gray, wet haze. The air was cold, the smell of rain heavy in it. Traffic buzzed in the distance. He leaned against the railing and stared at the skyline, trying to find sense in any of it.

He should walk away. He should pack his things and go back to Boston, forget all of this. But something deep inside him—the same thing that had driven him to follow that dream here in the first place—kept him rooted.

You were led here for a reason.

The words echoed again, uninvited.

He closed his eyes and saw Sigrid’s face. The warmth in her eyes. You are chosen to bear the weight that others can't, she had said in the dream.

When he finally went back inside, Naomi was waiting near the door. The others had resumed their quiet work, but the air still felt heavy.

“Elias,” she said gently. “You don’t have to decide anything now. Just listen to what I have to say. After that, if you still want to leave, I won’t stop you.”

He nodded, numb. “Fine.”

She motioned for him to sit. He did, the chair cold beneath him.

Naomi took a breath, steadying herself. “There’s something you need to understand about what we’re doing. About the artifact.”

Her voice dropped slightly, her tone shifting from cautious to solemn.

“It’s not just a mission,” Naomi said softly. “It’s a necessity.”

The room seemed to tighten around her words. Elias sat motionless in the metal chair, feeling every heartbeat echo against his ribs. Naomi stood a few steps away, hands folded, her eyes distant—somewhere between exhaustion and conviction.

He wanted to say something sharp, something to cut through the growing unease, but her tone held the weight of something that wasn’t easily dismissed.

Naomi drew in a slow breath. “Elias, I need you to listen carefully. What I’m about to tell you isn’t public knowledge. In fact, most people who’ve even heard of it don’t believe it exists.”

Elias said nothing.

“You know, I’m an archaeologist,” she went on. “PhD from Columbia, fieldwork across North Africa, the Levant, and the northern steppe. For the last decade, I’ve specialized in protohistoric artifacts—objects that predate established civilization, sometimes by tens of thousands of years.”

He nodded, cautious.

“Last year,” she said, “a rumor began circulating in certain circles—private collectors, museum curators, academic brokers. It came out of nowhere. An artifact was found in an excavation. The location was kept secret, but the whispers were all the same.”

She glanced toward the others, then back to Elias. “They’d found something in stone. A tablet. Flat, smooth, dark—completely unlike any known inscription. And the dating results…” She hesitated, as though the words themselves were difficult to say. “The results didn’t make sense.”

Elias frowned. “What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t from ten thousand years ago, or twenty. The data suggested it was at least a hundred thousand years old. Maybe older. Closer to three hundred thousand.”

He blinked. “That’s impossible.”

“I know.” She gave a faint smile, though there was no humor in it. “That’s what the labs said too. They assumed contamination, some kind of error. But when multiple teams ran the tests with different methods—uranium-thorium, luminescence, even isotopic scans—the readings stayed consistent. Whatever this material is, it isn’t behaving like any stone or metal we’ve ever studied. It’s… something else.”

Elias stared at her, uncertain if she was serious. “You expect me to believe someone found an object older than humanity itself?”

Naomi tilted her head slightly. “I expect you to keep an open mind.”

He opened his mouth, then shut it again. There was something in her expression—a mixture of reverence and fear—that stopped him.

She continued. “When I first heard about it, I thought it was a hoax. I’ve spent years chasing legends that turn to dust the moment you reach them. But the more I looked, the more the story held together. Photos that never made it to the public, coded communications between private brokers, movement of funds. Something real was changing hands.”

She moved to the window, her voice softening. “And then, before anyone could verify the site, the object disappeared. Someone bought it directly from the field team. Quietly. Off the books.”

Elias leaned forward. “Who?”

Naomi turned to face him. “An Arab collector. Billionaire. No official record, of course. But he’s known among those of us who study high-value antiquities. He collects things that don’t belong anywhere—artifacts that are too dangerous, too strange, or too inconvenient for the public eye. Rumor says he has an entire private museum hidden in one of his estates.”

She paused. “And he bought the tablet before it could even be verified. Paid in cash, no trace. That was six weeks ago.”

Elias rubbed his temples. “And now you’re telling me you want to steal it from him?”

Her gaze held his. “Before he moves it out of the country.”

He stared. “You said this man is a billionaire. You think you can just walk in and take something from him? You’ll be lucky if you make it past the front gate.”

“We’ve planned for that,” Naomi said. “That’s why we’ve been trying to breach his security remotely for the last two weeks. His systems are protected by Sentracore tech—the same infrastructure you helped design.”

Elias froze.

Naomi’s tone softened. “You see now why we need you.”

He felt his throat tighten. “So you’re not just some mystic group with visions and dreams—you’re thieves planning to break into one of the most secure estates in the country.”

“No,” she said quietly. “We’re reclaiming something that doesn’t belong in human hands.”

Something in the way she said human made him look up. “What does that mean?”

Naomi hesitated, her eyes flicking briefly toward Marcus, then back to Elias. “It means there are things in this world that don’t fit our understanding of history. Objects that carry… traces. Power, knowledge—whatever you want to call it. This tablet is one of them. If it’s what I think it is, it predates every civilization on record. Every myth, every empire. It could rewrite everything we know about where we came from.”

Elias’s pulse quickened. “And you think it’s real?”

“I don’t think, Elias.” Her voice was low now, almost reverent. “I know.”

She turned slightly, as if the memory of the artifact itself were hovering in the room. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. There are symbols carved into the surface—nothing like cuneiform or runic script, but deeper, more deliberate. They look… alive, almost. As if the lines themselves are breathing.”

Elias felt the hairs on his arms rise. “You’ve seen pictures?”

“Fragments,” she said. “A broker sent me stills before the trail went cold. Most were blurred, taken from video feeds. But one image—one image showed a pattern that shouldn’t exist. The same sequence repeated seven times, each rotation forming a spiral that converged inward. The same geometry you find in sacred sites across the world, but this—this was older. Purer. Like it was the source.”

“The source of what?”

Naomi’s eyes flickered with something almost like awe. “The source of the knowledge that built everything else.”

Elias leaned back, shaking his head slowly. “You realize how insane that sounds.”

“Of course it does,” Naomi said. “That’s what truth usually sounds like before it’s proven.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “And what do you think is written on it?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “No one does. But if my suspicions are right, it’s not just a record—it’s a message.”

“From who?”

Her silence was brief, but telling. She glanced toward the others again. The muscles in Marcus’s jaw tightened. Reina stopped typing. Valerie’s gaze flicked toward the floor.

Finally, Naomi said, “From whoever—or whatever—was here before us.”

Elias exhaled through his nose, trying to suppress a laugh that didn’t come. “You’re saying this thing was made by aliens now?”

Naomi’s lips curved faintly. “Not aliens.”

“Then what?”

Another pause. Her eyes softened, but her voice stayed calm. “Something older. Something that walked the earth long before we learned to crawl.”

The room was silent except for the faint hum of Reina’s laptop fan.

Elias looked at each of them in turn. Their faces were calm, expectant, as if they’d all already crossed some invisible line that he couldn’t yet see.

“This is madness,” he said finally. “You’re talking about stealing an artifact that might not even exist—from a billionaire who probably has an army of private security—to protect the world from, what, ancient knowledge?”

Naomi didn’t flinch. “Not protect it. Preserve it. Before it disappears again.”

He stared at her, half expecting her to break into laughter, but she didn’t. Instead, she moved closer, lowering her voice until only he could hear.

“Elias, listen to me. You’ve seen things you can’t explain. Dreams that feel more like memories. You know, deep down, that something’s pulling you toward this. Do you really think that’s a coincidence?”

He hesitated.

“Maybe those dreams aren’t random,” she said. “Maybe they’re trying to show you something. To guide you.”

Elias’s mouth went dry. He wanted to argue, but his thoughts slipped back to Sigrid—to her voice in the firelight, to her story about the chosen ones, to her saying that being chosen always comes with sacrifice. The dream had felt too real, too warm, too true to dismiss.

And now this woman was standing before him, echoing the same words through different lips.

​He swallowed hard. "Do you expect me to believe all this?"

“Forget belief. Just acknowledge the doubt you feel right now.” she said softly. “Maybe there is something greater than you and me, something that brought you here at this exact time.”

He looked away. “You make it sound like destiny.”

Naomi smiled faintly. “Call it what you like. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you are here now, and you have to make a choice. Will you close your eyes and walk away, or will you take the leap, and search for the truth?”

The words hung in the air, heavy with something he couldn’t name.

For a while, no one spoke. The smell of coffee had gone cold. Outside, the city breathed—horns, rain, distant laughter. Inside, the air was still.

Elias rubbed the back of his neck, the silence stretching between them. “Even if I wanted to help,” he said at last, “I’m not sure I could. I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

Naomi’s tone softened again, patient, coaxing. “We’re not asking you to fight or steal or break anything. Just to help us understand the system. You built part of it—you know how it works. We need a way in that doesn’t raise alarms. Just a window, something temporary.”

He closed his eyes, exhaling. “You want a backdoor.”

“A small one,” she said. “Enough to give us a chance. After that, you can walk away if you want to. But I think once you see what’s at stake, you won’t want to.”

Elias let out a hollow laugh. “You’re assuming a lot about me.”

Naomi met his gaze, steady. “No,” she said. “I’m seeing what’s already there.”

Her words unsettled him more than he wanted to admit.

She turned, her voice quieter now, laced with a new urgency. “The collector is preparing to move the artifact soon. His people are packing up his Manhattan penthouse tonight. By next week, it’ll be on a private jet bound for Dubai—or somewhere even harder to reach. If we don’t act now, it’ll vanish. And with it, the answers we’ve been searching for.”

Elias looked up sharply. “You make it sound like you’ve been chasing this thing your whole life.”

Naomi smiled faintly. “In some ways, I have.”

Her eyes caught the light for an instant—reflective, unreadable, like the surface of deep water.

Elias didn’t respond. He just sat there, the chaos of the last twenty-four hours pressing down on him: the dream, the peace he’d felt for the first time, and now this—talk of ancient artifacts and impossible histories. His rational mind screamed for distance, but something deeper, older, was listening.

Finally, Naomi said, “I'm just asking you to consider it.”

He gave a short nod, though his thoughts were miles away.

She turned to leave, but before she did, she said one last thing—quietly, like a confession.

“If you do choose to help, Elias… you won’t just be helping us. You’ll be helping yourself understand why you’ve been dreaming all your life.”

Then she walked away, leaving him alone with the echo of her words—and the sense that, somehow, everything he’d ever lost was pulling him toward this moment. Maybe Naomi was right. Maybe this wasn’t about the team, or the artifact, or even the risk. Maybe it was about finally knowing.

He exhaled a long, heavy breath—then he stood up, all heads turning toward him. “Alright,” he murmured under his breath. “I’m in.”