This is part 2 of Chapter One from Out of Time. Thought I'd break the second half of the chapter since the other post was ~4k. Read part one here. Enjoy.
Chapter 1 - False Foundations cont.
"Are you ready to depart, Heir Prime?" the driver asked as Dylan and Elias approached the cart.
"Yes," she replied dismissively, adapting to the role she’d reluctantly resurrected.
Elias placed a hand on her arm, stopping her in place. He leaned close to her ear and whispered, "Heir Prime?"
"Not here," she whispered back. "Just act normal."
"Is there a problem, Heir Prime?" the driver asked, seeing them stopped.
"No," she said, voice bored.
Up close, the cart looked deceptively ordinary. A typical four-seater with a canopy and bed for luggage and equipment. It had a clean black exterior with the Helios Foundation logo on the hood. The seats were padded leather with seatbelts for rough terrain. Grab handles were welded to the canopy. There were even cup holders for passengers.
Luxury in the middle of nowhere.
An intentional first impression for any visitors to the site.
Dylan entered behind the front passenger, took a long drink of her Gatorade, and set the bottle in the cup holder.
Elias looked at it and her as he sat behind the driver. She shrugged, adjusting her satchel over her lap. He snorted softly and shook his head.
Before the cart started moving, Dylan and Elias grabbed the canopy handles and set their free hand in the space between the seats, looking casual and bored to anyone watching them.
The lurch of the cart as it rolled into motion made Dylan’s grip tighten and Elias softly swear.
Her eyes flicked briefly between the driver and his partner before murmuring lowly in German, "Easy, partner."
Elias replied in German, "Easy for you to say, your bag isn’t bouncing between your legs."
The partner snorted, turning his head just enough to let them see the smirk on his face.
He’d understood them.
Dylan’s jaw tightened. She had been hoping Cadogan had only brought people who spoke the local language, but the man’s reaction proved Cadogan knew her well enough to anticipate the switch to German.
Plan C, then.
Or was it D, now?
Casually, "Erinnerst du dich an die Türkei? Das war eine interessante Expedition. (Remember Turkey? That was an interesting expedition.)"
Elias snorted. "Du und ich definieren ‘interessant’ sehr unterschiedlich. (You and I define ‘interesting’ very differently)."
At the same time, he tapped on the back of her hand, Understood.
Dylan huffed indignantly but didn’t retort.
As they neared the camp, their conversation became a series of taps along the backs of their hands. Each pointing out what they saw.
Reinforced fencing.
Floodlights.
Cameras.
Overlapping patrols along the perimeter.
Years ago, during Elias’ first assignment working as Dylan’s assistant and bodyguard, a recovery operation in eastern Turkey had gone catastrophically sideways. Elias learned two things almost simultaneously.
The first was that Dylan had absolutely no instinct for personal safety once a mystery got into her head.
The second was that she noticed patterns faster than most people could speak.
The code had started three days later in a crowded train station in Istanbul.
Simple taps against the wrists and palms at first. Numbers. Directions. Warnings.
Over time, it evolved into compressed rhythmic patterns built around Dylan’s love of linguistic structure and Elias’ preference for efficiency. Entire observations reduced into modular beats and pauses they could exchange without moving their lips.
Useful in places where being overheard could get people killed.
Or worse.
The cart slowed as it neared the entrance to the camp. The sign over the gate read "Helios Research Station" in bold gold against black. Centered on the sign was the stylized gold rising sun of the Second Dawn.
If you didn’t know Second Dawn or William Cadogan, the sign looked like any well-funded research foundation.
The cart stopped beside a small guard shack standing beside the closed motorized sliding gate. On the other side stood another shack, and the guard inside was watching them.
The guard on their side stepped out of the shack, and the driver said, "Heir Prime and her assistant for Professor Roberto Alvarez."
Dylan’s jaw ticked at the title.
The gate guard straightened, immediately putting his fist over his heart, "Heir Prime."
Dylan tilted her head, smirking uneasily, and pulled out her Gatorade. She took a long drink, nodding towards the gate while looking directly at the gate guard behind her sunglasses.
His eyes widened, and he quickly retreated into the shack. There was a loud beep, and the gate lurched before rolling open.
Elias leaned in close and whispered, "Are you royalty?"
Dylan sputtered, choking on her drink, and took off her sunglasses to glare at him.
"Don’t," she hissed.
The second escort looked at her in concern. "Are you alright, Heir Prime?"
Dylan coughed and cleared her throat. Her voice came out slightly strained. "I’m fine. Wrong pipe," she replied, setting the drink back in the cup holder. "Let’s move. I’d like to be back in the States by midnight."
"Yes, Heir Prime," the driver said, driving the cart through the still opening gate.
Dylan put her sunglasses back on, resuming the air of indifference and boredom she'd adopted, and went back to inspecting the camp through dark lenses.
They rolled deeper into the camp, tires crunching softly over packed gravel.
Researchers in layered clothing against the June chill of the Andes crossed between modular labs, carrying tablets, sample cases, and rolled survey maps. Portable generators hummed behind neatly stacked supply crates stamped with customs labels and archaeological permits. Black utility trailers sat parked beside larger rigid-wall tents marked for communications, medical support, and environmental analysis.
A scene Dylan knew well after years of fieldwork around the world.
Professional.
Organized.
Exactly what a well-funded archaeological operation was supposed to look like.
But the longer she looked around, the more the cracks began to show.
Too many security personnel.
Too much infrastructure.
Pairs in tactical gear moved through the camp with the smooth, deliberate rhythm of trained professionals, rifles hanging low at their chests as they scanned rooftops, entrances, and sightlines rather than the people around them. Cameras tracked movement from nearly every corner. Reinforced fencing divided sections of the camp into controlled zones with coded keypads mounted beside the gates.
Elias’ fingers tapped once against the back of Dylan’s hand.
Compartmentalized.
Dylan subtly nodded.
The farther into the camp they drove, the more obvious it became that the "research station" had been designed for long-term occupation. Additional trailers sat unused near the back of camp, still wrapped in transport plastic. Crates marked for satellite communications and atmospheric scanning waited beside pallets of climbing gear and excavation equipment clearly intended for transport higher into the mountains.
Preparation for expansion.
Not a temporary dig.
Cadogan clearly believed that whatever he was searching for was somewhere in or around Machu Picchu.
Dylan’s eyes tracked a cluster of researchers gathered near one of the labs. Their body language caught her attention immediately.
No wild gesticulations.
No rising and falling cadence of voices.
Not the ease of collaborators arguing over finds.
Instead, they were clustered tightly, glancing over their shoulders often enough to notice with conversations dying before they could carry.
Every movement carried the same nervousness that people developed in a police state.
Across from her, Elias tapped again.
Controlled environment.
Yeah.
She’d noticed that too.
That kind of control meant Cadogan was monitoring the flow of information.
The cart passed a larger structure near the center of the camp. This one was marked with the Second Dawn sun and the words "Operations Center" above the double doors. But what truly set it apart were the two armed men standing motionless in front of the doors.
Guards with one detail she’d only seen in the Second Dawn Grand Hall, outside the door leading to a basement secret.
A collar pin that glinted in the June sun.
XIII.
The insignia of Second Dawn’s most devoted and militant followers.
Dylan tapped a single chilling pattern on Elia’s hand, Fanatic.
Elias flipped his hand and gently squeezed Dylan’s. His signal that he had her back. To anyone watching, it looked like a romantic moment. But for her, it eased the tightness in her chest.
She gently removed her hand to grab the Gatorade bottle and took a sip. Dylan forced herself not to look back as they passed the building.
The Heir Prime would expect to see those guards standing watch outside anywhere Cadogan was present.
Not look to see if they were watching her.
Alvarez’s lab was just past Cadogan’s building, which made an uncomfortable kind of sense if the professor possessed the original excavation material.
Dylan could see him pacing tight circles outside the entrance, gesturing as he muttered to himself.
More than likely, he was working through an apology for getting caught up in the discovery and failing to do the due diligence he’d taught her himself.
The sound of the cart rolling to a stop startled Alvarez. He spun, nearly losing his balance.
Dylan was out of the cart before it fully stopped and went straight for him.
"Roberto, are you alright?" she asked, laughter evident in her voice.
"SÃ. SÃ. Just an old man lost in his head," Alvarez replied, holding her forearms. "It’s good to see you, hijita."
"You’re hardly old, Roberto." Dylan smiled, letting him pull her into a firm hug. "It’s good to see you, too."
She stepped back, keeping a grip on one of his arms. Looking toward Elias, she said, "You remember Elias. My assistant."
Alvarez beamed, stepping forward with his hand out. "Of course. Of course. It’s good to see you, young man. Oh, I have some exciting things to show you."
Elias shook his hand, smiling. "It’s good to see you, too, Professor. I look forward to finding out what you’ve discovered."
"Speaking of…" Dylan said, gesturing toward the lab. "Why don’t you show us why I canceled my vacation to Hamburg?"
For a second, Roberto looked confused, then his face lit up in realization.
"¡Oh! Disculpa, hijita. No me habÃa dado cuenta de que ya estábamos en esa época del año. (Oh. I’m sorry, my dear girl. I didn’t realize it was that time of year already."
"SÃ. Es la única época del año en la que todos pudimos ponernos de acuerdo para pedir vacaciones. El tÃo Mike se quedó picón porque no va a tener la oportunidad de recuperarse y ganarme los guantes firmados de Vettel. (Yeah. It's the only time of year we could all agree to get time off. Uncle Mike was disappointed he wouldn't get the chance to win back his signed Vettel gloves from me.)"
Roberto and Elias both laughed as he led them inside with the restless energy of a man who had spent too many days sleeping beside a discovery he still couldn’t explain.
The lab was far larger than Dylan expected.
She took off her sunglasses, tucking them into her shirt pocket, and scanned the room.
Climate-controlled storage racks lined one wall beside reinforced archival cases stamped with humidity warnings and handling instructions in three languages. Tables overflowed with survey photographs, excavation maps, stratigraphy reports, and sample trays. Multiple workstations hummed quietly beneath suspended task lights while a bank of monitors displayed scans of carved stone, topographical imaging, and partially reconstructed glyph groupings.
Top-of-the-line equipment.
Not university-owned either.
Private acquisition.
Cadogan money.
Dylan felt her jaw tighten slightly behind her composed expression.
"As you can see, Helios spared no expense on equipment," Roberto said, taking Dylan gently by the arm and guiding her forward. "This easily rivals Peabody’s labs."
Elias snorted. "No one beats the Sun Devils."
Dylan chuckled. "Right. Because you’re number one in innovation. We still got you on endowment and Nobel laureates."
"Whatever. Why don’t you put your pricey degree to work and translate scribbles while I do the real work, Adler."
Dylan resisted the urge to either stick out her tongue at him or flip him off or both, and focused on Alvarez. She had a job to do and wasn’t interested in dragging out her stay in a Second Dawn-based camp.
"It’s over here," Alvarez said, moving toward a workstation cluttered with printed images and handwritten notes. "We scanned the entire wall, hoping for context clues. It’s just the one stone with the anomalous glyphs."
As Alvarez launched into an increasingly animated explanation, Dylan let herself be guided deeper into the lab, asking questions at intervals while keeping half her attention on Elias.
He had gone quiet.
Not suspiciously quiet.
Operationally quiet.
While Alvarez focused entirely on Dylan, Elias drifted naturally through the room with the casual aimlessness of someone waiting for the academics to finish talking. He paused near one workstation long enough to connect a slim black device between the tower and monitor. Another disappeared beneath the edge of a table near the central camera mount. A third sat no larger than a USB drive and vanished behind a server stack beside the environmental controls.
Small adjustments.
Forgettable movements.
The kind people stopped noticing seconds after they happened.
Dylan recognized every device immediately.
Camera interference.
Signal disruption.
Counter-surveillance.
At another workstation, Elias rested one hand against the keyboard while pretending to examine a printout. His thumb moved once along the edge of his watch.
Programs quietly began stripping monitoring software, disabling keystroke logging, and rerouting background data collection protocols.
Cadogan might have built the lab.
That did not mean he was entitled to everything discovered inside it.
"And this," Alvarez said excitedly, spreading several photographs across the nearest table, "was taken after we cleared debris near the statue. You see the spacing here?"
Dylan stepped closer, forcing herself to focus on the images instead of Elias’ movements.
Groups of four.
Again.
Not random.
Structured.
Deliberate.
A pulse of excitement twisted sharply with dread in her chest.
Behind Alvarez, Elias reached for his Gatorade, took a drink, and tapped two fingers once against the side of the bottle.
Clear.
Good.
Dylan exhaled slowly through her nose before looking back toward Alvarez.
"Roberto," she said gently.
The older man blinked, still caught halfway inside his own explanation. "Hm?"
"You and I both know how I work when I’m translating." Her tone softened apologetically. "I need quiet. No interruptions. No hovering."
Understanding flickered across his face almost immediately.
"Oh. Yes. Of course." He stepped back quickly. "Of course. I’m sorry. I’m just–"
"Excited," Dylan finished with a faint smile. "I know."
Alvarez rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "I may have had too much coffee."
"You?" Elias deadpanned from across the lab. "Impossible."
Alvarez barked out a laugh.
The tension eased slightly.
Deliberately.
Dylan stepped forward and squeezed the professor’s shoulder reassuringly.
"We’ll go through everything carefully," she promised. "But before you leave, is the original khipu fragment here? The one you sent me an image of."
Alvarez brightened and moved to the climate-controlled racks. Dylan followed, and her eyes widened when he pulled out a drawer.
There it was.
The fragment that had gotten her here.
"Beautiful, isn’t it?" Alvarez said, smiling at her. "We aged it to roughly the same timeframe as the Caral khipu."
"How long ago was that?" Elias asked, coming over to look at the khipu fragment.
"Well, the oldest undisputed is the Wari khipu. Around 600-770 CE. The Caral khipu is dated to 2500 BCE." Dylan explained. "Do the math."
Elias let out a long whistle and looked at Alvarez. "How’d you even come across this, Professor?"
"One of Helios’ representatives presented it to me," Roberto explained. "He said that a Foundation member found it during a closed auction, and wanted an expert to date and possibly translate it."
Dylan and Elias exchanged a look.
"When I realized it didn’t correspond with anything I knew, I sent it to you, Dylan, while agreeing to lead this dig."
"We’ll figure it out," Dylan reassured her mentor. "But Elias and I need to work alone for a bit first."
"Take all the time you need," Alvarez agreed, shutting the drawer and heading to the doors. "I’ll be nearby if you need anything."
"You already know I’ll forget time exists once I start working," Dylan said.
"Yes, yes." Alvarez waved dismissively toward the door. "I remember finding you asleep in Tozzer many times when you were working on your dissertation."
Elias laughed. "That sounds about right. She still does that."
Dylan pushed him. "Shut up. I’ve gotten better."
"Sure, Jan."
Still smiling faintly, Alvarez stepped outside.
The moment the door shut behind him, Dylan’s playful facade fell away as she locked it.
"Let’s get to work. I don’t want to be here any longer than I need to be."
Elias nodded and headed toward the station with the geological surveys. "Same. The surveillance is already deaf. The cameras will begin looping in five. And they’ll have no record of what we type or look up."
Dylan debated between the fragment and the images before choosing the images. She was going to spend most of her time working on them anyway.
Perfect for setting up the loop.
Dylan set her satchel on the station, pulling out her laptop and notebook. She set both of them up, then looked over at Elias.
"Do it."
A key clicked softly.
"Recording."
Ten minutes later.
"We’re golden. We’ll need to make another loop in… two hours."
"Perfect," Dylan replied, abandoning the images for the khipu fragment. "Time to get a closer look at this mystery string."
