Odd's dad was shaking his head. He had a bad headache, from working so long, and this discovery was turning out to be very weird.
First, there was the writing. It did not match any known written language on Earth, modern or ancient. Hector had set up a computer program to decode it, and it was making some progress, but only very slowly.
Second, one of the surest ways to determine the time period for the time the chamber was built was to use carbon dating, but it only worked if there was organic matter that they could use for the dating, which there wasn't. Even stranger, they had determined the strata layer the chamber was in as a backup dating measure, and all the evidence pointed to the burial of the chamber happening far before humans walked the planet.
Third, there were the black metal objects that had been found in the chamber. No one could identify the type of metal, and the purpose of the objects was unknown. they had taken one apart, and had found a small but sophisticated laser built into it. No ancient culture could have had that sort of technology... so who had placed it there? And why?
"Would you like something to drink, Mr. Della Robia?" Said a voice. He turned to see Mrs. Ishiyama standing there with a tray of drinks. He noticed that several of his co-workers, along with his son and his friend Yumi, were drinking lemonade. He took a glass and slid the liquid down his throat, glad for the refreshment in the hot summer sun.
"Thank you, Mrs. Ishiyama."
She smiled and left. He spared a glance for the two children, then felt his headache return. This day had been very strange so far. He had no idea that it was going to get much, much stranger.
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"OK. This time its going to work!" Jeremie said.
He was hunched over the keyboard to his computer, with Aelita leaning on his shoulder, looking at the screen with him. Ulrich was sitting on Jeremie's bed, face in his history textbook. A stack of several other notebooks were piled on the bed next to him. He wasn't paying any attention to what Jeremie and Aelita were doing, as he was much too absorbed in his homework.
The computer whiz and the formerly virtual girl were tinkering with the superscan, since it had broke. Again. Jeremie really hated it when that happened, but it seemed to be one of Xana's favorite tactics. Jeremie grinned when he saw the green plus sign on the screen.
"Great! Its done!" Jeremie said. Aelita smiled, but it quickly turned upside down when the newly fixed scan popped up and indicated an activated tower, which, according to it, had already been activated for ten minutes.
"Shoot. Looks like trouble. Lets go guys. Can you call Yumi and Odd, Ulrich?"
"Huh? Oh yeah. Sure."
He pulled out his cell phone. "They're both at Yumi's house, I think. Watching some kind of archeological dig or something." Ulrich said, with the tiniest hint of jealousy that his two friends got to hang around while he was buried in work.
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There was a ringing sound from Yumi's pocket. She pulled out her cell phone to answer the call.
"Hello? Oh, hi, Ulrich." She said sweetly. "Huh? A Xana attack? Where? You don't know where? Ok. We'll be there."
She turned to look at Odd.
"Something's up." She said.
"You don't say. Look!" Odd pointed.
One of the archeologists was running, and screaming, as a pickaxe flew through the air behind him, chasing him and making swipes in the general direction of the back of his skull. The other archeologists stared, bewildered, at the pickaxe, which now seemed to have a mind of its own.
Yumi and Odd watched, undaunted, as specters began to flow out of sockets in Yumi's house, fly out the door, and take over the archeologists' equipment. There were more screams as lights, cameras, digging equipment, and even the gardening tools still lying on the porch table started to attack.
"RUN!" Yumi shouted. The adults in the area didn't need a second prompting. They ran, still screaming, as their tools chased them.
"Ok. To the factory!" Odd said, and the two of them ran off, in the other direction.
It was very quiet in the backyard when they had left. All humans and possessed objects were gone. The only sign of anything out of place was a single specter creeping toward the Grail, lying on the porch table. Xana was eager to add it to the host of careening objects.
The specter touched the Grail, then flowed into it. It immediately flew right back out, zapped by a mysterious energy.
Xana was puzzled by this, to say the least. He could possess any non living thing, and most living ones, too, so how was this object able to resist him?
He ordered the specter to try again, a little more carefully this time, as he monitored what happed to it. The specter slowly eased itself in, trying to avoid being to forceful. It slid back out a second later, zapped again, but Xana was able to glean some information this time. It wasn't that he simply couldn't take control of it, like with the kids. The object was actively resisting. Theoretically, it was possible, but he had never seen it happen before. It could only happen if the thing he was trying to possess was a very strong computer, at least as strong as he was, if not stronger.
This was an intriguing challenge to Xana. Carefully, he began to pick at the Grail's defenses determinedly, eager to find out what secrets the object might hold.
