Leta surfaced and pulled her breather out with her free hand, finally able to voice her pain.
"What happened? Are you okay?" Pilar, a sweet university student from Columbia asked, swimming up to her.
"I dunno." Leta hissed, "There's some artifact down there. It suddenly sprang at me and stabbed my arm."
"What? Get back to the boat! Let's get that looked at." Pilar exclaimed, brown eyes wide as she watched blood seeping from Leta's wound. She treaded water next to Leta, ensuring that her wounded friend made it back to the boat.
Getting out of the water, everyone continued to ask her what happened and if she was okay.
A large, burly Greek man with silver hair named Vasilis who was acting as their boat captain and medic helped peel her wetsuit down with Pilar's help.
Now that she could see it, Leta realized that the artifact had done some serious damage.
Her forearm was a complete mess with a deep gouge and about three inches below her wrist. The gouge itself was less than half an inch in circumference, but the wound was puckered around the edges and there were black lines running from the wound like spiderwebs under her skin.
It didn't look like the artifact had pierced all the way through, but it felt as if it did hit the bone and was painful to the touch.
Vasilis let out a string of Greek curses as examined her arm. Leta hissed as hydrogen peroxide was poured over the gash and let out her own English curses, much to the humor of the skipper.
Pilar and Vasilis got her as comfortable as possible on the boat's hard benches.
The Greek man produced a flask of hard liquor and offered it to her to help take the edge off. Although she was underage to drink in Greece, Leta happily took the offered drink.
Vasilis got a great laugh as she coughed profusely, realizing that he'd probably given her the strongest homemade moonshine she'd ever had.
Leta was then told to lay down, rest, and not to move her arm while Pilar radioed in the situation.
Alone to her thoughts, Leta reflected not on the injury like a sane, normal person, but instead on what she had discovered and the historical implications.
How did the Myceneaens, who had not even mastered paper production, invent something spring activated? More so, how did a spring on what she now realized was a push plate survive thousands of years under water without deteriorating?
And what was in that vial? Whatever that black icor was, it was most likely a colony of bacteria that had decomposed whatever liquid was inside before decomposing on itself.
Leta shivered, disgusted by the thought. She hoped that it was just really, really old vinegar by now and not about to make her patient zero for the zombie apocalypse.
During this time, Pilar and Vasilis had gotten the dive team out of the water and the boat ws making t's way back to their base on the island of Thera.
It was three hours back to shore, and by that time Leta's fever had worsened. Her body was shivering as if she'd been left naked on the side of Mount Everest, Pilar assured her that she was burning up.
Through her growing fever, Leta profusely apologized to the crew and everyone on board, feeling like she wanted to cry for what had happened. All her life she had wanted to do this and the first day on the job, she's pulling the team away from the find of the century.
Eventually, her tongue started to feel stiff and she could only moan her discomfort.
'What a cruel fate.' Leta thought to herself. 'This is how I die? This is how it ends? I'm finally doing what I love, and now it's over? Whoever is on the other side of death, I'm going to have a serious chat with the. I refuse to die like this.'
A few of the team members brought her water to keep her hydrated while others wondered if she'd been stung by a poisonous animal or toxic anemone.
The sun was low on the horizon when Thera came into view. Leta could only make out a blurry dark blob with twinkling lights that got closer and closer as the boat cruised onward.
The team had gotten progressively more worried for her as they traveled and would ask her innate questions to make sure she was staying conscious.
Leta had become more and more scared that she really was going to die as her skin started to pale, her lips turning blue and her limbs going limp. Her heart seemed to be beating double time as panic began to set in.
At the dock, Dr. Annick Galloise, head archeologist for the excavation, and an ambulance were waiting for them.
Leta went in and out of consciousness as they loaded her onto the stretcher.
She remembered Pilar telling the medics something in broken Greek, and the medics opening her eyelids but by that time she couldn't see anything.
Soon, thoughts became spotty.
She felt a jolt as she was moved from stretcher to gurney and the pinch of a needle in her arm.
She could almost make out the light behind her eyes of the fluorescent tubes in the hospital hallway as she was wheeled away.
The beep of her heart monitor seemed too weak.
That beep was getting more faint.
Beep…. beep...… beep....beep......…..beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-
Silence.
Leta felt as if she were floating in an abyss, cold and desolate, when suddenly something blurry came into her field of vision.
They looked like odd hieroglyphs that were a strange mixture of cuneiform and Mycenaean Linear A.
The symbols blurred and warped like a fever dream when suddenly she could read them.
[HOST IDENTIFIED]
[TESTING COMPATIBILITY WITH HOST]
[HOST COMPATIBLE WITH SYSTEM]
[SYSTEM UPLOADING]