The morning call for prayer from a nearby mosque wakes Eve up. After pouring herself a cup of coffee Eve sits down on the rocking chair at the courtyard and takes a sip. The air is pleasantly cold and the sky glows orange. Eve hears footsteps.

Mason enters the courtyard. Eve looks away from his shirtless and toned torso. Her cheeks feel warm.

"You slept well?" Mason says, sitting down on the chair next to hers. His gaze falls on her pale legs below the pyjama shorts.

"Yeah, you?" Eve says.

"Practically passed out," he says, making her chuckle. Irrespective of how luxurious the ride was, it was long and exhausting and everyone went to sleep right away after reaching the house.

"Where do you want to start looking?" Eve says.

"Uncle's study would be a good place to start. It's right down the hall to the left."

The iron gate at the boundary wall opens and in walks a man in kurta and kufi, carrying a large tiffin carrier.

"Abdul!" Mason says, getting up to greet the man.

They hug. "You didn't have to come," Mason says.

"Of course I do," the man says and lifts the box, "and I bring breakfast."

Mason introduces Abdul to Eve as the house's caretaker and an old friend of Mason's uncle.

"Let's eat our breakfast before others wakeup, or you won't be left with any," Mason says.

After giving the tiffin carrier to Mason, Abdul leaves.

On the dining table Mason and Eve unstack the large stainless steel boxes that carry flat breads, sandwiches, mixed veg curry with eggs and some cumin biscuits.

Soon enough Ashton, Brad and Keith join them at the table and finish everything.

After the meal, Mason takes Eve to his uncle's study room - A large room with three arched wooden windows. There are books everywhere. In the shelves, on the tables and the corners of the floor.

The rest of the space are occupied by small figurines of what appears to be Egyptian Gods and Pharaohs. Eve recognizes the one with a human body, falcon face and a disc on top of the head - It's the figurine of Horus, the God of kings and the sun.

Mason rummages through his uncle's desk to find any clue to what Nathan Gold was up to before he disappeared. Eve walks around the room, reading the spines of all the books.

Just as in Prof. Nathan's Washington house, the books here seem to be from every different discipline of science that Eve could imagine. To Eve, Nathan comes off as a seeker of knowledge beyond his field of profession, meteorology. Someone who she wouldn't be surprised if he was indeed part of a secret scientific society.

While turning onto the next shelf of books, Eve notices the brick fireplace. There's nothing unusual about it except something seems odd. There are dark ashes on the floor of the fireplace, but the pile is not big enough to have been from fire logs and on top of that there are no traces of soot at the sides of the fireplace, as if it had never been used before.

"Some pages are torn from this notebook," Mason says, drawing Eve's attention. There's a leather bound notebook in Mason's hand. Eve looks between the note and the fireplace.

She goes to the fireplace, squats down and notices the shape of the ashes. Paper. There are some pieces not fully burned. Eve grabs one. She can't make out the words. But she can see the lines. "Are the pages in that note ruled with pale blue lines?"

Mason comes over to Eve and looks down over her shoulders. "Yes," he says. She gives him the piece she found and looks for more pieces like that. She picks up another one.

"Could uncle have burned these pages?" Mason says.

"Mason," Eve says, standing up and handing him the piece she just picked up with a somewhat surprised face. Mason takes it and reads the word that had survived on that paper, written in his uncle's cursive handwriting.

"extinct"

Eve quickly looks back at the shelves. She did notice another odd thing before that she had passed on as nothing. But now...

"That shelf," she says, "It's the only one where the books are not neatly arranged. They are piled up disorderly as if he was picking them out and putting them back in quiet often."

"Which shelf?" Mason says.

"The one that has all the books on genetics."

Mason and Eve go stand in front of the shelf. "You're right," Mason says. The two of them start taking out the books one by one and leafing through them to find any notes or inscriptions.

"Found anything yet?" Keith says, entering the room.

"Help us look through these books," Mason says, throwing a book to Keith.

"What am I looking for?" Keith says.

"Anything odd," Mason says.

About ten minutes later, Keith shouts, "Hey! Look!"

Keith has a book open at its first page in his hand. Mason and Eve look at it. There's a handwritten note on the page - "You'll love this one" - signed by a Gina. And below the note she had drawn a symbol - an octagon with a pyramid inside.

"Isn't this the symbol from the box?" Keith says.

"It's the same. Turn to the cover," Eve says. Keith closes the book. The book is titled "The Mesozoic Evolutionary Biology," written by Dr. Gina Yates.

"The author seems to know my uncle," Mason says.

"Show the back cover," Eve says.

Keith turns over the book.

Author's bio says, Gina is a Biology professor in Cambridge University.

"We could get a contact info for her from the university website. We can ask her about the symbol," Eve says.

"No," Mason says, "not over the phone. We visit her."

"You mean go to Cambridge?" Eve says, surprised.

"Yes," Mason says, "She must be a part of whatever my uncle was involved in. We've to see her in person."

"But will she be of any help though?" Keith says, "She's a biologist."

"A few pages from my uncle's note was torn and burned at the fireplace. We found this piece," Mason says and shows Keith the burned piece of paper.

"Extinct?" Keith says, "As in what? Extinct animals?"

Eve glances at the book in Keith's hand. "Mesozoic," she says, "It's a geologic period."

"Like ice age?" Keith says.

"Yeah. This one was before it," Eve says.

"What was before ice age?" Keith says.

"That can't be," Mason says, looking at Eve, "Could extinct mean that?"

"I don't know. It's... I don't know," Eve says.

"What are you guys talking about?" Keith says.

"The period before the ice age is called cretaceous. Which in turn is part of the Mesozoic Era that is comprised of three periods - Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous," Eve says.

"Jurassic, as in from the movie? The dinosaur movie?"

Eve nods. "Mesozoic is the time before Dinosaurs went extinct."

End of chapter