Arthur gave a dry chuckle. “So what now? I go home with a souvenir from a monster?” “Not a monster,” she said quietly. “A message from Earth’s past. A reminder of what we don’t know. What still sleeps beneath.”
He stared at the pulsing egg behind her. Its rhythm matched something in him now. A pulse in the deep. “And you,” she said, “have seen what no one else has. This… is a secret very few are now privileged to understand.