ZARA ‘ZEE’ CORTEZ LEANED BACK in her creaky desk chair, the fluorescent hum of the Global Enquirer newsroom buzzing like a swarm of judgmental insects overhead. The space was a chaotic symphony: typewriters clacking relentlessly, stale coffee permeating the air, and half-baked headlines screaming from corkboards—‘Bigfoot’s Disco Debut!’ pinned next to a grainy photo of a blurry shape. Zee’s desk was a testament to her disdain for the gig: crumpled notes piled high, empty Styrofoam cups scattered like defeated soldiers, and her leather whip coiled prominently in the center—a relic from her last real dig in Guatemala. There, she’d unearthed a jade idol that could have rewritten Mayan history, but a jaguar’s claws and a collapsing temple had nearly ended her. The Enquirer had spun it into ‘Archaeologist Wrestles Jungle Ghost!’ with a doctored photo of her mid-swipe. At 32, Zee was too restless for academia’s ivory towers and too stubborn for the gatekeepers who’d sneered that women didn’t belong in the trenches. She’d proven them wrong with every scar, but this tabloid grind was a temporary hell—paying the rent while she chased mysteries that mattered, the kind that could heal the guilt gnawing at her since Guatemala.
The phone jangled like a summons from the grave. She snatched it up, her voice sharp. “Cortez. Make it good—I’m not chasing Elvis sightings today.”
Mickey’s gravelly rasp cut through the line, laced with the dockside tang of salt and cheap rum. “Got somethin’ better, Zee. Peruvian crate, straight off a freighter. Trader called it cursed—a map to some cosmic whatchamacallit. Figured it’d tickle your fancy.”
Zee’s hazel eyes narrowed, a flicker of genuine intrigue piercing her skepticism. “Cosmic? Mickey, if this is another wild goose chase—”
“Swear on me ma’s grave,” he insisted, his voice dropping low. “It’s at the warehouse, Pier 17. Fifty bucks, and keep it quiet. Folks who held it too long… they vanished, like ghosts in the fog.”
The line clicked dead. Zee stared at the receiver, her thumb tracing the whip’s handle absentmindedly. Vanished. The word echoed a legend she’d stumbled upon in dusty journals during her post-Guatemala haze: the ‘Cosmic Compass’, an artifact tied to ancient star-worshippers, rumored to fold time and space like origami. Scholars called it myth, a fairy tale for dreamers. Zee saw it as a challenge—a chance to reclaim the fire that had died with Alex, her partner crushed in that cave because she’d pushed for one more chamber, one more secret. “This one’s for you,” she muttered, shoving down the guilt that still woke her at night.
She grabbed her battered leather jacket, stuffed the whip into her satchel alongside a Polaroid camera and notebook, and swiped a thermos of black coffee from the break room. Hargrove, her editor—a sweaty blob buried in cigarette ash—bellowed after her. “Cortez! Where the hell? I need that UFO piece by five!”
“Chasing a lead,” she called without breaking stride. “Little green men can wait.”
The San Francisco fog wrapped around her like a shroud as she gunned her ’78 Triumph Bonneville, the engine’s growl mirroring the storm brewing in her chest. Pier 17 loomed ahead, a skeletal maze of rusting warehouses and flickering sodium lights, the air thick with brine and rotting fish. Mickey waited by a tarp-covered heap, his knit cap pulled low over a gap-toothed grin that didn’t reach his wary eyes.
“Fifty,” he said, hand out like a beggar.
Zee tossed the crumpled bills. “This better not be another scam, Mick.”
He yanked the tarp aside with a flourish, revealing a wooden crate stamped with faded Quechua symbols—glyphs she recognized from her Machu Picchu notes, ancient warnings of celestial wrath. Mickey pried it open with a crowbar, and there it was: a slab of basalt, etched with jagged lines of rivers, mountains, and a central starburst that pulsed with faint golden veins, like veins of living light. Zee brushed her fingers over it—the stone was cool, but the gold hummed under her touch, a vibration that sent a tingle up her arm and into her spine. For a split second, the room was spinning: a flash of stars bending, a scar blooming on her palm that faded as quickly as it appeared. An illusion, she thought, but her heart raced.
“Holy hell,” she whispered, tracing the glyphs. “Where’d this come from?”
“Some trader in Lima,” Mickey replied, shifting nervously, his eyes darting to the shadows as if expecting them to move. “Jungle dig. Said it was bad juju—folks who kept it too long went missin’, like the earth swallowed ’em.”
Zee’s smirk hid the unease creeping in. “Bad juju’s my specialty.” She pulled the Polaroid, snapped a shot—the flash illuminating the slab’s veins in eerie gold—and tucked the camera away. “Thanks, Mick. Mouth shut.”
She hauled the slab to her bike, securing it with bungee cords. The weight pressed against her not just physically, but with an inexplicable pull—a whisper in her mind of distant stars and unraveling threads. She gunned the engine, the roar drowning Mickey’s parting mutter about curses, and tore into the fog.
Back in her cramped apartment—walls plastered with maps and artifacts, floor littered with unpaid bills and takeout remnants—Zee spread the slab on her kitchen table, shoving aside clutter. She pored over it with a magnifying glass, her coffee growing cold beside her. The map pointed south: Peru, deep in the Amazon basin, coordinates aligning with sketches she’d seen of the Compass—a relic not for gold, but for dominion over reality itself. If real, it wasn’t treasure; it was godlike power, the kind that could fix past mistakes or shatter everything.
A shadow flickered past her window—the fog seemed to thicken unnaturally—and a low hum, 60 HZ, rumbled through the walls, vibrating her bones. Zee’s grin was sharp as a blade, but a faint scar tingled on her palm—a mark that hadn’t been there before. “Alright, universe,” she murmured, cracking her knuckles. “Let’s see if you’re bluffing.”
She didn’t know it yet, but the Cosmic Compass had already claimed her. The curse’s first echo—a phantom pain from a wound not yet earned—throbbed in warning. The adventure of lifetimes was about to unfold, and with it, the shadows of betrayal, loss, and redemption.
