Mars Mayan s6a1r

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

MARS MAYAN

First edition. July 23, 2021.

Copyright © 2021 Zack William Thomas Jameson.

Written by Zack William Thomas Jameson.

Table of Contents

Copyright Page

MARS MAYAN | An interview with Anna | Conducted by ZWT Jameson

MARS MAYAN

An interview with Anna

Conducted by ZWT Jameson

––––––––

Several weeks ago I was approached by what turned out to be an intermediary who asked if I would be willing to interview an American archivist who had worked alongside a Mexican archaeologist. They had recently been working in the jungles of Central America at various dig sites including at some of lost Mayan temples discovered in Guatemala. Their most recent work had included investigating the temples in the Northern Peten region in the ancient city of Holmul. This ancient city, along with El Mirador and Tikai were part of an interconnecting Mayan settlement. These were discovered using a revolutionary technology called ‘lidar’ which is a marriage of light and radar. The technology helped produce detailed computer images of what lay below the dense jungle and this process revealed the whereabouts of these ancient cities. In truth I didn’t think much about it at the time. However as the intermediary grew in confidence when discussing the case with me, piece by piece they revealed more facts surrounding the subject matter the archivist was looking to discuss during the interview. It became clear why this unusual approach was necessary and how compelling the interview could be if the information being imparted to me was the truth.

So I agreed to conduct the interview. Strict ground rules were set out by the intermediary for the interview. These conditions included the fact that I couldn’t record any part of the interview, that it would be conducted using video conferencing software and the archivist would the call via a mobile phone which would be pointed at the camera of the intermediary’s laptop. In addition to this, the voice of the archivist would be disguised and their image would be pixelated out of the phone. I was allowed to make notes and would then have to read them back to gain ‘approval’ of what I would eventually publish. I was told that the they were using to set up the call was to be deleted and I was to have no more with them once the interview was complete. Throughout the interview no specific locations or names were to be revealed, unless volunteered by the interviewee. I was simply asked to refer to the archivist as Anna and the archeologist was to be referred to as Javier; both names used were apparently aliases. I would be interviewing Anna. The intermediary initially ed me via e-mail during which I was instructed to an encrypted messaging service which contained a self-destruct facility allowing all of those messages to be deleted after a very short time period. The e-mail used to me would also be deleted. This is that interview. Vetted and approved prior to publication by the intermediary using the encrypted messaging service. ZWT: I’ve been instructed that I am to refer to you as Anna, are you comfortable about telling me anything else about yourself? Anna: I was born in California and have worked as an archivist on archeological sites for about ten years. ZWT:

Is this how you met Javier? Anna: Yes. ZWT: What can you tell me about Javier? Anna: Javier was an experienced archaeologist from Mexico. We met on a dig and decided that we wanted to work together due to our shared interest of the Mayan civilisation ZWT: So how long had you and Javier been working together? Anna: We worked together for about eight years ZWT: I understand that Javier is dead, what can you tell me about the circumstances that led up to his death? Anna: Javier and I worked on a dig site in the Northern Peten region of Guatemala, this was a relatively new dig site, away from some of the main temples when we were approached by agents who claimed they were working for NASA. These agents were looking for an archeologist and archivist who were perhaps of a lower profile than say, Estrada-Belli, who spearheaded a lot of the digs in the region as they didn’t want to attract any unwanted attention. I guess we fitted the bill. ZWT:

So you’re saying this was a conscious decision made by these agents as they wanted to remain below the line. Anna: Yes. They approached us at the dig site where we worked and scheduled a meeting the next day, away from the site. ZWT: So at the point of the initial you had no idea what this proposition from the agents entailed? Anna: No. The only thing we were told was that we were selected due to our profile and that our skill set was of interest to the US Government in connection with their proposition. We were told that this was a matter of national security and all information connected with the dig would be classified, therefore we were forbidden from discussing it with anyone not connected to operation. ZWT: And so you both agreed? Anna: Yes. In our profession to get such an approach is unusual and as you can imagine very intriguing, so we both agreed to meet the next day. ZWT: So what happened next? Anna: We were greeted the next morning at the camp site and escorted by the agents to the meeting place in an old van. ZWT:

So can you describe the scene in your own words? Anna: It was an old military base in the middle of nowhere. It looked like it hadn’t been used for years, we entered a dilapidated building in the middle of a small clearing that situated in the middle of the jungle. I had no idea where we were because we were sat in the back of a van with no windows. ZWT: Wasn’t that scary? I mean not knowing where you were with these people? Anna: At that point why should it be? They had showed their ID cards and were clearly taking no chances on whatever it was they were keeping a secret. In fact I can looking across to Javier in the van and feeling a buzz of excitement, the adrenalin was kicking in. ZWT: Can you their names on the ID cards? Anna: No, the excitement got the better of me I think. Once inside the building though it was clear this was a slick operation. ZWT: What makes you say that? Anna: The room was full of all manner of high tech gear, a clear perspex screen with a map drawn on it stood in the middle with various location notes on it pointing towards a crude image of a Mayan temple and to one side there was a clay mock up of a typical looking Mayan temple. I also saw another perspex screen, this time an image of Earth was in the middle of the screen and there were arrows

pointing to and from a planet labelled Mars with question marks scribbled around them. ZWT: So at that point what did you think? Anna: Well I guess at that point I thought it was probably too late to turn back so I just shrugged my shoulders at Javier as the agents looked on. ZWT: So what happened next? Anna: We were ushered into a dark room and sat down at a table surrounded by people in suits. Two people got up and stood at the head of the table. Then we watched on as they took it in turns to talk us through a Powerpoint presentation, whilst constantly reminding us this was classified and a matter of national security. ZWT: What can you tell me about the presentation and the people who delivered it? Anna: I won’t give out the names to protect myself, I can say that one of them introduced themselves as a CIA agent and the other was a top ranking NASA representative who had ‘special responsibilities within his portfolio’ ZWT: And what were these special responsibilities? Anna: He was in charge of investigating any instances of suspected alien reported to NASA.

ZWT: So what they say? Anna: The guy from NASA explained that the Mars rover Opportunity hadn’t ceased operations in 2018 and that a press statement sent out to the media in early 2019 saying it was now considered non-operational was a smokescreen. As you can imagine this was all news to myself and Javier and not something we gave any thought about, until then. ZWT: Ok, so at this point it was a suspected alien event then? Anna: It wasn’t explicitly mentioned but Javier and I had our suspicions. They then went on to confirm that Opportunity had been hacked by some unidentified source and was pinging a signal back to Earth. The signal was traced to an unknown Mayan temple outside the Northern Peten region where we were currently working. All the slides in the presentation were marked classified and it was clear to me they’d done a lot of research into this before bringing us on board. ZWT: Could they authenticate the signal? Could it have been a technical issue with Opportunity? Anna: No, they’d done all their due diligence prior to making the decision to set up a base in Guatemala and approach us to get involved. It wasn’t a signal they’d encountered before and a technical issue was ruled out. Apparently Opportunity had no power and wasn’t responding to anything NASA could throw at it. ZWT:

So where was the signal traced to? Anna: Like I said, a Mayan temple that hadn’t been previously discovered. A specialist team had gone in to the location and secure the area. The area immediately around the temple was baron, devoid of almost any vegetation but immediately outside that area the temple was surrounded by a dense jungle. We were told that only about twenty percent of the temple was visible from the surface, the rest had either submerged over the years or was actually built into the ground, they weren’t sure. ZWT: Had they managed to date the temple? Anna: They believed it was between 2000 to 3000 years old. ZWT: So what was the brief? Anna: We were told that we would escorted to the temple and would be in charge of investigating the contents they had discovered during their initial searches. All of this would be under strict supervision from NASA and the CIA agents at the site and we were to wear hazmat suits for our own safety. That freaked me out a bit. ZWT: Did they say why you had to wear the suits? Anna: They claimed that when they initially opened up the temple there was evidence of low levels of radiation and they didn’t want to take any chances. ZWT:

Did they say what else to expect?

Anna: No, they wanted to ensure we wouldn’t go into this dig without any preconceptions, of course we had an inkling that due to the origins of the signal there was something going on, possibly alien in origin and that this was potentially a proof of scenario. ZWT: You talk as if you kind of expect this stuff Anna: We’ve all read the book Chariots of the Gods and at some stage we’ve all been at a dig and wondered whether there was any substance in it or whether it was just pure speculation. ZWT: So now you could be on the cusp of getting some answers.... Anna: Well yes, and this is what you dream of, the chance to discover something that either validates or dismisses the theories posed in that book and others like it. This was the dig of a lifetime. ZWT: So no hesitation in going through with it? Anna: It was too late for that, we knew the minute we walked into that dilapidated building that we weren’t turning back. ZWT: What was Javier’s opinion?

Anna: We weren’t encouraged to have any opinion at that time and given that we were escorted pretty much everywhere we went we had little or no time to discuss anything in private. But I could tell from the expression on his face that he was excited. ZWT: So next you went to the site? Anna: Yes. We were driven in the same windowless van so we had no real idea where we were. They could have been driving around in circles for all we knew. ZWT: Describe the site

Anna: Well they were thorough that was for certain. They’d set up an electrified perimeter fence which was heavily guarded and there were a few military grade tents nearby the temple. We didn’t recognise the temple as anything we’d seen before so we definitely knew this had evaded detection. Once inside the main operations tent we were given a safety brief that included a communications test and we were issued with our hazmat suits. Each suit had our names stitched on to them, like they expected us to accept the invitation without hesitation. ZWT: Slightly presumptive of them? Anna: That was my thought as well. I was then given a camera that I was instructed to use to gather evidence inside the temple. Having suited up we were then escorted to the entrance of the temple. This was heavily guarded and we had to walk through a short, covered area to get to what looked like a temporary door that led into the temple. My guess is that this was some kind of decontamination tunnel to guard against any radiation leaks. ZWT: So you and Javier are in the temple, who escorted you in there and what did you see? Anna: The NASA representative along with the two agents then instructed us to follow them down what seemed like about three floors. The tunnels were tight and the steps uneven but they had set up lighting so that made it slightly easier to navigate. Every so often there were small holes carved into the walls and there we saw, well, the first evidence of Chariots of the Gods, lots of little statues like the ones in the book. This wasn’t particularly unusual as they are a common site at these digs. The further down we got the colder it got and there was evidence of human remains such as skulls and other bones that littered the floor.

ZWT: Any evidence to suggest how they died? Were there any trauma marks to the skulls for example? Anna: It was hard to make out, and our escorts were keen for us to get to the destination so we had no time to examine them. It was my impression that these were not of importance or relevance to the operation. ZWT: So you arrived at your destination, describe what you saw. Anna: The floor opened out into something like an atrium and in the middle of this was a giant stone coffin. Well to me it looked like a coffin. The lighting was far better in this area and there were several people in hazmat suits examining various artefacts in the room. One of them appeared to have a geiger counter, he kept pointing it erratically all over the room. The coffin was damaged, the lid had been cracked, who knows maybe someone else had got there first but it had definitely been disturbed.

––––––––

ZWT: What was in the coffin? Anna: Well this is where things start to get strange. Javier was summoned to the coffin while I was instructed to start collecting images of the surrounding areas. I had to use the camera I was issued in the military tent. I did try to take out my phone

but was quickly told to put it back into the pocket on my suit. So Javier approached the coffin, peered in and then stopped. I’ve known Javier for years and had never seen that look on his face. ZWT: What did he look like? Anna: It was a mix of fear and awe, hard to describe but without hesitation he started to closely examine the body on the coffin. ZWT: Were you able to examine it? Anna: I was shuffling around the edge of the atrium taking pictures while my nominated agent kept an eye on me, I could see that Javier was in deep discussion with the guy from NASA but they’d obviously switched frequencies so I couldn’t hear a thing. Javier kept pointing at the body inside the coffin and shrugging his shoulders then pointing to the sky. The NASA agent looked concerned but I was kept occupied by the agent shadowing me who was keen I documented all the items in the atrium. ZWT: What were these items? Anna: Mainly more of the same, similar small statues that were placed around the edge of the atrium and then some pieces of what looked like metal. I set the flash on the camera and played with the exposure time to try and get a clear image of these pieces of metal but every time I took a picture the material just seemed to disappear from view, it was as if the metal was reacting to the light and turning translucent. I kept showing the agent these images and he kept asking me to tweak the settings on the camera but nothing seemed to work. I then reached out

to touch one of the pieces, it was warm. Now given the location and how long it may have been down there I would have expected it to be stone cold yet I could feel the warmth coming through the glove on my suit. When we exhaled our suits were emitting condensation vapour, this would suggest the room was cold. ZWT: Did you mention this to the agent? Anna: I did question him but he was not interested, he just kept pushing me onto the next artefact to document. ZWT: So why you guys? I mean surely the combined muscle of NASA and the CIA should mean they could find someone to take pictures and someone to look in a coffin? Anna: If you want to fix your car you don’t call a chef. ZWT: Very true. Anna: And besides this didn’t come across as something that had been on their radar for a while, I think Opportunity had them spooked and they needed access to people with the skills we had and fast so as to ascertain the risk. Plus we were already nearby on another dig. ZWT: Interesting that you should use the word risk. Anna:

It may have been a risk and they didn’t want to take any chances. ZWT: So how long did Javier spend examining the contents of the coffin? Anna: He was there with the guy from NASA for a while, maybe about three hours. Javier was permitted to bring in some of his equipment and he was carefully using this to try and get a closer look at the body. ZWT: And you’re sure it was a body in that coffin? Anna: At that point as sure as I could be because he kept pointing at the guy from NASA, himself and then the body in the coffin and shaking his head vigorously. ZWT: But you didn’t actually see the contents of the coffin yourself? Anna: No, they wouldn’t let me near it. ZWT: So how could you document something if you didn’t see it?

––––––––

Anna:

My job was to document the surrounding areas in the atrium and I didn’t feel that arguing with the agent would get me anywhere at that stage. He was pretty explicit about what I had to do. ZWT: So then what? Anna: After a couple more hours we were instructed that our time was done and escorted back up to the camp site. We then had a briefing with the NASA representative and CIA agent in one of the smaller tents by ourselves. It was there that I got to learn more about the contents of the coffin in the atrium. Javier confirmed the body was like nothing he had seen in previous temples, even with a basic examination he could see the person in that grave was not from the area. ZWT: So it was human? Anna: The word alien was never used during that meeting, instead they referred to it as ‘humanoid’ so take from that what you will. ZWT: I take from that that they were not entirely sure what was in the coffin. Anna: Precisely. ZWT: So why go to all the trouble of keeping you away from the coffin and yet invite you in to a debriefing where they discussed the contents of that coffin? That doesn’t make sense. Anna:

It does when they explained the reason behind that. ZWT: What was the reason? Anna: At this point in time during the investigation they didn’t want any photographic evidence of the contents of that coffin, only testimony from a trusted archeologist who could confirm their initial findings. They needed someone to that this person was probably not from the area given all that they knew about the age of the temple and the location. Javier could provide that initial evidence so they could then move onto the next stages of their investigations. ZWT: And the link with Opportunity?

––––––––

Anna: Still unclear at that point. They were guessing, that is apart from the location that the signal was traced to, which of course was the temple. ZWT: Guessing? I mean did they know what the signal was saying? What its intention was? Anna: Well yes, they were guessing. They didn’t know what the signal meant or its intention, they were simply guessing. I mean how can you logically explain that a signal sent from a hacked rover on Mars was anything other than some attempt to communicate with an Earth based lifeform without starting a lot of conspiracy

theories? ZWT: You mean the one that humans once inhabited Mars? Anna: That’s the most obvious one. ZWT: So what about the metal and how it reacted to your camera flash? Anna: There was no logical explanation for this either, one theory floated was that this may have been the source of the low levels of radiation. ZWT: Could that radiation have been responsible for the presence of the bodies you saw further up in the temple? Anna: It’s possible, but to draw an accurate conclusion you’d have to examine the remains and that wasn’t on our agenda. ZWT: Your agenda seemed very light. Anna: I didn’t make the agenda, I just followed it and then counted the cost. ZWT: This is where we get on to Javier?

Anna: To start yes.

––––––––

ZWT: Can you tell me what happened to him? Anna: We had a meal in one of the larger tents with everyone and then retired to our quarters. The next thing I know Javier is having convulsions in the bed next to me and choked to death. I tried in vain to resuscitate him but he was gone, dead. ZWT: And that’s it? Anna: Believe me when I say this is just the start. ZWT: I was warned. Anna: So Javier’s body is unceremoniously removed from our quarters by some of the guards and the next thing I know I have a guard stationed outside our tent. I checked my phone for a signal but nothing, I had no way to communicate with the outside world having just watched my friend and colleague die in front of me. Something was wrong. Very wrong. ZWT:

You mean to say that after you had carried out your work they wanted no loose ends. No witnesses. Anna: That was my thinking. ZWT: Standard protocol. You were loose ends to potentially the greatest discovery in mankind’s history and having confirmed their initial suspicions they had no further use for you. Why would they want an unofficial leak to the media and someone else claiming all the glory? Anna: Yes, that was, in hindsight what was happening, we were the loose ends being tidied up. I had no idea how they got to Javier, maybe it was the food, but if that was the case why not me as well? ZWT: Perhaps they hadn’t finished with you at that time. Anna: I then thought back to the hazmat suits with our names on them, maybe they had been sabotaged with something but again, why not me as well? I had to get out of there, I just had a bad feeling after what had happened to Javier and how cold they were to the fact he had just died right in front of me. So that was it, I had to escape somehow. ZWT: And this is where you used the military latrines to escape? Anna: How did you know? ZWT:

Your intermediary did a good job of selling me on the highlights. Anna: It was not a highlight for me, I can assure you. Hiding in the latrine having excused myself from my tent and waiting there for hours whilst hearing the guards shouting up above was not nice. It stank and I stank having climbed out after all that time in the pitch black. ZWT: How did you escape through the perimeter fence? Anna: Luckily they left Javier’s bag containing his tools so I grabbed a small shovel and having got out of the latrine I crawled to one of the quieter areas of the perimeter in the pitch black and was able to dig a hole big enough to get under the fence and not get electrocuted. I then made my way back into the jungle. My phone was knackered so I had to navigate my way using the stars as my guide, you learn these things when you spend so much time in the jungle. ZWT: You must have been exhausted. Anna: I was, but eventually I found a track and was lucky enough to get picked up by a local farmer as dawn broke. He gave me a lift to the nearest village and it was there that I started on my long journey back across the border. ZWT: What about ID? Wouldn’t they catch you at the border? Anna: I guess this mission was so secret that at the point of crossing into the US, which was several days later, they still hadn’t alerted the authorities. And anyway what

could they say? ZWT: It’s the CIA they don’t need to have a reason..... Anna: Maybe not but I had enough cash and a justifiable reason for people to help me get to the US. I don’t think I’ve ever hitchhiked so much in my life.

––––––––

ZWT: They must have been after you though given what you knew. Anna: No doubt about it. So next thing I do is call collect to my sister, Kate, and she organised for a transfer to arrive at the gas station in the town I now found myself stranded in. She was scared for me, you see my sister is autistic but also a tech geek. She spent her days in the basement of the family house online talking to various conspiracy groups and hacking into various corporations exposing their operations to the press. You know, knocking down the corporate wall and showing how they evaded taxes, paid their employees a pittance and generally acted like wankers. ZWT: So your sister is a bit of an activist. Anna: I guess so, and being a bit of a techno geek that’s a lethal combination, the corporations absolutely shit themselves when her group hacked into them. She was the one who told me to throw away my cellphone and buy one of those

phones in a box, you know, the ones that tend to be hard to trace. ZWT: So then what? Anna: Well it was clear that I couldn’t go back to the family house so I made my way to a small town in Oregon, my ex, Cameron, still lived there and was always good to me if I ever needed any help. I rang him and told him to expect me with no real explanation apart from the fact this was an emergency and that I couldn’t go home. Without any hesitation he agreed. ZWT: That was good of him. Anna: Yes, we still had a thing for each other but my job and his expectations of our relationship kind of clashed in the end, it was amicable but they tend to be the worst kind of break ups. ZWT: I can imagine your line of work is hard on any relationship. Anna: I think most of the people I’ve met on the dig sites I worked on were either divorced or single. ZWT: How did you explain this whole situation to him?

Anna: I said for his own protection he couldn’t and shouldn’t know much as I didn’t want to jeopardise his life. That spooked him out a bit but he let me stay in the basement of his house. So this is when things turned nasty. ZWT: With Cameron? Anna: No, he was very concerned, even with the small amount of detail I told him he could see this was some seriously heavy shit. ZWT: How heavy? Anna: My sister had managed to hack into the NASA mainframe, I didn’t ask her to do this, but she just did it given the limited amount of info I gave her. Again I didn’t want to put her at risk either, especially given her autism and the fact she rarely ventured out of the house due to it. ZWT: What did she find during the hack? Anna: Turns out the NASA guy I met was now issuing a series of top secret memos to some agent in a dark lying part of the CIA concerned with alien about the risks I posed should the info that we uncovered at the temple get out into the public domain. I was described as target number one, being still on the loose. Target number two, which I guess was Javier, in their words had been neutralised. The hazmat suits were rigged with some kind of drug that Javier had been breathing in all through his time in the temple but it didn’t trigger until he

ate. His meal contained the second part of the drug that killed him. It transpires that the drug release mechanism in my suit had failed which is why I’m still alive. ZWT: And this was all contained in these memos that your sister had found on the NASA mainframe? Anna: Well, let’s qualify this. The names given to us during the meetings we had with these guys were fake. ZWT: The names you didn’t want to tell me earlier on, the agent and the NASA guy who were in the room doing that presentation? Anna: Yes, those names. I don’t want to tell you them because if those names have been created specifically to identify me and prove I’m alive by showing up in an article somewhere then it could put us all in jeopardy. Can see why I’m cautious? ZWT: Of course I can, I totally get all of this, which is why I’m doing this interview. I’m still probably putting myself at risk just by talking with you now, but then journalism is full of inherent risks all the time. The truth can, in certain cases, cost lives. Anna: Anyway, Kate found these memos by using a deep dive key word search, something hackers tend to do when they want to find specific information on one of their subjects. The memos were in a part of the VPN that was designated top secret and used for encrypted internal messages between nominated groups of participants. This was highly protected stuff, serious shit, but somehow my sister and her gang of geeks managed to hack their way in and locate them.

ZWT: So she didn’t know their names until she found these memos? Anna: That’s right. The fact that the names given to Javier and I were fake when we met them meant I would have little or nothing to use when I got back here. If I’d gone to the authorities what could they say as technically these people didn’t exist? How could anyone even this most basic of information to corroborate my story? But of course that’s on the basis that I got back anyway, which we now know wasn’t in their plans. ZWT: And of course any journalist you approach would just think you’re basically part of the ongoing drip feed of info feeding the conspiracy theory press without any concrete evidence to your claims. So the case gets ridiculed in the mainstream press and everyone moves on to the next conspiracy. Anna: Correct. I don’t even know where the location of the temple is. ZWT: But now you have the internal memos to back you up. Anna: Yes, my sister screen grabbed as much as she could and sent it to me via an encrypted e-mail we had set up years ago. ZWT: So what’s stopping you going to the police? Anna: I don’t think my told you what’s happened recently did he?

ZWT: Well I think your was primarily sticking to the main points to ensure I would go through with this interview

––––––––

Anna: You see Kate is not only autistic but she’s my twin. And when I say twin we are impossible to tell apart aside from some of her behavioural issues due to her autism. ZWT: I didn’t know this Anna: And you also won’t be aware that Kate was killed in a hit and run accident not so long ago. ZWT: I’m sorry to hear that, how did you find out? Anna: I got a call from my father, Kate must have ed this number across to my parents with instructions on how to me. They would have known only to me in an emergency as I know Kate would have explained what was happening. I couldn’t talk directly to my parents as it would have freaked them out and caused them to panic into a decision that may have created more issues for me. ZWT:

It must have been awful to receive that call. I can’t imagine how you felt. Anna: Thing is Kate never really leaves the house unless she’s accompanied by either one or both of our parents, and even then she is rarely gone for more than an hour. She can’t cope without having someone familiar by her side but on this particular day she left the house without telling anyone and was never seen again. Both our parents are retired so I can’t understand why she did this. ZWT: And you think there’s a connection? Anna: There has to be, either that or it was a case of mistaken identity. Apparently the driver and car were not identified as it happened in a location where there’s no CCTV coverage, coincidence? No. Not in my opinion. ZWT: Mistaken identity is a real possibility but this only makes things worse if they were behind the crash and were in fact trying to silence you. Was it wise for your father to you given the situation? Anna: He had to let me know, the last thing my parents would have wanted was me finding out via the local press or another source. These cheap cellphones are hard to trace and we have a safe word set up to our identities. My parents knew the risk of kidnapping in the regions where we worked so were well versed in a set of protocols we would use in case anything like that happened. You have these protocols in place but hope you never have to use them. ZWT: What else did they say about your sister’s death? Anna:

Only that she seemed perturbed by something in the morning and must have left the house in a rush with nothing but a laptop in her rucksack. If Kate went anyway she would always take her rucksack and a laptop, it was like her safety blanket. ZWT: Did Kate have a phone on her? Anna: I don’t know, my father didn’t say what personal effects he recovered when he went to identify the body. But the phone itself is dead, nothing at all. I’m guessing that it either got destroyed in the crash or taken in order to try and garner some information from it but they won’t find anything, I know Kate would have been so careful with what was stored on it. ZWT: What else have your parents said? Anna: They keep seeing cars parked on the street that they don’t recognise. It’s a small town and this is the kind of area where you get to know who drives what, you know, nosy neighbours and all that. ZWT: When did this start happening? Anna: Just after my sister was killed. ZWT: Why haven’t your parents called the police? Anna:

Because they know the risks of the situation. Let’s assume this hit and run was perpetrated by the people behind this dig, if they’re capable of that what else are they capable of? My parents are well respected of the community, they’re visible, so they’re much harder to intimidate, unlike my sister who was rarely seen out and whose autism severely limited her life. Nathan (the intermediary): Ok, that’s enough for now. Anna, look at me, I’m going to count down from 10 and when I reach the number one I want you to return to a deep sleep. Ten....Nine....Eight....Seven....Six....Five....Four....Three.....Two.....One. And Sleep....

––––––––

ZWT: You weren’t kidding when you said her head is a mess full of disinformation. Nathan: There’s more, whoever did this has made a real mess of her head and was determined that she wound up in a padded cell for the rest of her life. Thankfully we got to her before they could inflict any more damage on that brain of hers. ZWT: Just from what she said, how reliable is this testimony? I mean it sounds.... Nathan: Crazy, doesn’t it? Believe me when I say her mind is far better than when we first started trying to bring her back from wherever they were trying to send her. ZWT:

So Cameron was......? Nathan: A figment of her imagination. He was designed to give them some sort of respite while they tried to go deep into her mind and re-write her memory in a way that made her come across as paranoid and untrustworthy. Cameron gave her a sense of security that she could equate to her surroundings and meant she felt safe and was less likely to resist the treatment or even try to escape. I mean this is scary stuff, you know, they basically re-wired her memories so she would appear to have a grasp of what happened but not enough to endanger their operations and yet just enough to..... ZWT: Make her look crazy to anyone who would spend time listening to her for long enough. She would effectively be dismissed as another attention seeking conspiracy fantasist. Nathan: Exactly. Without her testimony standing up in courtroom they knew they had no witnesses to be concerned with and could carry out their ongoing operations. ZWT: What about Javier? Was he a figment of her imagination? Nathan: No. Javier was very real. He died in an apparent mugging on a deserted road near one of the dig sites. He’d been shot as well, you know, just to make sure the job was done. We tracked down the crime via the local police force, such that it is and the one thing we did manage to establish was the timeline, it all tied in with when they both left the dig site in the Peten region and were taken to the other temple. The case is now closed. ZWT: Did you see if anyone could offer up a positive ID on the people who met them

at the dig site?

––––––––

Nathan: No. No one could recall seeing anything, the person managing the dig just recalls getting a text from Javier saying that he and Anna were off to another dig site for while and given this happens all the time no one thought anything of it. ZWT: So why not simply kill Anna? Nathan: What they didn’t know about Anna at the time of the initial approach is that she was the daughter of a retired senator who still had security protection and had access to people who could help him track down his step daughter. ZWT: Step daughter? Nathan: Yep, she kept her father’s surname and was therefore very hard to trace as she kept a very low profile and didn’t use the senator’s family name. Maybe it was an oversight but in their rush to find suitable candidates to investigate the site they didn’t connect that particular set of dots. ZWT: So what about her sister? Nathan:

There is no sister. ZWT: You mean they managed to make her believe she had a sister? Nathan: Yes, I don’t know what mix of drugs they were using but they created the sister character to instil a sense of fear and paranoia into Anna to prevent her from talking. They knew what they were doing, clearly they had done this before. ZWT: And I guess anyone who spent time interviewing her, that is without my prior knowledge, would have drawn the conclusion that she was fantasist. Nathan: The plan was hatched to discredit her as a potential witness to what she saw so the sister character and the way she believed Javier had died were all part of that plan. The more out there she came across the easier it would be to discredit her. ***Nathan stated that I am not permitted to publish any further parts of the conversation we had after this point***