The relic resting in the glass depression didn’t belong to the mortal world.
It was an equilateral triangle, exactly four inches on each side and half an inch thick, forged from an unfamiliar, rainbow-bright white-gold-palladium alloy that seemed to swallow the afternoon sunlight. Its three sharp corners were beveled at thirty-degree angles. Its flat faces were inscribed with tiny Precursor circuitry that glowed with a faint, steady sapphire-blue soft glow.
Unlike the daemon that had carried it, the triangle felt warm to the touch.
Lin Tao knelt upon the glass-fused rock, extending his bare right hand. He didn’t grab the relic right away. His SRE instincts were too deeply ingrained to handle unknown hardware without proof. He held the star-white-gold needle of his land-mapper metal pen half an inch above the three-sided face.
A burst of crisp, blue tracking data flooded his test left eye.
“A Root Access Token,” Lin Tao whispered, his fingers closing around the warm metal.
The metal felt unnervingly smooth, possessing a thickness far greater than lead or gold. Lin Tao lifted the three-sided token from the glassy stone. Then, a subtle, rhythmic shaking pulsed through the white-gold alloy, synchronizing right away with the a deep hum refresh cycle of his optic screen.
