Chapter 1

On a hot August day, my father plucked me up like a weed and took all our belongings and went all the way from America to an ancient city called Angkor. He had landed a research job there.

I was shocked. I didn't want to spend my summer vacation in a remote area digging dirt. It was like going to a faraway land in a jungle.

Of course, I had no say in that. It was a blistering hot afternoon when our plane landed. The glaring sun hung high in the perfect blue sky. A few cottony clouds drifted over our heads. My dad and I gathered our luggage and loaded it onto a cart. We had packed almost everything we owned, and it made me a bit worried that we might actually plan to live here.

"Nikita, don't galumph around like that. You're in your mother's homeland at last! Isn't it great? Come on, smile!" Dad tried to cheer me up as we walked down the aisle together. My mom was born a native of South East Asia while my father was an American-born Russian descendant. My dad met her during a school trip to Cambodia over seventeen years ago. And this was the first time I get to see her homeland.

"Dad, give me a break." I gave him a bored look. "I think my brain has turned into a mash."

It was a long flight, and it felt like we were in a blender for hours. I hadn't recovered from the turbulence yet.

"Aw, don't be a little goose! Hurry up, the adventure awaits us!"

"I don't see how digging up dirt is an adventure," I murmured.

"Hey, archaeology is important, gooseberry," he told me. "It helps us understand who we are and where we come from. We may stumble through a tomb or any valuable thing from the past. You may see the great monument from a long distance blocking your vision. You may chance upon a lost sunken city in the ocean. We shall dig into the past to find how it all began and how it was done. Then we may see how our future is going to be. Without people like me, how would you know someone had founded a city starting with a single stone or a dead log?"

In case it wasn't clear, my father was one of the head archaeologists specialized in Asian Heritage Studies.

"Come on, dad," I groaned. "I'm not in the mood to learn a history lesson right now."

My father pouted at me. Don't get me wrong, we usually got along like a pair of oars. He was the only family I had in the whole wide world. When my mother was pregnant with me, he thought I would be a boy since I started kicking way too early. They thought I would grow up to be a kickboxer. Then my dad named me Nikita, which was supposed to be a boy name. It means 'unconquerable'. You couldn't find any girl named Nikita in Russia though. My mom wanted to name me Chandra, 'the light-bringer', which comes from a Hindu god of the moon since I was born on Monday. The two nouns ended up being my first and middle name respectively.

Instead, I was born a girl, and my mother died. My dad still didn't change a single thing. He didn't change my boy name or replace his broken heart. I knew he still loved my mother although a lot of single ladies had expressed their willingness to be his life partner. He was handsome even in his early forties, always clean-shaven. He loved wearing his old fedora hat and knee-high boots like his favorite American movie star in Indiana Jones. Even though I was born a girl, it didn't stop him from including me in all sorts of adventures, most of which were considered 'unlady-like'.

Unfortunately, there was no more project funding for his future research, so we both settled into a dull existence in America. Dad worked at a small museum. He didn't mind it though and always quoted Bukowski's words, 'Find what you love and let it kill you.'

Then just out of the blue, my father got a phone call from his old friend, who sent him some documents on a rare find from a medieval city — famously known as Angkor City. Before I knew it, we ended up at the Phnom Penh International Airport three days later.

The air was hot and humid outside. I could grow crops with my sweat. As I stumbled along with my heavy luggage, my dad was frowning over the map.

"Dad, you're not helping me!" I huffed, trying to push our rickety cart.

"I'm holding a bag of your coloring books, darling," he reminded me, jerking the brown satchel on his shoulder, and let me tell you— that was literally the only bag he was carrying.

"They're my art supplies, not coloring books, and you're still not helping me," I replied. "So where are we going to stay?"

"My colleague has booked us a hotel room," he said over his broad shoulder. "It's about half an hour drive from here. We're going to be in the city for a couple days before I head straight to work."

"I'm in need of some nice cold lemonade," I said, pushing my blonde hair out of my face and fanning myself by plucking my collar shirt.

"Don't be a little goose, Nikita, come on!" he said. "We're almost there."

He raised his hand to a taxi driver on the other side of the parking lot. The taxi driver drove his beat-up Toyota towards us. A small man in a white dress shirt and Khaki pants jumped out.

"Where are you going, sir?" the man spoke in accented English. Dad unfolded his map of the modern city and squinted over it for what seemed like forever. He was an archaeologist who could read ancient maps like the back of his hand, but he was hopeless with the current cities. I used to tease him that his mind belonged in the ruins and not the modern world.

"Just give it to me, Dad," I said and grabbed the map from him. I found the location in a blink of an eye then showed the address to the taxi driver. His face lit up in recognition.

"Oh, yes!" the driver said. "Nice hotel and nice view! I can show you around the city if you like. Are you here on a vacation?"

"No, thank you, sir," Dad said. "We're not here on a holiday or anything."

"Oh so you're not visiting the temples then?" the driver asked again while he was loading our belongings into the trunk.

"Actually, I'm doing an archaeological research project here."

"A research project? Oh, I see! A lot of people seem to flock into the country after the latest discovery at Angkor last month," the man said. "They did this airborne laser scan thing and found some traces of alien activities..."

"Er...maybe we should get moving, sir," my dad said to change the subject.

"Oh, right!" the driver hurried to open the door for us.

We got inside the car. The engine roared to life then we left the airport. But along the way, I couldn't stop thinking about what the taxi driver had said.

"Dad," I asked him in a whisper. He looked at me. "What was it about the alien thing?"

"That's just some whacky hypotheses about an ancient spiral near the old city, Nikita," he told me in a low voice. "Don't pay it any mind."

"An ancient spiral?"

"Well, it's some kind of an old stone discus we've found," he added with a shrug. "We still don't know what that spiral is exactly. That's why I'm here. But don't worry; I'm sure it doesn't have anything to do with aliens. I just have to work out what the object is with my team."

I didn't expect much from this trip, but this started to get real interesting. Yet the main reason I came here was buried deep under a pile of unsaid things, I want to see my mother's homeland. It was where she was born and raised as a young girl.

For some reason, I had a feeling that this adventure was going to turn my ordinary life on its head.