Sitting across the desk from him.

"Are you going to help me look for him?" Nat asked Veronica after a long pause. "I'll get a whole team to help you. If Adam and three or four of his colleagues disappeared out there, we'll need a whole expedition team if we want to get there and back safely." Veronica replied.

It was a couple days of anxious waiting for Nat before Veronica greeted him at his hotel room door with the news that she'd gathered a team of about a dozen other archaeologists, navigators and wilderness experts. While on the smaller side, they agreed that it would be enough for a simple rescue mission. It wasn't long before they set off in search of their missing friend.

It took about a week for Nat, Veronica and their team to reach where the ruins were allegedly sighted. And, to Nat's disbelief, there was a chiseled stone edifice taking up a sizable portion of the 10-foot-high cliff of dirt and gravel they found themselves facing. Long vines grew down from the clifftop, partially obscuring the stonework and the understory plants were particularly thick surrounding the clearing at the base of the cliff. It was like the jungle itself was trying to hide the ruins. Nat went up to the stone wall and cut away some of the vines to get a better view of the carvings. They weren't quite like anything he'd seen before. They were similar to carvings created by the Inca, but were miles away from the Andes Mountains that they called home.

"This is surreal..." Nat said, as Veronica and a few others with the expedition joined him in investigation. "Yes, but it's also deeply disquieting. We've arrived at the ruins that Adam and his friends went to find, and we haven't found them yet. We're barely any closer to doing so than we were before we left Sao Paolo." Veronica said. "I... hadn't realized that..." Nat responded. A few minutes of worried contemplation went by before Nat spoke up, "I have a plan. Send say, half the team back to civilization. Tell them to get a real search and rescue team out here. The rest of us will stay here and investigate these ruins. We could have a massive breakthrough on our hands." Nat says. Veronica stares incredulously at Nat for a few seconds before leaving to disseminate the plan.