Without hesitation you pick the work "release" hoping that it'll at least save your father from any further torture.
You watch on the screen as the left hand of your captor holds the fish by the head. The other hand now comes into view holding a razor blade.
Fearing the worst, you scream "I chose to release him you bastard!" You watch in horror as the blade brought towards your father's head. His tail thrashes helplessly as the blade is used to scratch into the fish's armored head, right in front of his eyes. You hear the rough noise of scrapings against the armored head. The hands then move away, revealing the letters MA clearly etched there. M.A. Your father's initials.
The hands now lift the fish up as it writhes slowly, then the screen goes black.
It seems like an hour passes before the screen goes on again, showing the fish now on a metal table, with some wires climbed onto it with alligator clamps. Behind the wires lead to a metallic machine about the size of a boom box, with various dials and digital numbers on it. You watch as the hands of your captor fiddles with the device, setting one of the parameters to "400,000,000", and another to a series of numbers that appear to be GPS coordinates.
The hands then flip a switch on the device, causing it to emit a hissing electrical sound. A visible surge of electrical energy shoots down the wires, into the fishes body, making it convulse. You can only watch as your father's armored body glows a bright yellow as he thrashes around, electrical pulses flowing into him. The glowing gets brighter and brighter, until finally the machine shuts off with a crack and a sudden blinding light.
For a moment you're dazed by the flash on the screen. When your vision finally recovers, the fish has completely disappeared.
You look around trying to figure out what happened. Oh god, was he just vaporized???
"Don't worry, he was just transported elsewhere. Released, as you wished", the digitized voice announces overhead.
"It took months for me to find him," the voice continues. "I've waited a couple decades to finally gift this specimen back to its rightful owner".
What the hell are is he talking about?
Several moments of silence pass.
Then you hear the sound doorway being opened up from behind you. Still tied you are unable to turn your head and look.
A metal wheeled table is pushed out in front of you. There appears to be a large slab of rock sitting on top of it, propped up like a display. In the corner near you read a rectangular piece of paper reading:
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Cephalaspis magnificans
around 400 million years old
Early Devonian
Scotland, discovered in 1983
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You examine the slab of rock, which you now realize is a fossil. In the center is the fossilized outer shape of an ancient creature with a wide arrow-shaped head, with a long tapering tail. There's two distinctive eye holes in the middle.
Then, to your horror, you see the following unnatural marking on its head: the letters MA