Nine Swords

Jenn smacked the coffee table next to her laptop and sent her mug of coffee wobbling along like a demented, fluidic zombie. She caught it with one hand before it fell over or sloshed too much out. Tom and his Ikea furniture. It was out to get her. Feeble coffee table...

She shut her laptop, unplugged it, and stared at it for a few minutes. She took a sip of her coffee before she plugged the thing back in and started it up again.

She called up the file she'd been working on... the images of the artifact casket... specifically, the close-up serial frames of the text itself. She'd been trying to work through the translation completely. If they were going to go to Hell for this thing, she needed to know what she was looking for.

And... “Feck it!” Whack. Slosh. K-9 and Kat were watching from under the table by the door. The cats had retreated there as soon as Jenn started cursing at the laptop a half-hour ago. It was possible they were just lurking, waiting for Tom to come home so they could ambush him and demand bacon. It was more likely they were just getting out of the blast radius when Jenn got fed up.

She stared at the laptop a while longer... tried changing images... but it was no good. There was some sort of corruption in the files. The images were hopelessly pixelated over some of the glyphs. For feck's sake, it almost looked like a ghostly Mickey Mouse floating over one section.

She left the laptop sitting there, with the images pulled up, and stalked away to fish her mobile out of her jacket pocket. The jacket was draped over the table by the door where Tom usually disarmed when he came home. Apparently, Ikea didn't stock weapons racks or he'd have had one there instead of this square-legged, light oak... thing.

Hitting a speed dial code, Jenn gave the cats a baleful glare as they slunk off toward the kitchen when she invaded their table. “Traitors!”

“The number you have attempted cannot be reached. It may be out of our service range.”

“Bloody marvelous!!!” She snapped the phone shut. He could be in Romania, where service was spotty at best. He could be across the town picking up a taco at the Haitian Market. There were a few murky spots there where mobile signals simply refused to penetrate. Who was she kidding? With the discount carrier the Templars seemed to have shifted to lately, he could be downstairs having a sandwich in the lobby.

She grabbed a piece of paper from the printer as she walked back to the couch. Rescuing a pen from her pile of notes, she scrawled:

Files are fried. Need to get another set of survey scans of the glyphs.

She thought about her audience...

Pictures of the ducks and snakes. Taking my phone. You're somewhere off the grid. If you've slunk to New York for a pizza, there'd best be leftovers when I get back.

She left the note on the table by the door. Hopefully he'd see it before he dropped a shotgun, six pistols, four knives, a sword and hells knew what else on it.

She looked down at herself. Oversize t-shirt she may or may not have stolen from someone's closet. Jeans. She shoved her feet into a pair of running shoes she'd left by the door, without unlacing them, and grabbed her shoulder bag... the black hole of women's accessories. She shoved her phone in the bag and yelled at the cats not to get at the couch again as she closed the door behind her.

Tom stared intently down at the field in front of him. He was perched up on a rock, blending in with the shadow cast by the trees above him. He pulled the hood of his hoodie up over his face, keeping the rain from trickling down his nose. It all felt very assassin's creed to him. Still, probably a bad idea to try and jump down into that hay bale down there. The fall might hurt him about as much as Mr. Auditore, but there was the small matter of the gaggle of vampires just milling around. He could probably take three or four, but the half dozen there would stretch his limits.

And those were just the close ones. The fields were practically littered with the undead. Creepy bastards with a Nazi Germany fetish somehow impossibly mixed with a steampunk flair. It looked like a damn nerd convention down there, except he knew all the guns were real. He could probably hit a few of them from here if he had a rifle, but he hadn't brought one with him.

It didn't really matter, he was here to recon anyway. From what he could see the vampires had settled in for the long haul. On one hand that was good, it meant they wouldn't be moving on the town any time soon. On the other hand, it meant they weren't doing a very good job of driving them all out. He slowly slid back away from the ridge and stood, wiping his muddy hands on his pants. There would be no slaughter today, he just had to report back to the town defenders and head home. Maybe they could breathe easy for a night.

Say one thing about Wes, he had an amazing monitor tan. He had re-read the last few lines of text at least three times without registering their meaning. The cool, baleful glow of the monitor cast odd shadows over the ancient text before him. He sighed deeply. The long hours of research in the library were finally taking their toll.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and then placed a hand on his arm as he rolled his shoulder with a vague yawn. Between researching Bryn's mysterious stalker and even more mysterious family tree and Jenn's literal Highway to Hell, he wasn't sure when he had last seen daylight. He knew he had been there for most of the day, but the dim light of the room suggested it was now well past dusk. While he had acquired a few new tidbits of information, he wasn't sure it was worth bothering Jenn over.

Sighing, Wes closed the book and switched off the terminal. No reason to disturb her evening. He hoped she was having a relaxing night free for at least a bit from the recent turmoil. An early start tomorrow was likely in order and he still had to stop at the shops on the way home.

Still, there was a nagging concern about one passage, "Unmake not by breaking, but by taking that which it desires least and feeding it a double measure." The verse was likely irrelevant and seemed to be more of a footnote than anything else. Ah well, he would let Jenn judge for herself. It was a long tube ride home and typical London weather wasn't going to let up just to see him get to the station without a sound drenching.

Jenn dodged in through the sliding doors in the glass-and-metal front facade of Edwards' London R&D labs. She stood just inside the doors, dripping.

“Miss Jennison?” The Security Night Chief had just come on duty. He looked up from his review of the screens behind the front desk and arched an eyebrow at the site of the boss' daughter standing in an ever-growing puddle. “Bit damp outside, still?”

“No, Pat, I took a quick dip in the fountain before I popped in for a chat.” She gave him only a mock glare that ended in a soggy grin. She shook her head briefly, spraying water out of her hair in every direction.

Pat winced and hit the intercom. “Can we get maintenance up here? Jenn's sprung a leak in the lobby.”

“Very funny.” Jenn fished in her shoulder bag and dragged out a brush. She was tugging wet snarls out of her hair as she walked over to the front desk, her tennis shoes squelching on the marble floor tiles. “Daddy in the shop this week?”

“No ma'am.” Pat reached under the desk and tossed a small towel at Jenn. “Bucharest I think.”

She ruffled her hair nearly into liberty spikes with the towel before dropping the damp thing back on the other side of the desk. Pat caught it before it landed on the monitors and shorted out half the building. “Great. Maybe he'll bring me a stuffed... er, what do they stuff in Bucharest? Bears? Stuffed bear.”

Behind Jenn, a long-suffering maintenance man with a bucket and a mop started soaking up water off the now-slick marble floor as she brushed her hair back down, spraying more water on the floor. She smiled brightly at him over her shoulder, then turned back to the desk.

“I've got to get into the sublevel lab that I had locked off.” She shoved her hairbrush back into her shoulder bag. “Have we done a radiation check down there yet? I'm having trouble with corrupted video files from the digital cameras.”

Pat nodded, leaning down to key in some information on the computer directly in front of him. “Got a negative on the full spectrum we check for. Should be clean down there.” He looked up again. “Still locked to you. You want company?”

“No!” She shook her head rapidly. “No... that floor and the one above and below should still be locked down to the access list I gave you. Strictly Templar, and only that list. The biometrics on Daddy's lab are still set to me only, neh?” She leaned over the counter to peer at the screens.

“Since you hadn't ordered differently, of course they are, oh Jenn of little faith.” He grinned at her.

She gave him one of those lightning-flash smiles. “You're the best, Pat! Going to head downstairs.”

“I'll release the main core elevator for you.”

Cats. Cats everywhere.

Tom stepped gingerly around the felines, doing his best to avoid crunching any toes or tails as the cats reciprocated by making his life very difficult. By the time he got to the table where he usually left all his weaponry, he had already had enough narrow misses to make him shoo them off with a shake of his foot. He picked up the white sheet on the table and read it. "Damnit Jenn," he grumbled, "That's exactly what you're not supposed to do." He pulled out his phone and checked it, noticing a missed call. At least she had tried to reach him.

He only paused long enough to grab a Dew from the fridge before heading back out. He wondered if the local taxi service would even know where "Edwards Arms" was.

Squelch, squelch squelch. She wasn't going to be sneaking up on anyone tonight.

“Pat, I almost forgot...”

Jenn leaned on the front desk again. Pat automatically reached for another small towel under the desk for when she vacated her spot.

Jenn's brow was scrunched up a bit. She had so many things on her mind, she'd nearly let this one slip. “Do we have an empty lab on the first floor that we could re-do tomorrow as a visitors' suite? The way we do when we've got someone visiting who needs some extra security? Inner room, simulated windows only...the usual drill?”

Pat tapped a few keys and nodded. “Can do. I'll have A36 set up first thing in the morning. Any special requirements?” He made notes on the system for maintenance and security.

“Perfect. And yes. Make it obscenely comfortable. Stock a small wet-bar. Snacks. Small fridge. Big flatscreen, and a full set of Dr. Who on blue-ray.” She tried to remember anything else while Pat gave her an odd look.

“Planning an all-night study session?”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “It's not for me. Oh, that reminds me! I'll be bringing in my friend Bryn to get her security set up and her thumbprint and retina on file for the door. Can you key the external -and- internal locks on that lab to her when I do, please? Biometrics and a voice code you can work out with her. We'll need security override of course.”

“You want us to lock it so no one can get in... or out... without the code?” He was professional enough, he didn't quite let the 'wtf' out.

“Sha, perfect! Ta, Pat!” She shuffled off toward the elevator again. Squelch, squelch, squelch.

Tom stepped out of the sleek black automobile. Turns out it didn't matter if the cab service knew where Edwards Arms was. The Templars did, and there were a few perks that came with rank. Like having a private car service. Tom popped open the umbrella that had been left on the back seat for him and leaned in to thank the driver before heading towards the big fancy doors to the building. He always felt like he was stepping into somewhere he was unwelcome in whenever he came to Edwards. Kind of like a bank.

Once inside, he closed the umbrella and set it by the door, not wanting to drip water all over their polished lobby. He stared at the metal detector. "I'm heavily armed." He commented, looking to the security desk, "Just so it's not a surprise." Without Jenn around, he would probably have to turn over his weaponry before they would let him in. So he just started dumping it all in one of the bins. Shotgun, pistols, knives, a pair of brass knuckles, the list went on for a while.

"I take it Jenn got here before I did?" He asked after his third time setting off the metal detector, stepping back through, and removing some other dangerous object from his person. "I believe she's expecting me. Can you have her paged or something?"

Wes stood, sodden, at the tube station. He had *just* missed the last train and had a bit of a wait until the next one. Was Jenn serious about that Ferrari? Nah, where would he park it anyway? Besides, he had seen enough episodes of Top Gear to know that London's back streets were not friendly to expensive Italian suspensions. Well, while he waited he might as well be productive. He could grab the cream for Taibhse at the shop near his flat so...
Wes keyed in the text and sighed. Still the appeal of a bright red Ferrari... He shook his head but was almost immediately distracted by an attractive ebony skinned woman wearing all red. It was almost like someone had thrown a ball in front of an eager Beagle...

Jenn stepped out on the third floor underground in the Edwards complex. She paused just outside the elevator. The hallway was much darker than usual. She had max security on this level now, and they were using infrared as well as other spectrum sensors. The other labs on the floor were shut down, so there was no need to keep the working lights up.

She wasn't sure if it was the dim lighting, or just knowing what was down the hallway in her father's lab that made her so nervous. She just wanted to get these pictures and get out of here.

Her phone buzzed in her shoulder bag an she nearly screamed. “Feck, feck...” She fished around for the phone and checked the text message. Keying in a response gave her one more reason to delay going down that hallway.
The texts looked fine when she sent them, anyway.

*******

Pat watched patiently, letting the young man unload enough hardware to protect a G8 summit. He smiled placidly through the whole process... his public smile. He didn't even mutter, 'we're going to need a bigger bin'.

He nodded, politely, as Tom went back through the metal detector time and again and returned time and again to voluntarily remove some other device or weapon he hadn't removed yet. Through all this, Pat smiled patiently.

When Tom finished, Pat nodded to the request to page Jennison. “She's down in the main lab on sub-level 3. I'll let her know you're on your way. Mr. Jackson, you do know you're cleared for the whole building? As you come in the door?” Pat slid the bin...and the shotgun and the pistols and everything else that wouldn't fit...back toward Tom across the counter. “I'll unlock the core elevator for you when you're ready, sir. Again, sub-level 3.”

Tom stared at the man. "Oh, right then."

He set about putting all of his stuff back on. It took him a while to get all the straps criss-crossed just the right way again, and to get all the weapons to sit just so against his body. Eventually he was satisfied though, and headed towards the elevator. "Really? The whole building?" He muttered to himself, stepping in and pressing the button to send him down to sub-level 3. "That just seems like a bad decision."

When the elevator doors opened again, he stared down the dark hallway, hair on the back of his neck rising. He had seen too many horror movies that started like this. He resisted the urge to ready his shotgun and use the flashlight on the barrel to light up his way. "Jenn," He called down the hallway. He stopped briefly to look through a few windows into various labs on the level. The guy had said that Tom had full access, but he didn't see anything that made him curious enough to risk horrible science-lab death.