by Bianca James
Shaking his head to clear away the errant thoughts which clawed at the edges of his concentration, he withdrew something that looked like it might easily have been the demon love child of a Star Trek phaser and a Home Depot impact driver, from his pack. It was then that he noticed the fine dusting of hair on his arms standing upright. A primal response to danger, as yet, unseen. But nonetheless real.
Chapter 2
Four levels below Bryce and his clandestine excursion across the brightly lit glass roof, deep in the bowels of the museum, Saira Rolton hunched over the display of her labs latest acquisition, a Tracer III series XRF. The state-of-the-art spectrometer had only recently been donated to the museum by an anonymous, but extremely generous donor. The only caveat to the donation was that it be used, in first instance, to research the provenience of the legendary Hoxne Hoard in an effort to supplement the meager body of archaeological knowledge surrounding the true geographic and anthropological origins of the treasure.
With over 14,000 gold, silver and bronze Roman coins from the 3rd and 4th century to analyze, it was a daunting, repetitive and somewhat lackluster task, yet Saira volunteered to process the treasure, coin by painstaking coin, during the evenings, after she had signed off for the day. Stringent budget cuts had meant there was no possibility of being paid overtime, yet she felt drawn to the treasure in a way she didn’t fully understand. She had simply felt an overwhelming impulse to take on the task, regardless of the disruption to her personal life.
Then again, Saira didn’t have much of a social life anyway and dropping ancient Roman coins, one at a time, into the spectrometer, like it was a glorified slot machine, was as good an excuse not to go home to an empty flat as any other.
“Who knew, kitty?” She stroked the neck of the cat sleeping on the adjacent chair as she used her free hand to punch the code for the machine to begin its startup sequence. “Three years at Oxford and another working on my thesis just so I could play the slots with Roman coins,” she mused to the purring cat.
The napping cat opened one eye before stretching lazily and exposing its belly for more attention. That innocent display of trust reminded her how far the poor little thing had come from the time she found it on the cold, wet balcony of her Fetter Lane flat in Covent Garden.
Son of a b —
Her anger flared and she balled her fists at the thought of the monster who had abused the helpless kitten before tossing it over their balcony to it’s almost certain death. Tears shone in her eyes as she pictured the tiny ball of fur which, though nothing more than pure chance, had landed on her terrace instead of the street many stories below. Soaking wet, shivering with one eye protruding from its socket from infection and a broken leg, the tiny creature was lucky to survive and it adapted very quickly to the loss of one eye.
Saira had never had a pet before and had never felt any real desire to have one in her life, but when the vet couldn’t find a foster home for the little one eyed mite, the thought of it being …
She couldn’t even finish the thought. Tears began to well in her eyes. At the same time, though, Saira could never bring herself to acknowledge the attachment or bond she felt with the kitten. Then or now. Naming it would forge a bond she wasn’t prepared to share. If she didn’t name it, she could pretend she didn’t care what happened to it. Better that way. Better not to become too attached. That sort of thing only led to heartache and pain. So, kitty became its moniker and in Saira’s head, she hadn’t named him, wasn’t responsible for him and was only minding him until she found a permanent home for him. Neither she nor the cat believed any of that for a second, though.
One of the perks of working in the catacombs as the researchers referred to the maze of underground tunnels and laboratories, was that both her boss and the occasional security guard on his rounds, would turn a blind eye to their resident ‘cat lady’ bringing her furry friend into the lab when she was to work after hours on the legendary Hoxne treasure. And that was most evenings, as it happened.
Not that the curvaceous, twenty-something Saira was the typical single girl with a house full of cats, but work colleagues, could be insensitive, bordering on cruel, when labelling co-workers with nicknames. Saira didn’t do herself any favors, either, with her disinterest in making idle conversation with the other postdoctoral research fellows within the confines of the catacombs and her adamant refusal to accept social invitations of any kind from her colleagues, not even the obligatory drinks at the Museum Tavern on a Friday night after work. She didn’t really see the point. As a researcher, she was paid to conduct the research assigned by her boss and that didn’t include anthropological studies of mindless, mundane office gossip. Nor did she feel the need to socialize with a bunch of people she wouldn’t be spending time with if not for her need to work within the confines of the museum.
The highly romanticized notion of spending months at a time, alone on the African veldt or among the rugged mountains and steep sided fjords of Norway, exploring and seeking to uncover the many secrets of ancient cultures, was her key reason for choosing archaeology in the first place. By the time she graduated, though, the high cost of operating dig sites for any but the most significant and the political instability in many countries rich with archaeological treasure had crushed her dream. But not her spirit. Deep within her, she knew she had the ability to pursue her own path and make her own discoveries. She knew her time to shine would come. That thought alone kept her going through the long hours of work and study. ‘Live like it’s your last day on earth. Study and work like it’s your first,’ her grandmother used to say.
“I’ve got the study and work bit down, thanks Gran. Still working on the living part,” she mumbled to herself, eliciting brief look of displeasure from kitty at yet another interruption.
For now, though, she was stuck feeding old coins into a machine. All 14,865 of them. One at a time. Insert artifact. Press scan button. Record results against the coins registration number. Remove coin. Insert next artifact. Saira would have been the first to admit the whole process wasn’t nearly exciting as it sounded but she was in between research projects and this repetitive task gave her an opportunity to consider what her next project might be. Of course, there was a little academic prestige in being the one to perform, for the very first time in history, a spectrographic analysis of a collection of coins and other treasures in a hoard that had been valued at over four million dollars.
At least here in the seclusion and solitude of her lab, she no longer had to contend with the attentions of her former professor as he pretended to mentor her in her research into the use of x-ray fluorescence (XRF) to analyze the elemental composition of ancient coins. Her theory and the basis of her research paper, was that by identifying and mapping the elemental distribution of a particular coin and mapping it against the ore deposits from which the base metals were derived, it might be possible to not only identify the geographic origin of the coin, but to also map and better understand trade and anthropological patterns of movement over time based on where the coins were later found by archaeologists.
Her hands balled into fists once more as she recalled seeing her professor’s smug face plastered all over the Oxford Journal of Archaeology when his research into XRF analysis and ancient coins was published as a ground breaking paper in the prestigious journal.
Not only had the bastard stolen her work product and published it as his very own, but she’d been stupid enough to let the man talk himself into her bed and take her —
Bastard! She shivered at the thought of his hands on her naked skin. The way he told her how much he enjoyed her soft curves. And she stupidly allowed herself to believe him. Worse, she felt herself falling in love with him.
Bastard!
He used his prowess as a man to break down her physical barriers and his academic position to build her own esteem to the point that she willingly shared her work with him in order to win his approval. And approve he did, right up until the time he put his name to the
young grad students work and published it to the scientific community as his own.
Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!
Shrugging herself out of the restrictive lab coat that HR deemed mandatory apparel during the workday, she untucked the oversized “My Life Is In Ruins” T-Shirt she’d purchased online from an archaeology equipment supplier with a sense of humor, and settled herself down to begin her nights work. She hoped the monotony of the night would serve its purpose once more and rid her thoughts of the wretched man.
The machine beeped at last, indicating that it had completed its self-diagnostic and calibration procedures and was ready to be fed its first meal of ancient Roman coinage of the night, a silver coin, minted, according to the museum records, in Milan around 400BC.
With a barely audible hum, the machine scanned the first coin and within minutes, a graphic and digital display appeared on the screen. All results were uploaded to the museum mainframe in real time, but as a backup, the results were also entered manually into a spreadsheet. This was the first time such an analysis of the Hoxne Hoard had been conducted and Saira held her breath as the results began to scroll across the screen.
As soon as the analysis was complete, the machine sounded a chime and the results froze on the screen.
Saira began to doubt she had calibrated the machine correctly and immediately started to reboot the system ready to perform the analysis once more.
That’s impossible, she thought as she glanced at the data for this particular coin. There’s no way this could be here if it was was minted in Anti —
Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted when kitty sprang from his prone position in the chair. Back arched, fur standing on end and teeth bared, kitty began hissing and snarling at the air condition duct inset into the wall on the far side of the lab.
“What the hell . . .?”
Chapter 3
Bryce straddled across the metal frame and touched the surface of the glass with his fingertips. Each pane of glass was stippled with small dots to reduce what the architects referred to as solar gain. Essentially, they prevented the Grade 1 listed heritage site becoming a giant green house and cooking the occupants and temperature sensitive exhibits within it.
But this glass panel was different. The fritting process applied to this particular panel wasn’t designed to filter out ultra violet rays, instead, each stippled dot was actually a micro drill hole, created by an Ultrashort-Pulsed Laser or USPL during the manufacturing process. A decade ago, Bryce hacked the firewall of the glass manufacturer and embedded a Trojan Horse code into their system, expressly engineered to manufacture this one glass panel different to the other 3,311 panels in the spectacular and majestic glass roof.
Bryce wasn’t your usual smash and grab artist. In fact, he wasn’t even the archetypical thief, in that he had the patience and planning skills to play the long game. A very long game. After all, he could afford to. His kind lived a lot longer than most and had a different perception of time to most people. But it always came down to one thing — the acquisition of treasure. His treasure. If there was one thing that caught the attention of a dragon shifter, it was the lure of treasure long lost to his ancestors. The treasure of a dragon’s clan belonged to the clan and its members for all time. That had been a fundamental tenet of dragon law since ancient times.
With that thought foremost in his mind, Bryce powered up the pistol shaped device he held in his hand and began to use the custom built, miniature Multi Laser Beam Absorption (MLBA) device to create thermally induced cracks in the glass, from one stippled dot to the next. No other cutting method could circumvent the array of heat and vibration sensors that monitored each and every panel in the roof structure. While the budget for security guards might have been cut back by a bureaucratic fiscal razor gang, it seemed that there was always an abundance of funding for high tech security, starting with the multitude of state-of-the-art sensors in the very roof of the world’s first national public museum.
Bryce allowed his eyes to shift into their dragon form, enabling him to better see the results of the MLBA’s handiwork. The vertically elongated irises, although evolved through the eons to improve predatory hunting skills also served just as efficiently to view the microscopic cracks. He was pleased with the results.
“Works just like a bought one,” Bryce whispered with a sigh of relief as he said it. Although he’d paid one of his associates to build the device, the design was his and there had been no time for shakedown trials. Time was of the essence.
Before completing the micro fracture pattern around the perimeter of the glass, Bryce attached a spider-like device with a large suction cup for a body and smaller cups at the ends of its 5 robotic legs. With only the slightest whisper of escaping air, the spidery looking apparatus, another of Bryce’s high tech creations, flattened itself onto the glass and gripped it without the slightest vibration or sound. Now he was free to complete the surgical incision around the glass while holding it aloft with his other hand.
“So far, so good,” he whispered to himself. Just because he always preferred to work alone didn’t mean he didn’t miss having someone to talk to when he was on a job.
Finally the glass was free of its metal frame and was laid, ever so delicately, atop another adjacent piece of glass. In theory, the displaced section of glass should not have registered on the sensors as the weight of that section of the roof remained constant.
An approaching flashlight beam from a nearby gallery dispelled that carefully crafted theory. The erratic bobble of the powerful beam suggested that the bearer of the flashlight was moving with a sense of urgency and purpose. This was no sluggish security guard going about his rounds or making his way to share a quiet smoke with a colleague.
Bryce braced himself in the gap from which the glass panel had been removed, ready to drop below and fight or make his escape above. He had only two options — fight or flight. That’s all dragons knew. The time to decide which was fast approaching.
The beam of the flashlight stopped still before beginning a methodical grid search of the roof canopy above. Each sweep brought it closer to Bryce’s precarious position.
Maybe there’s a third option. His perfect, cupid bow lips tightened into a smirk that toyed with the mischievous gleam in his eyes.
Chapter 4
The darkness crushed him like a physical force. The constriction of the impossibly narrow tunnel wasn’t helping, either, but the total lack of any light whatsoever felt even more oppressive than the steel tube which seemed to mold itself around his not insignificant girth. He tried valiantly to control his erratic breathing as he cursed the small Maglite that hung from his belt. With his arms outstretched trying to claw his way forward, he had no way to reach it and regretted not being better prepared before the larger air conditioning ducts branched into much smaller pipes. With barely enough room to use his legs to push himself forward and nowhere near enough purchase on the smooth steel ducting for his hands to fare much better, a sudden thought struck him.
I’m going to die in this fucking pipe.
As the morbid thought brought him to the brink of panic, his breathing became more desperate, accentuating the narrowness of the steel tube in which he was now trapped. The more he struggled, the more labored his breathing, the tighter the pipe gripped him, like a boa constrictor squeezing the last breathe from his burning lungs. It felt like the weight of the entire building was crushing down on him. Despite the total darkness, spots swam before his eyes due to oxygen deprivation as panic and irrational thoughts tightened their grip on him.
He imagined himself dying and rotting in the air conditioning system, not being found until maintenance workers were called to investigate the source of the putrid, gagging stench that filled the museum galleries from the many innocuous vents that were scattered throughout the building.
The Circle was paying him generously, but not nearly generously enough for this kind of shit. And certainly not nearly enough to die slowly of suffocatio
n in a dark, steel coffin. He tried to push himself backward, toward the more expansive pipework in the hope of being able to escape his assigned task. Then he realized that although he might escape the confines of his current predicament, he could never hope to escape from The Circle. Failure was dealt with harshly by the Circle leadership. As much to punish those who failed as a tool to foster a greater level of motivation from those chosen to perform critical tasks. And his task was the single most critical task assigned in many hundreds of years.
Cringing, he thought of the last member to fail an assignment. The horrendous screams of agony over the incessant buzzing of the rotating saw blade. And the blood. So much blood. He could almost smell the coppery odor of the fine mist of it that filled the air as they were forced to watch what happened to those who failed to complete their mission. Being showered with and breathing in someone else’s blood wasn’t something you forgot in a hurry. Or ever, for that matter. Perhaps asphyxiation in a darkened pipe wasn’t so bad after all. He slumped and resigned himself to his fate, finally letting go of his dreams of fame and recognition for his discovery. No one would even know that he’d been the one to find that which had eluded so many for two thousand years.
That’s when he heard the eerie wail of some unidentifiable creature echoing though the darkness, assaulting his ears with a piercing pitch that made his skin crawl, like fingernails across a blackboard.
The horrific sound shook him from his morbid contemplation. He might still make it, despite feeling right royally wedged around the belly. He blamed his new Nigella Lawson cookbook for that.
Perhaps he’d shed a few pounds sweating it out in the dark metal tube or maybe he simply buckled and contorted the thin steel pipe into submission, either way, he felt something give and his frantic scrambling moved him forward an inch. Then another. Suddenly, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Figuratively and literally.
