I do not own Warehouse 13 or any other references made or thought to have been made.
Pete and Myka entered Artie's office through the Umbilicus in their normal fashion…arguing.
"I told you, I did not eat your croissant. It was probably some birds." Pete defended as Myka stormed past Artie, who had turned from the computer to see the argument that had arrived.
"So you didn't use the excuse of us seeing the artifact to steal the one part of my lunch that I specifically said I wanted!" Myka retaliated.
"No." Pete tried to say calmingly as he noticed Myka getting to her limit between anger and rage.
"Hey, hey, hey, hold on now," Artie interrupted. He had his glasses up in his hair and he was wearing his rugged brown coat, as always. "Forget about the French pastry for a minute, did you get it?" The gleam suddenly appeared in his eyes, the gleam of a collector who just found another piece to add to the horde that was his obsession.
"Of course we did." Pete lifted the wrapped item out of his duffel bag gently. "The Codex Magia, an actual spell book that can do magic." Pete threw a joyful smile at Myka who was still staring at him angrily.
"The book was actually made to hold what was believed to be a language whose words held the power of the elements. For the sake of archiving the language so it wouldn't be lost, the words were printed in a book and then hidden so the Words of Power could never be used. It was actually amazing what some claimed could be…" Artie stopped midsentence as he headed into the Warehouse to put it on a shelf, he stopped and turned towards Pete who suddenly looked scared at Artie's perfected 'interrogation face.
"What?" Pete asked.
"Did you read any of the spells in this book?" Artie had a feeling as to what the answer was, but he had to make sure.
"No I didn't." Pete said crossing his arms over his chest feeling proud.
"Because I wouldn't let him." Myka said leaning against the back wall. Pete stuck out his tongue at her in a very childish, and very Pete, sort of way.
"Thank goodness. Good work Myka." Artie walked back towards the Warehouse with a relieved sigh.
"What about me?" Pete called, wanting some appreciation.
"You get a compliment when you don't try to use the artifacts for your own pleasure." Artie said as he walked down the stairs.
After a few moments of silence, in which Pete had a grumpy look, Myka said quietly, "Karma for a croissant."
"I didn't eat it!" Pete retaliated once more just as the door opened to let in an excited and dancing-to her-iPod Claudia. The music was playing so loud it might as well have been playing on a radio.
"Claudia!" Myka called. Claudia turned and immediately pulled out the earplugs.
"What's up?" Claudia asked innocently.
"How can you hear us when that thing plugged into your ears is turning you deaf?" Pete asked jokingly.
"Because my ears are awesome and can listen to rocking music without going bad." Claudia replied setting her bag on the table. "Where's our ragged old in-keeper?"
"Putting our artifact away." Pete said, "What did you bring to add to our lovely junk-drawer?"
"First I need to ask why Myka looks like she wants to bite off your head." Claudia asked with a confused face.
Pete, fearing to look back at her, answered "Because she thinks I bit into her croissant, I didn't…"
"DID!" Myka yelled at him.
"Oh he so did," Claudia added.
"How can you say anything," Pete pouted as Myka laughed in the back, "You weren't there."
"No, but you're you and you eat everything, no matter who's food it is."
"Whatever, what did you bring?"
Claudia pulled the sliver bag out of her backpack. "I hate museum duty. I got the Hope Diamond from the Smithsonian. And the thing is surprisingly heavy." Claudia turned to see Pete and Myka stare at her in shock with mouths gaping open. "What?"
"You have the Hope Diamond?" Myka said unbelievingly, "Why? Or better yet, how?"
"The Hope Diamond is cursed to bring death to whoever wears it. Something about a chemical in the gem that reacts to human emotion or some junk you can ask Artie about." Claudia said, still not seeing what was so amazing about having a 67 carat diamond necklace.
"Did you know that when the Hope Diamond was originally found," Artie spoke as he entered the office and surprising everyone, "it was twice as large and was 112 carats, but King Louis the 14th had it cut to 67 carats?"
"Why'd he shrink such a huge and valuable rock?" Pete said as he tried to make Claudia give it to him so he could see it.
Artie walked over and snatched the bag from Claudia, who had be guarding it from Pete, and continued, "Some say it was because he needed it to be smaller and cut to a certain design for some purpose that was never known."
"Crazy." Pete said, disappointed that he didn't get to look at it. Suddenly he felt a slight humming in his ears and the feeling that there was a ringing sound in his head. A vibe, Pete thought, But why here? Pete suddenly got the feeling that something was coming up behind him.
"Everyone move!" Pete shouted as he pushed everyone towards Artie's computers and away from where Pete felt something approaching.
"What?" Myka said in a calm but nervous voice, "A vibe?"
"And a weird one at that." Pete replied, there was nothing where he had felt the vibe was warning him about, but he still felt something coming. Then something happened.
A strong gust of wind came out of nowhere and began turning into a typhoon as papers and folders went flying in the air and making a mess of Artie's office. Pete leaned back against Myka and Artie who was holding Claudia back defensively. The wind began to form a tornado in the area where Pete had felt the vibe. Suddenly, a red light appeared about seven feet off of ground in mid-air. This light then began to turn into a crack, a crack in the air that revealed blood red and fiery orange light. The crack began to grow as it sliced its way down to the ground, and the storm in the office grew stronger and it was harder for Pete to hold everyone back. When the crack stopped falling a few inches from the floor, the wind died down a bit. Until the crack opened, spilling out a wave of heat and lights that one would see in a nuclear explosion, and the cracks seemed to grow out further from the main opening as the storm picked up again. Pete couldn't hold them, and he fell to the ground and the others fell with him.
A shadow appeared in the center of the opening and it seemed to grow larger and closer. Just as the shadow seemed to cover the entire crack, it jumped out of the crack.
A boy, around his twenties, appeared, dressed in black pants, a grey shirt, and a black trench coat. Something fell out of his hand as he fell to his knees in front of Pete. He seemed to be in incredible pain, as could be told from his muffled screams through gritted teeth.
"Pete!" The boy screamed at Pete in a strained voice. "You must save him!"
"What!" Pete had to yell just to hear his own voice over the storm of sounds coming from the crack. This boy screamed louder as cracks began forming on his skin and clothes; these cracks gave off the same red light as the one in the air behind him.
"You must save him!" He screamed as the cracks grew quickly all over his body. "It's the only way or all will be destroyed!" He moved away from Pete as the cracks grew to cover his whole body. With a final pained yell, he threw out his arms as he exploded into pieces in a blinding red blast.
"PETE!" Artie suddenly yelled as he stood up and grabbed a metal can by the Umbilicus door. "FIND THE KNIFE!" He popped open the lid and threw a bucketful of the purple goo at the crack. The crack seemed to absorb it all and calmed down slightly as the wind died down, but after a few moments it picked back up. Artie, Myka, and Claudia kept throwing goo at it to stabilize the crack, but it seemed to still get stronger.
Pete looked for what the guy had dropped upon coming through the crack. He found it beneath the table by the filing cabinets which were bursting open and having the papers in them go flying.
"ARTIE!" Pete called; he tossed the knife gently to Artie who had turned to him. Artie ran to the crack in the air.
"Artie! No!" Myka yelled in fear as Artie neared the dangerous fissure.
Artie moved to the crack then fell to his knees in front of it. He reached out his hand with the dagger and stabbed it into the bottom of the crack. Immediately the fissure closed and the red light dimmed as the cracks began to recede into the knife. Artie moved his hand up, with the knife still embedded in the crack, and the smaller ones disappearing along with it. It looked like he was closing up a zipper. As Artie reached the top of the crack, and there was only a small bit of light poking out, he lifted the knife vertically and shoved the whole knife through the opening as the crack disappeared entirely.
"Why the hell would someone do it?" Artie was muttering as he stared at where the crack had once been. "What could have been so bad that it called for that?"
"Artie?" Myka said as the others neared the eldest member of the team. "What just happened and who was that person?"
"Who is now dead probably." Pete added, he suddenly felt that he shouldn't have because it put a grim look on everyone's face.
"That," Artie began, regaining his composure, "was the Mixtec Dagger. The Mixtec were a pre-Columbian nation in Mesoamerica. That dagger was a ceremonious object with incredible and mystic power. It was believed to be able to cut anything, whether it be cutting a diamond in half, cutting the soul from a human body, or, as some Warehouse agents suspected but never tested, cutting a hole in time and space itself."
"So that guy," Claudia began, "came from another time?"
"Yes," Artie answered, "And, he most likely came from the near future." He began walking over to the Warehouse data computer.
"How can you know that?" Myka asked.
"Studies were done on the possibilities of time travel with the dagger and it was found that if an object was sent to the past, and a point in the past where the object already existed, the object from the future would self-detonate. That's what happened to our mysterious guest, God rest him. It was theorized that no two of the same object can co-exist in the same timeline, and so the one that was from a different timeline 'removed' itself, so to speak." Artie was going through the inventory of the Warehouse looking for the dagger.
"I thought you said none of the agents ever tried to use it?" Myka responded.
"They didn't test it on themselves, but they used objects like balls or books. They sent them into the past and future, both recent and distance, and documented what happened." The screen blinked as an image of the dagger appeared. It listed all the usual info about it, but where at the bottom, where it said where the artifacts current location was, it read "REMOVED FROM STORAGE: LOCATION UNKNOWN"
"So it was in the Warehouse, but someone took it out?" Claudia asked.
"Yep," Artie answered in a nervous tone, "An agent took it out without permission 42 years ago and never returned it or told where it was."
"Artie," Pete began with a confused look on his face, "After you sealed the crack, you were saying something like 'why'd he do it' and 'what could have been so bad'? And the guy who came through said that the world would be destroyed."
"There is a safety protocol," Artie said after a moment of hesitation. "It was created by the Regents as a final resort should there come a time when the world was in unpreventable danger. It was that an agent must use the dagger to go back in time to send a warning to try and stop it, but it would come at a cost. Not only would the person who went through the crack die in the most horrifying and painful way that none could ever conceive, but it couldn't guarantee that it would change the future either."
They all stood in horror at what this meant, a new danger was coming for them, and it appeared that they weren't able to stop this one and the world would be destroyed because of that.