A/N: This is a whole new take on the Celestial Twins story. We have grown out of our silly MS style and hope this will be a better telling. This is not a sequel like the other one was. We have scrapped that one and are starting fresh with a whole new set of ideas.
In this fic, the movies do not exist, but the books do. Middle Earth really did exist in the past and Tolkien was really The Brown Wizard Radagast who simply recounted the history of his time.
Disclaimer: We do not own, nor claim to own anything by Tolkien.
Chapter 1
"Angie!" One of the workers called. "There's a call for you. Someone from back at the office."
"Juste un moment." Angie called back.
Angelique Diot was working with a team in Egypt on the Sphinx. She was a young archeologist, only 23, but as clever as they come. She studied under a Professor Alain Ducett in France, and now worked with him as his personal assistant. The professor was away in England for a conference and had left her in charge of the team in Egypt. Even though she was the youngest member by a long shot, they all respected her and followed her instructions.
She was a pure French woman, born and raised in Paris. She followed in her father's footsteps as an archeologist. Her mother taught English literature at a local high school where she grew up.
Angelique was 5'5", which was slightly taller than her mother, and had fair skin. Though all the time she spent out in the sun had now tanned it to a nice soft bronze. Her mother's Irish background had given her a beautiful copper tint to her blonde hair. Her eyes were blue as the noon sky, and oddly enough turned stormy grey when she was angry, and turquoise when she cried.
She was mild tempered, but every now and then if someone really got on her nerves, that Irish temper came through and the person on the receiving end usually wished they had never been born.
Angie left her tent and went to the main tent.
"Did they say who they were?" Angie asked in her charming French accent.
"No, just that it was important."
"Hello?" She said taking the phone.
"Angelique, you're never going to guess what we just found," came the voice of Emily Labelle, her best friend and co-worker.
"Emily, you always find something that I'm never going to guess. Just tell me and save me the trouble." She laughed softly.
"We're back in the UK right now and we were given a tip about something under the foundation of Stonehenge. We were almost about to throw the guy out of the office when he showed us satellite photos of a void underneath Stonehenge. He wouldn't tell us why was looking or how he got the photos, but we're already on our way to have a look." She replied.
"You're kidding. That can't be -" She was cut off by more rambling from Emily.
"I'm dead serious. You would not believe the size of this void. It actually looks like there could be a chamber of some kind down there. Angie I really think you need to come and have a look." Her tone changed to one more serious and slightly confused. "I'm sending you a fax of one of the photos."
The fax machine beeped and Angie took the paper that rolled out. Emily was right. This wasn't some blip in the picture. She wondered how no one had seen this before. Or had they, and they just didn't say anything.
"I'm on my way." She said simply and hung up the phone.
"Bloody hell," muttered the bicycle messenger as she gazed out the double glass front doors of the office building. Outside, it was raining heavily and traffic seemed to be at a standstill. Pulling up the hood on her violently purple anorak, she sighed. Looks like a late delivery for Grunnings, she thought as she secured the certified letter in her pack and headed out the door and into the downpour.
The life of a bicycle messenger isn't glamorous by any means, nor is it a profession one aspires to have as a small child with delusions of professional grandeur. However, circumstances in life often lead us down the roads less traveled. So it was with Simone Pennington, the bicycle messenger with the brilliant purple anorak and a vibrant hate for crowded streets and unpleasant weather. Only twenty-three years old, Simone was an aspiring artist with various odd jobs that helped her keep her London flat. The bicycle messenger job was one of them; the other was as a delivery cyclist for a small Indian take-away restaurant on Vauxhall Road.
She had, of course, had other options along the way. As a child she had attended a prestigious girls' boarding school in Scotland; and had in her later teen years been accepted to Oxford University. She had refused, obviously, because her passion lay with her artwork and with the freedom that came with it. Simone never liked holing up in a library like some scholar while life sailed by outside. It wasn't that she wasn't intelligent; Simone just liked to do things her way. And while some would call her life wasted, Simone enjoyed it immensely.
Except for days like the day she was currently having, but the occasional bad day was inevitable.
Forty-five blasted minutes later, she pedaled up to the huge gray skyscraper buiding in Elephant and Castle – Grunnings Inc. Simone had no idea as to what sort of services that Grunnings Inc. provided the general public, nor did she care. Wiping the rainwater from her slate gray eyes, she pushed the heavy glass door of the entrance and went inside.
The receptionist looked at Simone as if she did not approve of her dripping onto the white and black marble floor of the lobby. "Can I help you?" she coldly asked the soaked messenger before her.
Simone removed the certified letter from her pack, perfectly dry and intact. "Yes, I'm to deliver this to Mr. Alastair Jenson," she replied, holding the letter just out of the receptionist's reach.
"Mr. Jenson is currently in a meeting, you can just leave that letter here with me."
"It's a certified letter. Mr. Jenson will need to sign for this immediately."
The receptionist sized up Simone as if to verify her last statement. After a moment, the receptionist picked up the phone and called Mr. Jenson from his meeting.
"If you'll just wait over there," the receptionist waved to an obscure corner of the enormous lobby with one perfectly manicured hand.
"No thanks," Simone said curtly, "I'll wait here."
The receptionist glared once more before the ringing of the phone drew away from her scrutiny of Simone. A few moments later, two men appeared in the lobby, engrossed in conversation.
"Stonehenge, you say?" asked one of them.
"Yes, yes indeed. We are sending one of our top archaeologists out there, you know, Angelique ..." Suddenly one of them stopped talking and noticed Simone in her purple anorak, dripping all over the floor.
"That'll be the letter from Elson and Associates?" he addressed her briefly.
"Yes," she replied, handing him a small slip of paper, "Sign here please," she continued in a bored tone of voice.
He quickly signed and took the letter from Simone, "Thank you, miss."
Simone smiled briefly and turned to walk back out the door and back into the rain. It was a good thing that this was her last run of the day; she was looking forward to the prospect of a hot bath and Persian take away that evening.
"All right guys, I'm leaving to meet the other team. Something's been found at…" She wondered if it was a good idea to say anything about it just yet. "Well, they found something and need back in England."
"Is anything wrong?" One of the team members asked noticing Angie's confused expression.
"No, not really." She tried to find the right way to explain. "It's more like something out of place…." She trailed off thinking back to the fax. "Anyway, I have to arrange for a flight back."
"It's already been done," called Jonas, another close friend and co-worker. "Apparently Mr. Jenson was notified before you were and he's arranged for your flight. It leaves in an hour."
"Tabernac…" She cursed under her breath. "Why does no one tell me these things?" She grumbled on the way back to her tent.
She packed up her notes and went out to the jeep that was waiting for her.
"I'd like to stop by the hotel and get my things before we go to the airport." She told the driver.
He nodded and took off down the desert to the main road out of Giza. They stopped by the hotel and she packed her clothes quickly and checked out. She didn't see any reason for them to hold her room when she didn't even know when she would be back. She got back in the jeep and it sped off for the airport.
Sure enough, when she got to the desk and checked her luggage, her ticket was waiting for her, already paid for too. Sometimes it was great working for the big wigs, but only sometimes.
The rain was still coming down heavily on London, but once back into her cozy flat, Simone hardly noticed. After a good soak in the bath, she felt refreshed and decided to wind down in front of a blank canvas with a palette of paint. Picking up a paintbrush, her slate grey eyes scanned the canvas, as if searching for inspiration.
A few moments passed before she automatically dipped her brush into a bit of paint and applied it to the canvas. Her mind was blissfully blank as her brush flew all over the blank white before her.
Three hours later, she finally paused. The starched white canvas had transformed into a picture of a forest of trees with ethereal leaves of silver and gold and a blurry figure sat in the branches pondering the forest through the veil of starlight.
Sitting back in her chair she regarded the painting with a critical eye. Silver and gold leaves, she thought, smirking a bit; although she did admire the striking contrast of gold against the grey scale of the rest of the painting. Perhaps she would take this one to the gallery in Soho – she'd think it over some more in the morning. Rubbing her eyes, she stumbled towards her bed; and she was asleep before her head touched the pillow.
The plane took off and Angie closed her eyes for a quick nap. She had been awake for the past two days going over notes and cataloging various artifacts. It wasn't that she had to get it done quickly, but simply that she couldn't leave it alone. Once she started something, she didn't stop until it was done. If that meant no sleep and no food, so be it. Besides, it was about a seven hour flight, so she might as well make the most of her time.
The plane arrived at Heathrow early the next morning. The flight attendant shook Angie lightly to wake her and tell her to put her seat belt on for landing. She could swear she had just fallen asleep though. Angie raised the blind on her window and looked out at the sunrise, or the beginning of it. It was just peaking up over the horizon as the plane began its descent.
After going through customs and getting her luggage, Angie stepped out the front doors of the airport to see a man holding a sign with her name on it. He was standing in front of a well used SUV.
"You must be Angelique." He smiled, and with an American accent.
"Angie, please, and you would be?" She asked, not recognizing the man. "I expected one of my on to be here."
"Emms said there wasn't time. The second they got to the site things started happening and she was really excited about it." He rolled his eyes. "She's a strange one."
Angie still stood next to the SUV staring at him waiting for him to tell her who he was. Noticing this, he cleared his throat and explained.
"Oh, sorry. My name's Jake Barton. I'm one of the new guys that you don't know about. There are two others back at the site, twins no less. They're… odd to say the least."
"I see." She sighed and got in the front seat as Jake loaded her bags in the back. "I guess I have been away longer than I thought."
"Yeah, but you love it don't you?" He winked as he got in the drivers seat.
"Oh yeah, working all hours of the day and night, very little if any sleep or food because you're so wrapped up in your work, the dirt, the physical labour, worrying about bad weather destroying the site, need I go on?" She chuckled.
"Like I said, you love it don't you?"
They sped off from the parking lot and Jake talked Angie's ear off about how excited he was to join her team. She was just about to doze off again when they left the main road ad took a back road that was far from finished. In no time, they came up behind the great stone circle and Emily was flagging them down. Jake parked next to all the others and Angie got out just as Emily approached. Before Angie could get a word out, Emily grabbed her and practically dragged her to the relic.
"Emily! What the..? Slow down." Angie protested.
Emily took her to the very center where they had their equipment set up. There was a circle outline in the dirt in the very center.
"What's that for?" Angie asked rubbing her wrist.
"That… is the beginning of a shaft that drops roughly 300 meters below the foundation." Emily grinned. "We've checked our equipment and they show there's something of a cover about 3 meters down and then just dirt on top of that."
Angie couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"Are you serious? Do we have permission to dig?" She asked the obvious question.
Everyone looked around and grumbled and then looked down at the ground, not wanting to answer.
"Guys, we need permission to do this. Didn't any of you think to ask…" she was cut off by one of the other new guys, the twins.
"We asked." They said in unison. "Permission was denied. No one is to disturb the area, regardless of what we may have found."
Angie turned to see a remarkable sight. Not only twins, but identical and the epitome of tall, dark and sexy. She shook some rather naughty thoughts from her mind and concentrated on the issue at hand.
"Did you explain what it…" She was cut off again.
"Yes, of course we did." They glared back at her as if she implied they were stupid. "We explained in great detail."
Angie sighed and shook her head. "That means only one thing then."
"The competition." The rest of the team chorused.
Angie turned and walked around the site. She had never been here before and she wanted to see it all before she made the decision that could ultimately destroy her career. She stood just outside the inner circle at the far end of the site and was joined by Emily.
"I know what you're thinking, and think we should do it. Besides, I really don't trust the word of those two." Emily glanced over her shoulder at the twins. "They've been acting strange since we got this tip and I'm not even sure they really asked anyone's permission."
Angie looked back at them then to Emily.
"What do you know about them?"
"The obvious. They're twins, their names are Dan and Ro, which I haven't been able to keep straight yet, they know a lot about this area but they won't say how and they speak a strange language when they think no one is around. I know it sounds familiar but I just can't place it." She explained.
Angie thought a moment and could come to only one conclusion.
"They could be spies from another company. God only knows how many times we've encountered them." She took a deep breath and looked back at the task at hand. "Let's do it. Someone is covering this up and I want to know why."