CHAPTER ONE

Author's Notes

Artie gets an alarm that is far from routine. A mysterious cloud is destroying people. What artifact caused it? And who is the strange man who claims to know Artie, and why doesn't anyone remember him? And worse yet, why is there time missing from all of their lives.

#

This is a TW/Warehouse 13 crossover. Hereafter W13 and TW. DW may be mentioned, but he may not show up.

This is the second in the 'artifact" series. The first one in the series was the "Angels among the Artifacts." You don't have to have read it, it (mostly) stands by itself but there is some cool backstory in it. But in it, It is mentioned that there are worse things than the Angels. Here are those things.

TW: Probably Pre season 1, this Jack has been hiding because he knows at the moment he is supposed to be somewhere else. He had left a cryptic warning about there being worse things.

W13" I am writing this as if Jinxie didn't exist. Only because we are between seasons and until I know how they are going to resolve that whole thing I can't plan anything. (I don't trust dead bodies.)

#

No money is made, nothing you recognize is mine.

CHAPTER TWO

The cloud

June 15, 2000.

Recording.

The grainy picture came into focus. The three figures in bio-hazard suits held the small glass container with grippers at a distance. At the far end of the field of view a figure reaches up from a bed, as far as his shackled hands would allow screaming something.

The three figures remain intently focused on the shadowy thing in the tube and carefully break the seal. For a while it seems like nothing happens and then the power begins to flicker. A glass panel slams down blocking the shackled patient from the rest of the lab.

The shadow in the tube begins to move, and then, in the blink of an eye, there are only skeletons where the three researchers had been. And in the distance, the single figure reaches up one more time before laying back on his pillows and succumbing to the medicine in his IV.

#

18 hours ago, near San Diego

The exterminator came back into the house wearing a resperator, he was only in there trying to get one of the pumps working. The power flickered again, and he fussed with the cord to make sure there was a good connection. The pump coughed once, and started again. He stepped forward, noticing the odd way that the light was pooling around him making him seem to have two shadows. One of which didn't seem to move.

A moment later there was a scream and only a skeleton dressed in the exterminators tattered clothes remained. It wasn't for an hour or two that anyone noticed he was gone. And when they found him, they called in the cops. No one saw the shadow in the dark corner of the room.

#

Artie could hear the strange alarm from the panel. It was one that seemed familiar but that he couldn't remember. He couldn't have told you what it meant, all he knew was that it was bad. Very bad. End of the world on a sunday afternoon bad.

He fumbled on the table for the Farnsworth, his hands shaking more than they should.

"No way," Claudia had just arrived from seemingly nowhere causing Artie to jump. "That's a code nine alarm."

Claudia instantly put both hands over her mouth as if she had just let out a bad secret. She fumbled for a phone and ran out of the building to make a call.

She dialed a number from memory, and unsurprisingly got a voicemail. "Jack. I know you check this often. It is 2:28 PM and it is Monday, June 11 2012." She remembered the lecture Jack had given her about dating her calls so that he knew which direction he was going. "We have just had a Code nine alarm. I need you here like now because Artie is curious and I may have accidentally let the cat partway out of the bag, I know, you can kill me later."

If you had asked Claudia a year ago if she would be keeping a secret like this from Artie, she would have said no. But jack had given her three options. Disappearing into a small cell in the middle of god-knew-where for the rest of her life, dying, or keeping her mouth shut when the retcon failed. She was the only one that remembered the Weeping angels. She kept a hammer near her workstation, and had embedded a search program in the mainframe that would flag her if any more of them showed up, but she hadn't told anyone.

She was lost in thought which is why she was surprised when a familiar figure in a greatcoat brought her into a hug. "So exactly how dead are you?"

"I sorta told Archie about a code nine alarm we had." Claudia looked sheepish. "I ran before he could ask any questions, but I was able to see that it wasn't an Angel. That would have pinged me directly."

"Any idea what it is?" Jack had let her go and they walked toward the car so that she could drive him back.

"The failsafes still won't let me in."

"Not through the front door, but you are still tagged as an artifact." Claudia said with a smile. "Me, an artifact?"

"Yeah, in fact, you come up in the system as 'the ultimate artifact."

"Do me a favor, make sure that research gets destroyed."

Already did. The file is there but blank." Claudia smiled. "I figured that was too dangerous to let out."

"Seeing me might trigger things." Jack said, "but if this is a code nine..."

She could hear the desperation in his voice.

#

Jack came in through the side door that had let MacPherson out not too long before. He paused inside the door waiting for anything to happen. Nothing did and so he went up to the office to talk to Artie. Jack stood in a sort of awe as he looked around the office. This man reminded him so much of the doctor. The alarm was still blaring in the distance and Artie was buried in paperwork trying to find any answer to stop it.

Jack simply reached over Artie's shoulder and hit a particular keystroke that silenced the alarm. "Who the hell are you?" Artie jumped up, tessla raised.

"Captain Jack Harkness, I'm a specialist." His smile lit up the room.

Artie's eyes narrowed as if this man were familiar to him but he couldn't place it.

"What triggered the alarm?" Jack tried to keep Artie going before the cascade could catch up with him. "Where?"

Artie found himself responding to the strange man's tone. "Outside San Diego. An exterminator went into the tent and never came back out. When they went in to find him, they found his skeleton had been stripped bare. All organic tissue was gone, even the brain."

"You think an artifact did that?"

"There were no traces of chemicals, no traces of what could have happened to the flesh. I mean even scarab beetles leave something."

Jack nodded.

"Are there any more cases?"

"Two that's why the system flagged it." Artie said.

"One in Texas, one in Nevada."

Claudia smiled. "I love Nevada the whole city is on tape." She sat down at the computer and began to run some programs. "When?"

"A week ago."

She put in the time period. "Where?"

"The maintenance room of the Luxor." She frowned. "It says that the lights fried him."

She prodded the mainframe a bit before exclaiming. "Ooh, there is video."

The video was grainy and at first there was nothing wrong, but then, in what seemed like just a frame or two there was a skeleton where the man had been moments before.

Jack spoke two words as if he were speaking impending doom. "Vashta Nerada."