Author's Note: This story is set five or six years after Engle and Barnes apparently vanished from the face of the planet and the Strange Forces series trailed off. The Collector's gone corporate, the Ceques is at the end of its line, and a bunch of the good guys are out of the picture. Beware: This is a lot darker than the series was. Its original fans (including me) having all grown up, it's to be expected that our appetites are stronger. >:D And yes, I am aware of the full extent this title's cheesiness. Leave me alone, I'm bad at titles. =\
Jessica "Jei" Lee
Prologue
The Collector stood before the wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling bulletproof window that took up one entire side of his office, clawed hands clasped behind his back, gazing down at the myriad of lights twinkling from the urban landscape below.
He had exchanged his safari gear for a closet consisting of expensive Italian suits, silk ties, and Gucci loafers, all specially tailored to fit his no-longer-quite-human form. It was time, the Collector had decided, for an upgrade in appearance. It was time to leave the tireless trudging through marsh and mire behind him and move up into the corporate world. He had kept his black pith helmet, however, and it sat now on the corner of his desk, a single note of sentimentality in an otherwise coldly impersonal and mechanically functional room.
The reflection of the Werejaguar general behind him shifted slightly; the Collector's head tilted a hairsbreadth to the right, and the Werejaguar straightened immediately back into an uncomfortably stiff at-attention stance.
Scaly lips curved just the tiniest bit upward before parting to allow a gravelly voice to emerge, rolling off a black tongue that showed the start of a fork at its tip. "Report."
"We have acquired one of the Gauntlets, sir, and are currently working on locating the second. We have established that it is most likely in the western segment of the European continent and have dispatched a fully regimented unit to screen the area."
The Collector stirred impatiently, though he kept his voice level. "And the Helm?"
Hesitation. "We're still working on it, sir. It's only a matter of time."
"Make sure that time is short, General. Dismissed."
Even alone, the Collector did not relax. Soon. He could feel it deep inside him like a dark secret unfurled… it would happen soon. After years of toil and fruitless searching, years of dead ends and failed retrievals, he would finally be able to complete his collection with the artifact of all artifacts, the greatest prize of all. Something he had long ago set out to find; the one thing whose loss had torn a chunk out of him and had left him, if only for a brief time, a broken man. His infantile dreams of capturing Chipekwe paled in comparison with the tangible reality of this acquisition. After all these years, he would finally have it.
Soon.