A/N: Yeah, I know, I take forever. Sorry about that. To recap where we're at now, Artie and my original character, Joanne, have flown themselves to New Mexico to retrieve an artifact from one of the earliest European settlements in the Albuquerque area. It was reported to make a person suddenly become very... well-versed in survivalist skills, I guess you could say. After a little adventure trying to teach Artie how to fly the jet, and then getting down a ravine, they're now almost at the dig site. Special thanks to KJay99 for a lot of help with the suspense and action that I'm still learning how to do, and extra special thanks to all of you who are enduring my slowness, to read the story. I appreciate your patience more than I can convey!
After several minutes of walking, Artie put a hand up, obviously commanding Joanne to stop. She did so, using the time to take a drink of water. The pilot, accustomed to spending half her life at absurdly high altitude, was in the habit of staying more hydrated than she felt right now, hiking through the New Mexico desert. Even the water seemed a little drier in this climate. She watched silently as Artie crouched up against the side of the riverbed, creeping around the bend a little bit. They must be pretty close if he was assessing the situation, she realized. He crept entirely out of her view in his exploration, putting her on even more full alert as she listened intently for any sign of distress from her friend. A few minutes later, however, Artie's face peeked around a rock, and he beckoned her to join him.
Joanne followed, mindful to not leave too much evidence of her presence, even if they were alone in the ravine. When she came around the bend and took in where most of the digging was going on, she began to understand how relics of a settlement got into a riverbed. Most of the recovery effort seemed focused on a ledge about shoulder-high, suggesting that erosion had brought things into the riverbed. It was probably also responsible for unearthing the antiquities, she realized, thinking back to a large storm she'd had to fly around a few months prior.
She shook off those thoughts and followed her friend to the temporary structure where the archaeologists seemed to be cataloging and storing the remnants of New Mexico's pioneer days. Items and crates lay under a canopy near the door, as if the grad students had gotten careless about organization, under the desert sun. Artie carelessly dropped his tesla into his bag and drew out a set of purple gloves. He wordlessly tossed a pair to Joanne and fished another pair out for himself.
As Joanne wrestled the gloves on – Artie made it look so easy! – she asked, "Artie, what is the artifact that we're looking for? Don't think you mentioned."
"That's because I don't know." He responded quickly. He was poking through an abandoned duffel bag, moving random camping items around. "The police report mentions an out-of-character level of edginess, and some sort of survival skill set…" He drifted off as he considered a rather corroded oil lamp before disregarding it.
Joanne stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the excavation site. "Survival skills?"
"Yeah, the um…" He stood up and made his way over to the dig site to peek into an excavated hole. "A masters student. With no prior knowledge of hunting or trapping, he set up a rabbit snare, and then cooked his catch over an open fire." He made his way back from the roped off area protecting the old remnants of the settlers' site. "So, perhaps, a knife… or, or maybe something along the lines of Davy Crockett's hat. But that's at the Warehouse, of course."
"Of course," Joanne replied with sarcasm. She had no way of knowing that, but Artie was in search mode, so she just let him be. She took a breath of the hot, dry air. If I were an artifact, where would I be?
She knew that artifacts seemed to have a life of their own. If the archeologists did come across one, would then even know it? Probably not. But if they did recognize something unusual, wouldn't they, separate it? Keep it safe from the elements at the very least?
Her eye considered the tent that Artie had just then slipped into, having gotten bored with the helter-skelter assortment of relics laying around outside. Made sense. Something should be in there. But Artie had it covered, so she wandered around, trying to think like the crazy people that dug into old dirt for a living. Around the side of the tent, hidden from Artie's view was a rickety shed, hastily put together with wood that left gaps in the walls.
She drifted up to the hastily constructed shed and peeked through one of the gaps. Inside were several wooden crates used for shipping. A small smile crept over her face. She looked for what they constructed for a door and saw that it had a Mastercraft lock on it. "Bingo."
"Artie, I think I found something!" she called, and half a second later, the portly agent trotted around the flap of the tent to her. She pointed at the lock, enjoying the way he lit up at the sight.
A moment later, Artie had rummaged his lock picking tools out of his seemingly bottomless bag and was working the lock. "The kid was picked up two days ago, so I'm not sure, but it shouldn't be anything found after that. Not that much of this stuff seems to be labeled or organized yet."
The pilot just nodded at the info and kept looking through things, while periodically scanning their surroundings. She couldn't help but feel like the rocks were watching them. Maybe some... something, somewhere, was being disturbed with all of the digging going on. Sometimes things were better left alone.
Joanne was brought back to the present by the lock snapping open. Artie gave a start of satisfaction and pause to wipe his brow, wincing as he brushed the injury to his eyebrow, before he stood up. He opened the door and entered the shed, holding the door open for Joanne behind him.
Dust had settled on everything in the shed, let in from the holes in the walls where the planks didn't line up exactly. It was poorly constructed, but fairly sturdy. Joanne looked at first one crate than another. Some had shipping labels but most were unmarked. She reached in and shifted around some packing material, finding only a nicely preserved bit of pottery. It looked distinctly unimpressive, so she picked up the crate and set it on the ground to get to the one below it. This crate was already nailed shut. She tried all the sides briefly, but they were all nailed tight. The pilot scowled at the crate and considered her options. She would need something to pry the lid off- or bash the crate somehow.
Joanne took a breath and got out "Art—" before a crow bar was held up into her line of site. She pulled back a bit, then took the crow bar and smirked at Artie who foresaw her request far enough into the future to not only locate the tool, but use it and then hand if off to her. As soon as she took it, he was elbow deep in his crate searching the contents.
She soon had the top of the shipping crate off and set the crow bar aside. Her curiosity had her digging into the packaging material with excitement. It was sort of like Christmas and a scavenger hunt all in one. She wondered briefly if she didn't like this just a little bit better than her own job - if maybe she'd rather be an agent, facing adventure and danger in the hunt for mysterious, dangerous items that you never quite knew what it was until you were looking at it. For a moment, Joanne even contemplated what it might take to become a Warehouse agent, until she started to seriously consider giving up her sky, and the partnership of mutual respect that she had spent years forging with the often challenging, fickle friend.
Periodically, Joanne pulled things up from the packing fibers. Petrified corncob... probably not. Some kind of hinge, definitely not. This seemed pointless, but she kept rummaging anyway, determined to do a thorough job. She smiled when her fingers came upon something very familiar. A book! Also probably not the artifact, but she pulled it up, just the same. Joanne had always had a very soft spot in her heart for books of all kinds, and this one was no exception. The rest of this stuff struck her as more or less junk, relics from an earlier age, that should be left to decay right where they'd been abandoned. But a book... this, she had to read. Continuing to rummage absently with one hand, she deftly held the book in her other hand, turning the pages carefully with her pinky finger.
Artie, listen to this." She returned to the spidery handwriting and couldn't help but start reading the sage out loud. "October 17, 1880. Winter is coming, I can feel it. I fear that this hostile landscape has not provided us with enough food to last until spring. Many of the others feel the same, but none speak of it. We only look upon each other with the combined resolve that we will make it through. We must. All of us."
"Sound like they had an incredibly strong will to survive." Artie said, his voice trailing off. He suddenly looked at her over his shoulder, then turned around. "Joanne! That book! What are you— don't read that!" He darted across the room in a blur sending crates flying in his rush. He knocked the book from her grip sending it flying.
The pilot scowled at him. "Hey! What gives, Artie!"
He forcefully grabbed her with both hands and peered deeply into her eyes. "Are you all right?"
"Of course I am! Have you lost your mind?" She vaguely realized that her heart was pounding was faster and harder than it should be, but she really liked that journal; it nearly spoke aloud to her through its gripping tale, told so simply and yet eloquently in the author's elegant handwriting.
Artie released her and looked around for the journal. He located it on a crate, but left it there and went for his bag instead. "Do NOT touch that again, Joanne," he said over his shoulder. "Let me neutralize it and see if that's our artifact." He was reaching for his bag when he froze. He was staring into a pair of dark eyes that were staring right back through the half open door.