We All Have Our Time Machines

Part Two: Those That Carry Us Forward

Chapter 8

The journals had been stored, per Artie's scrupulous specifications, in the Dark Vault with everything else the man had ever known H.G. Wells to touch. She had not been surprised to discover how entrenched the older man's distrust had become, but was disappointed in its depths.

There was no inclination on her part, however, to blame Artie for his feelings. Rather, like so many other things of late, she viewed it as a personal failure. If she had managed to contain her fury enough to avoid giving that distrust any merit, many would things would be different. To his credit, or perhaps simply out of desperation, he had managed to push that trepidation away long enough to let them all search for a safe method to bring back their friends.

Like any good parent or steward, Artie would never admit to having a favorite, but Helena had seen the man interact with the Warehouse family enough to understand that though he loved all his agents more than he would ever show, he did actually have a preference.

It was Myka – reliable, steady, meticulous. She constantly toiled toward perfection – in procedure, in detail, in nuance – as Artie himself constantly fiddled with a trinket or an algorithm or a piece of music in search of that same goal. It was a symmetry he respected, appreciated, and even adored in a woman that he would have been proud to call a daughter.

In many ways that was the role Claudia filled, and Helena understood that the gruff Warehouse supervisor was just as deeply attached to the girl. In the three days since they'd collectively begun studying her old journals, the younger genius had made the man visibly nervous with some of her suggestions, and that panic in his eyes instantly flipped into a stabbing, wary glare directed toward his least welcome guest. Without fail, she latched onto it and gave it as much solace as she could without speaking. She had no intention of allowing Claudia to sacrifice herself in any of their efforts – Artie needed to know that the only person she would allow to be lost was herself.

"Umm..."

Pete drew the group's attention as he closed another notebook.

"I might go to Hell for this, but what about Jesus's burial shroud?"

"The Shroud of Turin?" Artie grunted. "It's a fake."

"What?" The younger man blinked, then scoffed a bit. "Not it's not! Wait...how do you know?"

"Because we had it tested about forty years ago. Thing's a tourist trap. The shards from the cross, however..."

Again, the irrepressibly cheerful man drew attention, this time with a hop and a snapping of his fingers. "Yeah! Those! Can we use those? Do we have those?"

Helena took the notebook he'd just set aside and thumbed toward the end, then pointed to a paragraph. Pete read it aloud.

"Burned as kindling during Thomas Cranmer's execution. Deadened his pain until the shards were completely burned up." He scrunched his face in disgust. "Ew."

"What about Orpheus's Lyre?"

The raven-haired woman turned towards Leena's voice. "It was a very, very attractive option, but I never was able to pinpoint its whereabouts. It disappeared from record after Warehouse 3."

Claudia tapped away at the keyboard for a few moments, then frowned. "And it's still gone." She sighed, then leaned back in her chair. "We're running out of options. There aren't many cases of resurrection in the database since 1899, and those that were reported were all really...uh..."

"Dark."

Four pairs of eyes focused on Artie, who sighed. "I'm not trying to discourage you guys, really, but if I could think of a safe way to fix this I would have."

They were growing desperate.

Exhausted and over-caffeinated, the four of them were no closer to a solution than they had been when they started. They all knew their clock was running out, and after the second day it became clear that the clock might unexpectedly expire if Artie's uncharacteristic indulgence wasn't enough to keep the Regents and Mrs. Frederic at bay.

It didn't help that Helena hadn't quite captured the scope of her notes when she'd suggested them as a starting point – there were dozens of notebooks to go through and research all over again. Unfortunately, none of her ideas were proving more feasible in 2011 than they had in 1899.

For her part, the former Warehouse 12 agent hadn't slept since that first night, and the physical weariness was beginning to wreak an emotional havoc on her. An all-too familiar anxiety was taking root in her mind, and it took every ounce of willpower she had not to give into either the fear it brought with it or the exhaustion that had caused it.

But as her other companions slowly succumbed to the overwhelming demand for rest, she felt the pull of exhaustion and fear become stronger. The journal before her had been her last, the one with the most unpolished ideas. Of all the possibilities, they held the most promise for new leads...and yet of all the possibilities, they had so far proven more rash than reasonable.

But, she told herself, there had to be something...anything...somewhere...

The night was balmy but pleasant. The wind blew the mist and salt air off the channel, using the Thames as a natural tunnel, gathering with it the lingering heat from an exceptionally warm summer day.

It was well past nightfall, and the streetlamps had already been lit as Helena and her companion spilled out onto the street, laughing with one another, comfortable arm in arm. Her smile, wide and happy, reflected the joy she felt at the end of her marvelous evening.

"This was such a splendid idea, Reagan," she remarked, laughter still in her voice. "We simply must do this again soon."

"Well, my dear, now that there is such a grand theater so close by, I vow that we shall."

"A promise and a rhyme," she remarked. "That is, perhaps, why I love you."

She looked on in unmasked adoration as the tall, dark-haired man let out an ungentlemanly snort.

"Why, Mr. McGrath," she scolded, "May I not love you for your amusing use of language?"

He smiled, full lips drawing out into a playful grin. "My dear Miss Wells, you may love me for whichever quality you deem suitable."

She smiled again, as he was correct: she loved him for far more than his way with words.

The Garrick Theater was a recently-hewn modern marvel, located quite strategically near the national administrative offices at Whitehall and only a short distance from Westminster Palace. It was terribly rare for the pair of them to find the time to attend the theater, let alone any other cultured entertainment. Helena's social status in her own right was slowly climbing. The young and charming sister of an up-and-coming author, she was no longer an unexpected patron of London arts. Reagan McGrath was a tall and handsome surgeon in residence at the practice of London's finest doctor, a rising star himself. His future was full of promise, and he had been welcomed into society immediately after matriculation, a mere three months prior. Their schedules, however – hers as an agent of Warehouse 12 and his as a student, then apprentice –had historically made it insensibly difficult to patronize any culture.

Helena couldn't help but be proud of what they had both accomplished. Her companion and betrothed, Reagan knew everything about the great warehouse filled to the brim with strange and ancient curiosities. He was entirely accepting of her uncannily gifted mind, and adored her carefully crafted stories. She had listened patiently during his time in medical school as he reasoned through the mysteries of the human body and the science of biology. Their minds were perfect matches for one another.

She would never have admitted it at the time, but she had fallen in love with the man the night they met.

They waited on the corner of the cobblestone street under a flickering streetlamp for their coach to arrive. The roads around them grew hazy as a fog rolled in off the river, obscuring the buildings and alleys such that one could almost imagine they were the only two people in the world. The hush that fell upon London during foggy evenings was eerie, but comforting. As modernization continued throughout England and the world, the ambient volume grew, as well. In all her imaginings, she'd never stopped to consider how very noisy the future might be.

"Perhaps we should find a place in the country," she suggested ruefully.

He turned a skeptical gaze downward at her. "Please," he said. "I would never be able to wrest you from the city. You love it far too much."

"Much of the time, yes, but a country home would be a pleasant escape on occasion."

"Oh ho! A country home! My, but you do possess such lofty aspirations for our future."

"Our future is a shining beacon. One can only expect great things of it."

He pulled his arm free of hers and wrapped it around her waist. "I only expect that in three days, when you and I are wed, our future will be a wondrous place filled with love and happiness."

His was a face that was so easy to look upon. He possessed a lean but strong jawline, defined cheekbones, and full, warm lips, but of all the pleasant features on her future husband's face, his eyes were her favorite. Large and expressive, he simply didn't have the capacity to hide anything from her. They varied in color – from a medium brown to a pale mossy green, depending on his mood and the light. In them, she could see family, happiness, and a future filled with their many creations. More than any other quality, she could see the depths of his love for her shining as bright as the sun whenever he cast a look toward her, and she could only hope that whatever he saw in her own eyes was as bright.

Her musings were interrupted by shouting from the alley behind them, then an deep, agonized cry. They cast one final, startled glance at one another before running toward the source.

Halfway through the narrow passage, obscured by a blanket of darkness, they found an oafish, burly man on his back, weakly grasping at the knife in his chest. Down the alley, at the exit, another man stumbled away from the scene.

"My God!"

The man's plight became frighteningly worse as they neared him, and only when they'd come to a stop at his side was Helena made aware of how dire his situation was. Blood seeped through the gaps between his flesh and the knife at an alarming rate, saturating his grimy vest and shirt. His face was peppered with glass shrapnel, as if he'd been hit on the head with a bottle of spirits prior to being stabbed through the ribs. The man's brown eyes were open, but unfocused.

"He doesn't have much time," Reagan muttered.

He was an avid follower of medical advances, especially in regard to traumatic emergencies. He scrutinized reports written by battlefield medics for symptoms unique to cases of severe injury, and for techniques and advances discovered during the most critical of cases. She watched the doctor as he carefully prodded the injured man, taking care care not to injure him further. The compassion he held for the sick and suffering was one of the many things she loved him for.

"Helena, I need bandages for this man. I hate to ask this of you, but might I trouble you to make something of your petticoat?"

She was in motion before he finished the sentence, making long, wide strips of the undergarment. Reagan took them from her as quickly as she could make them, wrapping them around the groaning man's torso and packing the man's wound around the weapon.

"Should you not remove the knife?" she inquired at length, annoyed that her carefully converted petticoat was going to frivolous use.

He chucked, but continued to blot the blood around the knife. "Recent reports from military field surgeons suggest that leaving a blade in until transport to a surgeon's tent may actually prevent a great deal of blood loss. In injuries such as this, it is often the loss of blood that kills."

Helena smiled and shook her head. Of course, he would have his good reasons. "We must see this man to a proper facility, then."

He was still wrapping the bandages when the patient's eyes finally focused, then cast downward toward the blade. Panicked, the man sat up, screaming and shouting and flailing until he finally found a grip upon the knife in his chest and ripped at it.

They both tried to stop him: pulling the knife out was certain death. The man soon overpowered them both, fear and strength his allies, and with an angry shout shoved them both away before he finally collapsed again, the knife clasped in his hand, dead within a handful of shallow breaths.

Helena pulled herself upright, eyes searching for her companion even before she came to her feet. She found him a yard and a half away, on his back.

His chest was covered in blood.

"Reagan!"

She jerked up in her chair and gasped for air, as if she'd held it during her nightmare. Her heart was racing, and her cheeks were streaked with tears.

Inevitably, a body demands of its owner a period of recuperation, and she had run for nearly three days without rest. The ticking clock on their project – an enemy that was drawing uncomfortably close, had been her most frequently-cited justification for avoiding sleep.

The truth was, she feared the torture her mind would conjure while her thoughts were not her own.

Every time she so much as closed her eyes, Myka's final moments played against her eyelids just long enough to force them back open, just as they had in her dreams that first night. It had been painful enough to live through once, much like her daughter's death, but to have it come back to haunt her again and again was enough to keep her from bed until she simply couldn't think anymore.

It surprised her, then, that instead of reliving that day in the bronze sector, she recalled the final minutes spent with her long-lost betrothed so many, many years ago, a dream that had haunted her for nine months before it had finally left her be.

It surprised her that she would dream of that because that memory hadn't invaded her sleeping mind since the day her daughter had been born.

Helena scrubbed at her eyes and reached for the cup of tea by her open journal, and took a sip of it despite the fact that it had long ago gone cold. Her eyes skimmed the page she had fallen asleep on, re-cataloging and dismissing all the options she came across in an effort to dismiss the nightmare and stop the shaking in her hand.

She found success when she came across a tiny note written in the margin of one of the last pages.

For a long moment, she couldn't decipher her own writing, but when she finally made out the single word, she also remembered why it had been placed there and then so quickly discarded. By that point, her mind had been made up: she would be going into the bronze, and her plans were already set.

But there had been one final stray thought, one last idea that she'd noted briefly, researched lightly, then scratched out.

"I have it!" she shouted. "I have a solution!"

Those that had been asleep stirred, and those that hadn't been rushed into the office.

"You do?" Claudia asked, stifling a yawn. "Really?"

Helena pointed to the word in the book as everyone gathered inward. "Sumerians. The answer is in the Sumerian Mythologies."

"Whoa...slow down." Pete scratched his head, still fighting off exhaustion. "The Summary Whats?"

"The Sumerians, Peter. The first civilization. The inventors of the writing system. They had a myth about their underworld and the goddess Inanna, who had descended into the Underworld to visit a friend. There were strict rules in that place, however, and even a deity was not immune. She was made to die. But her servant pleaded her case to Enki, another god, who sent his own servants to the Underworld to restore her...with the Bread and Water of Life."

Pete frowned. "Bread is an artifact?"

"No...you're saying there was a recipe out there somewhere, aren't you?"

Helena nodded at Leena's summary. "I believe so, yes."

"And...what?" Artie's bushy eyebrows came together in a frown. "You expect me to believe that recipe came without a price tag?"

"You demanded of us a method by which we might succeed in restoring life without a cost. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the story of Inanna's restoration to life, there were no descript consequences."

Her breath caught as the memories came flooding back – she'd come across the story of the goddess Inanna and her journey to the Underworld long ago. It was a story much like the tale told in Greek mythology about Hades and Persephone, except that Inanna had actually perished on her journey.

But in providing them hope, in giving them the details of the myth, she'd left one thing out – in Inanna's myth, much like Persephone's myth, the Sumerian underworld had a Conservation of Death law. One could restore life without paying one in kind, but that life could not be released into the world of the living again unless another took its place.

Claudia caught Pete in her celebratory dance, and the pair merrily enjoyed themselves for the first time in days, but Helena caught Artie's skeptical look.

She knew he was aware of the omitted details, but his silence spoke louder than even his greatest booming voice.

It was approval...for now.

"Okay..." Claudia, temporarily danced out, started looking for details. "I follow the story, but how do you go from a myth to saving Steve and Myka? And what makes you think something's changed since back then that makes it possible?"

"The recipes for both were said to be on a stone obelisk, about seven feet tall. In my time, there was no trace of the artifact."

"Wait...stone obelisk with cuneiform symbols? An octagonal obelisk, maybe?"

Helena nodded. "Yes."

"We...oh my God, we have that!"

Pete tilted his head. "We do?"

"Yeah! In the Ovoid Quarantine! We fished it out of Warehouse 2 a few months back, and we just haven't been able to process it yet!"

If only Helena had been in a frame of mind to think rationally in Egypt. While scouring the floor of the ancient warehouse in search of the second half of the Minoan Trident, she had come across the very item. It gave her pause – she had always suspected the obelisk was in Warehouse 2, but she knew that was likely only part of the puzzle. The ingredients would require more research than she would have time to commit to.

She would shovel her way through the Sahara if it meant getting to that obelisk now. Instead, all she had to do was walk to the floor of the Warehouse, into the purple dome at the far right side, and interpret the symbols.

"Hold up. Let me grab the wireless camera."

"We have a wireless camera?"

Claudia held up a small Canon camera, then removed a tiny memory storage device from it. "They sell wireless SD cards now. I improved the range a little and hacked the firmware so that it'll detect where in the Warehouse the pictures are taken, then send that location data over with the photo file. I just finished a handy dandy new program that looks for those new files and figures out what to do with them."

"So..."

The redhead sighed. "The tablet will be translated by the time we get back."

"Oh! Yeah, that's wicked, Claud! You're a freaking genius! So what's the program called?"

"Uh...I sort of dubbed it The Librarian."

Pete reared his head backward. "You named it after a Noah Wylie made for TV movie series?"

"It was either that or Attic Rat."

"I think I like that one better."

Pete and Claudia left the office together, their excited banter bringing some much needed levity to the group. It left Helena alone with Artie and Leena.

"You know that I won't allow Claudia to sacrifice herself."

The Englishwoman nodded. "I have no intention of allowing her to do so."

"But she'll try."

"And we'll all be there to stop her."

"...and if you try to bring back something else, if you're set on this course and do nothing short of bring one of my agents back-"

"Artie. Stop."

Leena placed a hand on his shoulder. Artie glanced backwards at the other woman, then sighed.

"I know you have no reason to trust her, but if you cannot trust me, trust H.G.'s past actions. Think, Artie, of why she stands here with us today instead of lying in a grave."

For the second time that week, Helena was amazed by the depths of Leena's compassion, and she was grateful for the vote of confidence.

If Artie meant to say anything, it was cut off by bleeping coming from Claudia's computer. The trio rushed to the screen as, one by one, the pictures stared coming in and the on-screen text readout began translating them.

"Okay...this is definitely the recipe for the Bread and Water of Life. It says the ingredients must be made from the Tree of Life."

Artie stepped back for a moment, stunned. "Tree of Life?" he whispered. "Kaballah?"

"I believe I recall seeing it referenced as such in the Sumerian myths."

"Kaballah is a real tree?"

Helena wasn't particularly familiar with the level of faith Artie possessed, but was moderately familiar with Jewish tradition. It was no doubt a deep revelation for the man – to discover something you believed for so long was based on incomplete truths was akin to having the foundations below your feet give way, and it was a feeling Helena understood intimately.

His fingers flew across his own keyboard momentarily until he came across an article in arabic. With a few more keypresses, the unfamiliar alphabet was replaced with a latin character set.

"There's a dig site in the Tigris River valley focused around this giant tree embedded in a rock face. Archaeologists and scientists can't figure out how it's still alive given its distance from water sources, but they can't seem to find a safe way to get to the tree."

He leaned back and fixed his glasses. "This seems like our most probable location...but how can we get into a war zone in the Middle East?"

"I can get us there."

Pete and Claudia came back into the room. The techie went immediately for her computer and the data it was still pouring out as the agent continued.

"I still have some buddies over there. They can get us in, but it would be up to us to get up that cliff face."

"I might have an idea for that," Claudia supplied.

"What, jetpacks?"

The redhead grinned. "Not gonna spill the beans, Petemeister. It'd spoil the surprise. But I can get us up there and back down again with cargo, no problem."

All eyes turned to Artie, the final link in the chain of approval. Quickly, he cast his gaze back to his screen and the picture of a rock face attached to it.

"Well" he said. "Pack your bags. We're going to Iraq."

A/N: Do I have you thoroughly confused yet? Fear not: thanks to the amount of research that's gone into this and the final two chapters, most of it is written. As usual, I promise no timelines...but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I want this over with as much as anyone.