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"You think that's it?" Steve asked as they drove back to the hotel. More slowly than normal because Claudia was holding the potential artifact in her lap and the last thing he wanted was for one of the spines to accidentally pierce one of her gloves. Unfortunately after they'd put their testing kits together last night they'd forgotten to put the container with the rest of the neutralizer back in the car, and neither of them had thought that leaving Urchin rolling around in the trunk was a good idea.
"I don't know. I mean, I thought I saw something when I brushed the goo on, but it was really faint. With the glass spines everywhere and the fact that the goo is purple, it could have been just a reflection. And breaking an artifact generally is enough to stop whatever it's doing and there are definitely still four mute people running around."
"Yeah, but 'generally' isn't 'always,' right? It could still be active."
She nodded.
"Plus neutralizing the shark tooth didn't fix your arm. Maybe this is a case where breaking the artifact doesn't reverse what it's already done."
She made a face. "That would suck for the people who got hit."
"No argument there, but I think I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that that's it anyway because it's not like we found anything else even vaguely artifact-like."
"Point. And dunking it may still do some good." She shook her head. "Although I'm still curious about how it would work. I mean, Dr. Jacobson had it for years with no trouble, and even if he didn't let his students mess with it, he must have touched it at some point. And even if we aren't talking a full auditorium, I'm sure there were more than four people in those lectures he gave."
"Well, the kid did say that he kept in it a case. Maybe that's why it's kept quiet over the years."
"And we know artifacts affect different people differently," she added after a minute. "Or maybe they had to be doing something in particular when they touched it, something that Dr. Jacobson hasn't done."
"Maybe you have to be sane." Steve shook his head. "Did you ever find the diagram with the bad equation that you were looking at?"
"Yeah, I've got a picture of it. It's not nuclear, I'm sure of that, but I swear I've seen something similar before. It's bugging me, but I'll figure it out eventually."
They made it up to their hotel room without attracting too much attention, and Steve hurried to get the top off of the goo container and set it on the floor. "All right, let's see if this works. Be careful."
"Well, I'm not going to throw it in," Claudia returned, kneeling down and leaning over, lowering it in slowly.
"Did that just…fizzle?" Steve asked after a moment, both of them staring down into the tub of goo.
"Yeah." Claudia frowned. "I don't think I've ever seen an artifact do that before."
"The most low-powered artifact ever?" Steve suggested. "Or can things get contaminated by artifacts? Maybe it was sitting next to the real thing."
"Or cracking it did some damage and we just finished it off." She sealed the tank again and pushed herself back to her feet. "Do you want to make the rounds of the victims again, see how they're feeling?"
"Sounds like a plan."
"Bet," Claudia said, sticking out a hand. "Worst end to a relationship buys dinner."
"Deal," Steve said, taking a hand off the wheel long enough to shake quickly. "And I want steak because my last boyfriend decided that he was 'wrong' and the last time I saw him he was getting on a bus for some retreat somewhere to get cured." It still hurt more than he cared to admit, and never mind that he'd seen it coming a mile away.
"Wow. That sucks."
Claudia, never one to beat around the bush, and he smiled. "Yeah. Steak."
She grinned and shook her head. "Steak's fine by me, but you're buying."
"How do you figure that?"
"Mylast boyfriend turned out to be in witness protection from the mob."
"What?" He turned to stare at her for a moment and then dragged his eyes back to the road.
"Seriously. The last time I saw him he was being hauled off elsewhere by scary guys with US Marshall badges and guns."
"And I say again, what?"
"The mob. You know—"
"I know what the mob is," he interrupted. "What the hell were you doing hanging around mob guys?" And okay, maybe that had come across as a little more protective than he had any right to be, but in his time at the ATF he'd seen the results of a few mob operations and the remains of a few informants. It was never pretty and nothing that Claudia should be anywhere near.
"Well, he was already in witness protection when he moved to Univille," she said with a shrug. "I mean, why else would anyone move there? And it's not like he was actually in the mob, he was just doing some IT stuff for some guy and saw some things that he wasn't supposed to." She frowned. "I'm not sure why the mob wouldn't have their own IT guys, I mean, it is the twenty-first century, but apparently they don't." Another shrug. "Anyway, we met when I was picking up some stuff at the hardware store, and we went out for a while, but we—Warehouse we, this time—were all kind of on edge after the whole MacPherson thing, and I sort of broke my own rule and ended up digging into his background a little further than I should have. And when I did, I found out that he didn't have a background, which was when I blew his cover and made him have to move."
"Huh." Steve considered for a moment. "Okay, yeah, I guess I'm buying steaks." He shook his head. He really shouldn't make bets like that with Claudia; the weird stuff that happened around the Warehouse seemed to guarantee her wins. "But I still think we're both in better shape than Michaels' brother's girlfriend. I mean, damn, sleeping with her best friend? And his brother was the one to tell her?"
"Hell of a way to start a Facebook feud," Claudia agreed.
They'd been heading up the stairs to talk to Mr. Michaels again when they'd heard the arguing, and when the substance of the argument had become fully audible…well, after a quick peek in the window to confirm that Michaels had been one of the ones screaming, they'd both decided to go find someone else to question. His vocal cords were clearly working again; no need to intrude. And if it turned out that they needed more details about what was happening when his voice had stopped working, they'd go back later. Much later.
"Third house on the left?" Steve checked as he turned down the narrow drive. They'd been this way just the other day, but then, they'd been several places the other day.
"Yep. Mrs. Lopez."
"Of the fiftieth birthday party."
"Right. But don't mention that because we aren't supposed to know about that."
Steve nodded.
Mrs. Lopez opened the door at their knock and greeted them with a smile. "Hello, Agents. So good to see you again."
"Well, I guess your voice has returned."
"Just this morning. I was having a late breakfast, and I felt my throat tingling, and…." She shrugged. "Mysterious ways, I suppose. Oh, you're welcome to come in. Can I offer either of you a cup of tea?"
"Sure, that would be great," Steve said after a quick look at Claudia. "Do you mind if we ask you a few more questions about the day that you lost your voice?"
"If you'd like, I suppose. This way."
It only took a moment for them to get situated in her sitting room. "So what happened right before your voice disappeared?" Claudia asked. "I know we were asking about the museum before, but I mean right before it happened."
"Well, it wasn't too long after I visited that exhibit you were asking me about," she said with a nod. "I was at my birthday party—my sister and the girls from work took me out after our shift; the whole reason we went to the lecture is because Susanna and Marie had to work an extra hour and we were waiting for them—and I'm afraid I might have had a little much to drink because I never talk about…well, those things."
She colored slightly as she said it, and Steve decided that he didn't really want to know.
"But then all of a sudden my mouth was moving and no sound was coming out," she continued. "At first I thought it had something to do with the alcohol, but when I was still having trouble the next morning, I called my doctor."
"And had that ever happened before?" Steve asked. "Being unable to speak after having a few drinks?" Most people slurred their words, they didn't go mute, but then again, stranger things had happened.
"No, never." She shook her head. "It sounds a little silly when I say it now, but I had been drinking, so…."
"No sillier than anything anyone else has ever done," he said with a shake of his head.
"And you feel perfectly fine now?" Claudia asked. "No sore throat, no difficulty breathing…?"
"Nothing like that. I did talk to my doctor and he wants me to come in tomorrow for a quick check, but he thinks that whatever it was must have run its course. Apparently viruses are like that."
Steve glanced over at Claudia again. "Well, I think that's all we need. Do you mind if we call you if we have any other questions?" They hadn't bothered to ask before since no voice made talking on the phone difficult, but...
"Of course. You have my number?" She shook her head. "You're with the government; of course you have my number."
"We do. Thanks for your time," Claudia said, standing.
"And we're glad you're feeling better," Steve added as she walked them to the door.
Steve tapped his fingers against his forearms, staring at the container holding Urchin. They hadn't located Mr. Zambrowski, but Mr. Hommat's voice had returned as well, so the odds were good that they'd managed to find and neutralize the correct artifact. As pathetic as its reaction to the goo had been. But he—and Claudia, who had disappeared in search of some kind of cable that apparently wasn't available in Univille but that she thought she could find here and save on shipping—were still at a loss for how the damn thing worked. Mr. Hommat had lost his voice at his daughter's wedding, less than twenty-four hours after his attendance at the lecture as well, but other than that none of them seemed to have much in common.
Mr. Hommat had been giving a speech, Mrs. Lopez had been dining, or at least drinking, with friends…they still knew next to nothing about Mr. Zambrowski, but assuming the twenty-four hour window held true for Michaels he'd been about to start a fight with his brother. Which meant that two of them had siblings, but that wasn't exactly a glaring red flag.
"Antimatter!"
Steve hadn't even heard Claudia's key in the lock, and he bit back his surprise as he turned to look at her. "If you bought antimatter at the hardware store, you're walking back to Univille."
"What? No. I bought sixteen feet of cable." She held up a bag and then knelt down to stuff it into her duffel. "Which was way more of a hassle than it should have been, by the way. But I was thinking about that diagram again, and I'm pretty sure that the equations were for antimatter. From the forties. I mean, investigation got big in the fifties—antiprotons and stuff; somebody somewhere got a Nobel Prize for it—but if that was really Dr. Jacobson's research, it was pretty advanced for its time. They've gotten a lot further now, that's actually what Joshua's working on, but I can see why he would have kept it a secret back then."
"Secrets." Something about that fit with what he'd been thinking about a few minutes ago, and Steve looked back at the container again. "Hey, do you think that's it?"
"Do I think what's what?" she asked, sprawling out across the end of the bed.
"Well, I think we can safely say that Dr. Jacobson isn't one to tell secrets, right?"
"Uh, yeah."
"But Mrs. Lopez went mute when she was talking about something with her girlfriends that she didn't want to tell us about, it happened to Mr. Hommat while he was telling stories at the wedding—some of which his daughter would have preferred that he hadn't, I'm guessing— Micahels was definitely spilling a secret to his brother's girlfriend…."
"So maybe if they spilled the beans on something they weren't supposed to within a certain amount of time after touching Urchin," Claudia said with a nod, "it fixed things so they couldn't say any more."
"Two of them definitely got hit within twenty four hours; I'd say our odds are good that all four did," Steve added. " And the whole nuclear program was pretty insanely secret. Wouldn't something like that be enough make an artifact?"
"The paranoia around it might, sure. We've definitely seen weirder. I'd think Artie would have found it if someone in the area went mysteriously mute back in the forties, but maybe if it was created at the end of the war, this is the first chance that it got. I'm still not sure why it stayed active after it was broken, but…." She shrugged. "Like you were saying earlier, different artifacts behave differently."
"We should probably check the records from back then again anyway, though. Or ask Artie to." Since they probably weren't computerized and that kind of research was neither his nor Claudia's specialty.
"Yeah. She shook her head. "Antimatter in the forties. Huh."
Steve was about to suggest that they go get those steaks and then check in with Artie about flying back tomorrow—since they had the artifact, he doubted that Artie would want them to keep investigating the 'whys' even if they were still short on a few details—when her expression brightened again and she grabbed her computer and flipped it open.
"Antimatter. I bet Joshua could get me some."
It was a little scary that he could actually follow her train of thought, and he shook his head as the diagram he'd expected popped up on the screen. "Claude, Artie will kill you if you power your new manual with antimatter."