The study was a room just off the parlour, about the same size as the Departmental office, with two desks either side of each other, both facing the window for the maximum light. Elise didn't offer them a seat, nor did she take one.

Once she closed the door she took a few steps into the room and asked quietly: "Okay, honesty now. What is going on?"

It was a look that would not be fooled. Magnus and Tesla looked towards each other slowly, unsure whether they shared the same instinct as how they should proceed.

Dr Richter, however, sighed, "You haven't been evicted by the government – you haven't got enough luggage – and last I knew no one was ill." She pointed to Magnus' medical bag, "You've clearly not checked out of your room… are you in trouble?"

Helen watched Nikola and knew that whatever he said wasn't going to cut it: "We all are," she admitted quickly, cutting him off before giving Elise her full attention.

The philologist was surprised to say the least, giving her a suspicious look that demanded more than that. If it wasn't so painful a position for her, the rheumatic doctor would've crossed her arms.

"Or will be…" Magnus continued with sincerity, hesitating only out of a desperate need to phrase this correctly, hands gesturing as she pleaded their case, "There are scientists who have created a mind-altering drug; it has the potential to be dispersed across a wide area – whole cities, countries even. It could be used anywhere, against anyone."

Elise raised a sceptical eyebrow.

"You know the monastic scriptures around the Spear," Nikola corroborated frankly, "those legends about a mist that kept humanity enslaved to heathen kings? Well, fact or fiction, they're being realised by some rather ardent fans."

He could see Helen giving him a muted glare and turned his head slightly towards her silent accusation. He wasn't going to apologise for giving too much away, he merely raised his brow: Elise Richter was more than intelligent enough to work this out for herself in time – she had, after all, been exposed to the legends at the heart of it all. If Helen wanted to play at quasi-honesty with the woman, then they were going to have to give her enquiring mind more than claims of imminent disaster.

Elise watched the two of them, speaking without words, the small argument going on like a moving picture. No wonder they were getting married. "Let's say I actually believe you…" she interrupted, not entirely convinced but still curious, "why do you need to stay here?"

"We've been compromised," Nikola answered without hesitation, "the scientists working on it-"

"We stole part of their weapon," Helen piped up, catching on. Seen as though the move had already been made… she was keen to keep as much detail about yesterday to themselves if they could. She dug inside her medical bag, extracting the liquid which she'd corked properly back at the hotel for safe transport, and presenting it to Richter.

Elise's brow shot up, her hand automatically reaching to see the chemical and inspect it for any familiarity – any hint that it wasn't just sulphuric acid or camphor. It wasn't like any medicinal tincture or cure she'd ever seen in her life, and she'd been to enough doctors and hospitals with her bad health to be quite familiar with your workaday pharmaceuticals.

"You are spies," she whispered, slightly horrified at the realisation that she'd dismissed the notion, that her logic had been critically flawed.

The words rooted Magnus and Tesla to the spot, only their eyes glancing at one another warily, then back to Elise. But they held their nerve, watching her closely for the first move against them – the distinct lack of any denial on their part a confirmation of sorts.

She frowned, "How do I know this… weapon, isn't the thing that will win Austria the war? Save countless lives?"

"But at what cost Dr Richter?" Helen reasoned stoically, her voice feeling far older than she appeared, "These chemicals… they rob you of your will, of your ability to think and act for yourself. Exposed to this, they could turn you into slaves just like the manuscripts describe." She could feel her argument getting though, "Whoever unleashes this isn't going to just stop at winning the war. They would have the power to create a new world order – placing themselves at the very top."

Nikola had to admit he was a tinsy wincy bit jealous that he hadn't thought of it first, you know. A world with him in charge would be so, so much better – no more wars, no more famine… but he had absolutely no desire to be on the receiving end of this device, ever again. If that meant destroying it… Well who knew? Maybe after the total obliteration of this war the world might discover some pure desire to improve itself and finally listen to people, like himself, who could actually make it a better place… Sure. Like that was going to happen.

"She's right Elise," he added weightily, holding her gaze, "You didn't turn me in for a reason. We came to you – for a reason. This is bigger than one, single war."

Elise frowned at the way he said it… as if time wasn't the same in his eyes. As if there'd be other wars, like there always had been, and he would continue to watch them pass him by with the knowledge that there would only be more to come. The expression of an old man peering out of young eyes.

"You know it is."

"They used it on us Dr Richter," Helen followed his assertion, rolling up her sleeve to show Elise the injection mark in her left arm. "That's why Nikola-us wasn't at work yesterday." She glanced briefly, sheepishly out the corner of her eye at him, as if avoiding the fact she'd almost slipped on his name at the half-truth, "It works," she insisted to Richter, locking onto her so she registered her plea: "and we don't know where on whom they plan to deploy it. What's to stop them using it on a hotel full of government officials, or the university – or a school of innocent children? How many countless lives will be manipulated, enslaved, by this next stage in Chemical Warfare?"

"My goodness…" Elise looked a little stunned, still reeling from the very notion that Hauler's Spear wasn't a complete fairy tale after all. That 'Nicolaus Mandić' really was a spy, out to sabotage. Only, their intentions sounded so genuine, their concern, their desperation. Could she really have been so wrong about the audacious Serbian? "But how can I believe you?" she reasoned quietly, looking to the ground as if asking herself more than anyone, then meeting their gaze, "You could be lying about everything…"

"And you are one of three…" he adjusted the figure in light of her sister's claims, "possibly four – people in the whole of Vienna who might suspect that we are, lying. Wouldn't we be making our lives more difficult by coming here," he challenged plainly, "if we weren't telling you the truth now? If you don't help us?"

Elise let that sink in… quietly processing the thought.

"You know more than enough to have us both arrested for espionage, right now." Magnus added, "Please Dr Richter," she reached to touch Elise delicately on the arm, baby-blues imploring. "We need your help."

Elise looked slowly down to that beseeching hand. She held the cards here. If she lied and said yes, they had no guarantee that she wouldn't call the police anyway – only her word. Was it such a stretch? To believe a weapon like this could exist? When students took cocaine and all manner of mind-altering substances – let alone the lecturers? When Mustard Gas filled the battle fields… disfiguring, killing, enemy and ally alike? Hadn't that started in some government laboratory… was that moral? Was that right? Wouldn't the world have been a better place if that chemical had never seen the light of day? Did the world need another way to kill, en masse, to control their fellow man through fear? No. No it damn well didn't. They shouldn't even be asking boys like Frauwaller, or Weber – he'd been her best student, her best – with their whole lives ahead of them. So much to give the world, what right had they to ask them to fight their battles? Demand that they leave all they know to be destroyed, like so much meat to the grinder, while their mothers and siblings starve away under rations that were getting smaller and smaller with each passing month. Damn this war. Damn these men with their war machines, and their chemicals, tearing the country she knew apart at its seams under their own delusions of grandeur. Damn them all to hell.

These two… whoever they really were – it didn't matter. They were on that same page. And if they weren't… if they gave her reason to suspect, for so much as a moment, that they had been anything less than true about their motivations. That they were only here to learn the secrets of the weapon, before leaving to create their own in America or Britain perhaps – she would hand them over in a heartbeat. They wouldn't even see it coming.

She met their eyes with a new determination, "Very well," she breathed, "How can I help?"

0 0

The plan was to return to the hotel room at the Kaiserin Elisabeth and recover the equipment. Smuggle it back to Dr Richter's where Nikola could deconstruct it in relative safety and work out how they might plan to replicate it on a bigger scale. Meanwhile Helen would analyse the drugs it had sprayed into the air, and their blood samples for whatever chemicals they might've injected them with. That meant they didn't even ask for a key.

Outside Room 47 Nikola stood to one side, his acute senses on guard for anyone approaching as Helen knelt by the door and picked at the lock. It gave quite quickly under her practiced hand, and she stood, looking to Nikola for confirmation that the room was empty the other side. He nodded, but as she started to turn the handle he reached out and stayed her arm. She heard the footsteps, coming from behind him, making their way down the hall – a woman.

Her heart beat harder at the sudden threat. Then a slight flex of Nikola's fingers round her arm drew her attention. The look on his face said 'follow my lead', and for a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, pull some stunt that might embarrass the passer-by into purposefully ignoring them, but he didn't. He only opened the door and allowed her to go in first, like a young husband and wife, sharing a room perfectly legitimately. She acted naturally as the woman brushed passed them for her own suite, no comment, no complaint, and they were – to their great relief – duly ignored.

The other side of that closed door Helen's relief turned to instant dismay. "Damn."

Nikola stepped in properly, taking in the distinct absence of the machine that had formerly sat between the couches with a frustrated sigh, "Great." He muttered bitterly, "So they'd planned to come back after all."

"It appears so," Helen offered absently, checking the draws that had been locked, behind the door that had hidden the device from them in the first place. Nothing. Gone, gone, gone. She looked around, at a loss, trying to assess what had likely happened. "It's been… maybe, sixteen hours? Since we came out of the…" illusion, dream, coma – they hadn't actually given it a name yet, had barely spoken about that particular point at all.

"Right," he interceded, delaying the scientific naming of what had been such an un-scientific experience a while longer as he followed her thoughts out loud, "but why be worried about leaving it behind, if you weren't worried about your patients waking up and taking it with them?"

"Or breaking it," she agreed with an insistent expression. "Unless they didn't expect us to wake up before they got back. Our bodies must have metabolised the toxin faster than their dosages allowed for."

Nikola's hand went to his hip. "So I was right," he pointed out, his concentration morphing into a triumphantly smug grin as he acknowledged the unspoken fact: "the Source Blood did give us an advantage."

It earned him nothing but a flat stare from Magnus. She was not about to lower herself into an argument about whether or not one could've called his surmise an advantage when they had still become victims of the device.

"It would explain why you came out of it slightly ahead of me," she carried on thinking it through, purposefully ignoring him. "The machine was still expelling the chemical at intervals when we woke up, presumably it was set to do so until the chemical had run out, or they turned it off. Perhaps the longer you're under the deeper you slip into unconsciousness. Like anaesthetic. If it had left us completely under it would've given them time to remove the equipment and bring in the authorities, or…"

"Take us somewhere no one could hear us scream."

She nodded numb at the thought – still extremely uncomfortable with the notion that the Freud she had come to know might have it in him to be so calculating.

"Well," Tesla sighed, turning on the spot and taking in the emptier environment, "seen as though that didn't go to plan, I guess we can presume they've taken it with them. The only question is – where?"

Helen held his intimating gaze pensively for a moment, then: "Maybe Löwy would know… or someone in his café circle. Or at least, give us a good place to start. Freud was too paranoid about his research to take it home – it would be the obvious place to be watched, the first place any organisation might invade and his daughter would start asking too many questions. Besides, if we ask too close to home we run more risk of alerting them of what we're up to."

"If they're even there… like you said, Freud wouldn't have taken it home so odds are he's wherever his research has gone."

"And what if he's asked his wife to let him know who's asking after him?"

"There'd still be enough time-"

"Let's try the café's first," she insisted.

"Or, I can go to Café Landtmann, and you can go get a head start on analysing the drugs – you still need to get your hands on some equipment, right?"

She eyed him dubiously, but didn't immediately poo-poo the idea.

"I'm not known there," he pointed out, "if I start asking questions it's not going to seem odd, and if I come across Freud and Reitler..." he gave a close-lipped grin, pointing to himself almost incidentally, "vampire, remember?"

Author's Note: Sorry folks but there will likely be longer between posts for the moment as I'm run ragged with our production of Orpheus in the Underworld. I will try my best though. ;)

Runforthestairs – OMG your comment on Bottom of a Glass made me so deliriously happy you have no idea. Thank you so much! It means such a lot to hear that not only are people enjoying my writing, but that they think I've nailed the characters too?! Awesome. That's what it's all about. As for being suited to Sanctuary – I think we can blame growing up on James Bond and Period Dramas for that. Seriously. :)

AConstanceC and Sparky – thank you so much for your continuing encouragement! :)