Got about 12 more chapters to go until this story is finished and we start on the final arc here. Woo! Only over a year later. So, read, enjoy, review if inclined.

Helena woke up frowning for the first time in a while. She believed what she had said to Myka, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to worry until everything blew over. She was almost used to being stuck in another universe. It was a problem to worry about, but it was constant. It wasn't unpredictable as humans were. The pen would send them back if they could deactivate it or something of the like. Simple solution, few variables, child's play. The Artie problem had so many unknowns it was practically unsolvable except perhaps by a random stroke of genius or luck. Those were the problems Helena loved, but not in this context. No, being three steps ahead of people was how she preferred it, but that wasn't an option here.

She hauled herself out of bed and got dressed again. Helena wasn't quite sure what she'd be doing all day. With the scanner set up and working as far as she could tell there wasn't much else to do. Claudia was taking care of the program and there wasn't anything simple enough for her to help with on that project. Helena supposed she could start reading through some of the files manually just to pass the time. From the names of the artifacts that Myka had given her there seemed to be a few rather curious files stashed away in the boxes.

She flicked out the ends of her hair, decision made. There was no use in being idle. Even if the work she did in a few hours could be accomplished by a computer in seconds. Who knew, she might find it before the program was even need.

Helena paused at that. But even if she did find it she would have to keep quiet about it until Claudia got the program up and running anyway. Agent Jinks and the metronome had to be located before any artifact that could help them was revealed. She brushed down her shirt, frowning at the few creases that had managed to set while hung up in the closet. It was unfortunate that they would have to delay, but a promise was a promise. She wasn't going to let Agent Jinks die unnecessarily any more than she was going to claim men were vastly superior beings. She wasn't going to let Claudia suffer as she had once upon a time.

Helena continued to stare into the mirror. That day seemed so long ago and yet a blink of an eye away. Having been to that house made it seem even closer than that. Most times it seemed like such a short time ago, except when she was with Myka. Only when she was with her did the amount of time that had elapsed match the amount of time since that fateful in her own mind. She was the only one who could soothe the ragged edges of the wound left by Christina's death. She didn't want Claudia to have to wait over a hundred years to find the person that would do the same for her.

She sighed and walked from her room, starting to smell the tempting aroma of coffee filling the air of her bedroom. Helena had to admit, as vile as the stuff truly was, it did happen to smell magnificent at least.

Claudia was already sitting at the kitchen table typing away at her laptop, a piece of toast gripped between her lips. Leena shot fond, if a little exasperated, looks at the younger girl and her table manners. Helena sat down beside the red head and looked at her screen. The code was far too advanced and moving far too fast for Helena to actually get a read on it, but she tried anyway. She caught a few commands, but nothing that would tell her how it was going.

"How far are you?" She asked, sitting back.

Claudia grabbed the piece of toast out of her mouth, taking a quick bite before plopping it on the table. "Not bad. I had an idea about everything last night and it seems to be testing well so far. If everything keeps going so smoothly I should be done sometime today."

Helena shot her an impressed look. "My, my, that's faster than I thought you would be done."

"I work quickly when motivated properly." She shrugged.

Helena looked around the room carefully. Artie was nowhere to be seen and the floorboards were not creaking upstairs. It seemed they were alone for now.

"Claudia, I think I've had an idea that would help us keep everything hidden until the last possible second."

Claudia glanced over at her for a second before turning her eyes to the screen again. "What?"

"What if we waited for the program to turn up with the information on an artifact to save the Warehouse, supposing it does anyway. Someone will have to retrieve it from wherever it was, why shouldn't it be us? We're quite the effective team. That way when we go looking for the metronome we also will have a legitimate cover story. At least until we get to wherever Agent Jinks is. From there we could go get the artifact and be back here perhaps before the full storm of our actions hits."

Claudia bit her lip. "That might take a while to find. First and foremost the program is supposed to probe for backdoors. Once it finds one it's programmed to flip over and put most of the effort into finding an artifact matching the parameters I set to indicate a potential Warehouse saving artifact, but until I crack that wall open there's still a large part of it attacking the wall instead of searching. Even after I do get Jinks's information and everything is shifted full force into searching there are a lot more files on there than you think."

"But just think, we would have the cover we needed to move freely. It might be worth the wait. If they catch wind of us coming it will be worse than having waited a few more days for a search result."

"But what if it doesn't come back with anything?"

"We address that concern then." Helena nodded once to emphasize the point.

Claudia thought about her suggestion for a few minutes. "Alright, fine, but if nothing comes up within three days of me cracking that wall, we're talking about this again."

"Deal."

Helena got up and grabbed a mug from the cabinet, filling it with water and sticking it into the microwave. She would never get over the pleasure that was having food heated almost instantly. After growing up in the era where fire did all of the cooking and only just seeing the beginning of electric powered stoves just before she was bronzed, such a convenience truly was wonderful.

She threw in a spoonful of loose tea leaves into her mug and let it brew for a few minutes. Leena worked around her, still prepping the bulk of breakfast. When the liquid was the appropriate dark brown she scooped out the bulk of the leaves and sat down once again.

A plate of food was set in front of her a few minutes later. Leena set a plate beside Claudia as well, along with a squeeze to the younger girl's shoulder, silently commanding her to eat. Claudia kept typing along, though.

"Just a few more lines and I should be done. I'll eat, Leena, I swear."

Leena sighed and walked away. "Sure, but we all know how you get with your projects. Soon I'll have to strap you down just to get you to eat a piece of toast."

"Hey, I'm not that bad! Food is important too."

"Only at three in the morning when you realize you haven't eaten all day."

"Alright, so I'm not perfect." Claudia typed a last few key strokes and hit the left mouse key triumphantly. "But in this case, I really am right." She picked up her fork and scooted the plate closer. "And while it's running through test I'll eat." She smiled cheekily at Leena.

Leena rolled her eyes but was still smiling fondly.

"If it comes through test clean then the patch can be applied?" Helena asked.

"Yup, and the search begins."

"How long will it take to find out if the scanner is copying everything right?"

"A couple minutes max once the fixes are applied."

"Good."

"But after that it's just waiting around, so."

"I think I can handle that."

"Yeah, yeah oh patience guru. Not everybody is good with sitting still."

"I'm sure Leena could find a few cleaning jobs for you if you don't want to be idle that badly."

"Shutting up now." She shoved a forkful of eggs into her face. Leena laughed behind her.

"I didn't think so."

All of them looked up as Artie came in, grumbling. Claudia reached over slowly and shut her computer, trying to act as casual as possible. Helena sipped her tea and nodded to the older man. She was surprised he had waited as long as he had to stumble downstairs. Perhaps it was he who had the bad night this time. Or perhaps the delayed wake up was nothing more than a coincidence.

The breakfast continued with stilted conversation until Pete came down and pulled Claudia into a discussion about the merits of Magneto versus Professor Xavier. They filled up the room with lively chatter whilst Artie and Helena sat silently eating and Leena looking on with a slight smile while Claudia went off on another hand flailing tangent about how Magneto was so much more awesome. Metal bending, hello?

Helena glanced down at the computer under Claudia's elbow. Soon. They would have a solution soon now. Maybe even before Myka's Artie problem hit the point of no return. The thought made the corners of her mouth twitch up. What a good prospect indeed.

A few hours later they were set up in the library once more, Artie having driven off to places unknown to do gods knew what. Probably something to do with saving the Warehouse, but whatever it was, it suited Helena just fine. She hated the feeling of having to look over her shoulder every few seconds.

"It's good to go," Claudia said from the couch she had claimed as her own.

Helena nodded and slipped a file into the load bin on top of her scanner. The file flew through the scanner quickly. She glanced up at Claudia and awaited the verdict. Now that the patch had tested clean and had been attached to the Warehouse database they were using things were progressing quickly.

Claudia pursed her lips and squinted a little. "They're a little out of focus. I can still read everything, but I'm not sure in the computer will be able to when it's searching."

Helena squatted down and flipped a few dials before pausing. She hit one last one before standing again and collecting the same file she'd just scanned. She figured it fitting that the first thing scanned into this new database was the file on Yogi Berra's jockstrap. The face that Myka had unwittingly made while talking about it had been worth its weight in gold.

She ran it through the scanner again. Claudia held up a thumbs up. Helena smiled widely. Things were progressing quickly and easily indeed.

"It's good to go, H.G. Crank her up."

Helena plopped a pile she'd prepared earlier into the feed tray and walked over to Claudia's side while it scanned in.

"So how goes its side mission?" she asked, perching on the arm of the couch.

"Pretty good. It's covered a lot of ground in a short time for the amount of power its got. If it keeps going at the speed it is, it might actually only take a day or two."

Helena nodded, pleased. "Has it encountered any resistance from the wall itself?"

"No, seems like it recognizes it as part of the Warehouse so it's not doing anything to it besides rebuffing it when it tries to get in. Pretty much what I hoped it would do." Claudia shrugged.

"Good. Perhaps the fates are actually with us today."

Claudia looked up at her. "You don't believe in the fates."

"No, but perhaps a little preemptive thanks will keep things running smoothly. I'm not above any tactics right now, darling. I do quite want to get home to Myka sometime in the next century."

Claudia snorted. "Alrighty then.

Helena stood up once more and went to fill the now empty scanner. "Perhaps in this universe they might actually listen."

"I don't think they do, dude. Believe me, I've been here the whole time and it's not like I've seen any evidence."

"No doubt, darling, but who knows, perhaps in some other universe they do."

"That's literally the most hopeful thing I've heard you say about religion. Like ever."

Helena smiled slightly. "And it will probably be the last. But I am in another universe, darling. To some that's a big a dream as religion being true."

Claudia looked over at her, thoughtful. "Yeah, I guess you're right."

Helena went back to unboxing the files at her feet, still smiling slightly.

"H.G.!" Claudia shouted an hour or so later.

Helena popped her head over a file box she was sitting beside. "Yes, darling?"

Claudia motioned her over frantically. Helena rose gracefully, pausing a moment to stretch out stiff muscles. She set on the arm of Claudia's couch.

"What is it, darling? What has you so hot and bothered?"

Claudia turned the screen to face her. "This."

Helena leaned forward and scanned the screen. A quiet gasp escaped her mouth. "Already? Even at a reduced capacity?"

Claudia nodded. "Yeah. I guess maybe the fates were with us." She shot Helena a look. "It's still searching to see if anything else matches better, but it seems like we've found a fix for our Warehouse problem."

"So it seems." Helena kept reading the file, skimming everything quickly. Her eyes stopped on one rather important detail.

"Darling, I hate to ruin your celebration, but did you read the side effects?"

"No, I just read the general what it does section to make sure the program was actually working like it should."

Helena turned the screen towards her again. "I'd read it."

Claudia's eyes flicked across the screen quickly. "Oh."

"Yes, oh."

"So it's literally a one for one deal. You get back the object you want but someone has to disappear from the world."

"Not only just a random person off the street darling, it says a dear one. It means a friend or family member."

"And it says you pick? What the hell this sounds like a magic spell, not an artifact."

Helena snorted. "Well, darling, it is Morgan Le Fay's spell book. I can only imagine this artifact comes about as close to magic as we'll ever witness."

"We can't get rid of anyone else. We already lost Myka. We still have to frakking resurrect Jinksy. Then as soon as everything is done you're leaving and who knows if we get the you who existed here before back. We lose anyone else and everything is just going to fall to pieces."

"I'm hoping that in the process of the Warehouse being returned your Myka might be as well. It says that the object will be restored to you in the condition that it was originally lost. As for me, I'm not quite so sure. If the version of me that was here before didn't come back I would think it would violate the Law of Conservation of Mass, but so many of the scientific laws I learned when I was young have been broken just to get me here, so this might be an exception. Or perhaps she might have been shifted to a new universe as well." Helena shrugged. "It's not as if I'll be around to find out."

Claudia scratched the back of her head. "Would she still come back, if there was a you to come back if we picked you for the whole artifact sacrifice thing?"

"Artifacts are finicky things. Do some more researching into the spell book. See if you can find anything, maybe an instance where someone has used it. Until then keep the search rolling just in case something else pops up that has more palatable consequences."

"Alright." She looked up at Helena with wide eyes. "But H.G. what if this is the only thing we find?"

Helena bit the inside of her lip. "We'll cross that bridge when we get there, darling." She turned and went back to her file boxes. "Until then we'll hope that somewhere in that database of yours or perhaps in one of these files a better option is lying in wait."

Claudia nodded and sunk back into her couch again.

Helena's mind refused to quiet later that night. The search had yet to turn up anything more. She tried to tell herself that it was only because the search was running slowly because of the search for the backdoor in the firewall, but something in the back of her mind wouldn't allow it. Helena had a feeling that this was the one solution. Morgan Le Fay's spell book was what they were going to have to work with. These people had already lost so much, was saving the Warehouse really worth the sacrifice of yet another person? Helena didn't think so. The Warehouse was steel and lumber and rock, things that could be replaced. But a person couldn't be replaced. The Warehouse was special, but not that special.

Something about the wording in the file tickled at her brain, but couldn't tease a full thought out of it. She left it alone and hoped the forming idea would come to her when the time was right. Perhaps talking to Myka would help. It always seemed to when she was trying to puzzle out her latest conundrum. But with her brain buzzing the way it was that was a long way off.

She wondered how unlucky she was to have two restless nights in a row. Not like she was stranger to them, the years after Christina seemed to be one long restless night. Since being unbronzed she hadn't had that particular problem. She sighed. Perhaps yet another side effect of being so long away from Myka. Perhaps just a side effect of the happenings around her. Whatever it was it was highly annoying.

Helena paced her room for a few hours until yet again the physical activity wore her out. She laid down in her bed and let her eyelids slip shut once again.