Chapter 32: "Both archives?"

Greenpoint was, well, not green. Not exactly. Not unless you counted the peeling paint or the graffiti on the silent walls or construction billboards. There were parks at some points and trees in most residential streets, but out by the East River, where the previous year's rezoning had triggered the transformation of unused buildings into whatever the developer had planned, trees didn't get much of a chance. Nevertheless, graffiti and development work aside, it wasn't the first place that would have sprung to Cal's mind as a hideout for kidnappers. Maybe that was the point.

He shouldn't be here, he knew. He should leave this to Vincent: the professional. But then Nikko had announced he was going and, superpowers or not, it would be a cold day in Kansas before Cal let Mini-Magneto go rescue the woman he loved without him. And so there were three. Three completely normal, not at all suspicious, guys of varying ages wandering around a deserted building site still waiting on the deadlock that was building permits. Yeah: not suspicious at all!

"You're almost there," murmured Maggie over their earpieces. "Just up ahead, on your right. There! Stop! The signal is directly to your right now."

At the forefront of the little trio, Vincent paused and turned right. An unbroken line of wire fencing met him, each section covered over with plywood boards plastered in promises and projections, posters and polythene.

"Okay, David Copperfield, you're up," grumbled Cal, stepping back.

Nikko raised a hand, but found his mentor lowering it without a single glance in his direction.

"Or," suggested Vincent, raising his other hand to point further down the temporary palisade, "we could just use the gate five panels down."

"It's still gonna be locked," shrugged Nikko.

"Quieter to open though," Vincent pointed out, leading the way. "Also, it has the benefit of not letting our enemies know our strengths. When dealing with Dorna, it is better to play one's cards extremely close to one's chest!"

"Hey, I'm a great poker player!" Nikko joked, following Vincent.

Cal trailed behind them, only half an ear listening to the conversation that rattled back and forth between master and pupil. He scanned the boards. There was nothing there that might give some clue why Juliet's keychain, and hopefully Juliet, were here. Beyond it being a building site on hiatus, he could think of no reason for this choice of place. Worse: he could think of several reasons why a building site on hiatus was a perfect choice, and most of them did not end well.

They came to a halt outside the chained and padlocked gate. Vincent slipped a discrete roll of tools from his pocket while Nikko completed his catalogue of self-aggrandisement.

"Your first mistake, Nikko," Vincent smirked, crouching down to the lock, "was in assuming the game was poker."

9 days after the fall

Calvin Banks shifted his weight and groaned. There really was no comfortable way to sit when your arms were tied behind your back and even breathing hurt. It wasn't all thanks to his elegant host, of course: falling down a hole in the middle of nowhere, landing on a pile of rubble and spending the week afterwards sleeping on cold, hard rock floors didn't exactly help matters. He had to admit: this guy at least had more than one song in his jukebox. The initial questioning had been followed with the clear and intricate detailing of Juliet's efforts to find him, which had been followed by the obligatory bad guy beating, which had been followed by his current state of painful boredom. Or maybe that's how things had started and he'd come full circle, he wasn't sure. A lack of consciousness can do that to you.

"Ah, Doctor Banks, you are awake this time, excellent!" Righetti's voice crowed from the doorway. "I am so glad that my security team paid heed to my warnings when they first brought you to me: you are so difficult to question when you are unconscious."

"Go to hell," Cal snarled, wincing at a sharp pain in his ribs. Was it cracked or just bruised?

"Now, now, Doctor Banks," smirked Righetti, coming to a halt in front of him and placing a chair opposite him. He waited until Calvin's eyes settled on the chair. "Oh, your friend is still at liberty," he assured his prisoner. "At least for now. She is quite adept at translating dead languages perhaps, but sadly less so at locating soon to be dead colleagues."

Cal shook his head and laughed. "You can't kill me: you need me to find the manuscript!"

It was Righetti's turn to laugh. "I believe the missing word in that sentence is 'yet'! As you have undoubtedly surmised, once you are of no further use to us your death will surely follow and the next your friends hear of you will be as another sad obituary in another local newspaper, nothing more. I am perfectly well aware of your intelligence, Doctor Banks. I realise fully that the delay of such an outcome is sufficient motivation for you to withhold from us the answers we seek. What you appear to be unaware of is this: while your own life may be destined to reach its end soon, the life of your friend and colleague still hangs in the balance. At this present moment in time, she is following a lead through the labyrinth that is Al Midan: one of the oldest parts of the city. It would be so easy for her to simply," he paused to shrug, "vanish!"

Calvin's jaw tightened, all trace of laughter and scorn freezing into the icy depths of certainty: a certainty that Righetti would snuff out any life that stood in his way without the slightest quivering of conscience, but also that he would use any means necessary to bend that life to suit his purpose first. There was always, of course, the possibility that he was bluffing, at least as far as his knowing Juliet's location, anyway. Could he really take the chance that he wasn't?

"You're bluffing," Cal spat back, shaking his head. "You have no idea where Juliet is. If you did, she'd be here."

"And lose one bargaining chip? Tut, tut, Doctor Banks," sighed Righetti, seating himself in the chair. "You forget, once the lovely Juliet is here, the only way out of here will be the same way as you: as a corpse. You barter for her life just now Doctor Banks. If we have to bring her in here, you will merely be bartering for the manner and speed of her death." Righetti stood and straightened his suit. "I advise you to consider your position with care, Doctor Banks," he said, peering down at his prisoner, "or the next person you will see sitting in that seat will be your friend."

XXXX

The gate swung open. Vincent led the way into the building site. Builders huts, portable toilets and the other regalia of a project paused midway adorned the razed expanse before them. Ignoring the flapping plastic and abandoned materials, he turned to the nearest of the huts, some five panels back the way.

"This looks about right," murmured Vincent, heading for the hut without a backward glance.

"Only one possible place available," replied Nikko. "Doesn't strike you as odd?"

Vincent paused. "We have no reason to suspect Blake knew anything about the transmitter," he reasoned. "Juliet didn't."

"We have no reason to assume he didn't," countered Nikko. "Look who he's working with! I dunno, man: this feels too easy to me."

"Yeah, well either way, it's the best lead we have," Cal scowled, striding ahead, He reached the door and tried the handle. It was locked. He stepped back, ready to kick the door down if necessary. Vincent's hand fell on his shoulder.

"Patience, Calvin," sighed Vincent. He let Nikko lead Cal back down the short flight of steps and retrieved the lockpicks from their pocket again.

The few seconds it took Vincent to pick the lock felt like hours to Cal. The time between his raised hand, warning them both to stay back, turning to beckon them onward felt like an eternity. Even so, Calvin was the first to Juliet's side dragging the gag from her mouth and begging her to wake up. It didn't take much for her to come round, and by the time she did, her hands and feet were free of restraints.

"My keychain?" Juliet blinked, frowning at the three men crouched around her. She reached into her pocket and dragged the item forth. It dangled silently on its loop. "Wait, where's my key?"

Nikko and Vincent exchanged glances. Vincent got up and hurried outside. He was putting his cellphone away when Nikko caught up with him.

"You were right," he admitted to his pupil. "It was too easy. She's a decoy."

XXXX

By the time the four got back to the Veritas building, the deed was done. The door hung open on its hinges, but beyond that nothing seemed out of place until they reached Vincent's office, where a Maggie lay slumped over the desk and Solomon lay motionless on the floor, blood oozing from his scalp and cheek.

"Dad!" Nikko shot forward, dropping to his knees by his father.

"Careful, Nikko," warned Vincent, taking in the scene piece by piece. "Don't move him. Head injuries can be tricky."

"Maggie's okay, just unconscious," reported Juliet from the desk. "It looks like he used a taser. She should come round soon."

"Call an ambulance," ordered Vincent. "Technically, they both should be checked out, but Solomon is the priority. You two stay here. Calvin, come with me."

"Wouldn't it be faster if we split up?" Cal queried, following close on Vincent's heels.

"Why?" Vincent replied, hurrying through the halls with watchful eyes. "We know where Blake was going and it looks like he did too."

"Huh?"

"Look around you, Calvin," chided the expert. "Nothing is out of place. No evidence of a hurried search. The only reason we had to believe Blake had been here at all was the door, and the fact neither Maggie nor Solomon were responding."

They reached the main lab, where Juliet and Cal had spent the last day and a half translating the scroll of parchment from the hidden room. It was gone. So were the piles of notes that had been left, forgotten, on the table beside it when Juliet's absence became an issue.

"Tell me you locked the scroll back in the laboratory safe, Calvin," murmured Vincent, inspecting the empty desk.

"It's gone," stated Calvin, shaking his head and stepping back. "They've got the scroll."

"The translation too," added Vincent, "unless you thought to lock that away before going after Juliet."

Cal floundered. The desk was empty. The pile of scribbled notes were gone. All the work they had done: gone. On its way to Dorna. Perhaps even already there. Calvin backed away further, bumping into the doorframe. He blinked, frowned, looked down, and reached for his back pocket. His hand came back holding his notebook.

"Huh!"

"Huh, what?" Vincent prodded. He walked over and took the book from Cal's unresisting hand. Without waiting for permission he flicked through the small book. "What's this? Shorthand?"

Cal shook himself, like a man waking from a dream, and leant back against the wall with a sigh. "That's just my writing when I write fast. It's also the second translation of the parchment."

"Second translation?" Vincent looked up.

"We screwed up," Cal explained. "Tired minds make mistakes. Also translating unfamiliar languages from unfamiliar scripts that have little or no vowel symbols is really hard. Once we finished the first translation, some things didn't make sense, so we started again from scratch. Well, from the computer transcription, anyway, checking it again as we went. Once some of the later parts of the scroll were translated, you see, it gave us a better idea of what the earlier parts ought to be. The notes on the table were Juliet's. We had them there to refer to for context and comparison and so on. We were pretty much done with them when she left me to complete the new translation when she went to meet Tony, so the first translation was still on the desk, with the scroll, the second one is all in here."

"Hey," said Juliet, walking up to the doorway and slipping her arm around Calvin's back. Her head came to rest on his shoulder. "Maggie's awake. Says she's fine, just a headache. Solomon's still out. Ambulance is on it's way. Nikko's with them."

"We should check the rest of our recent finds," mused Vincent. "I will check the security for the archives, both of them. You two check the items on this level. Meet me in the office when you're done."

With a nod from Juliet, Vincent was gone. Calvin still stood staring at the notebook Vincent had returned to his hand.

Juliet looked up at him, frowning. "Both archives?"