Chapter 13: "Excuses, excuses."

"How's the carbon dating coming along?"

"You never were one for patience, Solomon," sighed Maggie. "It'll be back in a few hours. I rushed as much of the prep as I could, but sometimes real science takes time."

"Oh really, real science?" Solomon scoffed, straightening from where he leant over a map weighted down at the corners with books and coffee mugs. "It's like that is it?"

"You show me any one of your discoveries that did not make use of this lab and I will show you a lucky guess!" Maggie laughed back. "You'd be lost without an analyst and you know it!"

"I'd be lost without you, I know that," murmured Solomon, perusing the map again. "I've been staring at these things so long, I think I'm lost right now!"

"I told you to wait until we had some idea of the dates," smirked Maggie, looking round from her monitor. "The stable isotope analysis will give us a more precise location, but I won't get through all of that until tomorrow morning, so let me at least put you slightly out of your misery for the moment." She walked over to the printer and passed him the single page that had just been spat out. "The pollen belongs to a subspecies of grape vine found in these areas in what is now France. I can't be a hundred percent certain, because the molecular clock for grape vines isn't exactly as high a priority as it is for pretty much any animal species and wouldn't tell us exactly what had changed anyway, but it's as close as I can get and closer than I expected."

Solomon looked at the shaded areas on the map in his hand, then at the much larger version on the desk. "Okay. Okay, here, give me a hand with the tracing paper would you, please, Maggie." He flipped a switch on the side of the desk and light shone through from below the map. "Thank you."

XXXX

Nikko flicked from one camera angle to another and reached for another handful of popcorn. Inventory wasn't the most interesting of tasks but he and Vincent had had enough practise working together on it by now that it was at least a straightforward and swift one, especially when Vincent wanted to check on the new security stuff afterwards. It wasn't as if there weren't enough cameras in the building! He had six different options in the linguistics lab alone! Only three were really any good for a clear view of Cal or Juliet's face, though, or of the whole table from one of the upper corner cameras. In the half hour that he'd been hacked into his dad's office computer, spying on his friends, he had watched first one then the other look along the length of the table, then look away before the other spotted them so often that he was convinced they would have been easily finished by now if they could only keep their minds on the task before them. He reached for another handful of popcorn and was mildly disheartened to find the bowl empty. He shrugged and switched to the high camera again. Calvin was looking up now, silently. If there was sound on these things, he hadn't found it yet, and to be honest he hadn't really looked. For the most part Nikko could make out what both parties were saying, if he was on the right camera at the time, and Cal wasn't saying anything right now anyway. If the camera happened to be the wrong one, the stuff Nikko missed made it difficult to keep track sometimes, but he'd already looped his tablet into the server where the data was being stored: he could always watch it back again later.

Juliet looked up and began speaking just as Nikko reached for his water. He flicked the main screen over to the camera that showed her face with one hand and retrieved the glass with the other. He switched to the feed showing Cal's face and watched his reply. He choked on his water.

"Nikko, there you are," stated Vincent's ever-placid voice from the doorway. If the sight of the young graduate trying to breathe, swallow water, switch the monitor off, put down the glass, and mop up any spills, all at the same time, affected or amused him in any way, he didn't show it. "May I speak with you, please? In the training room?"

Nikko nodded, gasping for air between coughs. "Be righ… Be right… Right with you."

It was still a mad dash to remove the evidence, but not long afterwards Nikko sauntered into the training room his usual, boisterous self. The swagger left him as soon as he saw the look on Vincent's face. To call it 'grave' would be an injustice. Vincent often looked 'grave'. 'Grave' was what Nikko liked to think of as Vincent's 'working face', with an occasional option on 'mysterious'. This face wasn't 'grave' or 'mysterious'. This face was definitely 'troubled'. Vincent never looked 'troubled'. If anything, Vincent made other people look 'troubled'.

"What's up?" Nikko frowned. He glanced around the room and his eye caught the stone in the centre of the floor. "Oh. Uh… Meditation practice?"

"Meditation is by it's very nature a practice," Vincent murmured, pacing around the room, hands clasped behind his back, until he and Nikko faced each other across the stone. "I have spent many hours in meditation, and seen many others do likewise, but never in all that time had I seen, or heard of, one who could move a stone with it. Never until yesterday, that is, when I returned from escorting our uninvited guest out of the building and making sure he stayed out. I believe you know the time to which I am referring."

"Uh… Um…" Nikko stammered, trying desperately to come up with an excuse and knowing it was already too late.

"Do not lie to me Nikko," warned Vincent.

"No, I… I wasn't going to."

"Then you will be happy to tell me how long this has been going on for," mused Vincent, "and what, if you have any idea, started it."

XXXX

6 ½ Months ago – five days after the fall

"Okay, not a priest hole," Juliet agreed, surveying the walls of scrolls. "Whatever this place is doesn't change the fact that there's now two closed doors between us and the outside world that we don't know how to open."

"We don't want to open them," Cal pointed out. "At least, not yet."

Juliet ran her flashlight over the outline of the second door, "Maybe, but I'd still feel a lot better knowing we had that option."

"We'll be fine, I promise," murmured Cal, leaning over the desk in the corner.

Juliet glanced over at him then turned her attention to the nearest set of scrolls. "You can't know that, Cal."

"Actually I can," he replied. A warm light bloomed in the corner and cast a dusty shadow over the scrolls Juliet was examining. "You remember that voice I told you about?"

"Assurances from a concussion aren't really a great thing to base your argument on," muttered Juliet, stepping away from the scrolls and turning to the cabinet. She glanced at the candle now burning in its holder. "Is that really a good idea in a room full of really dry, really dusty, really old parchments?"

"It really is," quipped Cal, earning him an eyeroll from Juliet, even if it was directed at the wooden cabinet door in front of her. "Look, we don't know how long Dorna are going to be out there. We should conserve our batteries and settle down to wait awhile."

"You settle down," grumbled Juliet. "I want to know what this thing is and how it opens, and if it has anything to do with opening those doors again."

"We'll get the doors open," Cal assured her.

"Because your concussion says so," Juliet retorted.

"Because the voice said…"

Cal stopped so abruptly Juliet forgot she was trying not to look at him and turned. She met his eyes, her own narrowed. "Said what?"

This time, it was Calvin who looked away.

"The voice said what, Cal?" Juliet repeated.

"It wasn't… It didn't… Ugh!" Cal shrugged. "I don't know how to explain it. It didn't so much tell me stuff as… I don't know, upload, download, whatever, information into my brain. Information that I know is real and true. I don't know how I know it. I can't prove any of it. Only time will do that."

"And this knowledge included the fact that we will get out of this room?" Juliet raised an eyebrow at him.

"Yes."

"Did it include instructions about how to get out of this room?"

"The room itself wasn't exactly mentioned."

"Then how exactly do you know we get out of here?" Juliet pressed, watching a myriad of expressions chase each other across her friend's face. "Did it tell you you're going to win the lottery or something?"

Cal shrugged and reached for the easy answer. "In a manner of speaking. Something like that, yes."

"Something like that," Juliet echoed. "Something like what, Cal? Spit it out! You want me to believe this voice wasn't the product of a head injury that left you blind for three days, you're going to have to tell me more than that."

Cal sighed, searching the ceiling of the room like it had the words he was looking for scrawled across it in illegible handwriting.

"Calvin?" Juliet prodded, turning her flashlight on his face fully. "Tell me."

Another sigh, this time one of defeat. "Fine, but for the record, I didn't want to tell you this. At least not yet."

"Duly noted," nodded Juliet. "Now tell me."

"Part of the knowledge the voice left me with," began Cal, now searching the floor for words, "was that you and I… That we would end up together. Long term."

"When you say together…"

"I mean exactly what you think I mean."

"So what: we're destined to fall in love?" Juliet frowned with a laugh. The laugh faded. The frown did not. "Is that why you kissed me?"

"What? No!" Cal flinched, as though the accusation had walked up and slapped him. "No, I… I kissed you because I wanted to kiss you. And because I thought, maybe, you wanted... maybe you wanted to kiss me too. And because it just felt like… like the right thing to do at the time!"

"At the time?" Juliet echoed, both eyebrows rising now. "So what? Now you wish you hadn't?"

Cal's eyes snapped up to meet hers. "I didn't say that. I didn't mean it either."

"Then what did you mean, Calvin?" Juliet snapped.

"Hey, you kissed me back!" Cal countered. "I just meant that for a moment I forgot that anyone else in the world existed but you and I. I forgot that we have a job to do here. I forgot that we have to go on working together after this. I forgot that the creeps who always seem to be on our tail these days might show up any moment. I most definitely forgot that you had a brand new boyfriend waiting back home for you and, for a moment at least, so did you."

Juliet turned away, shaking her head. "I got caught up in a moment, that's all. Just a moment. I'm not going to turn my world upside down because your head injury says so!"

"You know it wasn't just a head injury, Juliet," pressed Cal, watching her. "You and I have seen crazier stuff than that in the past few years."

"Not usually involving the two of us, though."

"Antarctica."

"I said 'not usually', not 'not ever'!"

"The Uffizi."

"Coincidence. And running into an ex is not exactly crazy, or even unusual!"

"Spooky Templar castle."

"That affected everyone."

"My point exactly!"

"What makes you think this isn't caused by some form of Helmholtz resonance too?"

"Uh, remind me who that castle affected first?"

"Not the point!"

"Yes it is! The resonance affected everyone there! Why would it only affect me and not you here?"

"Ugh!" Juliet threw up her hands and turned away. "None of this is helping get us out of here."

"If Dorna think we're hiding in the tunnels they're going to be out there a while; like days, not hours," reasoned Calvin. "Maybe we can't get out yet, but it seems as long as we're in here, they can't get in."

"So you think," sighed Juliet, finally switching off her flashlight. "Fine, we'll set up camp here for the night."

"Maybe two."

"Maybe… What?"

"We can't exactly go out there and ask them to hurry their search along, can we."

"Professor Zond will want to know why we've locked ourselves in a mediaeval librarian's panic room," muttered Juliet. She flicked her flashlight on again and considered the cabinet. "Any suggestions?"

Cal shrugged. "I think you're looking at it. You really think he's not going to want to know what's inside that thing?"

"We should take a look at the scrolls too," she murmured, turning to the opposite wall. "There's so many of them."

"Yeah, but the wrong handling and they're dust," he noted, peering at the scrolls resting in the shelf Juliet's flashlight was trained on. "They're completely desiccated. We should add them to the list of things to bring back specific kit for. They'll need some serious stabilising."

"What about the desk?" Juliet asked, turning again.

"It's a desk," shrugged Cal. "Writing materials, candles, couple other odds and ends. Nothing hugely significant or interesting."

"So, the cabinet it is then," she sighed.

"Juliet, it's a room high strongbox that hasn't been opened in centuries," Cal pointed out flourishing both hands at the ancient piece of furniture. "At least try to sound a little curious when you tell the professor about it!"

"Maybe you should tell him yourself, if you're so excited about it!" Juliet shot back. "He'll get suspicious if he doesn't see you soon."

Cal wordlessly pointed to the still clearly visible gash on his forehead.

Juliet rolled her eyes. "Excuses, excuses."