Disclaimer: Warehouse 13 was Created by Jane Espenson and D. Brent Mote and was Produced by Universal Cable Productions. All Rights are retained by the original holder, whether Personal or Corporate.
I make no money from this story.
This story is rated T, or WH-13.
This is my third Warehouse venture, all of which take place following 'Endless', the final episode of the televised series. 'Come Forth' happens a month after 'Endless', whereas my second work, 'Darkest Shadows', occurs a week after that.
Then there is a five-day span before
Triple Threat
A Warehouse 13 Adventure
By JMK758
Prologue
Late Summer is when parks and beaches fill by mid-morning and space becomes a premium as people get in those last weekends of hot weather, and the world seems to pause, take a deep breath and scream.
One person went down, then two, three, blood gushing onto grass and blankets.
The screams fill Prospect Park in New York City's Brooklyn, first from several women's throats, then more women and men add their own cries to the din. In moments those who had been lolling in the sun, reading on blankets, eating or, on rarer occasions, barbequing, run headlong in a score of directions. They're heedless of other runners seeking their own safeties by fleeing blindly in intersecting directions, trying to dive behind benches or whatever cover they can find.
Some even leap over bloody, still bodies in their desperation to escape.
If they collide with and therefore hinder the escapes of others who cut across their paths, they do not care.
Run. Hide. Get behind something. Get under something. Change course when someone a bit faster blasts sprays or gushes of blood from chest or back and falls dead or rolls to stops.
And when those on their feet are finally scattered out of the park, some of whom will continue running until they collapse, not one person can say that they ever heard a shot.
When the first white and blue Police car arrives, five men and seven women dot the grassy expanse. None of them move, none of them bleed any more save for the downward leaks of blood that soak into the soil.
Chapter One
Pings
'Leena's Bed and Breakfast', seven miles on the other side of Univille, South Dakota from Warehouse 13 has few guests aside from its 'regulars', for the town attracts few people who do not come to visit families and friends.
In fact, presently the only 'guest' other than four Warehouse agents is Abigail Cho, who had managed the establishment during Leena's 'vacation', a rather macabre euphemism for being dead. She now remains as the Psychotherapist employed by the Regents Council for the aforesaid agents.
x
"Mykes, could you pass the butter?" Peter Lattimer inquires of his Secret Service / Warehouse partner, his words muffled by the half croissant still in his mouth.
Ever since declaring their mutual feelings for one another, they have brought their partnership to such a level that Leena has expressed her great reservations to the prospect of knocking down the intervening wall between their rooms.
In fact, she has given her iron clad decision to that: any remodeling will be done during the pair's Honeymoon.
Presuming they can carry domestic bliss that far.
"Don't you think you've had enough butter?" The croissant, already made with a generous allotment of butter, is thick with yellow together with red jam. Claudia Donovan, on his other side, returns to him the tray which Myka had moved, knowing it to be the best way to avoid a prolonged discussion.
x
The front door opens and Artie Nielsen, predictably in brown (does the man have any other color in his closet?) enters, carrying several file folders and his black leather satchel.
"We've got a 'ping'," is his announcement as he approaches the heavily laden table.
"Yes!" Claudia exults. The last ping they'd had, excluding her having been whammied by an artifact and the nightmare night that followed, had been over a week ago and she's been developing 'Warehouse Fever'.
She has but one regularly scheduled daily activity, that being sessions with Dr. Cho, trying to deal with so many assaults to her psyche, things she has been unable to discuss, despite her best efforts, with her friends.
She needs a break, needs the normalcy of hunting down the most mysterious, dangerous, planet-threatening artifacts, struggling for sanity while occasionally running for her life.
On second thought….
x
"Oh, scones." Artie reaches for and snags the last one an instant before Pete's capture of the delicacy. "Actually. we got three pings. It was a 'ping-ping-ping'–."
"Ricochet Rabbit!" Pete finishes in cartoon announcer flourish.
"Forget it, Droop-a-Long, none of them are in Hoop'n'Holler."
"Whoa," Claudia cries, "Artie with the slam dunk!"
"I'm impressed," Myka calls, hand raised for a high-five which the man leaves hanging. Instead he pulls one of the folders from the pile and puts that in her hand.
"Vanessa and I were exchanging memories the other day."
"Orville Wright's Aviat –" At the man's glare Pete reconsiders the suggestion. Since the goggles' last uses were transferring Nick Powell's memories of the past five centuries, and then Claudia's Warehouse memories, into Paracelsus, the less said the safer.
"Myka, you and butter fingers here head to New York." Pete looks at his fingers, several of which had been smeared by his overly generous use on the croissant. "Twelve people were massacred in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. No one saw anything, no one heard anything –."
"Isn't that par for the course?" Pete asks, licking the last of the butter off his finger like finishing a popsicle, much to Myka's disgust.
"The city has the most sophisticated gunshot detection system money can buy, yet not one detector… detected anything." He'd known he was headed for a verbal swamp but had been unable to avoid it, so he'd given in while handing Pete the other file. "Don't smear it."
x
"Claudia, you and Steve are going to San Francisco." He hands them the files. "Communications lines are going wonky. No matter what is said, it reaches the other end as a series of obscenity laden outbursts."
"Sounds like fun," Steve Jinks says in tones that make his feelings clear. "Do we have to investigate another Frat House?"
"While that sounds like fun," Claudia teases, "this sounds like adventures in cyberspace."
"Go! Do your megabyte mojo, and don't come back here with any new bad words."
"Moi?" she asks as though the idea would never cross her mind.
"Keep an eye on her," he orders Steve.
x
"Meanwhile you and I," he tells Leena, handing her the final two folders, "are going to West Palm Beach."
"We are?" She makes it sound extra delightful to get under Pete's skin.
"Alfred Ganze was found standing in his office where he is President of the local Community Board, checking his mail, frozen solid on a hundred-four-degree day."
"Cool," is Pete's assessment.
Steve checks his watch. It's 8:42, meaning that in Florida it is 9:42. "Someone mail him an artifact?"
"Awfully early in the day for mail," Leena notes.
"Maybe it was yesterday's. Maybe they're efficient. Our job to find out."
"Victor Fries' Freeze gun," Myka suggests. Claudia wishes she hadn't; Artie and Steve had recently conspired to use that on her.
"I checked, it's still in Aisle 754-1934, Shelf 96832-0632-021. It was never one of "Brother Adrien's" traps."
"Driftwood from –" is as far as she gets.
"Titanic's Driftwood, the Freezing Snow Globe, William Parry's Inukshuk, which by the way only gets down to -54 degrees; no, all present and accounted for. Mr. Ganze was flash frozen."
"What about –?" Pete tries.
"Brooklyn, New York! Twelve dead! Unknown cause! Go!"
"I'm going, I'm going."
The agents gather up their last fragments of breakfast.
Artie bites the scone.
xxx
When twelve bodies are discovered spread throughout more than a thousand square yards of hot park, the Crime Scene can get very complicated. As such, when the two Secret Service Agents, their badges on display on their belts, dip under the length of yellow tape, no one challenges them and there is much to see.
On the paved road behind them that wends its way through the park there is a long, double line of white and blue Radio Motor Patrol vehicles from at least four precincts, the cars a grim announcement of how widely the call for aid had gone.
All those who stand upright or crouch upon the huge grassy field share in common badges in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors while the attire ranges from blue or white short sleeve uniform shirts to what would otherwise be termed male and female business attire.
The agents left their rented car behind, having considered and abandoned the idea of leaving it and the air conditioner running, for even with the huge perimeter cordoned off and the scores of uniforms spread out before them, Myka doesn't dismiss the possibility of any of the people outside the taped expanse stealing the car.
x
From some yards away the agents pick out, by white shirt with gold oak leaf shoulder insignia and distinctive gold badge, an NYPD Deputy Inspector, and as soon as they have made an approach and the woman has concluded her conversation with a green uniformed Civilian Emergency Response Team member, they meet DI Barbara Harris.
"What's the Secret Service's interest in this?"
"All I can say," Myka tells her, "is that one of the deceased has a particular connection with 'higher ups', so high I'm not allowed to name names, not even the victim's."
"Hmph." She has no need to say to what extent she doesn't believe the pair, but the shields and IDs appear real and if they're not being square, well, it'll be just another example of government officials who don't carry much weight throwing around what little they do have.
In the meantime, she has more than an acre of Crime Scene to deal with.
"Take your pick," she advises, nodding to the white sheets, each some twenty or more yards from its nearest neighbor, under each of which lies a body.
x
As they step away Pete, who'd made no attempt to flirt in deference to her rank and the seriousness of the situation with so many dead bodies upon the grass, still does say "Is it me, or does it seem she's not going to order her people to give us carte blanche?"
"She may not have to," Myka veers them slightly left, setting course for a blonde woman who has stood up after lowering the corner of a white sheet. In a few moments the woman sees them approaching and her face alights with recognition.
"Well, as I live and breathe, which is never a certainty in this job. Myka Bering."
"Hello, Megan. Haven't seen you since Philly. Pete, this is Dr. Megan Hunt; Megan, my partner Peter Lattimer. Megan, good to see you; I didn't know you were in New York."
"Yeah, I transferred three years ago out of the City of Brotherly Love when it stopped being so. Better hours, better pay."
"How's Lacey?"
"Married, and a mommy."
"Congrats. Boy or girl?"
"Yes." Megan keeps it hanging for a moment, enjoying her friend's expression. "Twins. How about you? Any kids?"
"Just this one," she says, cocking her head at Pete, and both women share a grin at his expense.
Myka realizes she's derailed a flirt. Good.
"I did a couple of weeks in DC before deciding that wasn't a good fit either."
"It almost never is. That place is never lukewarm, you either cook there or you don't."
"Well, I didn't. I looked you up, but you weren't there."
"No. South Dakota, a little place, well, not that little, called Univille."
"Univille, South Dakota? Whatcould there be for the Secret Service in Univille, South Dakota?"
"Oh, you'd be so surprised. Special Service. Sorry I can't tell you."
"But then we'd have to kill you." But Pete's movie reference is decidedly unwelcome, as indicated by the women's collapsed smiles. "Sorry."
"So, what've you got here?" Myka asks, trying to salvage the moment.
"Damnedest thing you ever saw."