The deep, French accent spoke from within the large chamber. It was danker than the rest, circular, and its walls were lined with stone columns. The windows near the ceiling let in small rays of natural light. The space was greater in size, higher ceilings, stone flooring, but not a single treasure in sight. It felt vacant and cold.
"And without backup."
Without flinching, Myka's gun rose to eye level. She glared down the barrel, teeth clenched behind pursed lips. What frightened her most was how outgunned this man, presumed to be Lallement, was. It was by no accident that the agent rushed in, bringing a gun to a snark fight. Chased him into a corner, no less. No, Lallement must have had something up his sleeve to turn the tables. Since discovering the Warehouse and its prerogative in hunting down dangerous artifacts, it was becoming frighteningly clear to Myka how little comfort her sidearm afforded in that chamber. As this Frenchman stood, hands in pockets, smiling and quite content at gunpoint, Myka felt like the punch line of a joke.
Gaspard Lallement did not look commonplace in the eerie chamber he stood in. He wore a three piece pinstripe suit that made Bill Gates seem like a pauper. The gold tie clip and ring on his pinky finger danced in the light as did his brushed to a glossy finish shoes. His slicked, straw blonde hair was touched with grey at the ears and temples. He was clean shaven, hardly any sign of facial hair.
Lallement's image was the very definition of looking like a million dollars, despite the setting. He looked far from the kooky, sociopath the team's imagination made him out to be. However, if appearances were deceiving (and their research accurate), then this rich billionaire could very well be the black market dealer, killer, and extortionist he was. The maniacal laugh they chased down sure fit the bill.
Piercing grey like storm clouds, his eyes creased to make out the twin outlines. The womanly figures stood close enough that only a whisper of air passed between. So close that two became one, where you could not decipher where one began and ended. A collector and connoisseur of many fine works, Lallement had laid eyes on indescribable beauty in all its forms. Many a time had his breath been taken from him in the galleries of museums and gold adorned palaces. He was a man of heavy pocket and he spent in good taste. The very castle they stood beneath held more spectacles than the Louvre itself.
But no treasure he owned or sought to own could surpass the quiet symmetry that these two women embodied. Combined with his investigations, this real life sketch displayed the stark differences between them, in their postures, their pasts, the shadows that followed them daily. Their methods, one impulsive the other methodical, their personalities, one timid and the other eccentric… it all balanced itself out, combing two varying halves like two unfit puzzle pieces. There was a quality of oneness about his foes as evidenced by their distance apart. Their bodies were as magnetic to each other as their paths. It was fantastical to behold, but an itch his right brain couldn't scratch. The analytical, opportunistic side of Lallement, which was always the more dominant, called for a more invasive technique than mere artistic observation.
They hadn't spoken, and neither had Lallement. He appreciated silence, and the tremors that filled its spaces. His chin dipped as he observed Myka and H.G.'s attention drawing away from him and to the very center of the chamber.
"Yes, yes," he goaded, "splendid timing." His laugh met with a gesture to the focus of their gazes. "Your husband has been waiting for you."
Her eyes flickered up to Lallement, their brown irises widening in horror before panning back to the black cloth head, bowed as if in prayer. He never looked so submissive. Years ago she would have sacrificed anything to see her husband like this, spent, bloody, and broken. He sat in a wooden chair, his feet and hands tied in a manner similar to that of a pivotal memory. The sight sent a shock of current through her veins. It rushed in, icy and chaffing beneath the skin where she couldn't strip it or suck it out like poison. Just watching was torture. She couldn't imagine what was going on beneath the skin of a tongueless man crying out for her help any more than between the flaps of lacerated skin of a faceless man she once shared a life with, had a child by.
"Lewis," she breathed.
H.G. had suffered at the hands of Lewis Webb. Some of it was intentional, other times it was not. After eight years H.G. still didn't care about Lewis, but curiosity had a way of rearing its ugly head. She wanted to know his fate. She desired closure after all these years. If protecting Christina was her shameless reason for embarking on this mission, Lewis was her ashamed reason. She wanted the satisfaction of seeing his face when she told him of the amazing daughter she raised on her own and without the help of his bloody bread or title. Lewis may have lived in a real world devoid of folly and fantasy, but there would be no legacy. He would never know the satisfaction of putting a child to sleep with words written by his own hand. He could never imagine the bright future that lay before his own flesh and blood. H.G. wanted him to feel that sense of loss and if he didn't she would brand it into his skin so he'd never forget. She needed closure either way, in the form of a defeated sob or a sear to flesh.
It would appear someone beat me to it.
"Tell me, do you prefer him this way?" And with little flair or flourish he pinched the cloth and revealed the trick. "A lovely prelude to the business at hand, vous ne pensez pas?"
Lewis Webb. Dead. The inert, glassy eyes were frozen open by rigor mortis. The eyes that once smiled when they first met hers; that cried tears of joy when she said "Yes" to his question, and inflamed when she took rights to leave his side forever. H.G. watched as those same eyes stared straight and true into nothingness. It was enough to process before H.G. slammed her own eyes shut. This was not the kind of closure she anticipated.
Beside her Myka gasped. The slight tremor in it was enough to snap H.G. to attention. "How do you know who I am?"
"Helena Wells, born September 21, 1976 in Bromley and raised in your father's pathetic trinket shop. Studied at university against your family's aspirations and became a supreme rebel when our mutual friend came along. Your disobedient streak continued when you married for love –"
"That is debatable," H.G. sneered.
Lallement chuckled, head tipped fondly towards the corpse. "A one-sided debate, at that. Á propos." He turned on his heel and started a slow pace. "From a bird's eye view the marriage was ideal. You were afforded what any wife required and more. You supported him publicly, stood by his side as he did yours. But behind the curtain… ah, that was something else entirely, no?" When H.G. didn't offer up a response he drove on. "Much alike a hostage in luxury you, Helena, had no choice amid all that wealth. Your husband belittled your ambitions, wounded you with falsehoods, and made you out as a coward."
"Stop!" barked Myka. Her gun was lowered to her side, but the ultimatum lacing her shout was more of a threat. She saw how Lallement's rant was affecting H.G. More importantly, she felt the guilt radiating from her in waves. If the onslaught was battering H.G. the result of it was tearing Myka's heart in two. She was well within her rights to shoot this sociopath, but her gun weighed a thousand pounds in her grasp and her feet were rooted to the stone floor. "You're hurting her," she accused weakly, eyes burning.
"So you left him," Lallement said, untouched by the professor's demands, "and raised his daughter all on your own. Chicago may be a bustling city entrenched with American culture and celebrity, but for one damned to witness protection it is a prison, not so unlike the one you escaped I would presume. And after all the sufferings you became a teacher, using that mind to bring your pupils on the brink of slumber. The legacy of Helena G. Wells," he concluded with a raise of his hands as if the void in their grasp represented her accomplishments. He smiled at how easily these facts were brought to his attention. Information was always more easily bought than wealth. "I am more resourceful than your Warehouse employer thinks. In fact, one of my greatest is – or was – you hus –"
"Stop calling him that!" H.G. cried, eyes glassy and hands shaking. "He is not…" her throat constricted and she tried to overcome it with a soft whimper. She could feel sorrowful green eyes on her, caressing the side of her face as tears did. H.G. didn't know if it was a comfort or if it made it harder for her to follow through. "He is not mine. He never was. Lewis Webb never had my heart. He is not the one…" She could have finished the sentence, but it just made sense in that split second that one fell from her lips that it ended there.
Lewis is not my One.
He never could be.
"And Dr. Bering, you wouldn't think I forgot about you?" He smiled at her defiant expression. "Myka Bering born December 1, 1978 in Colorado Springs, USA. Thanks to your parents you grew up with a love for the written word. You are well-read, possess skills in fencing, self-defense, and firearms, can speak several fluent languages besides English, and actually managed to find an occupation that puts your history degree to use. Whether or not you enjoy the day in, day out torments of Chicago University and its students I will leave to more applicable hands to judge. However, for as healthy as you are in mind and body, emotionally you are… how do I put this… detached? You make up for your lack of personal relationships by controlling every aspect of your life, organizing each piece into its own precise location. If travel arrangements or childhood dreams do not coincide with your schedule they are simply swept off the table." He slapped his hands together with a finality that made Myka flinch. "Have I missed anything? Besides, of course, the father issues that are quite toxic as well as tedious."
"He's just trying to wear us down," Myka whispered, her eyes never leaving Lallement's. When she didn't get a reply she turned to H.G. The very sight made Myka want to wrap her up and whisk them far, far away. Her friend, an imaginative woman with a great capacity to love, remained immobile, warring between charging at their enemy with her fists and sinking to the ground in defeat. The consideration behind those brown eyes, the consideration to forfeit, disturbed her as much as the clenching fists at her side. "We can't let him get to us." Her encouragement was wearing thin before this unacquainted spectacle.
Indulgent smile ever present, Lallement walked to the chamber wall. "You have nothing to fear from me, mademoiselle." He pried open one of the bricks. Myka could barely make out the keypad inside and the code punched in. The instrument panel beeped three times in quick succession before a low rumble, like stones grinding against each other, sounded. His eyes pierced into Myka, warning, "But perhaps from the extraordinary." A surface of the wall opened to reveal a secret alcove illuminated by an installed light. From inside, the black basalt piece and its etchings glossed to a shine under the light.
Myka's eyes widened, her heart hammering in her chest. The historian in her was thrilled at the find. In all her years studying and teaching she never would have thought to be standing where she was. She was discovering a piece of history, she was there, living it. Despite the doubts of many historians, a small part, the childlike hope in Myka always believed the missing piece to exist. Something, not her education but an instinct, always convinced her that this lost artifact of Egypt, of the world, continued to evade the quests of the righteous and unworthy alike. Jealousy encapsulated her as she watched Lallement take the stone from its hiding place. It even looked to be the same size and weight as scientists have theorized.
"Seek and ye shall find," Lallement mused. He cradled the stone like a precious newborn. "Knock and it shall be opened unto you."
The heady sensation of wonder was shattered and replaced with the liquid chill slithering back up Myka's spine. This was the leverage she feared their enemy possessed. She was armed, yes, and H.G. had startling qualifications in Kenpo, but it may not be enough, Lallement hinted, against the extraordinary.
"When the men I hired failed to acquire the Stone I carried the deed out myself. Lewis was not my only means of tracking down what I desired, but he was the most resourceful. In fact, his mind was filled with such valued information that I retained his services."
H.G. bit the inside of her cheek until her tongue savored copper. She blinked at the stiff, tortured form and understood that the services Lallement spoke of were anything but willingly offered.
"You see, the Rosetta Stone – the larger of the two halves – is still out there. But I managed to get my hands on this petit ange."
Yes, that is quite the little angel you are holding.
I would bloody like to shove it down your throat.
"What your pathetic Warehouse mainframes might not compute is that together the two stones give its possessor the power of telepathy. Though it is far more powerful with its missing counterpart, this one beautiful section has absorbed a small capability of reading the mind." His white teeth flashed beneath a chuckle. "I know what you are thinking. 'It is a ruse! He is playing us for fools!'" He shook his head, eyes closed lightly and fingers pawing the stone's worded grooves. "No, no, no. This is no magic trick. I would never endeavor to lie about a prize such as this. I was illuminated by this angel's power during my… discussions with Monsieur Webb." He stepped forward and stretched out a hand, palm up as if offering an innocent waltz. "Would you prefer a demonstration?"
Sharing eye contact that made her skin crawl, Myka opened her mouth to tell him to go to hell. But he had already started. Words, unfamiliar to her highly cultured mind, ran from Lallement's lips. There was no melody to it. No beauty. Just stunted, rough sentences spoken by an ignorant tongue. However ugly it sounded it did the trick. The archaic language swirling and seeped into her brain and made her feel something she never could imagine.
The cry pierced through the dry, dusted air. It reverberated around the circular chamber like a spasm and penetrated her ears like a thousand knife points. H.G. had never heard so anguished a sound. The shrieks emanating from Myka's mouth were inhuman. They were distorted and broken, pained and hopeless. It was an unimaginable sound. At once, H.G. joined Myka on the floor, knees clapping the stone, and hugged the delirium like a child that had lost its way.
"Myka," she said over the howling, "tell me what is wrong."
Myka was clutching her head in agony and rocking back and forth. Her friend was in excruciating pain and she could see it or touch it or vanquish it.
"What hurts, darling?" H.G. had turned to begging and felt that her own mind had succumbed to delirium as well. Hot tears flooded her vision and stained the chestnut curls to a dark chocolate. "Myka… Myka…" she repeated in a fever.
Myka was so closed off from the world she could have been a prisoner in Plato's cave. Reality was but shadows. Words ceased to propose meaning. Since his first syllable, Lallement's ancient reiterations flooded her brain with thousands of languages, some she didn't recognize. She experienced every dialect imaginable from 196 BC to the present; every system of communication passed from one hand of a mason to the next of an industrialist; across oceans and territories, from Manchuria to Peru and Singapore to Denmark.
Myka's chords strained to the cries. She had long ceased control over her own voice. The contracting muscles under her skin, the jerks and twitches of her limbs, and the tremor along her vertebrae were left in the hands of neurons and synaptic connections. Every motor command was a response to the unimaginable discomfort beneath her skull.
The images of scrawling script and echoes of speech continued to enter Myka's consciousness like a landslide. If they had slowed down to a more manageable speed the professor would have enjoyed this 'historical glimpse' but it was far too much for one human mind to handle. Too much of a good thing, like eating an entire carton of ice cream and ending up with brain freeze. It was like sand filtering through a sieve that passed through easily if poured at a fixed, slow rate, but bulldoze it in all at once and it breaks the filter. The filter, in this case, being Myka's mind.
Whether her brain would freeze to ice or be consumed by fire Myka couldn't know. All she knew was pain. In addition to images the stone's power gave her the opportunity to experience the same distress others before her had suffered at the hands of this artifact. Pain and knowledge passed down through the ages. It was too much of a burden that it sent her into convulsions.
"Myka… Myka…"
Thin, frail hands covered Myka's, trying to pry them from her head so the nails don't draw blood. H.G. was a mess of tears and crumbling designs. All she wanted was to take on the burden herself. She wanted Myka, the woman she loved, to remain untouched, heart beating, and lips smiling their lopsided smile. As one came apart at the seams and the other lost their mind to disproportionate wonder, there was barely enough strength between the two of them to see the transfer through.
"Leave her be!" she shouted to no one, anyone. Her forehead braced against matted curls. "You don't deserve this. Not you."
The last syllables slip from Lallement and the images and the screaming stops. The inscription on the stone glowed bright gold and then faded back to its glossy black state. Myka sobed out in relief just as H.G. felt the tension leave from the body in her arms. She sagged into the safety of her friend like she could slip onto a weightless cloud.
"It does give a terrible headache, no?" asked Lallement, sarcasm dripping foul from his lips. He watched with interest as H.G. whispered into her friend's hair. It was as he didn't exist, as if his presence meant nothing. Lallement's lip curled at the scene of this lover's embrace. He did not like to be ignored. "While she was in unimaginable torture the stone allowed me to pluck unripened seeds from her mind. You are afraid, Dr. Bering," he addressed the deeply breathing Myka. "Afraid of dying, yes, but also of failing in your duty. You fear disappointing… Artie. But most surprising," a frown darkened his face, "you are filled with excitement and wonder. Chalk it up to adrenaline in a desperate situation, yet you, Myka Bering, are quite content to be here right now." He laughed, seemingly overjoyed over this puzzle. "Intrigant."
He looked to the corpse of Lewis Webb and then at H.G. and asked her, "Shall I read your mind?"
She looked up finally, eyes filled with tears and renewed vengeance. She rose, leaving Myka crouched and recuperating on the floor. "How about I save you the trouble." Her voice didn't waver. She suddenly felt a burst of strength flood her system, brought on by Myka's near death and the lively gasps that continued to fill the chamber. Like a phoenix from the ashes she was rejuvenated. "I am remorseful, but not in the way you presume. Lewis deserved his fate. He was foolish to consort with people like you and the money only sullied him further. I convinced myself that my lies would be protecting my Christina. And they did. But the moment I became faithful to another, the second I spoke truth it damned her to this peril." The heel of her boot grazed the stone as H.G. stepped forward. "I am sorry for many things, the greatest being that you and I did not meet sooner. I should have finished this in England when Lewis was on trial and my daughter but months old. Before I ever met Myka."
"We both know you cannot change the past, especially your own. And even if it could be done, that day you chanced upon Dr. Bering would be erased. It would be as if you never met." His chin dipped condescendingly. He spoke to her as if she were a child. "Surely no one would risk such a friendship."
H.G.'s throat constricted. Her voice was barely a whisper. "She would be safe."
Her soft expression was diversion enough. Without warning her body lunged forward, arms outstretched to break any vital part of Lallement that kept him breathing in this world. It was too great a distance too close, however, and he stepped back and resumed the spell. H.G. cried out just as his lips moved. She clutched her head like it was cracking in half. She doubled over, hands clawing at the stone flooring.
Myka was already on her feet. Consciousness returned, her mind was clear and her anger renewed. H.G.'s screams cut into her and it pained her to know exactly what her friend was experiencing. Myka's nostrils flaired and her hands clenched mightily at her side. She took the opportunity to catch Lallement off-guard, coming at him from the side and sending them both crashing against the wall.
The stone's connection with H.G. was severed, leaving her panting on the ground. While her mind eased back into clarity, Myka and Lallement continue to struggle. In her effort to pry the artifact from the man's steel grip she backed unexpectedly into the chair, knocking it down along with the departed Lewis. Lallement's eyes widen as the stone slipped. A wave of golden light spread from the epicenter of the cracked lesser half of the Rosetta Stone. He dropped to his knees before the wreckage, hands shaking at the sides of his face. His inheritance, his birth right, the treasure he spent years and coin tirelessly searching for was dust. Ever since the story was recounted to him as a child he dreamed of returning his family's property and showing the world that the greatest discovery in human history was a hoax.
His head rose from the ash, his eyes following later. They met Myka who was starting to understand how significant her part was in destroying this sociopath's obsession. She was vulnerable and they both knew duty would never win over obsession.
In a blind rage Lallement attacked. His fists sought her jacket and brought her roughly upright only to catapult her into one of the stone columns. The back of her skull cracked against its surface and she fell lifeless to the ground.
H.G. heard the crack like a call to arms. She didn't see it happen but she knew it was Myka who crumpled. An animalistic growl sounded as H.G. charged forward. She unleashed a fury of uppercuts, hooks, and jabs. She evaded his attacks by transferring her body weight instead of blocking, allowing herself the time and freedom to strike back. A series of uncoordinated but powerful blows rained upon Lallement, tiring him in mere minutes. He put up a fight, but H.G. was more skilled, not to mention more motivated than he and his broken trifle.
Soon Lallement's awkward footing tripped him to the ground.
In her eerie calm H.G. turned away. "What say we end this, hm?"
She stooped to pick up Myka's absent gun. Walking with purpose and threatening charm she stood above her victim. The weapon she swore never to handle, the instrument deemed too uncivilized for her imaginings, the gun that her palm pressed as its previous owner's had was trained on Lallement. Her thoughts were filled with Christina's giggles, her petulant urgings, and the good tears. Her heart was overflowing with affection for the best friend she ever had or would have, the love for a woman who stole her breath and whose demise brought her to these depths.
Gaspar Lallement realized defeat with silence. His eyes panned from the gun to the H.G. as he bet against her motivations.
Behind the point of a gun she witnessed his sigh of relief. It occurred to H.G. that he saw something in her that eased his mind. But all H.G. felt was the same thing that had haunted her for eight years. Fear, vengeance, the need to shelter. And new feelings, too, rushed through her. Overwhelming love, desperation, and rage. These sensations in particular were vital in tightening her hold on the gun's grip. Her finger caressed the trigger as it would the skin of a lover. It could end there with one shot through the heart. The thought was plucked from the clouds and brought down for the scientific eye of H.G. Wells, drawn closer to manage the idea and nurture it to maturity. Her loving finger curled and squeezed.
"Helena," Myka tried to shout but it only came as a moan. Her vision was blurry from the fall and her head was pounding. "Don't," she managed.
I'm alright, Helena.
Christina's safe.
We're all going to be okay.
The shot rang throughout the chamber, so loud it deafened the ears. Myka shrunk back to the ground, covering her head. When she looked up she saw H.G. standing over Lallement's cooling body. The gun was smoking wisps from its barrel. Her hand made no move to tremble. A definitive act without hesitation or afterthought.
Five months ago Myka hadn't known a single thing about this woman. Helena Wells was a mystery and an engaging presence that stirred every cell in Myka's body. Forty-eight hours ago she would have claimed to know everything there was to know about her friend. Myka knew how she took her tea, what books she preferred, how she'd spend the night watching over her daughter whenever a simple cold was contracted, and her persistence in offering her scarf to special friends on chilly nights.
Myka shifted on the cold stone, easing her back against the wall to gain her bearings. H.G. appeared more clearly in her vision. She was a teacher and a brilliant scientist who could see what others couldn't. She was a mother and dear friend even if only to a few who tolerated her. Helena Wells was a woman to be admired, respected, lusted, and loved. Myka had experienced those from H.G. and returned every single one in earnest. The latter, however, was so fresh it frazzled Myka to her bones. Frazzled in a good way, a way that tore down her walls, cradled her timid nature, and rearranged the sentences in mind to bumbling distortion. She was in love with the reluctant teacher and the scientist. She was in love with the passionate writer even if not a single word had been published. She was in love with the mother, the friend, the insufferable pursuer of her heart.
But as Myka blinked away the dull ache spreading across her skull she saw the smoking instrument in H.G.'s hand and realized something paramount.
I'm in love with a killer.