"I can't watch this…" Claudia and I walked off as Pete placed the coin on a rock. "Not one move." I walked up with my gun drawn. "How'd you find us?"
"I traced the signal on Claudia's cell." Jinx and Marcos stood behind Pete. Marcos had an artifact that was controlling Pete's body.
"You traitor!" Claudia's voice cracked as she looked at Jinx.
"Move and Marcos is dead." Jinx chuckled and took a step towards the coin.
"He doesn't stay dead for long."
"Then I'll shoot you Steve." He looked down at me and shook his head.
"I don't think you will." My finger got tighter on the trigger.
"Just in case…" Marcos made Pete throw the rock he had at me. It hit me in the head and I went to the ground. In the chaos, Claudia grabbed the coin and ran into the woods. After I came to, Pete told me he heard two gun shots. We ran into the woods after Claudia screaming her name.
"Guys..shhhh." She had a smile on her face. "Are they gone?" Claudia filled us in on how the Regents burnt him. He was undercover and gave Claudia a clue on where he had H.G.'s body. He told us where an abandoned airplane hangar was and we sped there. All of us ran in with our Tesla guns ready to fire. The hangar was clear and Pete went to the upper level. A moment later, he walked down the stairs and had a horrified look on his face.
"What's wrong?" He shook his head.
"Go to the car." He could barely speak.
"Pete." Claudia lowered her gun. "What is it?"
"Please go to the car?" Claudia ran past him and up the stairs. Soon we heard a streaking scream and I ran after her. I was horrified when I saw Steve sitting in a chair; dead. I was numb; we all were numb. None of us knew how this could have happened. I walked back into the room after telling Artie what happened. Claudia was still knelt beside Steve.
"Claudia, we need you to hack into that computer. There might be information on it to tell us where Sykes is. We need to find him and stop him before anyone else…" The knot in my throat was getting larger and made it hard to speak.
"Myka…" I turned to Pete. "Steve is dead. How can you be all business as usual?"
"Because if I don't…I'm going to lose it. So I need you to help me." Pete walked over to Claudia and Steve and told her that he'd stay with him while she worked. She opened the laptop and tried to find something.
"They ran a fat boy on the memory. Fat boy little boy…they're like a hacker's nuclear bomb. They erase everything and makes it impossible to get information. This laptop is useless to us." She slammed the lid on the laptop and went back to Steve. "All of this was for nothing." Pete rubbed her back before walking over to me.
"Sykes needed H.G. for something. We need to find him and figure out what."
"We will. And when we do, we'll get payback." There was a building rage in Pete's eyes that I've never seen before. The death of Steve and kidnapping of H.G. was hard on all of us in different personal ways. Not only did we lose a friend and good agent, we were getting closer to losing another friend. Helena was put back together by now but she was in more danger now than ever. Sykes had her and wanted to use her for something. He had an arsenal of artifacts that could seriously hurt someone. As that thought crossed my mind a rage started to build inside me. I wasn't going to let him hurt the woman I love.
When we got back to the warehouse, Pete, Claudia, and I sat at a table covered in paperwork. When Artie walked in, Claudia said nothing to him; she just took her computer and moved away. "How'd they do it?"
"An injection. They made it look like a heart attack." We went through his personal stuff and he had a lighter on him. Claudia saw it and jumped up.
"He hated smoking. His father was a chain smoker." She grabbed the lighter and went back to her computer. "That's my boy." Claudia found an SD card in the bottom and plugged it into her computer. A video popped up and it was Jinx telling us that Sykes was heading to Hong Kong and that there was something off with Marcos. Jinx said he always gets a weird look in his eyes when Sykes takes out a wooden box. It must be an artifact.
"Agent Jinx may have just led us to Sykes' endgame. He must have found something we thought was long buried and gone. Sykes must have found the ancient Regents Sanctum." Mixed feelings filled the room as Jane walked in.
As Pete and I flew to Hong Kong we realized Sykes had a good head start on us. He knew where the sanctum was and we didn't. One thing we couldn't figure out was what did he want with H.G. Warehouse 7 which was when the sanctum was build outdated H.G. by at least a hundred years. As Artie and I looked at maps back and forth we found out where the sanctum was located. The town at least.
Pete and I entered a Chinese food joint we were puzzled. He was getting vibes about this place but didn't know why. We saw a sign and it dawned on us that the sanctum must be underground. We went down the stairs and into the basement. I looked around and got a slight peaceful feeling when I found Helena's locket. "Pete, look at this." The flashed his light against the necklace. "I'm guessing Sykes and H.G. don't wear the same locket. She must have left this for me to find because she knew I'd come after her.
Neither of us could figure out where the opening to the sanctum was until I saw a scraping along the floor. We looked at the wall and then saw an Egyptian eye. I pressed the eye with my thumb and the door opened to reveal a long passageway. As Pete and I walked down the hallway, guns drawn, we heard Sykes speaking. When we got closer, we could see H.G. holding a gun to Tyler's head and off to the corner a bunch of skeletons with their skulls cracked open. I was glad to see H.G. again but I could see that an artifact was being used on her. Tyler made a move on the chess board and it must have been wrong because an axe fell and sliced his skull open.
"Lattimer and Bering come one down. It's time for round two." We came around the corner with our guns drawn and he made Helena shoot at me. Thank God she was a better fighter then shooter.
"Myka! Are you okay? I-I didn't do that." She felt horrible for shooting at me; I could see it in her eyes.
"I know. You're being controlled by the riding crop." Sykes told us to drop our guns or he would make Helena shoot again. We did as he said and Pete moved Tyler's body. He explained that this wasn't a torture device; that it was actually a key to unlocking the sanctum. You had three moves to unlock it or you die.
"It was created by a man named Kataranga. He was the Claudia of warehouse 12." There was softness in Helena's eyes as she spoke of this man.
"He was your teacher." She smiled slightly.
"Such a smart girl. Yes he was. He loved puzzles. He taught me a lot but never how to open this lock."
"Maybe I used the wrong incentive." Sykes bent the crop and made Helena push me into the chair. The chair moved and locked me in. "Maybe you can think clearly and figure it out when someone you care about is in the chair." Helena had a gun to my head and I knew I was three moves from death. I knew how to play chess but not how to win in three moves.