Arthur stood in the shadows as Merlin attempted to disarm the security alarms with his magic, and while he was concerned about the interaction between magic and technology, his mind was on other things. As if to compound his mood, it had started drizzling.

"Office cat? Really?"

"Focus on your magic." Arthur rubbed his face and glanced at his phone again. He closed his eyes, Gwen's cold word still ringing in his ears. "I couldn't think of anything else. If I'd said that someone was hurt, she would have insisted on coming along with me."

"For such an influential man in Camelot, you're useless. Watch out!" A small puff of purple smoke rose from the gate and Merlin place a hand on the handle and gave a quick tug. Arthur braced himself for the shrill sound of alarms, even though he knew that it was more likely that this brand new building would house an silent alarm. "Are you coming?"

Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Arthur followed Merlin into the university building. It was dark and eerily silent, their wet shoes making squelching noises with every step. This was obviously Merlin's second home and he navigated the long, labyrinth corridors with ease.

"Here," said Merlin. He raised his hand, muttered a few words, then pushed the door open. Arthur entered what looked like a typical science laboratory. He ducked past a skeleton that hung near the door, causing Merlin to laugh. "That's Betty."

"Nice to meet you," Arthur muttered. He followed Merlin deeper into the stark white and metal laboratory, taking in all the strange looking machines around the lab. Merlin stopped at a table, opened some drawers and pulled out all sorts of apparatus which he arranged neatly. He snapped on a pair of gloves and turned to Arthur.

"The ash?"

Digging into his pocket, Arthur pulled out a small bag of dirt that he'd scooped from the ground and placed it on Merlin's outstretched hand. Impatiently, Arthur waited as Merlin performed a series of tests on the ash. It got boring very quickly, so Arthur wandered around the laboratory, poking and prodding at various pieces of equipment, his mind oscillating between what just happened and Gwen.

"Maybe you should go see Gwen," said Merlin, not bothering to look up from the machine that was doing something sciency to the ash. "You're rather distracting."

Arthur leaned against a metal counter and picked up some sort of measuring device. "I think she might be a little upset with me."

"A little upset huh? Is she still ignoring your calls and messages?" Merlin pressed a button and the machine he was fiddling with came to life, filling the room with a low hum. "I don't need a machine to tell me that something is weird. Put that down."

"I don't need a machine to tell me that either. It's not even close to the full moon and a monster that powerful is attacking. How did they get past the veil? And you haven't told me how you even knew the chimera had appeared."

"This." With his attention still focused on the machine in front of him, Merlin stretched out his skinny arm.

"What? Your arm hair?"

This time Merlin looked up with a scowl. "No. The watch. I'd been working on it for a while -"

"You never told me you were doing this -"

"Since when do I have to report everything to you?"

Arthur rolled his eyes. "So what? The watch beeps when something breaks through the veil?"

"Basically." The scowl transformed into a smug grin. "I won't bore you with the details but I figured out how to put magic into technology."

"I was wondering about that," said Arthur. "Didn't you tell me before your magic didn't work on modern technology?"

"I did but then I - oh, hang on." The low hum stopped and Merlin grabbed a piece of paper that the machine spat out and frowned. "I think someone is trying to kill Gwen."

Fear, cold and sharp, shot through him. "Are you sure?"

"No, I'm not. But I can't think of any other explanation. The chimera has the same monster markers as the past three creatures that -"

Footsteps and muffled voices came from the corridors outside.

"Damn grad students," muttered Merlin as he grabbed the rest of the ash. "Let's go."

"Where?"

"Here." Merlin pushed open a window, swung one leg over and in a blink of an eye, disappeared out of the window. Then, his head popped up again. "Come on!"

Arthur swore, then climbed out of the window behind Merlin, swearing again when he realised the only way down was via a large pipe. They made their way down a large pipe, easy for Merlin who wasn't encumbered with a sword.

"Do you do this often?" grumbled Arthur. His sword hit the pipe, throwing Arthur off balance and it was only his arms that kept him from falling. He swore.

Merlin grinned up at him. "And here I thought you were the fit one."

Arthur swore once more.

Finally, they both hopped onto the wet grass, Merlin doing so with the grace of an elephant, stumbling onto his knees. The moment Merlin got back onto his feet, they ran.

At one of those all-night restaurants that dotted the center of the city, they picked up some greasy burgers and fries. Slumped in a corner seat, trying to avoid the unknown patch of stickiness on the wall, they ate for a while in silence, before Merlin finally broke it.

"It's the same ash," he said around a large bite of his burger. Rubbing his chest, he swallowed, then continued. "When I first started tracking the creatures we killed, none of them had the same monster markers."

"Monster markers still sounds as ridiculous today as the day you coined it."

"It's alliterative. I suppose I could give it a more scientific sounding name but I am not sure about the conventions of naming other-worldly creatures. I mean -"

Arthur waved a chip at Merlin, catching his attention again. "Never mind that. What does all the creatures having the same monster markers mean really?"

"I don't really know. But it feels deliberate - these creatures have something in common that they shouldn't have - and I don't have any proof, but I think they are manufactured."

"Like in a factory?" An image of a conveyor belt carrying various animal parts and masked people randomly putting them together formed in his brain. That would explain that weird creature they had defeated some weeks ago - it had the body of a lion, wings of an eagle and face of a bear.

"Like being spelled, conjured up," said Merlin with a hint of impatience. "Like someone is doing this on purpose -"

Arthur swallowed the last bit of his burger, washing it down with a big gulp of his drink. "And since it's happening around Gwen, you think someone is out to kill her. But why?"

"I wonder if Morgana is back," said Merlin slowly, his eyes focused on the napkin he was slowly shredding into tiny pieces. "She's always had a thing against Gwen."

"She's never come back before. At least not to our knowledge."

Merlin yawned, dropped the napkin and slouched further into his seat. "I know. Perhaps we're reading too much into this. Maybe it's all coincidences." He yawned once more. "Boy, I'm exhausted and I need to be at work in 4 hours."

"You'll continue to look into the ash?"

"Of course."

By the time Arthur reached his home, he too could barely keep his eyes open. A glance at his phone showed that Gwen had read his messages but hadn't replied. The rock that had taken up residence in his heart since their last phone call only got heavier. He stared at her laughing face, delight shining in her eyes and thought about how he had made her laugh like that. Too reluctant to turn the screen off and have Gwen's face disappear, Arthur crawled into bed, stared at her face on his phone until sleep overtook him and the phone fell on his head.

George had infinite patience, Arthur acknowledged as he entered his car the next morning. After the night that he'd had, his dreams-plagued sleep completely unhelpful, it wasn't surprising that he was over an hour late.

"Sorry, George."

"It's no problem, Mr Penn." George turned the key and the car purred to life. Leaning his head against the soft leather, Arthur closed his eyes. He shifted, trying to make himself comfortable when his hand brushed against something. He closed his fingers around the small piece of metal.

A bobby pin.

Gwen's.

With a sigh, Arthur slipped it into his pocket. In his head, he tossed about all the information that had come to light. Merlin would be the first to point out that Arthur's understanding of magic was limited and a lot of what Merlin had put together had seemed like more conjecture than anything. After all, they had been through several reincarnation cycles, and while all of them had their challenges, none had been anything like this.

Still, if Gwen was in danger, then he needed to keep her safe. She should be safe in daylight, which gave him a whole day to work out how to continue to ensure her safety, especially when she was clearly pissed off with him. But she'd been annoyed with him before, and he'd always been able to wriggle his way back into her good graces. Surely, this was just a temporary blip in their friendship.

It took several rings before Merlin picked up his phone. As he waited, he slid the privacy window close. George wasn't one who would eavesdrop nor one who would gossip, but the fewer people involved in this the better.

"Merlin. Make time for dinner tonight."

"Why?"

"We need to tell Gwen and I'm not doing it alone."

"She's talking to you? She's ignored my texts this morning. I don't know why she's taking her anger with you out on me," said Merlin sulkily.

Arthur ignored Merlin's whine. "I think that we need to tell her about everything."

Merlin didn't say anything and the silence stretched out. "Even the reincarnation?"

"Maybe not that. I'm not sure." Arthur sighed and ran his hand through his hair. "This is as much your secret as mine. I need you to be ok with telling Gwen."

"You know I have no problem telling Gwen, especially if it's in her best interest. What I'm not that keen on is being there when you tell her."

"Don't be a coward. You're the great Dragoon. 7pm at my house." Then Arthur hung up.

"Arthur." Gwen's voice was cool, but at least she answered the phone.

"Gwen. I'm so sorry about last night. Are you free for dinner tonight? Let me make it up to you."

It took a while before Gwen spoke. "I'm pretty busy."

"Have dinner with me and I'll explain what happened last night. Please."

"Everything?"

Arthur blinked, uncertainty filling him at her tone. Gwen knew something. "Everything," he said.

"Ok. I'll see you tonight."

His office was bustling when he entered. Arthur nodded and smiled at his various employees and muttered a quick apology to Nadeem who had inundated Arthur's phone with messages reminding him of his various appointments.

Pushing open his office door, Arthur groaned when he saw Pete on his chair. Over the past few days, Sera had been working on finding out who had been fiddling with the numbers, only to discover even more problems. Despite what Arthur had believed was a top-notch security system, it appeared that someone was able to get into it. From what Sera had told him, whoever this person was hadn't been able to access the more secured parts of the system and Sera had disconnected those parts from the main network, which made work difficult.

Now that Pete was frowning as he sat on Arthur's chair, Arthur braced himself for more bad news.

Pete stood as Arthur walked in, glancing pointedly at his watch.

"What's the problem? I assume there must be one since you're here." Arthur shrugged out of his jacket.

"The security breach."

Arthur hesitated a moment, before hanging up his jacket. "More bad news?"

"Sera wants to hire an external forensic firm to look into the breach."

"And I take it from your frown that you disagree?"

"The moment we take this out of this office, there will be talk, rumours. It's not good for business."

Arthur sat down. "Isn't Sera's team one of the best in the business?"

"She says that they are getting nowhere with their investigation. Apparently there are strange traces in the breach that she cannot explain. This morning she was rattling off a whole bunch of words I didn't understand. Someone is trying to take down this company. We don't know who, we don't know why and we apparently don't even know how. This is serious."

"I know."

"I want to start a parallel investigation," said Pete. "Into our employees. Nothing too invasive, but a background check. See if any of them have reason to want to go against us."

"That's the reason you're lurking in my office." Arthur rubbed his head "Fine. Go ahead. Now leave me alone."

With a curt nod, Pete walked out of the room. At the door he paused. "You really shouldn't give out your office number to your admirers."

"Did Gwen call?" The moment he asked, Arthur realised that it was a foolish question, not just because he had just got off the phone with her not that long ago. Gwen had his personal mobile number. There was no reason for her to call his office.

Pete rolled his eyes. "Said her name was Fay."

"I don't know anyone called Fay. Did she leave a number? And why are you answering my phones?"

"She didn't. I figured you would have her number."

Arthur bristled at Pete's tone. "My personal life isn't your business."

In response, Pete simply stepped out of Arthur's office, letting the door slowly swing shut.

Arthur didn't have time to wonder about unknown women calling him, although the fact that she had his personal office number was a little concerning. But among all problems that were plaguing his life now, random women getting hold of his contact details was incredibly low on the list.

"Nadeem, contact Sera and tell her I need to see her today." Arthur put the phone down and closed his eyes. His mother was right - it never simply rained, it poured.

AN: Thank you for reading and commenting! 3