A/N Please remember to leave some love, or any feedback if you've been on the ride so far! (It helps fuel the muse). To answer a question, this takes place just over a year after the final events of "Sybarite".
And the plot is afoot - javol!
TWO
London, England. 1884
"What do you mean you're leaving? Helen was scandalized, unsure of what to do as she watched Nikola methodically packing his journals into a trunk.
"Exactly that. I am on a ship to New York tomorrow. I have an offer to work with Thomas Edison. A contract for fifty-thousand dollars."
She slammed down the lid of his trunk before he could pack more of his possessions into it. He was forced to look at her. "Do you mean to tell me that you're leaving the Five for money?"
Nikola sighed, sitting down on his bed and gesturing for her to have a seat by his small writing desk. "The Five hasn't met regularly since we all left Oxford. James is working with Scotland Yard, Griffin is robbing banks, and who knows where that lunatic Druitt is. Edison owns the largest workhouse for electric motors, generators, transmitters – my work. It can't be here anymore."
Helen hung her face in her hands. She felt a gentle fingertip under her chin, lifting her eyes up to meet his. His lips quirked into a small smile.
"And you're continuing your work. Don't despair, Helen. Should you ever need me, I would never deny your call. I'll think you'll find, though, that you won't need me as often as you think."
With a gentle, ticklish kiss on her forehead, Nikola stood up and offered her his hand. He helped her to her feet and bade her farewell.
"What do you think of this one?" Will held up a postcard of a penguin wearing a sombrero. Kate pulled a face and shook her head.
"Try the one with Big Guy's cousin and Elvis."
Will held up a second postcard of the famous picture of Big Foot (which actually was a hoax and a favourite joke amongst the Sasquatch community) wearing a party hat and holding Elvis Presley's hand. Kate nodded her approval and Will scribbled a note on the back.
Kate sighed. "We're wasting so much on postage."
"I'll remember you said that when I'm deciding whether to take you or Henry with me to Brazil next month."
Helen shook her head at the pair of them, and picked up the small pile of letters on her desk. There was an unmarked brown envelope without a return address. Curious, she searched for her letter opener.
"Bringing Hank would be a waste – he'd just stay inside with his laptop. You'd be on vacation with a computer screen!"
"At least Henry can surf."
Carefully slicing open the top of the envelope, Helen reached inside and found a plastic bag sealed with evidence tape. Inside the bag was a single, dark brown hair. Bemused, she searched the rest of the envelope but found nothing. No business card, no letter, no report…
Was this from the FBI?
"Will," Helen said, interrupting the now ridiculous conversation he was having with Kate, "did you put in a request for evidence from any of your former colleagues?"
"No." Will looked curiously at the bagged evidence. "Who's that from?"
"I don't know…" Helen turned the empty envelope in her hands, it refusing to reveal any clues to its origin. She looked at the bag and shrugged. "I guess we'll just have to find out."
"Did we actually get any DNA off the hair?" Will leaned over to see the screen better.
"There was just enough of a skin tag that I could build upon. It's taken a few hours though. Initially, I can tell you it's from a male and very old." Helen ran through a few more preliminary tests and frowned. "It's over a hundred years old."
"Abnormal?"
Helen ran the hair's results through the Sanctuary database and almost immediately a perfect match flashed on the screen.
"The hair belongs to John."
"I think…"
John nodded, already knowing what Helen was about to say. "…I have some loose ends to take care of."
With a flash of orange light, John vanished. He would have to visit his former safe houses and private accounts with a fine-tooth comb. Any further traces of John Druitt's existence had to be destroyed and quickly.
Helen had agreed with him that someone was trying to blackmail him. They had to find where his hair had been retrieved from. It was still unclear as to what else was in store … but a game was afoot. One that could end in ruination.
Helen had been in too many scrapes to know never to allow your enemy to strike first.
After John left, Helen joined Henry down in his lab where he had already begun a search of Interpol databases on recent evidence collection.
He looked up when he saw her enter. "Nothing. There are no records of John or the hair in their records."
"Search the entire Sanctuary network – but use our blank account."
Henry's eyebrows shot up. The blank account meant hacking into the network and encrypting their presence so no record of their activity could be detected. "You suspect an inside job?"
"I don't know … but I want to be careful."
Helen opened her account on a different computer, thinking to send some covert notes to Sanctuary colleagues she trusted, when she found a new message waiting to be reading her inbox.
She frowned. Only someone from within the network could send her an email to that account. But there was no address. The email was blank as well.
"Take a look at this, Henry."
He sidled over and frowned at the blank email. Furiously typing, he went through mainframe records and ghost drives on the network.
"It's … it's a hidden message." Henry had finally been able to pull up the original message through automated save files in the network ghost drive.
It was a photograph. Of three hairs being removed from a woman's dress. A woman who was horribly mutilated and lying prone on a bed.
"Dear gods…" It was a photograph of Mary Jane Kelly, the last of the Whitechapel murders. Helen had never heard of hairs being found on the crime scene … but then, forensic investigation had been in its infancy at that time.
It was new evidence in the Ripper case.
"Doc … there's more…" Henry gulped as he pulled up another auto-save file from the ghost drive. The binary code had been manipulated to form one word.
KNIFE.
Helen felt a chill run down her back, but smiled grimly. She was not a woman intimidated easily.
"There's a reason those messages have been sent to me and not to John directly. We need to know what that reason is."
Helen figured the best way to respond to the threat was directly. She hit "reply" to the blank message and typed: what do you want?
When she hit send, Henry pulled up a new screen, studying it intently. His face dropped. "You were right. The message was just received by another terminal in the Sanctuary network. I can't tell which one or where though."
"Damn…" Things were sinister indeed if someone from inside the Sanctuary network was trying to blackmail them.
John Druitt quietly thanked the woman and waited until she had left the vault before approaching his safe deposit box. He had not visited this account in over fifty years.
He knew he should have destroyed it. He should never have kept it, there was no place safe to keep such an object. He wasn't sure why he hadn't melted it down … perhaps he was afraid even that wouldn't be enough to erase his guilt.
He opened his box and looked inside. It was empty. He broke out in a cold sweat, but somehow he already knew it had been stolen.
The most powerful, protected and safeguarded bank in the world, nestled in the heart of Switzerland. A fortress that even Nigel Griffin wouldn't have been able to break into.
But somehow someone had been able to enter and take the only possession he kept in his deposit box. The knife used to commit the Whitechapel murders.
The implications turned slowly in his mind as he placed the box back, left the vault and thanked the teller. No one could have broken into the bank. Which meant the knife hadn't been stolen. Someone had just taken it.
Someone who had enough money to corrupt the bank … or enough power that they couldn't be refused.
John Druitt had made an unfortunate enemy.
Peru
"What is it this time?" Ylena looked eagerly over Aureliano's shoulder, unsuccessfully trying to snatch a peep of his letter before he was done with it.
Aureliano laughed heartily and finally passed the postcard to Ylena. Will had drawn speech bubbles coming out of Elvis and Big Foot's mouths, speaking as if they were Will and the Big Guy.
"Which one should we send him back?"
Aureliano shrugged, tucking the postcard into the breast pocket of his shirt. "I'm sure I'll find something suitably amusing in Brazil." He held out his arm to Ylena and she took it.
They strolled through the marketplace, arms linked. Because of their exotic colouring, especially pale skin that never seemed to darken from the sun and bleached, golden hair, most assumed they were brother and sister. The arrangement was close enough to the truth that they never contradicted being referred to as such.
"It will be nice to see that boy again," Aureliano mentioned casually as they approached a certain store.
"You just want someone to surf with you."
Aureliano shrugged, neither confirming nor denying. They walked into the small firearms store and closed the door behind them.
Before the proprietor could greet them, Aureliano had leapt over the counter and pushed him up against the wall. Ylena sidled over, mouth hovering over his. A tendril of silver mist began to leave his mouth and he looked into her delicate face with panicked eyes.
"Tell me all your secrets," She whispered before sucking in his memories.
When they exited the shop, there were no signs of a struggle. The store owner was lying on his floor, unconscious, and nothing else was disturbed. Aureliano pulled out a pair of dark glasses and placed them on his face. "Well, this means a Christmas bonus for us."
"Yes, he'll be pleased." Ylena sifted through the jumble of memories she had just obtained, all with information highly sought out for.
"Is he still locked up in that tower of his?" Aureliano asked.
Ylena laughed and merely said, "Genius is often madness."