Warning: This chapter is completely set in the future and has two original characters in it. If you don't like OCs, then... you probably want to skip this one (but actually I won't recommend it, because then you wouldn't understand, and trust me, you want to understand...)
Thanks to Aimofdestiny for the beta.
2044
Paul's alarm rang, because he was a very responsible person. He knew that he would fall asleep at some point if he had nothing to do except looking at the display of Sarah's brain and heart activity while the girl was sleeping. In the morning, he would need to reload the time travel cycle, when the first 22 hours and 19 minutes where up and he would have to initiate the second cycle.
After waking up, he immediately checked on her - everything was fine, Sarah was still sleeping - made himself some tea and then decided to wake her up.
"Sarah." He spoke into his microphone and heard the noise of her shifting in the car's seat. "Sarah, you have to wake up. It's almost time for the first drop and I need your full attention for this."
"Go away." His sister replied in that tone of voice he usually heard from her in the morning because she wasn't a morning person. Then, there was also the noise of Claudia grunting, because the caretaker had fallen asleep as well and wasn't a morning person either.
Paul rolled his eyes. "Ferret." He pleaded, now a little bit louder. "Please wake up."
"I hate waking up to your voice in my head." The time traveller groaned drowsily.
"Yeah, it's not very pleasant to wake up and have to babysit you either." He offered her a small laugh and then started working on his keyboard.
"So, what do I have to do? Do I need to do something? Because then I want to get some coffee first." Sarah mumbled and her brother shook his head. He remembered that she couldn't actually see him and answered. "No, just close your eyes for a few minutes for me and concentrate on something. Because now, probably, the head ache and the feeling of losing control over your body will start. Just slight headache and dizziness."
"Eyes are closed. Didn't open them yet." The writer still wasn't very awake but that wasn't necessary, Paul could work around that.
"Good. Think about your novel or Julia or something else you like." He suggested while looking at her body in front of him to check on her aura. Due to the time travel, Sarah's aura was weak, she was tired, but well.
Paul activated the program he had written for the drop and then again checked on the screen and on her aura, which was slowly changing. This was when Sarah was pulled out of Steve's body back into her own. The purple of her aura brightened, then it again decreased because now, the time machine was sending her back. Paul looked at his watch, counting down the seconds she would need to be sent back and then -
Sarah's aura flickered and then disappeared completely. Her brother rose from her chair in confusion.
"What?" He asked, dumbstruck. That was not supposed to happen. This was where the display started beeping loudly and he felt his own panic rise.
"Sarah?" The first thing he did was check on his sister by adressing her. "Can you hear me?"
She didn't reply and Paul's eyes widened when the line that showed her brain activity suddenly flattened and then rebounded far too sluggishly.
The soon-to-be engineer cursed loudly, again and again, while hammering his fingers desperately into the keyboard. Then he activated the security back up system he had installed on the time machine; it should give her a slight shock, so maybe she would come back to her mind.
He heard his sister cough in his earphones, and a noise of relief escaped his throat. Her aura was back but still flickered heavily.
"Ferret?" Paul asked desperately.
"Slight headache and dizziness? Paul!" Sarah's voice trembled and then faded out. The fact that she didn't give him a sassy comeback worried Paul.
"How do you feel?" He asked, but his sister was again silent. Now, he heard Claudia Donovan ask loudly. "Sarah? What's going on?!"
The caretakers voice was filled with panic. Paul's eyes darted to his sister's shaking body. Her breathing was irregular, something wasn't working as it should, something was wrong and he didn't know what it was. He had planned doing this reload for so long. So, well, what was going wrong?
"Sarah?"
His sister didn't reply.
Paul had always been very proud of managing problems himself but he had no problems asking for help. Watching his parents and the rest of the Warehouse family, he had learned that it was in fact important to ask for help. So there was this thought rising in his head and he pondered it only a few things before making a decision.
Paul was only afraid of the rage of four people. Three of them shared his last name, the fourth one was caretaker of Warehouse 13. His sister's best friend Julia wasn't one of them. But he feared his sister's rage if he did what he was about to do now.
Still staring at the screen, watching Sarah's fluttering heartbeat and her strange brain activicty, occassionally hitting buttons on his keyboard to manage things manually the program would usually do automatically for him, Paul took his Farnsworth out of the pocket of his jeans and decided to call Adelaide. He had to ask for help.
Julia walked through the B&B, unsure of what to do. She had woken up early, taken a shower, had an awkward breakfast with this Adelaide person and now, she was asking herself what to do to escape another round of Scrabble with her and all those weird kids around them. Julia had always had the feeling that Sarah was hiding something about her family from her and by now, the medicine student was sure it was the fact that the people in it seemed to be a little... strange. Crazy?
Adelaide tended to ask incredibly awkward questions, like she wanted to construct a mental image of Julia herself, her relationship with Sarah, and then of what she was planning to do with her life. Well, that much was clear: Julia was becoming a physician.
The blonde was currently walking down the stairs as she heard this typical buzzing sound she had often witnessed around Sarah. It was this communication device her friend had referred to as an retro Iphone and Julia knew that this wasn't true. She had done research, that thing didn't look anything like an actual Iphone.
"Paul!" The medicine student could hear Adelaide's voice from the kitchen. Julia knew she was eavesdropping, but Sarah and Paul had been gone for a whole day now, doing their 'thing', which was getting more and more mysterious. Especially because Julia hadn't seen anyone else from Sarah's family yet. It had come to the blonde's mind that maybe there was really something to her suspicion that the writer was hiding something from her. "How is the overtime artifact hunt going? I hope it's going well, Pete's wife is alarmed and currently I don't know how to keep Julia busy any lo- What?"
The overtime what? Quietly, Julia snuck down the stairs to get more of that conversation. Paul's voice was muffled, she couldn't understand him, but he sounded alarmed.
There was this word Julia had already heard once or twice around Sarah. Artifact.
Of course the medicine student was curious about that. If somebody behaved as mysteriously as Sarah, one had to become curious about it at some point. But Julia had always hoped, waited for the writer to decide herself to let her in on that.
"No! Paul, what? Why would you do that? I am supposed to do what?" Adelaide sounded utterly horrified. "Of course I understand that Sarah's life is in danger. But... Julia?! You want us to make that decision for Sarah?"
And this was were Julia almost fell down the last steps of the stairs to quickly make it into the kitchen. "What is it with Sarah's life being in danger?" She asked quickly. "And how can I help?" Adelaide stared at her, holding that faux retro Iphone. Her mouth opened and closed a few times. The other woman could tell she was looking for an excuse.
"No, wait." Julia held up her hand defensively. "Stop pretending everything is alright and there's no mystery around your family. Currently, I absolutely don't care. If there's something wrong with Sarah, if her life is really in danger and I can help, then let's go there. Immediately! I can pretend that I'm not seeing the things I will see."
Adelaide stared at her for three seconds. Julia could actually count them. One, two, three, then the older woman closed the Farnsworth abruptly. "Junior!" She yelled, reaching forwards, to pull Julia on her wrist through the kitchen into the hall.
The teenage boy replied from upstairs, sounding as annoyed as teenage boys should sound. "Yeah?"
"Please pay attention to the kids, will you? I will call your mother so she will come over. That would be about an hour you have to babysit." Adelaide stated loudly.
"Is something wrong? Artifact?" Junior Lattimer asked in his annoyed tone of voice. Julia trembled while Adelaide pulled her through the hall and opened the front door. "Yeah!" The woman yelled. "But we have everything under control."
On the way to the car, Adelaide pulled out her phone and called Mrs. Lattimer to update her on an incident 'in the Warehouse, and I need to get there, so you'll have to come home'.
Everything was happening so fast. Suddenly, Julia found herself sitting in Adelaide's car, wearing only a shirt and sweat pants and no shoes. Maybe she should have...
"So." Adelaide swallowed once while driving through the streets of this strange hicktown called 'Univille' like something was on fire.
"Long story short. Your girlfriend-"
"Best friend." Julia corrected her.
"Yes, sorry. Sarah is part of a top secret facility which hunts down and stores dangerous supernatural objects." The older woman hit the gas pedal hard.
Julia was pressed into the seat. She also was impressed and nodded. "I'm just going to pretend I actually understood what that means."
"Well, there are objects in the world which can cause a lot of havoc and we are looking for them and store them in this really big Warehouse to make sure no one comes into contact with them." Adelaide smiled. "Well, actually there are other people looking for them. I'm one of those who make sure nobody notices them doing their job."
"Objects? Running havoc?" The younger woman asked in confusion.
"Magic. It's not exactly magic, but imagine magic, Sarah will probably explain it better to you later. If she won't kill Paul and me before that." Adelaide grumbled.
"Magic?" Julia was confused.
"Time travel, invisibility, telekinesis, things that humanity isn't ready for, yet." The other woman explained.
"And Sarah is working for you?" Julia blinked a few times, trying to make sense of what she just had heard, but failing poorly at it.
"No, in fact, her mothers were Warehouse agents once. Now, they do the same job I do. Sarah is only a writer who was born into this mess." They both leaned hard into the curve Adelaide was currently driving. Julia saw a long road in a smaller canyon and a big building at the end of that road. And... wow... what was actually happening right now? Ten minutes ago, her worst problem had been avoiding playing Scrabble with Mrs. Crazytown and her kids. Now she was being introduced in some secret... stuff.
"And I guess 'top secret' means you have to kill me after I have done what I am supposed to do?" Julia laughed helplessly, panicking.
"No, we're allowed to tell one person in our life." Adelaide stated seriously, like it explained anything at all. But Julia was utterly at a loss.
"Okay... I guess you just made me Sarah's 'one person'? So now you have taken that decision from Sarah and she'll get really furious because you did that?" The medicine student couldn't tell if this was really a better outcome.
"Don't tell me there isn't something special between you two." The older woman hit the gas pedal even harder; Julia was sure she would die today. If not of this woman's driving skills, then probably of Sarah's hands.
"If you want to call friendship special." The younger woman shook her head. "So, what am I supposed to do? I don't know anything about magic, or ...uhm ...artifacts?"
"Well, currently Sarah is trapped in H.G. Wells' time machine." Adelaide explained and Julia bowed her head and shrugged. "Of course she is." She replied in a very high pitched voice.
"And something about her medical condition is not as it should be." The older woman added.
"So, and I'm a medicine student in my second year and I am supposed to help people who deal with magic." Julia concluded nervously.
The car stopped with squealing wheels. "Yes." Adelaide replied simply and jumped out of the car.
Julia followed her immediately. The dust they had stirred up was already settling back down. The medicine student looked up at this huge building, a crow or a raven sitting on its roof, staring down on them.
"This looks utterly inviting." Julia commented monotonously then jumped when Adelaide straightened herself up. "I am Adelaide, a Regent and I'm responsible for whatever is caused by this person from now on." She yelled at the Warehouse, then she pulled out a remote that apparently was linked to its door. The opening was far too small for this kind of building, but Julia only shrugged. She felt some draught on her neck, but when she turned around, she couldn't find anything. The medicial student looked at the taller woman.
"We have to introduce new people to the Warehouse like this." Adelaide explained in reaction the the younger woman's questioning look. "We have this forcefield that activates if the Warehouse is in danger and, well, it could be that it activated once or twice on false alarm, trapping everyone inside the Warehouse, or reacting to people not the way it should. It's still not working quite like it should."
"Yes, those normal problems you have running a top secret facility that hunts down and stores supernatural objects." Julia followed Adelaide in some sort of white tunnel, shooting nervous glimpses at everything.
Julia reached out her hand for one of those pillars, interestedly, but pulled back quickly as she read 'Explosives' and Adelaide hissed "Don't touch the bombs!" at her.
And then, they bumped into Claudia Donovan. Julia knew Claudia, she was the woman who had visited them rather often in New York, almost every time spontaneously, and sometimes, it seemed, out of nowhere. The difference to Claudia's usual appearance was that, currently, she was made of stone. Julia asked herself if this really was Claudia Donovan or just a statue of her. Because, from what she had gotten of the redhead's character, and now this top secret thing, it could be either.
"Okay, it is as bad as the kids described it. Bad idea to have them handle that all alone." Adelaide huffed in disapproval. "They are kids. They said they can handle it... but look at it now."
The two women entered a big room Julia would describe at a messy office, with a lot of statues in them. Her eyes widened, as she recognised their faces. Faces she had seen before in pictures.
"So, Julia... the rest of the family, frozen in stone." Adelaide waved around the room. "We don't have time for that." Again, the older woman grabbed the younger one's wrist and pulled her through the office, on a gallery. Here, Julia loosened her arm from the 'Regent's' hand and just... stared.
"Welcome to Warehouse 13." Adelaide said in an official tone of voice. The first thing Julia recognised, were... shelves. A lot of them. Then she realized how big that room actually was they just had entered. She couldn't make out the end of it, just staring... and trying to make heads or tails of what she just witnessed. "Whoa..." Was everything she managed, facing the endless... room of shelves in front of her.
"Yeah, we don't have any time for that either." The other woman smiled a little helplessly and was about to take Julia's hand again. But the medicine student pulled back. "I can walk on my own. Just show me the way."
And then, they jogged silently. Through aisles and aisles of shelves. The younger woman knew her mouth was hanging wide open while she followed Adelaide and feeling her eyes darting to several objects. She wished she had more time to actually find out what was stored here. Everything looked so innocent. But then, there were bigger lockers and Adelaide entered one of them quickly.
In it, Paul sat in front of a screen, rubbing his forehead nervously "I- I tried everything." He stuttered. Julia couldn't help but see how incredibly helpless he looked. He was only a boy, nineteen years old and...
Sarah lay in a chair, so many cables and devices linked to her head, her whole body shaking and trembling. Her lips were blue, her breathing was so erratic.
Julia didn't waste a single second on asking herself questions about where she had landed. She reached forwards, her hand closing around Sarah's wrist to check on her pulse.
"Paul, what the hell are you doing to her?" She yelled.