Guardians Inc.: Thundersword: Guardians Incorporated Book 2

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Where real life historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work.

Copyright© 2012 by Julian Rosado-Machain.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Julian Rosado-Machain / Trueba Interactive S.C. Homero 136 Desp. 601, col. Chapultepec Morales. Mexico City, Mexico. C.P. 11570

http://www.Guardiansinc.com

Rosado-Machain, Julian.

Guardians Inc: Thundersword (Book two of the Guardians Inc. Saga).

p.cm.

ISBN 978-0-9911582-1-8

1. Fantasy-Fiction. 2. Science Fiction-Fiction 3. Conspiracy Theory-Fiction 4. Historical Fiction-Fiction 5. Adventure-Fiction 6. Robots-Fiction 7. Magical creatures-Fiction 8. Magic-Fiction

Cover by Fabian Cobos.

      Published by Trueba Interactive in Polanco, México.

      http://www.Trueba.com.mx

      To my brothers Leo the sci-fi freak, Mac the fantasy freak and my sister Tere…..just the freak.

      Family above all.

Guardians Inc.: Thundersword (Book two of the Guardians Inc. Saga).

Part 1

All for One

Outflanked

      Thomas crouched behind the column base, making sure that his legs were completely protected by the rock. One of the centipede bolts the Azure Guards used with their crossbows dug itself deeply into the rock behind him. The black-and-yellow centipede came to life almost immediately and began to pull itself out from the rock.

      A puff of pulverized marble came out from the broken column behind him as another bolt embedded itself. As imposing as the ruins of the Caracalla Baths were, the eighteen-hundred-year-old rocks were soft and brittle, and sinuous cracks ran from each hole the centipede bolts made.

      As more bolts cracked the walls and columns around him, Thomas knew that the Guardians would have to deal with very angry Roman officials.

      Thomas crushed the centipedes with his boot before the bugs could attack him. He wasn’t going to let eight inches of poisonous insect finish what his grandfather’s Azure Guard had failed to do when they were bolts.

      Tony landed beside him with a thump. His chest was splattered with squashed centipede; the bolts either exploded on impact or bounced off the new body armor developed by the Guardians’ engineering team.

      Remind me why we left Henri at the Mansion? Tony yelled as a couple of bolts impacted the stone he had just jumped over. He squashed the animals as they came to life.      

It’s the middle of the day.

      So? Tony lifted his compact dart gun and blindly sprayed toward the enemy.

      People would be a little spooked, don’t you think?

      Spooked? A centipede appeared from the top of the rock where they were hiding, and Tony blew it away with the dart gun, splattering them both with centipede goo. How do you think I feel right now? They’re shooting bugs at us, Thomas! Bugs! And we only brought these peashooters with us! He shot blindly again, yelling in frustration.

      Thomas shared in that feeling. When he had joined the Guardians last summer, Doctor Franco had told him that he was a Cypher. Only a few Cyphers emerged every couple of hundred years, and only Cyphers could read and decipher the signs needed to keep the world in harmony. His grandpa Morgan, another Cypher, and the Azure Guards had beat them to this sign for the Book of Concord in the Baths of Caracalla as they had done almost three months before in Aoudaghost, Mauritania.

The Azure Guard were now a little closer to gaining control and influencing history for the next five hundred years.

Thomas already knew what his grandfather and the Azure Guards would do if they controlled the Book of Concord. It was a roadmap of the future, and with it they would make sure to tilt the eternal conflict between technology and Magic in Magic’s favor.

It was already happening. The powerful Oracle on Earth wrote the book every five hundred years and had increased the Magic in the world. The most precise technological instruments were already feeling its influence. From NIST’s atomic clock to the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, reports of minor malfunctions from the most advanced labs in the world had begun to flood the Guardians’ command and control center.

Thankfully, none of the malfunctions had caused any casualties so far, but Thomas knew that it was only a matter of time. Humanity depended on its technology. What would happen when the Internet failed? What kind of chaos would ensue when electricity stopped flowing?

His grandfather believed he would help bring a new Magical age upon the world. The Warmaster, the leader of the Azure Guards, had convinced Morgan that hunger, war, and even death would be eliminated, and he had even given him magical proof. Morgan’s seventy-year-old body had been magically rejuvenated to his late twenties. His grandfather had been given what all men dreamed of, and by doing that the Warmaster had gained a Cypher to his cause.

Through their abilities, Morgan and Thomas could read and understand any language, they could break any code, but more importantly, they could sense and understand the Magical signs the Oracle left as clues to the Book of Concord.

The Warmaster’s plan of a Magical world was a great, brilliant dream, but at what cost?

Billions of humans would die.

A purely magical world would not be able to sustain humanity, a new Dark Age would descend on the Earth, and the Guardians were sure that the Wraith, the ancient enemies of all life, would gain a foothold upon the world.

Attuned to Chaos Magic, the Wraith could not survive for long in a world permeated with the order technology brought.

Technology was the best defense against the Wraith. Thomas and the Guardians had stopped a Wraith incursion already. The Wraith city of Ormagra had been sealed off completely, but the Guardians had lost Tasha Hergelin to them. One of the most powerful Magic users in the world and the second highest level Guardian had become ensnared by them, transformed by their Chaos energies into a creature of nightmare.

Tasha was to be the Wraith’s leader in the war to come.

Thomas still felt the pain of losing Tasha. He had had a crush on her, maybe even loved her. She had used his feelings for her and his Cypher powers to transform into a Wraith, but he couldn’t shake off blaming himself for what had happened to her.

He still hoped that somehow Tasha would return to them.

Maybe even to him.

Get that thing! Tony yelled beside him, bringing Thomas back to the fight.

Thomas shot a dart at a centipede that was racing through the ground in a beeline for them while Tony let go of another wild spray above the rocks.

"Stop wasting darts! They’re gone!" Elise shouted from behind another rock. Doctor Franco had forbidden her to use Magic in this mission, and she had held back with the Tech team that arrived minutes before to cordon off the area from the rest of Rome.

      Oh yeah? Tony yelled back. And how do you know that?

      I saw them go in the baths, Bolswaithe chimed in as he walked right out in the open. The butler was wearing the same Guardian-issued fatigues and armor vest as the rest of them, although Thomas knew he probably didn’t need them because Bolswaithe was a robot. Pieces of centipede and green goo covered Bolswaithe’s chest and arms where he had been hit by the living bolts. They’re gone, he said, and gone with them was the third clue to the Book of Concord for sure.

      So there. Tony stood up. Let’s see the damage.

      The baths built by Emperor Caracalla in 212 AD were among the most beautiful ruins left from the Roman Empire. They covered about twenty-five hectares, and its main bath building could hold about 1,600 bathers every day when it was in operation. Even today, the ruins were sometimes used as a stage for open-air opera concerts.

      Guardians Inc.’s Watchmen Teams and the Rome Police had closed the baths to the public claiming some minor emergency, which allowed Thomas to search for the sign. But somehow, Grandpa had beat him to it.

      Again.

      Their firefight with the Azure Guards had pinned them in place while Grandpa decoded the sign and made an escape through the inner buildings of the bath, just like in Mauritania.

      Like them, the Azure Guards had a quick method of transportation, but Thomas had to either find a door connected to Pervagus Mansion or walk two streets on the left to enter its main gate. Pervagus Mansion was connected to everywhere in the world, and all Thomas and other Guardians Inc. employees needed to do was walk through any street and two streets on the left the entrance to main gate of the Mansion would appear. How strange it had been the first time he had walked that private corridor to find a mansion fit for a European noble in the middle of Carlsbad, California. Bolswaithe assured him that it wasn’t Magic; instead the Mansion used a very advanced system based on quantum mechanics.

      A system which, of course, Bolswaithe had tried to explain to him, but as always, he had understood only a quarter of the words.

      Unlike the Guardians, the Azure Guards relied purely on Magic. They opened magical portals on specific walls or areas where a remnant of Magic or a minor flux line was already present. A couple of years ago their reach had been limited, but with the Oracle present on Earth, Magic was becoming more pervasive and places where Magic portals could be opened had multiplied.

      It was all interconnected to the balance between Magic and technology, and the more Magic in the world, the more technology failed and vice versa.

      Elise had tried to explain how the Magic portals worked, but if Thomas didn’t get the mechanics and physics involved in their own mode of transportation, Magic was even more confusing.

      This way. Bolswaithe led them through the entrance of the baths; remnants of the mosaics that adorned the walls were scattered on the ground along the ruins.

      They reached a small doorway; the small chain that restricted access to the public was broken.

      This is right beside the ‘Laconicum,’ the Steam Room, Bolswaithe offered. It was probably a storage room of some kind.

      So they had steam rooms? Tony was on-point, weapon ready, and peeking into the doorway.

      And warm and cold pools, masseuses, doctors, a gymnasium…

Thomas liked having Bolswaithe as a friend. The robot was an excellent chef, a great tourist guide, and an accomplished bodyguard. Bolswaithe also had a direct connection to the Library Computer net and the satellites orbiting Earth. With him by their side, they could never get lost and had access to all the knowledge in the Library Intranet.

      The small corridor opened up into a large room. The roof, like all the others in the ruins, was long gone, but the floor still had the original orange- and white-tiled motifs. Dozens of doves walked around the room pecking food from the floor.

      Anything? Elise asked. She could sense the remnants of the Oracle’s Magic.

      Here's a bug, Tony said with distaste. A centipede was scurrying toward them, and he aimed his gun, but Elise was faster. In a swift move, she captured the centipede in a glass jar. She lifted it up to her face to take a closer look. The little beast clacked its pincer-like jaws at her.

      New pet? Tony asked with a grimace.

      Kiran asked me to catch one alive if I could. Elise placed the jar in her backpack. You know how she loves animals...Baboon.

      Tony scoffed. It was bad enough that Killjoy called him Baboon every time they practiced, but ever since Elise had began taking martial arts classes with them and earned the moniker of Wasp, she rubbed it in every time she could. Thomas couldn’t help but snort at his friends.

      Thomas walked around the room trying to figure out what the sign the Oracle had left for the Book of Concord was, and although he could sense the Oracle’s fading signature, the actual sign was gone.

      He nodded. Grandpa had beaten him again, and his friend—the Warmaster—now had an advantage over them.

      Two signs to the one he had decoded in Hussahassalin. His grandfather was one step ahead of him at finding the Book of Concord.

      Over here, Thomas, Bolswaithe called from a corner.

A small stiletto was embedded in the wall holding an envelope with the words: For Thomas. He recognized Grandpa’s handwriting immediately—the elongated capitals and the slight angle he gave to each letter. He reached for the envelope, but Tony stopped him.

      Might be a trap, Tony cautioned.

      I sense no magic coming from it, Elise said.

      It might not be magical.

      There is no apparent chemical tampering, Bolswaithe offered. No traces of biological venom or toxin either.

      Tony opened his hands at the butler. Now tell me how you know that? he asked.  Did you take it to a lab already?      

      Thomas and Elise knew that Bolswaithe was probably the most advanced robot in the world, but at his request, they kept his identity to themselves. Tony and Henri, the Grotesque who guarded Pervagus Mansion along with his brothers, remained oblivious, but Tony was getting wiser every day, and he’d already said something about Bolswaithe’s abilities not being natural.

      Bolswaithe patted his goggles nonchalantly. Built-in Spectrophotometer.

      Really... Tony grabbed his own goggles and checked them against Bolswaithe’s. Same model, same brand, but mine are only tinted. Why would yours be different? He flashed Thomas a puzzled look.

      Bolswaithe extended his goggles to Tony. You can check the results yourself if you want. Just use the transient absorption instead of the time-resolved Spectroscopy, and be ready to compensate for inter-modulation when using the four wave mixed setting. Just be careful with the feedback, or it might blind you for a couple of hours. Nothing permanent.

      Tony froze short of taking the goggles, and Bolswaithe lifted an eyebrow. Thomas suppressed a giggle.

      You…ah… Tony hesitated. You double-checked?

      Triple-checked. There are no traces of chemical or biological agents or contaminants.

      Tony pulled back his hand. Then we’ll take your word for it. He smacked his lips together. Go ahead, Thomas.

      Thomas pulled the stiletto from the wall and handed it over to Tony. He was more interested in whatever message his grandfather had sent him than the little dagger. He pulled out the white card from the envelope and opened it. It was a simple message written in the same elegant handwriting.

Happy 16th, Tom.

Love,

      Gramps

P.S. Enjoy and be careful!

      Thomas’s eyes watered, but he held back his tears. His birthday had been a couple of months ago, and only those close to him in Guardians Inc. had thrown him a little celebration. He had moved from his hometown in Ohio to Carlsbad, California to live with his grandfather after his parents had disappeared. They were going on a cruise and were never heard from again. Thomas had received a couple of e-mails from his friends in Ohio, but he'd attended less than a month at the high school in Carlsbad—not enough time to make any lasting relationships at all. In the nine months since he had become a Cypher and joined the Guardians, his life had been completely absorbed by the company. Just learning the basics of the seven-thousand-year-old organization was daunting. Most people spent years of study just to become Guardians with the most basic clearance. Others like Tony, whose family had been with the Guardians since the Renaissance, had lived in the organization all their lives and still didn’t have the clearance or knowledge Thomas had as a Cypher. Working in Pervagus Library, with its unlimited access to all human knowledge helped, but part of him still wished for the simpler life he had before, away from secrets he wasn’t supposed to know, or the burden they brought now that he was at the forefront of Guardians Inc.

      Above all, he missed Gramps.

      Something else was at the bottom of the envelope. He turned it over and a key fell on his palm. An old key—its teeth were a little bit eroded from use, but Thomas knew that it still worked fine.

      It was a wonderful gift, and Thomas smiled in a way he hadn’t smiled since becoming a Cypher.

      So? Elise asked. What is it?

      Thomas held the key for all to see. I got a car, he said, beaming.

An Infinitesimal Change

      So, is it an old car? Elise asked as she stepped over the armor carrier bag the engineers had given each one of them, and then pressed the release button on her shoulder. The armor lost cohesion and its scales fell neatly inside the bag.

      Wearing the armor was like being encased in a magnetic building toy, like the ones Thomas had as a kid with a big magnet base he’d built by adding little, metal rods, ball bearings, and flakes into a sculpture. The armor worked exactly like that, except he didn’t have to attach each of the scales; the scales remembered their place in the armor and they reattached themselves when the shoulder unit was activated.

As always, Bolswaithe had begun to explain to Thomas how the armor functioned, but Thomas stopped him the moment he started talking about the Einstein-de Haas effect and the Biot-Savart Law.

      So, it’s like one of those magnet toys? Thomas asked and Bolswaithe nodded. Thomas felt bad every time he had to interrupt Bolswaithe, but sometimes his explanations were like listening to a lecture about how a Formula 1 car automatic transmission worked…in Latin. And the one thing his Cypher powers didn’t do was translate spoken languages. He could read Chinese, Finnish, or even Egyptian hieroglyphics, but he could only understand spoken English, and thanks to his grandmother’s heritage and his time living in California, most of the curse words in Spanish.

      At least Bolswaithe never seemed to mind cutting short his explanations; he always found another interesting topic to talk about.

      Old? Tony interrupted while disengaging his own armor. About half of the scales fell out of the bag, so he held the shoulder unit away from his body and turned it on. The chest plate reassembled in the air, and then he placed it into the bag. It’s a classic car, girl. A classic, show some respect.

      The 1959 Impala was more than a classic car for Thomas; it was his grandfather’s most precious possession and a family heirloom. Gramps had already promised to give the car to his parents, and his father had told Thomas all the little stories of the car and what it meant for the family. His father dreamed of the day when he would give it to him. You’ll meet the girl of your dreams in this car, he’d always said.

      Thomas stepped into his bag and disengaged the armor, rubbing the car key with pride. Who wants a ride? he asked. The car was stored at the Mansion along with boxes and crates full of everything that had been salvaged from his house. Henri and his brother Grotesque Jean-Luc had demolished his house fighting Wraith creatures, and he had only visited the storage a couple of times to get pictures of his family. He’d left the car just as Grandpa had left it…covered in a soft tarp.

      I’m in! Tony said, lifting up his bag. We can cruise Athens in style and then have a Mediterranean dinner. He pursed his lips; he’d already heard stories about the car and what it meant to Thomas.

      It’ll have to wait, Bolswaithe interrupted. Doctor Franco and Ms. Khanna are waiting for us.

      Well, Tony said, after that.

      After that is training session, study hall, then library work, Bolswaithe added. Thomas bit his lip and began to walk away toward the door that connected the Church of Nereo and Achilleo across the street from Caracalla Baths to the Mansion.

      You’re a real fun sponge sometimes, Bolswaithe. You know? Tony whispered as he leaned closer to the butler.

      Bolswaithe watched Thomas’s face very carefully as he opened the door.

Something happened in Bolswaithe’s neural quantum computer as qubits arranged themselves in an algorithm he had never experienced before.

      His left eye twitched involuntarily a couple of times.

      In all the time since his activation, Bolswaithe had worked with preset reactions, always tailoring his responses and actions to words and situations based on learned values. He had always responded to exterior stimuli choosing from the preset reactions, and his learning matrix allowed him to store the responses he got back from the environment and persons around him to advance the preset values he already had, which then furthered his tailoring of responses.

      As advanced as Bolswaithe was, he was ultimately a machine, a piece of technology so advanced that it mimicked real life. His designers had planned on that. Even if humans around him forgot that fact, he always knew he was a machine with preset reactions.

      Until this time. This time, the look on Thomas’s face made an internal change.

      Unexpected, surprising, and quite powerful.

      By following his programming, he had made Thomas feel discouraged. By reminding Thomas what he needed to do at that exact moment, and with those words and inflection, Bolswaithe had made Thomas lose all excitement about his gift.

In a direct confrontation to his orders of keeping Thomas alive and well, in all respects, including psychologically and emotionally, he had caused an adverse effect in Thomas.

He had let him down.

And that, in turn, affected him in a way he had never experienced before.

      Bolswaithe analyzed his own reaction and could only come to the conclusion that he had experienced empathy. He understood that what he had experienced was completely out of his parameters and original programming, and that for the first time he had crossed into one of the scenarios his creators had theorized his quantum computer brain could actually develop.

      For the first time, Bolswaithe felt.

Sitrep

      Doctor Franco’s office was one of the most interconnected rooms of Pervagus Mansion. To the real world, Guardians Inc. had a presence in all major cities in the form of skyscrapers. At the top of each building, visitors entering the Hong Kong branch would look out the large windows and see the familiar Central District and harbor beyond. The same applied to visitors entering the Santiago, Boston, Berlin, Pretoria, or any of the other buildings around the world, and they would always see the familiar skyline of their respective cities.

It wasn’t just the view though; thanks to the Mansion’s transport system, the offices occupied the physical space that the Doctor needed or requested. The loss of cellular service to the visitors’ phones was always explained with the need for security by the Doctor. Many other companies had the same measures, so it had never been an issue.

      The same trans-situation system made it impossible for someone from the outside to look into the office. Even if they somehow found the plans of the buildings, they would not show Doctor Franco’s office; it was like looking through a one-way mirror.

      As Thomas entered the office, the view changed from Sydney’s harbor with the Opera house in the background to a view dominated by the Eiffel Tower. When the Doctor was alone or with Guardians Inc. employees with sufficient access the views rotated between the separate buildings around the world and Thomas thought that the change in scenery maybe was connected to the Doctor’s mood.

Since meeting the Doctor for the first time, Thomas had learned to almost read the Doctor’s moods through his fidgeting. The CEO of Guardians Inc. was always in a constant state of movement. His hands fidgeted, his Daliesque moustache twitched, his lips trembled, and his eyes rolled or jumped constantly from one side to the other. His eyebrows were a telltale sign of what he was thinking—a disbelieving, single eyebrow arch or a double lift for surprise. He had never seen a double arch for anger, although Killjoy had told him it happened sometimes. The Doctor tapped his fingers while he listened, and gestured with his hands as he spoke. If he was sitting at a meeting he somehow kept his upper body still while one, or sometimes both, knees pumped up and down. Thomas had even seen him shuffling his feet as if practicing a twist dance while listening to an important presentation or report.

Maybe the Doctor’s fidgeting was because he could read most minds and it was probably very taxing to be aware of everyone’s thoughts.

Or maybe it was a very elaborate misdirection strategy. Thomas had talked with Tony about the Doctor often, and they had come to the conclusion that the Doctor was probably the most powerful man in the world and to anyone who didn’t know him, he probably looked absurd with his fidgeting, cane and ever-present cravat tie around his neck.

Nothing more than just a perfect cliché of the rich, mildly loony, and eccentric. Thomas had certainly thought that way about the Doctor at first.

      The other wall of Doctor Franco’s office was decorated with masterful paintings and various photographs of the Doctor and different heads of state. Two large full bookcases were side by side, and on the wall behind the desk was a mosaic of large screen TVs displaying real-time information from stock markets, news, and weather from around the world. One of the monitors displayed in different colors the alerts the Guardians had confirmed as Magic interfering with technology. Technical Blue and Potentially Yellow alerts dotted the map, but so far no Fatality Red dots had appeared.

      As soon as they came in, Doctor Franco stopped looking at the monitors, and a wall slid open covering the TVs.

      Killjoy was sitting by the desk in her usual Vice Principal disguise. She was slowly sipping on her coffee mug and her metal pad rested atop the Doctor’s desk. Her thick glasses were hanging from a chain around her neck, and her beautiful, light-brown eyes centered on Thomas.

      It was uncanny how Killjoy could disguise herself from the tall, six-armed, Master-at-arms, beautiful Doyenne Kiran, to the triple-chinned, barrel-bodied Vice Principal Ms. Killjoy Khanna with just a knitted sweater, long skirt, and large glasses. He had seen her literally transform countless times at the Five Treasures of Snow Dojo, but he had never ceased to marvel at the transformation itself, a well-practiced ballet as her six arms undid buttons and pulled on belts, and her body seemed to unfold from within the confines of her barreled sweater. He no longer had the interaction with her stern but fair Killjoy, Vice Principal persona anymore. Even when in disguise, she remained Doyenne of Martial Arts. He knew how strong she really was, how inflexible she could be when teaching, and how dangerous she could be as a fighter.

      Of course, he had also seen her tempered, even caring side. It wasn't a mystery that she favored Henri in a special way; the Grotesque and Killjoy shared something close to a true relationship and they had even spent time together many times since they started sparring.

      Tony called them dates, but Henri denied anything more than special training sessions, claiming that only he approached her in strength, if not martial prowess.

      Thomas decided it wasn't wise to dwell on the matter and kept his opinions to himself...and Bolswaithe.

      Elise was the first to speak up. Morgan beat us again, she said aloud. We had everything ready for Thomas to come in and take the sign, but Morgan’s escorts appeared in front of us and blocked us while Morgan read the sign.

      Just like in Aoudaghost, Doctor, Bolswaithe offered.

      How many? Doctor Franco asked. He pressed on his desk and monitors lit up with images taken from security cameras around Caracalla. One of the images showed a Magical portal opening and a couple of Azure Guards coming through, but the image turned to static as a third person stepped through.

      Three, plus Morgan, Bolswaithe continued. Two elves and a human.

      The mountain lion faun?

      I didn’t see him, Thomas said.

      They didn’t take him this time, Killjoy interrupted. Like us, they are still respecting the treaties of 1241 signed in Novgorod. That’s why Henri didn’t accompany you. Elves can pass as humans, but most Fauns can’t and Grotesques certainly don’t. They don’t want to escalate Faun or Magic presence into the open.

      Thomas sighed; Once again he felt a little lost. He hadn’t reached the part of the Guardians’ history where the treaties of Novgorod had been signed.

      With the mountain lion faun they have a squad of five, Killjoy continued after taking another sip of her coffee. "Just like we have a hand to search for the Book of Concord, the Warmaster has his own."

      Morgan is respecting all the treaties for the time being, at least, the Doctor said, but that doesn't help us. We have to find out exactly how he's tracking and getting the advantage on us. If we don't, we are only leading Morgan to the signs. Our network is immeasurably larger than theirs, and all our resources are centered on finding the clues for you, Thomas. The Doctor’s hand movements betrayed his feeling of impotence. We can't let them continue stealing the signs from you. We have to learn how they do it.

      If they are using magical scrying, it's a spell we had never seen before, Elise offered. I’ve asked King Seryaan and the Elven Council to try and follow us like the Azure Guards, but they couldn't.

      It has to be magical in nature, Killjoy said. The Warmaster would never use technology.

      If it was any kind of technology we'd know about it, Bolswaithe said.

      The Doctor rubbed his temples. We'll keep at it. I’m sure that we’ll find out soon enough. Meanwhile, you’ll have to stay inside the Mansion. The Doctor stopped rubbing his temples for a second. I'm sorry, he said. We can't risk losing another sign, but in the meantime we can gather something more from these images. The Doctor enlarged the best camera angle on his desk. Here are the two Elven guards, and then cameras go blind when the human appears. That tells us that he’s a Mage.

      More like a witch, Elise corrected. I got a good look at her when they moved inside Caracalla. She’s a female.

      I didn’t see a woman, Tony said. Did you, Thomas?

Thomas shrugged.

      That’s because you where hiding behind the rocks, Elise said coldly.

      I did see the alien rods though, Tony said smugly.

      What alien rods? the Doctor asked.

      The flying rods the aliens use for surveillance, Tony said. They were all over the place.

      Elise sighed. I didn’t see any flying rod, she said mockingly. The Doctor turned to Bolswaithe.

      I didn’t either, Bolswaithe told him. And the sensors on the equipment didn’t register anything like an alien flying rod. Thomas knew that he was probably talking about his own internal sensors.

      There’s even one in the camera. Tony pressed the rewind button and played back the video. Just before the Mage appeared onscreen a flash zoomed past the camera view. There! he said, pointing at the screen. You see that? Alien rod.

      Bolswaithe rewound the video again, stopped it when the line crossed the screen, and they all peeked in closer.

      The thing looked like a rod with a long, undulating wing on each side, but the image was so blurry they could only make out the general shape.

      Alien rod, Tony repeated, as if by saying it again it would become the truth. I'm sure the Guardians know the truth about them.

      It’s only a well-documented optical illusion, Bolswaithe said, pressing a button. Numerous windows appeared on the screen, from kids’ birthdays to base jumpers. The same rod-like things zoomed past the frame. Everyone sees them only after they review the video, Tony. Nobody sees them during the event. It’s just the effect of the motion blur as an insect passes in front of a camera with long exposure. Bolswaithe pulled up images being reproduced in controlled environments. There are no ‘alien rods.’

      Well…I saw one, Tony said, crossing his arms, and it wasn't an optical effect.

      And that’s why you were hiding behind a rock? Elise mocked him. The alien scared you?

      They were also shooting bugs at us! Tony said. And we were on the frontline, unlike you.

      Did you get one? Killjoy stood up, interrupting what promised to be a fight between Elise and Tony.

Elise flashed a final glare at Tony before pulling out a glass jar from her bag; the live centipede was walking inside, its mandibles clacking against the glass. A shiver ran through Tony as Elise handed the jar to Killjoy, who then opened it. The centipede walked around her hand and arm as she took a closer look at it. The centipede seemed to be at ease on her hand, almost like a pet.

      "A beautiful,