The Curator's smile was the only warm thing in the vast, ten-story Archive.
"She will be delighted," he rustled, as Lena looked at him with an expression just shy of pure mutiny.
"Sir," Lena said, her voice dangerously level. "You cannot be serious. He's a civilian. He's untrained, unvetted, and a complete unknown. He'll be a liability."
"He will," the Curator agreed, nodding pleasantly. "At first. But you will train him. You, Agent Lena, are one of my finest Seekers. You are fast, efficient, and you understand the Relics. But you lack one thing."
He gestured to Adam, who was still standing awkwardly by the leather chair, his mind reeling from the sight of the singing heads on the wall.
"You lack doubt," the Curator continued. "You see the supernatural. He sees the clues. You see the monster; he sees the drag mark. The Relic Society does not just need soldiers, Lena. It needs detectives. You will be his weapon. He will be your anchor."
Lena stared at Adam, her eyes narrowing. Adam could practically feel her calculating the precise velocity required to throw him over the mezzanine railing.
"I can't believe this," she muttered, not to Adam, but to the room at large.
"It is done," the Curator said, his voice, though soft, carrying an authority that permitted no argument. He turned his ancient gaze back to Adam. "Now, Seeker-in-training Adam. Your first mission is the one you have already begun. The Pythagoras Lantern."
Mr. Wijaya, who had been silent, stepped forward. "Sir, if I may. The gallery is... compromised. The thief's body—"
"Has already been dealt with," the Curator interrupted. "As soon as Lena contained the Shade, I dispatched a Cleaner team."
Adam looked at him. "A 'Cleaner' team?"
"A necessary division of our Society," the Curator explained. "When a Relic shatters the mundane world, the Cleaners are the ones who repair the cracks. They are masters of misdirection, carpentry, and, when necessary, mass Amnestic application. As we speak, they are currently editing the security footage, repairing the wall the Shade passed through, and building a very believable cover story for the gallery's owners. By morning, the thief will not have been killed by a monster. He will have suffered a fatal, mundane gas leak."
Adam felt a chill. This organization... they didn't just collect artifacts. They edited reality.
"The thief's body is gone," the Curator continued, "but the Lantern is not. The Cleaners are technicians, not Seekers. They are trained not to interact with Relics. They reported the gallery is 'sterile,' which means the Lantern is still hidden somewhere inside. Your task is to return, find it, and bring it here before The Auctioneers—the black-market syndicate that hired the thief—realize their man has failed."
"The Auctioneers?" Adam asked. "How do you know they're involved?"
"The thief was a known quantity," Lena said curtly, all business again. She was already checking the clip on her sidearm (which Adam now realized was not a normal pistol). "His name was Kai. A high-end 'acquisition specialist.' He only worked for the highest bidder. That means The Auctioneers. They'll have a tracker on him, and when he misses his check-in, they'll send a recovery team. We have... maybe an hour. Two, if we're lucky."
The Curator nodded. "Precisely. Which is why you must leave now. Lena, take Adam to the Armory. Equip him."
"Equip him?" Lena looked appalled. "Sir, I'm not giving a rookie a Quarantine-Level weapon."
"He will not get a Quarantine-Level weapon," the Curator said patiently. "But he cannot go in empty-handed. Give him the standard Seeker kit. And... yes... I think it's time someone field-tested Item 744."
Lena's eyebrows shot up. "The glasses? Sir, that's an Observation-Level Relic. We don't fully understand its side effects."
"An Observation-Level Relic," the Curator explained to Adam, "is an artifact whose danger is passive or psychological. Unlike a Quarantine-Level Relic, it won't kill you outright. It might just... drive you mad. Item 744 is a pair of spectacles. We call them 'The Prosecutor's Glasses.' We believe they allow the wearer to... perceive untruths."
He smiled at Adam. "As a detective, I thought you might appreciate them. Now, go. And Adam? Welcome to The Relic Society."
The Armory was not a room full of guns. It was another, smaller, much more secure library, smelling of ozone and polished steel.
"Standard Seeker kit," Lena said, throwing a slim black backpack at Adam's chest. "GPS, multi-tool, encrypted sat-phone, high-intensity UV flashlight, and a containment kit. The kit contains consecrated iron-filings, a silver-laced capture net, and a lead-lined box. Do not open the box unless I tell you to."
"Right. Iron and silver. Got it," Adam muttered, feeling like he was gearing up for a vampire hunt.
Lena went to a locker and keyed in a long code. A drawer hissed open. She took out a simple, old-fashioned pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, the kind his grandfather used to wear.
"Item 744. The Prosecutor's Glasses," she said, holding them out.
Adam took them. They felt... normal. "So what's the catch? They drive me mad?"
"We don't know," Lena said flatly. "The last Seeker who tested them quit. Said he 'couldn't stand to look at the world anymore.' Put them on."
Adam slipped them on. The prescription was perfect, the world snapping into a sharp, painful clarity he hadn't realized he was missing. "Okay," he said. "What now?"
"Look at me."
He looked at her. Just Lena, in her grey tactical suit, her arms crossed.
"My name is Lena," she said. "I am 102 years old. I was born in Atlantis."
As she spoke, something happened in Adam's vision. It was faint, but unmistakable. The air around her shimmered. It was like the heat-haze off a hot road, but vertical. It wasn't a crack. It was a warp in the air.
"I see it," Adam whispered, stunned. "It's... wavy. Like heat."
"Good," Lena said. "That's a lie. Now try this: My name is Lena. I am a Senior Seeker for The Relic Society. I think you are a reckless, untrained amateur, and you are going to get us both killed."
Adam looked. The air around her was perfectly still. Clear as glass. "That," Adam said, taking the glasses off, "is deeply unsettling."
"Welcome to the job," Lena grunted. "Let's go. The clock is ticking."
The drive back to the Menteng gallery was fast and silent. Lena drove the unmarked sedan with a focused, aggressive intensity that made Adam's previous macet crawl feel like a Sunday drive.
"Alright," Adam said, trying to be the detective. "Let's review. The thief, Kai, got in. He let the Shade loose, which killed him and dragged his body up the stairs. The Lantern is still in there. We need to find it before The Auctioneers show up."
"That's the gist of it," Lena said, not taking her eyes off the road.
"One problem," Adam said. "You saw the gallery. It's a giant, empty concrete box. If the Lantern was just lying on the floor, your 'Cleaner' team would have seen it. They didn't. Which means Kai hid it. After he was attacked, but before he died."
Lena was silent for a moment. "...That's a good point. A dying man's last act. He hid the prize. But where?"
"That," Adam said, putting his new glasses on, "is what we're going to find out."
The gallery was exactly as he'd left it, only cleaner. The faint, oily residue from the Shade was gone. The drag mark on the floor had been buffed out, the marble polished to a perfect, seamless sheen. Even the black quill was gone. The Cleaners were good.
"They're too good," Adam muttered, walking to the center of the room. "They erased all my evidence."
"Then it's my turn," Lena said. She pulled a device from her pack. It looked like an old, bronze dowsing rod, but it had a digital screen at its hilt. "This is a standard-issue psionic resonance scanner. It detects the 'echo' that Quarantine-Level Relics leave behind. Like a supernatural Geiger counter."
She held it up. The needle on the screen was dead. "Nothing," she said, frowning. "The Cleaners must have sterilized the room's energy signature. Or..."
"Or the Lantern is hidden somewhere shielded," Adam finished for her.
He looked around the empty room. "Okay, so your magic wand is useless. Let's try my magic wand." He pointed to his own head. "Logic. The drag mark. It went from the base of the spiral staircase, where I found the quill, up the stairs. Correct?"
"Correct," Lena said, "The Shade dragged the body up there."
"Wrong," Adam said. Lena looked at him. "What?"
"I've been thinking about it. That's the assumption. But the drag mark was faintest at the top and heaviest at the bottom. The thief wasn't dragged up. He fell. He was attacked at the top of the stairs, dropped the Lantern, and his body tumbled all the way down. The Shade, which is basically a supernatural guard dog, just dragged the body back to the stairs. But the Lantern..."
Adam walked to the spiral staircase. He looked down into the open, central column of the spiral. It was dark.
"It fell," Adam whispered. "It's not hidden. It's lost."
He pulled the high-intensity UV flashlight from his pack and shined it down the central shaft. Nothing. Just darkness and the glint of a decorative fountain at the bottom of the ground-floor lobby, two floors below.
"Wait," Adam said. He put on the Prosecutor's Glasses. He looked at Lena. The air around her was clear. He looked at the empty pedestal. Clear. He looked down the shaft. And he saw it.
It wasn't a lie. It wasn't a "warp" in the air. It was a glow. A faint, sickly, purple-black light, invisible to the naked eye, pulsing from the bottom of the shaft. It was the same oily iridescence as the quill.
"There," Adam said, pointing. "It's in the fountain. The glasses... they don't just see lies. They see... wrongness."
"Good work, detective," Lena said. She was impressed. "Stay here. I'll retrieve it."
"No," Adam said. "I'm your partner, remember? I'll go. You keep watch." He didn't wait for an answer. He ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time.
He reached the ground-floor lobby. The fountain was a shallow, black-marble basin, dry for the night. And there, sitting in the center, was the Pythagoras Lantern.
It was exactly as it looked in the photograph, but... dimmer. The black crystal panels were cracked, and the bronze framework was bent, as if from the fall.
"Lena! It's here!" he shouted up. "It's damaged!"
"Adam! Don't touch it!" Lena's voice echoed from above. "A damaged Quarantine-Level Relic is even more unstable! Wait for the containment kit!"
"Got it," Adam said. He knelt, looking at it. The "wrongness" he saw through the glasses was pulsing, growing stronger.
Thwack.
Adam froze. A sound from the lobby entrance. He looked up. Three men in dark suits were standing at the gallery's glass doors. They hadn't used a key. There was a perfectly circular, melted hole in the glass.
They were "The Auctioneers."
They saw Adam. They saw the Lantern at his feet. The men raised their weapons. They weren't guns. They were black, Taser-like devices that crackled with blue energy.
"Take the Relic," one of them said. "And kill the Seeker."