7/24

Outside the Getty museum, Los Angeles, California

10:15 AM

The Getty's pristine white concrete walls were splattered with paint. The lawn and gardens had been razed. These weren't new changes. When the Dracosys initialized, the Getty had turned into a Ruin, becoming a distorted version of itself, pumping out monsters. In the case of the Getty, these monsters were paint slimes and hedge golems. In the battle to clear the Getty, the plants were torched and the slimes got splattered. The management was working to fix the lawn. They were considering leaving the paint splatter.

Detective Jones was alone. His partner had gotten slashed by a kid with a glowing machete. The wound had been healed by magic and she was fine, but LAPD policy put her on 2 days mandatory paid leave. He got out of the car and walked right up to the front door where museum staff were waiting for him.

"Are you the detective?" asked an older woman in a grey suit. Well kept. Long skirt. Professional, intellectual. "I'm Delia Gracewater, head of inventory. This is our security chief, Mr. Robinson." She gestured to the thickly built man next to her.

"Right, so you know the situation?" Robinson asked in a gruff, clipped voice. He was obviously former military, which was probably why he'd been hired. Delia didn't seem to like him much. Hamilton watched the security man's eyes searching for a potential threat.

Detective Jones nodded. "Break in last night. You have a dead security guard. No security footage. Only missing item is a magic amulet. Looks like a chipped piece of marble, about yea big." The detective held his hand in a C shape. "Was it magic before or after the Dracosys?"

"It wasn't actually magical before." Delia gestured for Mr. Robinson to step aside and he opened the door for them. She continued as she led the detective to the scene of the crime. "The inscription claimed to provide relief to Gaia, a woman's name. It was supposed to cure her fever, chills and headache."

Hamilton was eyeing everything as they walked through. He'd been to the museum several times, and wasn't surprised by their route upstairs and to the back.

Detective Jones asked, "and after the Dracosys?"

Delia smiled. "Well, we had one of those scanners come and identify it. It now has the properties it claimed to before the Dracosys. It aids in getting over influenza."

They came into a small, dimly lit side room devoted to some of the oldest relics in the collection. The coroner had already removed the body, rushing to get done before Dungeon Break time. Hamilton had the preliminary report and photos of the body already on his phone.

The crime scene team was there, taking photos, but there wasn't much to see. The death had taken place at the entrance to the room. A blood spray pattern showed fierce, sudden violence, ending in death. Spray high on the wall indicated the victim, Mr. Clarence Cooley, had been standing when the single, fatal blow was delivered. He was cut deeply into his neck, fell and bled out in seconds.

The amulet and various other treasures had been in a tall glass case. Three panels of floor to ceiling glass kept the items out of the air and away from grasping toddlers. Except the case was entirely empty and the middle panel of glass was missing.

Hamilton asked for clarification. "Mrs. Breakwater, you said only the amulet was missing? Where are the other items?"

"Your technicians cleared them of evidentiary use and we moved them to the vault for safe keeping. We won't be able to put them back here until the case is restored and air tight again."

"Did you clean up the glass?" Hamilton asked one of the crime scene techs.

"Nope," she said flatly, while continuing to take low angle shots of the room and location the item was stolen from. "No glass when we got here. Damnedest thing. It should be impossible to get that thing out without breaking it. Even if the perp put the big pieces into his inventory, there should be a fragment or two around here."

Hamilton mused to himself, and if the killer did have an inventory, why leave everything else?

There was also the missing security camera. Hamilton turned back to the security chief. "Why was there only one security camera in this room?"

"Only one way in or out," Robinson replied. "And there's half a dozen cameras in the room just outside. We got footage of Clarence going in, but nobody went in or out the whole night aside from that."

The missing camera pointed away from the glass case, so there wasn't any footage of the glass going missing. The killer had removed the camera completely, leaving only wires behind. The footage from the camera cut out at 11:52 PM.

A classic locked room mystery, albeit one without a door. Hamilton Jones held back a smile. This was why he'd joined the force. To figure out impossible timelines and track down criminals who actually covered their tracks. His typical, pre-Dracosys cases had never posed even a slight problem for him. Husband did it. Boyfriend did it. PCP head did it. But post-Dracosys, people had inexplicable powers and monsters were on the loose. He finally had work to do.

Hamilton went to the security room and checked the video recordings.

-----

Known Timeline

11:52 PM The security camera goes offline. Security guard Clarence Cooley gets sent by the guy watching the cameras.

11:53 PM Clarence arrives, and within 10 seconds is killed. Guy watching the security feeds sees blood, calls Clarence on radio, doesn't get him, and sounds the alarm.

11:55 PM Other guards arrive, find Clarence dead, glass missing, amulet missing.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

12:22 AM Police arrive.

1:41 AM Coroner arrives.

2:28 AM Lab techs arrive.

Unknown timeline

The killer gets in without being seen.

The killer removes the glass, pocketing it without smashing it. They take the amulet.

-----

Hamilton mulled over the camera. That was the odd part. It had gone out before the attack. But before or after the glass and amulet disappeared?

If it was invisibility, that often came with a "cannot interact with objects" caveat. So the killer would de-cloak to remove the camera and get rid of the glass and snag the amulet. They could then refresh their invisibility to ambush Clarence, then refresh it again to escape.

The problem with all of this was the very tight window everything had to happen in. Magic could make it all work, sure. Hamilton searched through a public wiki of powers, then through the government's private database. He was right about the invisibility. You couldn't interact with stuff while invisible. The other problem though, was the glass.

There was the leveled's inventory system. That could be where it went. But it had to have been lifted by the killer before he could make it disappear into his inventory. And the floor to ceiling glass couldn't have been lifted without breaking it. He went back to the crime scene. There were locked latches at the bottom of the case that allowed the glass panels to be slid open. The latch was gone for the missing glass. Could the killer have taken apart the mechanism and then taken the glass? That would prevent it from smashing on the ground and making noise.

But the timeline was so close. They'd have to remove the camera, disassemble the door parts, take the glass, kill Clarence, take the amulet and then disappear, all within 3 minutes. It was doable, but...

There were so many other items in the museum. So many out in the open. So many more valuable than a magic flu shot.

"What are the other magic items in the museum?" Hamilton asked Delia.

She'd been typing away on her phone and was taken aback. "Oh! Yes, well we have several. After the museum was returned to its natural state, many of our pieces gained magical properties. Most of them quite mundane. A comb that curls hair, a painting of the sea that smells like salt, things like that."

"So nothing powerful?"

"We have a few more interesting pieces in our vault." Delia didn't seem to be ready to elaborate.

The amulet had to have been targeted specifically. Hamilton mentally checked notes. "Was the amulet the most powerful piece on the floor?"

"Well, that scanner man thought so."

Hamilton felt a string to tug on. "He did? What did he tell you?"

Delia turned to Mr. Robinson, who spoke up. "Spencer Rangoon was his name. He had that Ranger ability to scan system items. He went through everything on the floor and told me that amulet was the only thing worth a damn. He said we should probably protect it in the vault."

"But you didn't," Hamilton said.

"Its effect is less valuable than your yearly flu shot," Delia insisted. "It's value to the public as a representative of classic-"

"Did this Rangoon get to see inside the vault?"

Delia prepared a scowl. "No, we had a CIA officer come to check and log those. He took a few things with him, and we're not too happy about it."

"Was Spencer Rangoon left alone with the objects out here?"

"I was in the room with him the whole time," Robinson declared. "I know every object on these displays and I know he didn't walk out of here with any of it. He put everything back where he found it."

Hamilton's mind raced. He flicked through databases on his phone until he found what he was looking for, the description of the System Scan ability.

If Rangoon had... But then what was the amulet? Hamilton searched the ability lists again until he found what he was looking for.

Hamilton called up one of the LAPD dispatchers directly. "Detective Hamilton Jones. I need a BOLO for one Spencer Rangoon, probably an alias. Robinson! Tell this nice lady everything you know about that man." With that he tossed Robinson the phone.

"You said the rest of the items got put in the vault?" Hamilton asked Delia. "Take me there, now."

Mrs. Breakwater defended her most secure location. "Why? It's entirely secure. Impossible to open without two employees. It's under heavy observation both inside and outside."

"Well, earlier today you took a damn mimic in there." Hamilton noted the likely useless tasers on the security guards' hips. He wouldn't expect much help from them. He slid his pistol out of his holster.

-----

The Getty museum vault doors were flat, heavy, steel doors bolted into the walls. There were two keys to open them, a guard outside, and a dozen cameras in and outside of it. Detective Jones confirmed nothing had moved inside of the vault since the artifacts from the crime scene were placed inside.

Delia Breakwater refused to allow him access to a secure location without a warrant and without reason, so he explained.

"The scanner you hired lied to you. They don't need to touch objects to scan them. He got you guys to let him touch everything in the museum, except for what's in your vault. While he was pawing your art, he swapped the amulet with his own familiar, a mimic. He probably didn't even care which object it was. He probably made up the usefulness of the amulet. He just said it was important enough to be in your vault, but not important enough to sell or use to save lives. He wanted his fake to get into your vault."

"Mimics have several properties that make them valuable familiars. They can eat basically anything, turn parts of their bodies into weapons, and shapeshift into near perfect replicas of any inanimate object that they've eaten. So this Rangoon's mimic eats your amulet, then transforms into it. And this was, what, how many days ago?"

"A month ago," sighed Delia.

"A month ago. Familiars can survive without food and water so long as their summoner has Arcana Points. So it sits there, waiting. Hoping it's going to be placed in your vault. But it isn't. So maybe it gets bored. Maybe it gets a command. Point is, there's a new plan. Make a ruckus."

"The mimic eats the glass, eats one of the other artifacts, eats the camera, kills Clarence and then goes and turns into the other artifact it ate. It sits pretty while us humans walk right in front of the killer. It watched you take it right where it wanted to be. Inside your vault."

"So there's a monster in there?" Delia asked, fear in her voice. "With my artifacts?"

Three security guards armed with tasers flanked detective Jones, ready to follow him in. "Any of you guys leveled?"

Two guys shook their heads. The oldest guard nodded. "But all I got is some extra Agility and a dodge Technique. I assume you've got something better?"

Hamilton shook his head. "Not leveled. I don't trust the Dracosys." Hamilton double checked his clip was fully loaded. "I've got special bullets, it'll be fine. Just open the door."

Two keys were turned. The doors opened. Four men swept inside.

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