7/24

Inside the Getty museum vault

3:55 PM

To the right were shelves filled with cardboard boxes, each labeled. The left wall was entirely cubby-sized cabinets with clear plastic doors, each with a lock on it. Several polished steel tables were in the center of the vault. The back wall was large metal cabinets with locks on them. There were no artifacts, art pieces or curios in sight.

Detective Jones swept his gun left to right, checking the brightly lit room and staying alert for movement.

"Nuthin' in here, chief," one of the three security guards said in a hushed voice.

Hamilton was out front. "Stay calm, stay alert. We're looking for an ambush predator. It can be any inanimate object. No wood or cotton, but metal, stone, glass, all possibilities."

They hadn't moved from the vault entrance. Hamilton wasn't particularly motivated to move into a room with a mimic so he waited, the four of them just looking and staying on guard.

Robinson, the security chief, came up from behind them. Hamilton filled the man in.

Delia Gracewater, the head of the museum's inventory, gave Robinson an order. "Mr. Robinson, I need you to go in there and find out what, if anything, is amiss. We still have no evidence of this... Mimic theory."

Robinson cracked his neck. The big man pushed his three subordinates out of the way. "You going in?" he asked Hamilton.

"Not unless you are," Hamilton replied without taking his eyes off the silent, still room.

Robinson's voice was serious and grim. "I've got to. I have a handful of levels. Enough to keep me alive, hopefully. Nothing flashy, but I can punch well."

Jones decided to give him the best chance he could. "It can change size, be big or small. It can't eat you directly. It'll attack with an appendage, like it did to your fallen man. Mimics can do slashing and piercing pretty well, but in this confined space it won't wind up for a bashing attack. The tables are steel, should be more than enough to stop one of its blows. I'll back you up."

Robinson moved to the left, Hamilton moved to the right. Hamilton wasn't military, but he'd done SWAT training and knew how to sweep a room. The two men crept forward, step by step, keeping Robinson three steps ahead. Two of the security guards, the younger ones, followed, tasers held high. Robinson just had clenched fists up in a boxing stance.

Nobody made a sound. They all moved in. Robinson got about halfway down the long room when he held his fist up to the others. Everyone froze. Hamilton followed Robinson's eyes.

Inside one of the left wall's clear plastic cubbies, an oblong rock was wobbling. Hamilton moved in further, making sure Robinson wouldn't be in his line of fire. Then everything happened in seconds.

The rock expanded in less than a second, filling the cubby with a body of stone. The cubby door burst off its hinges. The mimic expanded further, now a long rectangular prism of grey stone. Hamilton fired twice, bullets smashing into the rock and shattering it in half. The long end of the mimic dropped as the stone broke apart. It turned into an ochre goo as it hit the floor. Robinson punched the half of the mimic still in the cubby, his fist glowing with golden Ki as he struck. The part of the mimic Robinson punched wobbled and turned into an orange, fleshy blob that started to flop out of the cubby. Hamilton got one shot off at it, putting a Hardcase P30 armor-piercing round into the blob. Robinson delivered two jabs to the blob as ochre blood gushed out of the bullet hole. Robinson's Ki filled punches caused the top half of the mimic, the part that was still slurping out of the cubby, to explode into ochre blood and orange flesh. The bottom half hit the floor and in a flash it slithered past Robinson and towards the vault exit. Hamilton dove to the ground, flopping onto his belly. The second he hit the floor he lined up a shot between the table legs and fired at the sliding mimic. The mimic exploded, showering the two security guards with ochre blood and stretchy, orange, skin-like flesh.

"Dead?" asked Robinson, his eyes only on the exploded gore next to him.

Nobody said anything for three whole seconds, then Hamilton replied, "looks like it." He hadn't moved his aim from the blood splatter.

"THE FUCK?!?" the security guard who'd gotten most covered in monster blood yelled. He and the other security guy got out of the vault as quickly as they could.

4:09 PM

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Mrs. Gracewater could be heard talking into a walkie-talkie. "Yes, we're going to need to clean up in the vault. Bring a hazmat kit." She considered the amount of flesh and blood. "Better bring... All of them."

Hamilton rolled onto his back and sat up. He found Robinson's hand waiting to help him up. "Good punches," Hamilton said.

"Good shooting," Robinson said.

The two men nodded to each other.

Then the vault doors swung closed. The lights inside flickered off, then on again. Hamilton and Robinson whipped around, looking for an attack. It wasn't what they expected.

The blood and goo and flesh of the mimic were gone. On the table at the back end of the room, a small boy, no older than five, stood. He wore a blue robe around himself. No shoes. No hair.

Hamilton unloaded three rounds into the creature. Robinson took a defensive stance next to Hamilton. The child didn't even flinch. The Hardcase P30 rounds, rated to punch through up to two inches of solid steel, flattened against the child's head and dropped to the table.

"Sorry, sorry!" It had a boy's voice, high pitched and nervous. "Um, I had to get you here, Mr. Hamilton Jones, sir. So I can convince you into becoming a Detective. And save your life."

"I am a detective." Hamilton fired four more rounds into the creature, which hit its clothes. The clothes didn't even budge, completely unfazed by the deadly rounds. Hamilton reloaded, letting his empty clip clatter to the floor.

"No, you're a detective, not a Detective. You don't have the class. But you could. If you just entered a Dracosys site, you'd get the prompt." The creature seemed nervous. Scared.

There was a banging on the vault door. Muffled voices from the other side. Robinson raced over to it and tried the handle. It didn't move.

The creature looked ashamed. "I locked that. With magic. Sorry. You have to stay here. Sorry."

4:11 PM

The creature looked at Hamilton Jones. "You're the only one who qualifies for the Detective class and who can still get it. Sorry. But the whole Scholar class tree will open up if you get the class! It's only available now that the extra class trees are accessible, and those can only be accessed by new leveled. So get the class, okay?"

Hamilton scowled, but held his fire. "No. You killed a man last night."

The boy looked like he was on the verge of a tantrum. "But I'm saving you right now!"

"Doesn't look like it," Hamilton said, tilting his head towards the vault door.

Robinson had a leg propped up against the door, trying to get leverage to pull the big metal handle up. It wasn't moving.

The creature rubbed its hands together nervously. "Sorry. The timing is a bit off. You solved the case faster than I thought you would. So we're going to be stuck here for a bit before I save you."

4:12 PM

"Save me from what?"

The boy, the creature, was guilty of something else it hadn't admitted to. He squirmed under Hamilton's gaze. "Kind of, Pit. Really, a nuclear bomb. This vault is shielded enough that you'll be safe in here."

Hamilton turned to the vault door and fired at the hinges. He emptied his clip into the hinges. The metal dented, but didn't break.

"The door made of titanium?" Hamilton asked Robinson.

"Yeah," came Robinson's downhearted reply.

The monster continued trying to wheedle out of its crimes. "I'm sorry, but I needed to save you. To save you I had to get you in here. To get you in here I had to kill a man and pretend to be an amulet for a month. I'm really sorry, honest!"

Robinson tried to call someone, anyone, over his walkie-talkie. He wasn't getting anything. Robinson pulled Hamilton's phone out of his pocket and threw it to him. Hamilton grabbed it. One bar. One fucking bar of reception.

"If, if it makes you feel better, you can call anyone you want to and try to evacuate people." The monster sounded like it was a peace offering.

Robinson looked to Hamilton. Hamilton spoke decisively. "Robinson, make calls. Anyone you can think of. You, monster, keep talking. Explain."

"So um, Pit had this plan, he had a deadline. So today was gonna be the day, and we all knew it was Los Angeles. And I'm in charge of humanity having the power to fight back. For fairness! So I knew you were important. I knew you had to get Detective. I tried a couple of times already! I asked you! I told you! I sent monsters after you!"

Hamilton remembered a kid who asked him directly to get powers to save people. He remembered an old man telling him that without power he was worthless. He remembered monsters coming right for him, ignoring other targets.

"Um, I'm Forth, by the way. I'm one of the twelve Dracosys Admins. I'm in charge of fairness. The only balance against Mond, Varren and Pit. They want to kill you without you having a chance! I can give you a chance!"

4:15 PM

Hamilton started taking notes on his phone. He immediately shared the Google doc with his department chief. One bar of 5G wasn't a lot, but it could get text out alright. To Hamilton, it didn't matter if a nuke went off or not. Nothing he could do about it now. But this kid, this Admin, had to know things. "Tell me everything you know."

The kid looked like he was about to cry. "The Ambrose Society..."

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