Monday, 4 June 2001 (Take Five)
Benedict's alarm goes off at 5:33am, and once more he sleeps for
another hour. This morning something is very strange. Ben has awakened
with rather feminine hands. Looking in the mirror he is revealed
as an attractive black woman in her middle years. Opening his wallet
he discovers that he is now Bernadette Oaxaca. S/he quickly dresses
and heads to work.
At the Wichita HQ Ben discovers a strange man is already at work.
He quickly draws his gun. The man reveals himself to be James Munroe.
He is a male equivalent of Jane. The entire world has gone topsy-turvy.
Ben explains to James what has been going on in the hope that he
believes as readily as Jane did. At first he doesn't, but when the
call comes in ordering the investigation in the kidnapping of the
D.A.'s daughter, he does believe. However, he still insists on calling
Ben, Bernadette.
In this reality things are different. Bernadette was the leader
of the team until the case where Alex Drake died. However, there
was no incidence of torture. In this reality it was Danni Munroe
who was raped by Apache Joe, although the incident was still the
spur for James to become a kick-ass martial artist and join the
FBI. The gender of most people seems to have shifted, although Artemis
Black remains eerily unchanged. Bernadette is not sure she wants
to solve the case on this attempt. She fears that reality will just
continue and she will be stuck as a woman forever.
James researches anything in Wichita that has direct or symbolic
connection with the sun. Meanwhile, Bernadette contacts NTOPFOR
and gives the code: goldfish. An team (carrying new armour and ray
guns) will arrive in Wichita in four hours. Meanwhile, James has
discovered that the Kansas State Library is holding an exhibition
on Egyptian Mythology, and are displaying a fibre-glass mock up
of the Eye of Horus. The pair quickly head off to the library.
Heading into the reference section, the agents see a suspicious
man with a tattoo on his hand who is obviously a look-out of some
kind. Ben takes a photo on him on his mobile phone and sends it
to the east coast team. The lookout hasn't seen the agents and they
slip past him toward the exhibition. A sign saying "Closed
for Exhibition" hangs off a chain that blocks a plaster-work
archway leading in to a darkened room. James heads through the archway
to snoop around. Bernadette tries to follow but she is overcome
by a sense of impending doom and cannot go through.
As Bernadette is deciding what to do next, she is accosted by two
burly looking acolytes of Sebek. They point their guns at her. Bernadette
stalls for time, telling them all the things that she has learned
in the past four versions of the day. They whisper to one another
in Arabic, obviously saying something along the lines of "she
knows too much", and they take Bernadette to the back exit
to quietly murder her.
At the back exit there are a number of other men of Arabic appearance.
They are dressed in workman's clothes; one is carrying a lunch box.
The place is deserted and this gives Bernadette her close. Calling
on her faulty doppelganger battle suit, she armours up. Shots are
fired and there is suddenly more screaming from the corridor. James
hears this and runs through the exhibit toward the sound of the
noise.
Bernadette turns her arms into spikes (a la T2) and skewers two
of her attackers through the head - a breath-takingly lucky shot.
James reaches the back of the exhibit and realises that a stud wall
has been put up here, and that the fight is on the other side. James
kicks a hole in the wall and has a look at what is happening.
One of the workman pulls the pin from a grenade and throws it at
the armoured Bernadette. She throws the dead bodies onto the grenade
which explodes and rips the corpses to pieces. Bernadette and James
are unaffected by the blast. James grabs the mullet of the grenade-thrower
and pulls him back through the wall, inadvertently killing him.
Bernadette spies two other assailants closing on James from behind
and bursts through the wall to engage them.
The two Sebek-goons are wielding swords (one a scimitar and one
a giant khopesh). However, this is not an easy fight. Both swordsmen
have magical protection, and both the swords are enchanted. The
scimitar does little damage, but seems to drain the strength of
those it strikes. The khopesh ignores armour and detonates objects
for substantial damage. James fights the scimitar goon, and then
other engages Bernadette.
James is stabbed several times by the scimitar and begins to feel
the bite of its power. Bernadette manages to stay away from the
flailing khopesh which is just as well as her armoured shell is
no protection against it. James kicks the scimitar of the hand of
her opponent and keeps kicking it out of the swordsman's reach.
A badly wounded Bernadette drops her armour and rolls across the
floor to grab the scimitar and use it on her magically protected
opponent. However, she is stabbed in the back and goes down before
she can reach it. Both swordsmen now close on James.
In a stroke of blind-luck the Khopesh wielder accidentally decapitates
the other swordsman. James now presses the assault, keeping the
khopesh out of the man's hand. Bernadette has healed herself and
now it is two against one. James keeps parrying the khopesh to allow
Bernadette a clean strike. It takes a while but eventually the swordsman
is whittled down. Both agents think that taking the swords back
to HQ would be a marvellous idea.
They hear the sound of a van pulling away outside. James sprints
out after it and (assuming the van may be connected, and may even
hold the kidnapped Melissa Lefenwiecz), he draws his gun and blows
away one of the rear tires. The van crashes into the wall. The back
doors burst open and two rather battered old men and a third carrying
a duffle bag get out. James fires a warning shot over their heads
and orders them to surrender.
The old men gesticulate wildly and a bolt of lightning impacts
on the ground feet from James. James calls to Bernadette for help.
Bernadette uses her powers to accelerate to the scene and shoots
the man with duffle bag at point blank range, killing him. She can
hear screaming from inside the bag - it is Melissa!
James shoots at the old men and misses spectacularly. The sorcerers
cast spells on Bernadette and James. As James charges his leg begins
to wither and he is crippled. Bernadette uses super speed to run
back into the library, grab the swords, come back and attack the
old men with them. But she misses.
Another spell is cast and a great crevasse opens up in the ground.
James and one of the sorcerers fall into it. Bernadette jumps into
save James. The sorcerer who cast the spell, prepares to seal the
ground burying all three alive. Bernadette hopes that none of the
effects on her age of using her powers so much are permanent, and
manages to get James out of the hole. James kicks the spell caster
back into the crevasse who accidentally seals himself in the ground
and he is killed. Both of the sorcerers are now accounted for.
Bernadette telephones Artemis and orders some white wash, he then
phones the local police and tells them that Melissa Lefenwiecz has
been found (although the blood-soaked James has scared her to death
after freeing her from the bag). Bernadette contacts Hume and tells
him to send NTOPFOR's force back to base. The agents will visit
them at a later date. They then go and collect the magic weaponry.
The man with the duffle bag and the khopesh-wielder are not dead.
Evidence response have some prisoners.
Suddenly the door on the other side of the alley-way opens. Todd
O'Connell and Bruce Campbell-Robson step out. They are using Hamblin's
door to teleport vast distances. Bernadette wonders is they are
doing that in the real reality. They quickly hurry all the magical
paraphernalia and the prisoners through the doorway to the west
coast HQ. Then Artemis steps through. He isn't abashed that using
the door is an anathema to god. He thinks that after the whole Joker
affair, "God owes me one."
The East Coast Team now arrive and begin the clear up. Artemis
loses no time in taking credit for saving the girl. The DA arrives
and there is a tear-filled reunion between him and his daughter.
He says that he will do anything he can to help the evidence response
team, they only have to ask. Rock Mulholland says that there was
an altar inside the exhibition and that this was obviously the spot
where the sacrifice of Melissa was going to take place. The altar
is a blasted sand stone block, over a mosaic of the son.
Now with the lights on the exhibition is actually a complete replica
of a temple. More interesting is the identity of the librarian who
organised the exhibition: one Alan Hamblin III. Rock finds a book
(a diary) that may have once belonged to Hamblin. The mid-west team
is given this book.
They speak to a librarian on site (Ruth Norman). She says that
the objects in the collection were part of the Duquesne Collection.
The agents confiscate the entire Duquesne Collection to examine
at a later date.
Bernadette is bringing the car around when he spies someone he
recognises from the fracas at Wichita airport (on previous versions
of this day). Both Yousef and Abdul are in the crowd that has now
gathered around the library. One is standing against the police
barrier, the other is further back. Not wanting to tip them off,
Bernadette speaks with Sergeant Albert James of the local PD. They
need to nab both these men without allowing them to do anything
violent and suicidal to the crowd.
Using the Wichita police a grab is made on the pair, and they are
carted off to the Wichita HQ for interrogation. After a round of
verbal fencing Yousef Bin Razah reveals that he is a member of the
Eyes of Sebek, and that the cultists attempting to destroy Wichita
were members of the Tears of Sebek. Yousef was trying to stop the
Teeth. He came to the library to make sure that all of them had
been killed. The Tears were testing their own weapon of mass destruction
in Wichita. They had chosen Wichita because it was in the middle
of nowhere and largely unimportant and unprotected. He agrees that
Melissa was a human sacrifice and component in the spell.
Yousef says that he and Abdul arrived in Wichita this morning.
He says that the sacrifice took place today because of special celestial
conditions between Sebek and the sun. It is an event that will repeat
itself several times in a human lifetime, so the danger is still
very real. He will say no more unless the recording devices are
stopped.
After this, Yousef admits that he was here to kill the Tears. The
Tears were the ones that tipped off the police that Melissa was
seen at the airport to lead the agents astray. He and Abdul underestimated
the time the ritual would take because they forgot to take the time
zones into account. He admits that they would have arrived too late
to stop the Tears without the agents' help. He isn't very pleased
about that. He advises killing the prisoners the agents have taken
before they wake up and can use their magic against them. He also
believes that the Tears were simply taking advantage of a situation
that presented itself, and there is no direct connection with the
Duquesne exhibit.
The Eyes of Sebek knew that the Tears were going to try this because
they had a book of prophecies called Prophecies of the Sons of Sebek.
One of the prophecies is "Kicking Man will be tried by the
children for the invisible." This could mean that James (or
rather Jane) is to be tried by the Sil. Could the Sil be the ones
sponsoring Jane in the Great Game? Looking at the prophecies it
seems likely that this book was actually written by Alan Hamblin
III 4000 years in the past. Yousef can't get his head around that.
Yousef gives Bernadette his business card and Bernadette releases
him and Abdul.
Bernadette then telephones the west coast team. She speaks to Bruce
and orders the death of the prisoners. Then darkness falls and the
day ends.
Tuesday, 5 June 2001
Jane Munroe arrives at work early. This is the second day that
Benedict has not turned up for work. She phones him but there is
no answer. Concerned, she drives to his house. She breaks in and
searches the place. As she heads up to the bedroom, Jane can detect
a faint smell of lavender in the air.
Benedict is stretched out on his bed. He is naked and glistening
with a faint sheen. There are bright red spots on his forehead,
and a plastic packing crate at the end of the bed. The red wounds
on Ben's forehead are covered in a sticky gel on some kind. Jane
quickly awakens her colleague.
It seems apparent that for the last day Ben has been experimented
on by members of the Sil. All the events he remembered from 5 June
2001 did not happen. The DA's daughter was never kidnapped. Ben
just imagined it all. Ben tells Jane everything that happened over
the five versions of the day. This is worrying. If Jane is the Sil's
champion, perhaps the Sil experimented on Ben to see what help he
could be to her. The rules of the game state that the players (the
brain bugs and the Sil) can't interfere directly with the players,
but they can knobble their friends. Jane is suddenly quite fearful
for Danni.
Benedict calls NTOPFOR, but they have no recollection of him ever
calling them. And they would never use a password as simple as "goldfish".
This is odd. How much that Ben remembers is actually true? How much
did the Sil know? Jane says they need to go to NTOPFOR anyway and
have all the conversations that Ben remembers having.
Ben showers and then investigates the plastic box. He touches it
and it melts away in to the floor. The contents spill out on to
the carpet. The box held a number of books and paraphernalia, Hamblin's
book that Rock found in the fifth version of the day, the magical
scimitar and khopesh. It even contains Yousef Bin Razah's card.
How do these things exist if the Sil made them all up? Curiouser
and curiouser.
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