Chapter Text
It was just after they had dealt with some overexcited elementals spreading dense fog over the Newfoundland coast to the disruption of shipping and commerce, when Eve began to feel uneasy. They were all safe back at the Annex with no loose ends to tie up, so "Why do I feel like the job isn't finished?" she asked.
"The job is finished," said Jenkins. "I am not responsible for your feelings."
Eve shook her head. "Something isn't right. I just know it."
"Ah, spidey senses tingling?" Ezekiel said. "I get that sometimes. Usually right before something comes up to threaten my life or freedom."
"Do you feel it now?" she asked him curiously.
"Nope. All on you, mate."
She glanced at Jake and Cassandra, who shrugged at her and looked blank. Closing her eyes briefly, Eve concentrated on the niggling sense of worry inside her. It had that little zip that was starting to become familiar as a signal of the supernatural. But why were none of the junior librarians or the caretaker feeling anything? Why was it only affecting her?
Maybe it was related to her job as Guardian? But all of her charges were here and safe... except for one.
Eyes snapping open, she pulled out her cell phone. They had been out of range for a few hours, in a small boat being towed over the Grand Banks by a group of mermaids (she was not going to ask about the collective noun for mermaids) after their outboard motor had given out. It turned out that mermaids could swim faster than outboards, anyway. But apparently, while they were out of contact, Eve had missed a text message.
Need some hlknm was all it said.
"Flynn's in trouble," she said, holding up the phone for everyone to see.
"Oh no, something got him while he was typing?" Cassandra breathed.
"Least he was still able to press Send," Ezekiel pointed out.
"How're we supposed to help if we don't even know where he is?" Jake demanded.
Eve spun around. "Jenkins, can you tell where the Librarian is?"
"No," said the caretaker flatly. Seeing four pairs of anxious eyes fixed on him, he elaborated, "When Flynn was new at the job, yes, he could be tracked fairly easily. But after years of exposure to magical energies and techniques, he's become much better at evading detection. If the Library won't tell me, I can't find him."
"I can," said Ezekiel. "Or at least I can tell where he was when he sent that text. Give me your phone," he said to Eve.
She handed it over and watched what he did as closely as she could, but within five seconds Ezekiel was calling up screens and applications she was certain had never been installed on her phone, and five seconds after that she was completely lost.
"Okay, here it is," said Ezekiel eventually. "Last transmission went through a cell tower in Egypt. Specifically, Alexandria."
"That's a suburb of Cairo, isn't it?" asked Eve.
"No, it's nearly a hundred miles northwest of Cairo, on the Mediterranean coast," Jenkins answered.
"In ancient times there was a huge library there," Jake said dreamily. "Founded in the time of Alexander the Great."
"Yes, it formed the original heart of the Library," said Jenkins. "When the Library of Alexandria supposedly was destroyed in a fire, that was the moment that the magical collections became sequestered from the more mundane materials. The magic protected itself then much as it is doing now."
"So Flynn was probably there searching for a connection to the Library today," Eve concluded. "Where would he look?"
"Oh, I know!" Jake crowed. "Probably in the Serapeum, near the acropolis - that was the last portion of the ancient library that survived."
Ezekiel was still playing with Eve's phone. "The acropolis, you said? Yeah, here it is on the map. That's within range of the cell phone tower Flynn used."
"Can you get us to the Serpentum-thingy?" Eve asked.
"The Serapeum, and yes," said Jenkins slowly. "But there's a maze of catacombs under that area. It could take you years to search all of it."
"Just get us there, and then we'll worry about finding clues," she ordered. She pulled off the heavy cable-knit sweater she'd been wearing in Newfoundland, assuming that Egyptian weather would be milder, and checked the clip in her gun. "Everybody ready?"
A few minutes later they were stumbling through the back door into a dark, cool night. It was a few hours before dawn here, so there was hardly any traffic or passers-by. They were at the edge of an open area with a huge stone pillar lit up by floodlights. Various signs around the square had information for tourists, some of the signs in Arabic but some in multiple languages.
Eve focused in on the largest sign she could find with English on it, but she'd barely read a sentence about Emperor Diocletian before Jake was saying, "This way to the Serapeum. Come on!"
They needed Ezekiel's help to get through some locked doors, but the late hour helped them avoid any notice. Soon they were wandering through underground halls which transitioned from modern architecture to much older bricks, and a while after that the tourist guide signs disappeared.
Ezekiel still had Eve's phone, which he was using to track Flynn's phone by GPS. "Couldn't you use your own phone for that?" Eve asked, trying to snatch her possession back. Ezekiel's phone was the latest, largest, and fastest - much more sophisticated than hers.
"Nope. It's like Jenkins said, Flynn's used to avoiding detection. He trusts you to track him, not me."
Eve made a mental note to be very careful with that phone in the future. Maybe a code lock and a fingerprint together?
"Anyway, my battery's low." Ezekiel shrugged. "Been a long day."
And all his fancy apps used a lot of juice, right. Eve sighed and resigned herself to a complete reset of her own phone, assuming she ever got it back.
"We're getting close," Ezekiel said. "Should be right around this corner..."
The tunnel opened into a medium-sized room, just large enough to need a double row of pillars for support. Their flashlights showed cracked friezes on the wall, some large lidded urns with paint mostly flaked off, and stone tables in the corners.
They all stopped, looking around.
"Should be in here," said Ezekiel. "Unless it's above or below?" He poked the phone again. "No, this looks like the right level."
"Maybe he dropped his phone," said Eve. "Look on the floor, in corners and behind pillars." She headed for one of the stone altar/table things and then slowed when she realized, "Oh no, these are sarcophagus...es."
"You think he's in one of them?" Jake growled.
"Over here!" called Cassandra before Eve could answer. The others hurried to join her, their flashlights converging on the ground behind a pillar.
A familiar tweed jacket with a pocket square and a rather sad-looking carnation in the button hole lay rumpled on the floor. Nestled inside the jacket were a matching vest and button-down shirt, with a neckcloth trailing out of the collar. Just below the jacket hem lay a pair of brown corduroy pants, and at the bottom of the pants were two boots - one lying flat and one inconguously upright.
"This mean he's running around here naked?" Jake said uncertainly as Eve knelt to check out the clothes.
"Maybe something dissolved him," said Ezekiel with a little boy's relish of the gruesome. "Nah, there's no goo. So he must have evaporated!"
"Here's his flashlight," Cassandra reported, retrieving it from where it had rolled away.
"And his phone," said Eve, finding it tucked under the right sleeve of the nested jacket-and-shirt. She picked it up with a frown and checked it; the garbled message she had received was the last thing sent.
"Doesn't he usually have a leather bag with him?" Cassandra asked.
"Sometimes two," Eve replied, turning to run her light along the ground. "It or they are missing. Guys, this is not good."
"Should we... check inside the sarcophagi?" Jake suggested.
They were all silent a moment thinking about that, and about what they might find.
A noise broke the silence and made them jump. Two flashlights and two phone lights converged on a small moving form on top of one of the lidded urns.
It was a cat, a brown tabby spotted and striped in black, crouching and squinting irritably in the light. It gave a low, elongated meow like a grumble, knocking a stone chip off the urn to match the first noise that had startled them all.
Everyone gave nervous little laughs. Eve looked back down at the pile of clothes and sighed. "Okay, Cassandra's right. We need to check inside everything that's big enough to hide a person. Also, keep your eyes open for anything that looks like this." She showed them a picture on Flynn's phone of a bas-relief wall carving in much better shape than the ones they had seen so far.
Jake gave a low whistle. "That's Archimedes - no, wait, I think it's Euclid - teaching at the Library of Alexandria."
"Well, the picture was taken just a couple of minutes before the text message, so it must be somewhere near here. And keep an eye out for Flynn's bag while you're at it." She knelt over the pile of clothes again, taking several pictures of how they were laid out (using Flynn's phone, since Ezekiel still had hers), then began to fold the clothes into a bundle. She hoped Flynn would be needing them back soon.
Jake and Ezekiel started checking inside the smaller urns first, making the cat complain about being disturbed from its perch. It stalked over to where Eve was kneeling, twining around her ankles and making her jump in startlement. The cat flicked its ears back in annoyance and turned away to sniff at the still-standing boot.
Eve picked up the boot and felt something rattle inside. She tipped the boot upside-down and something small fell out into her hand. At first she thought it was a carved stone scarab in the ancient Egyptian style, but as she turned it over in the flashlight beam she saw that it was a tiny carving of a rolled-up papyrus scroll.
"Baird, we're going to need all hands to shift these lids," Jake said.
"Okay, just a second." Eve set the folded clothes in a stack on the floor and headed over to the sarcophagus where the others were waiting, still turning the little marble scroll in her hands. Why would Flynn have tucked the thing into his boot? Was his satchel already taken by that time?
In her hand, the apparently-solid carving shifted, and she realized it was starting to unroll.
"Uh, Baird?"
"Hang on a second guys, I think I have something here." She gripped the little scroll by one of the handles and peeled it open further.
At her feet, the cat hissed.
"Baird!"
She looked up to see what appeared to be a wall of flame sweeping across the room towards them. "Everybody out!" She darted back to the pile of clothes and snatched them up, chivvying the rest of the team before her out the door.
They went a little ways down the tunnel and turned to look back; the glowing red-orange wall kept advancing, and it seemed to be speeding up. "C'mon people, move! Move, move!" Eve yelled.
At the front of the group, Ezekiel nearly tripped over the cat but recovered himself, bent, and scooped it neatly off the floor before leading the way back out.
They stumbled through a door and found themselves back in the Annex, without having asked Jenkins for an escape. Eve turned breathlessly to make sure the double doors closed before the wall of fire could reach them, and then they all stood trying to catch their breath.
Eve set the stack of clothes - with only one boot, oops - on Flynn's desk. Her hands were shaking. Had that fire been triggered by something she did? What if Flynn was caught back there somewhere, defenseless?
The cat jumped down from Ezekiel's arms to sit on the desk and start washing itself.
"Oh good, you found him," said Jenkins.
"What?" Jake panted.
"You found the Librarian. But why is he a cat?"