Chapter 4: GRAVE ROBBING
Fifty dollars bought silence in 1932.
The bellhop was nineteen, acne scars on his cheeks, eyes that had already learned not to ask questions. He palmed the bills without counting them and slid the master key across the service counter.
"Room 847 is still sealed," he said. "Police finished hours ago. Nobody's been up there since the coroner took the body."
"I was never here."
"Never saw you in my life, mister."
The elevator rattled upward. My reflection stared back from the brass doors—disheveled, unshaven, wearing the same suit I'd fled in twelve hours ago. The kind of man who bribed hotel staff and broke into crime scenes. The kind of man David Webb had never been and Jameson Caldwell had never needed to be.
The eighth floor was quiet. Emergency lights cast weak pools of yellow across carpeting that had probably been plush before the Depression. Room 847 waited at the end of the corridor, police tape forming an X across its door.
I checked both directions. Empty.
The master key turned smoothly. The tape tore with a sound like ripping fabric. I stepped inside and eased the door shut behind me.
Darkness. The suite smelled of something burnt and something else—the copper tang of violence. My eyes adjusted slowly, finding shapes in the gloom: overturned chairs, scattered papers, the table where Chen had performed his demonstration.
Blue light flickered at the edge of my vision.
[ARTIFACT DETECTED]
[DESIGNATION: SCARAB OF ANUBIS]
[CLASSIFICATION: UNCOMMON — CURSED]
[WARNING: IMPROPER ACTIVATION CAUSES LETHAL ENERGY DISCHARGE]
The scarab lay on the floor near the window, exactly where it had fallen after killing its previous owner. In my System-enhanced vision, it glowed with a soft blue aura—visible only to me, invisible to anyone else who might wander into this room.
I crossed the suite in three steps, avoiding furniture by memory. My hand reached for the artifact—
"Don't touch it directly."
The thought came sharp and sudden. Chen had been holding it when he died. Skin contact had triggered the discharge.
I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket, wrapped it around my fingers, and lifted the scarab carefully. Cold. Much heavier than bronze should be. The hieroglyphs along its edge seemed to shift in the dim light, though that might have been my imagination.
[ARTIFACT ACQUIRED]
[QUEST UPDATE: FIRST ACQUISITION — RETURN ARTIFACT TO CONTAINMENT]
Footsteps in the hallway.
My stomach dropped. I shoved the scarab into my coat pocket and ducked behind the nearest couch, pressing myself flat against the floor. The carpet smelled of dust and old tobacco.
The door opened.
"—told you, the cops already searched. Whatever Chen had, it's gone."
Two men. The voices were familiar—the same Cantonese-accented English I'd heard earlier, when I'd been standing in this room watching a man burn alive.
"Mr. Liu doesn't accept 'gone.' The scarab was worth fifty thousand. He wants it recovered."
A flashlight beam swept the room. I stopped breathing.
"The buyer list. Chen had three others besides the Caldwell kid. One of them must have come back."
"The Caldwell kid."
They knew my name. They'd seen me at the demonstration. If they found me here—
The flashlight beam moved toward the couch.
I bolted.
The window was three feet away. I hit it at full speed, shoulder leading, and the latch gave way with a shriek of protesting metal. Cold November air rushed in. The fire escape was exactly where fire escapes belonged—outside the window, iron rails slick with moisture.
"There! Stop!"
I didn't stop. I grabbed the railing and swung myself over, feet finding the grated platform. The metal groaned under my weight. I started down, taking steps two at a time, hands sliding on wet iron.
Eight floors. Seven. Six.
Shouts from above. Someone was following.
Five floors. Four.
My ankle turned on a step. Pain lanced up my leg, sharp enough to make me gasp. I kept going.
Three floors. Two.
The ladder at the bottom was stuck. Rust had welded it in place. I kicked it once, twice, felt something give. The ladder dropped with a crash that echoed through the alley.
One floor. Jump.
I hit the ground wrong. My injured ankle screamed. My knees buckled. I rolled, came up limping, and ran—if the desperate hobble I managed could be called running.
The alley opened onto a side street. I turned left, then right, then left again, moving through the maze of Manhattan's back passages until the shouts behind me faded to nothing.
A dumpster. I collapsed behind it, pressing my back against cold brick.
My breath came in ragged gasps. My ankle throbbed with every heartbeat. My suit was ruined—torn at the knee, smeared with God knew what from the alley floor. The handkerchief-wrapped scarab dug into my hip through my coat pocket.
Laughter bubbled up. Quiet at first, then louder, edged with something that might have been hysteria.
I'd just robbed a crime scene. Fled from armed men. Jumped off a fire escape with a cursed artifact in my pocket.
David Webb had been a museum curator. He'd spent his career behind glass cases, writing carefully footnoted papers about objects that other people had risked their lives to find. The most dangerous thing he'd ever done was disagree with a department head at a faculty meeting.
Now I was hiding behind a dumpster in a Manhattan alley, clutching an artifact that had killed a man twelve hours ago, while Chinese gangsters searched the streets for someone matching my description.
The laughter died. Something colder took its place.
"You're not David Webb anymore. You're not even really Jameson Caldwell. You're something new. Something that does what needs to be done."
Blue text pulsed in my peripheral vision.
[WARNING: ARTIFACT UNSTABLE OUTSIDE PROPER CONTAINMENT]
[ESTIMATED TIME TO SPONTANEOUS ACTIVATION: 5 HOURS 47 MINUTES]
[CONTAIN IMMEDIATELY OR RISK LETHAL DISCHARGE]
Five hours. Less than six before the scarab decided to kill me the same way it had killed Chen.
I pulled myself upright, leaning against the dumpster. My ankle protested. I ignored it.
The townhouse was forty blocks north. I couldn't take a cab—a driver would remember the disheveled man with the limp and the wild eyes. I couldn't take the subway—too many witnesses, too many people who might recognize Jameson Caldwell's face from the society pages.
Walking it was.
I started north, keeping to side streets and shadows. The scarab sat heavy in my pocket, pulsing with faint warmth like a second heartbeat. Every few blocks, I checked the timer.
[ESTIMATED TIME TO SPONTANEOUS ACTIVATION: 5 HOURS 12 MINUTES]
Keep walking.
[ESTIMATED TIME TO SPONTANEOUS ACTIVATION: 4 HOURS 38 MINUTES]
Faster.
[ESTIMATED TIME TO SPONTANEOUS ACTIVATION: 3 HOURS 55 MINUTES]
The streets were mostly empty at this hour. A few drunks stumbling home from speakeasies. A patrol car that passed without slowing. A woman walking a small dog who gave me a wide berth when she saw my condition.
Thirty blocks. Twenty. Ten.
My ankle had gone from sharp pain to a dull, persistent ache. My coat was soaked with sweat despite the cold. My lungs burned from exertion I hadn't demanded from this body since waking up in it.
[ESTIMATED TIME TO SPONTANEOUS ACTIVATION: 2 HOURS 31 MINUTES]
The townhouse appeared ahead. Dark windows. The faint glow of a lamp in Henderson's quarters on the top floor.
I let myself in through the service entrance, moving as quietly as a limping man could move. The stairs to the basement felt like climbing a mountain. Each step sent fresh pain shooting through my injured ankle.
Two hours and twenty-eight minutes.
I needed containment. I needed to figure out how to stop this thing from killing me.
The basement was cold and dark. I fumbled for the light switch, found it, and blinked against the sudden brightness.
The System's interface flickered.
[CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL AVAILABLE]
[REQUIREMENTS: LEAD-LINED CONTAINER, SALT BARRIER (MINIMUM 2-INCH DEPTH), NO DIRECT ORGANIC CONTACT]
[ESTIMATED TIME TO SPONTANEOUS ACTIVATION: 2 HOURS 24 MINUTES]
Lead-lined container. Salt barrier. No direct contact.
I could work with that.
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