Two men sit in a car, looking at a patch of woods in the middle of nowhere.

I’m leaning back in the passenger’s seat with my feet on the dashboard. Percy is looking at something on the property with a pair of binoculars. I don’t know what, because apparently, he only brought one pair. It’s late June, so it’s a typical day outside, bright and hot. This is good, because the cool factor of wearing sunglasses is completely nullified the first time you trip over something you couldn’t see because it’s the middle of the night and you’re still wearing them. This is also very bad, because I am wearing an army green jacket in a parked car and it’s over 90 degrees outside. Percy is wearing something more weather-appropriate, because he is mercifully free from having to dress like the boss. Thoroughly bored with this line of thinking, I finish off my third water bottle this hour and decide to strike up a conversation.

“You’re sure this is the place?”

“The empty lot on Sheridan, I came down earlier and scoped the place out myself. It’s just the shed, there’s nothing else on the property. Just forest from here to Olympia proper.”

“We’re in Sheridan, Percy, there has to be dozens of empty shacks here. How do you know this is our place?”

Percy hands me a pair of binoculars.

“Take a look at that sign, Nick, ‘Danger: High Voltage’, how many shacks do you think have one of those out front.”

“Point taken.”

Half a dozen men stand in a patch of woods in the middle of nowhere, peering around nervously. Their backs suddenly straighten as two more approach them. Their commander, Nick, and his right-hand man, Percy. Nick clears his throat and speaks first.

“Alright, Me and Percy are Team A, we’re going inside to check out the machine. Mickey and Johnny, you’ll be watching our backs outside the entrance, you’re Team B. Sammy and Wesley, you’re on perimeter, scan the woods around the property for anything weird, you’re Team C.”

The men nod and begin to assemble themselves into their assigned groups. Wesley and Sammy walk over to the left side of the property, towards the edge of the woods. Their radios crackle to life.

“Check check. Roll call. Nicholas Haves, A1.”

“Percy. A2.”

“Johnny. B1.”

“Mickey. B2.”

Wesley gives Sammy a questioning look, receiving a shrug in response.

He picks up his own radio, “Wesley. C1.”

“Sammy. C2.”

Wesley isn’t quite familiar with everyone’s names right now, so he takes extra effort to connect everybody’s voices with their callsigns. The person he knows least of all being his current teammate, Sammy, who’s even newer than he is. Which, he thinks, sort of makes it his responsibility to explain things.

“This is just the newbie job; you get more exciting ones the longer you’re here.”

“Heh, yeah, because I’d much rather be helping an insane person break into a shack, right?”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“We’ll cover more ground if we each take one side of the perimeter.”

Sammy awkwardly walks off in the opposite direction of Wesley, leaving him alone in stunned silence.

“Sure”, Wesley says to empty air.

Wesley begins to walk forward, concentrating extra hard on the radio to distract himself from that conversation.

Nick’s, that’d be A1’s, voice comes through on the radio,

“We’ve just entered the premises; we’re looking around now.”

Wesley decides to follow some tracks in the dirt, that counts as investigating something strange, right? He wonders if it’s a deer or something, he doesn’t really know how to identify tracks. He thinks you’re supposed to count the toes, but honestly, it just looks like imprints to him. Another voice crackles on the radio, A2, Percy.

“We’ve got eyes on the machine, it’s deactivated, probably has been for a few days now. Anything that escaped is probably already gone, but proceed with caution everybody. I’m going to try and reactivate it.”

Another voice, B1, Jimmy? No, Johnny.

“How do you plan to do that, thought there was no power in this place?”

Then Percy’s voice again. “On the roof, there’s a solar unit, looks like whoever was here was halfway through setting it up before they vanished. On a day like this it should supply enough energy to keep the machine running for a day or two before we find a more permanent solution.”

Wesley definitely agreed with the jab about the recent heat wave. As boring as perimeter duty is, at least the thick forest provides ample shade from the sun, which seems to have taken up a personal vendetta against humanity as of late. It could be worse; at least they avoided the worst of the heat by waiting until late afternoon to start the mission.

Another message on the radio. Wesley could recognize Nick’s voice anywhere. “You get up on the roof then. I can handle investigating the property, there isn’t anything in here big enough that I can’t handle it on my own.”

More silence, more wandering after tracks for Wesley.

Percy again. “This is a lot harder than I expected, apparently the panels were hooked up to batteries and they are extremely heavy. I’m going to need some backup here.”

Nick crackles back on very briefly, sounding distracted. “Can’t. Busy.”

Percy. “B team?”

A new voice. Must be B2 then, Mickey, like the mouse. “I got it, the outside of the building looks clear anyways.”

Silent again, presumably continuing their conversation in person. Wesley feels vaguely disappointed, considering the radio conversations are his only form of entertainment besides looking at dirt.

Nick’s voice returns. “Hey, Percy, will we be able to enter the machine after it gets reactivated?”

Percy. “Not if you would like to remain un-fried, why?”

“Because there’s something inside. Some kind of box, looks ornate.”

“I wouldn’t recommend going after it. Whatever it is, it’s probably safer in there.”

“It’s got blue gems and a keyhole. Matches the last recorded description of Pandora.”

Wesley stops to listen more intently, he’s never heard of this before, unless it was in the pre-mission brief and he overlooked it.

“Shit. You sure?”

“No way to be, but I don’t see any other explanation.”

“Nick, I cannot stress enough how dangerous it is in there.”

“It’s not turned on, it’s just an empty metal cylinder right now.”

“A metal cylinder that I am currently trying to connect to two weeks’ worth of electricity. If you’re inside and I touch a wire wrong, I will set your skeleton on fire.”

“Can’t you just hold off on the power for five seconds while I get the box? We’re not hurting for time.”

“Look, I may have overestimated how safe we are right now, there’s a reason we brought 6 people for this. Whatever broke out of here probably isn’t going to be very happy if it finds out we’re trying to re-contain it. Our number one priority should be getting the machine up and running before it has the chance.”

“Okay. Disconnect the machine from the power system and work on getting it operational, I’ll figure out how to open the machine and grab the box and then you can connect everything once I get out. Won’t take any longer than it would normally. That’s the plan.”

“Fine.”

Wesley really hopes that what Nick is saying is true, mostly because he doesn’t want to spend any extra time here. What was that Percy said about- Goddamn it he just lost the tracks. Time to turn around and start retracing his steps. Why did he get the worst possible job here? He could at least be watching the action.

I definitely exaggerated how quickly I could get the box out of this machine. Opening the porthole was easy enough, there was a large latch tucked under one side that allowed it to be opened easily, at least from the outside. Without the dark tinted glass obscuring the view inside, there was no doubt in my mind, I was staring at Pandora.

Describing Pandora is tricky. Not only does it have a number of vague, confusing properties, but one such property is the ability to completely change its shape and appearance. Tracking down information about it is even more difficult, but the basics are simple. Most of the time it takes the form of an ornate blue lockbox, it wields some form of untold power, but most importantly, it’s nothing short of coveted by local paranormal investigators. To most, it’s a small town urban legend, but I know better. Unofficially, obtaining this box has been my number one priority for the past several months.

And now I can almost hear it taunting me, just inches out of arms reach through the porthole. It’s infuriating, but I’m not going to let something this important slip through my fingers, locked away inside what I now see is a flimsy attempt at a vault. A container so dangerous and out of the way that it could never be stolen. Unfortunately, whoever tried to lock this away didn’t account for me. Sure, the box might be out of reach, if you just put your arm in, but the opening of the porthole is wide enough to fit a smaller person inside (which, I suppose, less charitable people might characterize me as). I’ll be the first to admit that it isn’t the most thought-out plan, but Percy seemed very intent on this being an in-and-out mission. He might be being overly cautious, but it was already late afternoon when we started, and I want to avoid staying here until dark as much as he does. I need to commit to something right now, and I am nothing if not committed.

I really wish what I did next was take a step back and jump through the opening, pivoting into a roll and landing upright, which is probably how I’ll describe it when I tell this story later. The truth is it went how you would expect climbing through an elevated gap barely larger than your shoulders to go, especially when you have to go head-first. The point being, I made it inside.

The outside of the chamber may have looked fortified, but the inside was downright impregnable (outpregnable?). The color was the same, cold, grey, untarnished steel, but the thick bolts and seams gave way to a single, smooth, unbroken surface. I’m no engineer, but even I can appreciate the amount of effort that must have gone into constructing something like this. It’s almost hard to believe that whoever was smart enough to make it was dumb enough to make the entire thing out of unshielded conductive metal. Even on the inside, no rubber to be seen. I can definitely see why Percy was hesitant to let someone go inside, hell, I think I’d feel safer in here wearing a suit made of asbestos. I lean in to get a closer look at Pandora, which I can now see is resting on a pedestal in the center of the chamber. The bottom of the pedestal appears to have once been a hollow metal cylinder with a long ovaloid window but is now a hollow metal cylinder and a scattering of broken glass on the floor. Something that the contained entity broke on its way out, presumably. My eyes drift back upwards to my actual prize, examining the casing holding Pandora in place. One, two, three, four, five… yep, that’s thirteen screws holding it inside the pedestal. I grab a screwdriver from the tool bag I always carry with me on missions and get started on the extremely riveting process of getting the pedestal to relinquish my prize, but before I can get more than 2 screws in my radio crackles to life.

Wesley supposes that maybe this isn’t the worst role to have. Well, it certainly isn’t the best use of his time, kneeling on the dirt staring at nearly formless imprints while the approaching dusk makes them even less visible. He is clearly not suited to the life of a tracker, because even at this distance the “tracks” still just look like jagged circular dents. He might have given up on following these prints ten minutes ago, but he still hadn’t been able to find where they vanished off to when he lost sight of them and giving up now would be admitting that he was defeated by lowered dirt. Luckily for his ego, he’d been able to at least track the prints to the base of an… oak? Redwood? The base of a big tree with a lot of branches.

Now, looking back, this is the point at which Wesley’s recollection of events becomes a lot fuzzier, as in, it becomes an incoherent mix of blurry nothingness interspersed with single images that were probably seared into his brain forever. Unfortunately, this next part is an example of the latter.

Imagine, if you will, a human spine, or more accurately, the spine of an extremely tall human, with the skull still attached. Now, imagine a dozen femurs, or rather, a dozen femurs salvaged from the dumpster of a hospital that has a very unique treatment for broken legs. Finally, imagine you are an amateur taxidermist that has been instructed to create an anatomical model of a centipede’s skeleton using only the aforementioned parts. The resulting abomination would probably be a decent approximation of the thing staring at Wesley from the canopy of this tree, with the notable exception of a bright blue glow emanating from its eye sockets.

Wesley had always assumed he was more of a Flight person, that if something dangerous approached him he would make the obvious decision to run as far away as possible. Apparently not, because as soon as he locked eyes with the thing in this tree, every muscle in his body contracted at once. Not even when the creature begins to move can he bring himself to do anything more than helplessly track its eyes with his own as they drift. He watches as the skeletal beast hooks a set of its spiked appendages, which could generously be called legs, over a thick branch and slowly leans backwards. Its spine curves into a capital G as each vertebrate clicks into place, with its skull forming the spur as it bends upwards to maintain eye contact with Wesley. As its face approaches Wesley, he finds it hard to tell if the low static buzzing sound filling his mind is actually radiating from the monster or just the sound of his brain short circuiting from fear. The only saving grace in this situation is that the creature seems to be just as paralyzed as him, staring blankly down just a few inches from his face. What is he supposed to do in a situation like this? Oh yeah, call for help. His right-hand drifts to his waist, unhooking the walkie-talkie from his belt loop and raising it to his mouth. Huh, he didn’t realize his hands were shaking that much. His voice comes out barely a whisper, both from the dryness of his throat and his desire not to startle the monster. He can’t really process the voices on the other side over the buzzing, but he’ll eventually piece together the conversation using the transcript.

Wesley remembers this part; he starts taking steps backwards. One. Two. Three….

Just keep stepping backwards. Five. Six. Seven. Slow movements, maintain eye contact. It isn’t moving. Eight. Nine. CRACK! The beast recoils and lets out a blood curdling scream, like popping a balloon filled with the souls of the damned. Oh, look, there’s Flight. Wesley is already a dozen feet in the other direction before he processes the fact that he’s running. He’s blindly running forward in what he hopes is the direction of the rest of the team, dodging trees and roots on pure instinct. There’s still a glimmer of light in the sky, but his eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark after staring at the bright blue eyes of the monster for over a minute. Speaking of the monster, it isn’t long before it follows him, giving chase with what feels distinctly like a full-blown gallop. “Feels” being the key term, because while Wesley isn’t looking back at the beast, or really at much of anything, its footsteps are slamming so heavily on the dirt that he can actually feel the vibrations of the ground in his bones.

There’s no doubt in Wesley’s mind that this thing is faster than him, but by some miracle whatever unholy force allowed an amalgamation of bones to become animate seems not to have bestowed the flexibility of muscles to them. He can hear the sounds of branches cracking, followed by brief pauses in the beast’s sprint. It faintly occurs to Wesley that had this encounter been in an open field instead of a dense forest, he would already be dead. He should make sure he plants a couple trees after this is over.

SLAM!

Never mind. Both about planting trees and the part about being able to dodge them on instinct. Unlike the monster chasing him, he can’t recover from a blow like that immediately, one good hit is enough to take him to the ground. His nose is going to be killing him for weeks after the adrenaline subsides, provided it, you know, gets the chance to.

The beast slows as it approaches Wesley, who has just about lifted himself off the ground and is now sitting slumped against the tree that caused his fall. It lifts a boney appendage, and in the ghostly blue glow of its eyes Wesley can see their structure much more clearly. The first thing that strikes him is how much unlike an actual leg it is. Besides what might be a knee joint midway down the bone, there is no visible foot or other device capable of actual movement. Instead, the leg tapers off into what could only be described as the mother of all compound fractures, hundreds of tiny needle-like shards form jagged peaks and valleys along the end of the bones, gradually rising to form several larger spikes the size of large nails.

Wesley isn’t a biologist, or any sort of animal expert, and he’s far from being in the right headspace to consider how this unique anatomical feature affects the way the monster moves, but his lizard brain does make one conclusion: the spikey limb looming down on him was a weapon, and an extremely deadly one at that. It reared back, evidently preparing to skewer Wesley to the tree trunk.

BANG!

The unmistakable sound of a gun firing rings through the forest, accompanied by a quick bright flash to Wesley’s left. The creature recoils and lets out a screech just as loud, both it and Wesley turning in the direction of the noise at the same time. There, looking just as much in shock as the two of them, stands Johnny, holding an uneasy grip on the firearm and extremely out of breath. Wesley blurts out the first thing that comes to his mind.

“You have a GUN?”

“It’s Nick’s, I don’t-“

Johnny is cut off by another scream from the beast. He levels the weapon again, letting out another shot. It recoils again, and for a brief moment it seems like he hit, but it quickly becomes clear that the monster is just reacting to the noise. Its wiry body would be difficult for a skilled marksman to hit in these low light conditions, and for as long Wesley has known him, Johnny has never even picked up a gun before. In his hands, the weapon is just about as useful as an airhorn taped to a megaphone.

The monster, finally recovering, rears back and launches itself forward spike first. Johnny’s instincts take over a split second before he gets decapitated, and he ducks left, dropping his weapon in the process. The spike, missing its mark, embeds itself half a foot deep in a tree, carrying the rest of the monster with it. Clearly doing a much better job of acting under pressure, Johnny takes only a handful of seconds to recover before he’s running, with still-ringing ears, towards Wesley, who’s still slumped over watching in shock.

Wesley numbly registers an arm under his shoulder lifting him up to his feet. His body is still numb, but he’s lucid enough to not break line of sight with the beast, still preoccupied with extracting its limb. Johnny speaks into his ear,

“Get up, don’t let it see that you’re injured. Are your legs broken?”

“No.”

“Good. Stop leaning on me.”

He stumbles a bit as his arm is removed from Johnny’s shoulders, but Wesley eventually finds his footing. He turns his head imperceptibly towards Johnny as he speaks, keeping his eyes on the monster.

“We need to get back to the rest of the team.”

The monster wrenches itself free from the tree and turns back around to face the two men, but doesn’t approach, instead compressing itself into a defensive stance.

“There isn’t anyone else who can help us, we need to hold out here until Percy turns on that machine.”

Wesley nods slowly, processing the new information before responding.

“Then stay still, no sudden movements or loud noises. Hold eye contact.”

“I’ll radio Nick and tell him to get us out.”

“Quietly, turn the volume down.”

Johnny grabs his radio, fiddling with a knob before holding it up to his mouth and turning it on. To his credit, he seems to have taken Wesley’s advice to heart, because the ensuing conversation is too quiet for him to hear.

Johnny silently clicks his radio off, figuring that continuing to follow this conversation is going to do nothing but create more potentially fatal noise. He tries to signal to Wesley that help is on the way (strictly speaking, it isn’t, but that’s what he needs to hear right now), but the other man hasn’t taken his eyes off the monster since Johnny got here.

Wesley’s brain has nearly completely ceased functioning, and its limited resources are mainly dedicated to perceiving the thrumming of his heart in his ear drums and the sounds of the beast moving. Apparently deciding that the two men didn’t pose enough of a threat to it, the beast had begun to approach while Johnny was distracted, in tiny, infinitesimal movements. First, it straightened its spine and appendages, stretching out to its full size, towering over them both by several feet. Then, it started shifting its weight to its front legs, slowly leaning towards them. Now, it takes its first step.

The spike makes an earthy noise as it wrenches itself from the ground, maneuvering to a closer position and slamming it down again like a flagpole being planted. Once it’s firmly anchored, another, further back, spike dislodges and moves closer. The wrenching and impaling noises combined almost sound like somebody using a shovel to dig something, probably Wesley’s grave. In stark contrast to the earlier stiff, reckless sprint, its movements now seemed almost graceful. Whatever served as the creature’s approximation of joints gave it a full 360 degrees of rotation around all of its segments, resulting in it resembling something like an animate tangle of string. A spider, weaving a web out of its own body. Step by step, movement by movement, it approached, hanging limbs limply off of tree branches as its central spine slithered and contorted itself. Then, it began to constrict; planting spikes on either side of the two men like the bars of a cell. Even if they wanted to run now, they couldn’t, trapped in an osseous tomb. The monster’s movements seem to somehow slow even more as it brings its skull inches away from Johnny’s face, until eventually…

…it stops completely. The monster’s eyes flicker once, twice, and finally go dark. It collapses to the ground in a heap, its limbs losing their connection to each other one by one until all that remains is a pile of old yellowed bones. Its skull lands directly into Johnny’s lap, causing him to shout and recoil, seemingly breaking whatever spell of silence the two men were under. Johnny quickly reaches for his radio to alert the rest of team, while Wesley lets out a breath that it feels like he’s been holding in for the past 10 minutes.

I pant heavily as I lay on the concrete floor in a heap, clutching Pandora tightly to my chest. That time I actually did jump, but unfortunately for my shoulder, didn’t roll. Luckily, I’m just able to get back up and close the porthole door behind me before I retreat to the corner of the room to sit back down, knees to my chest. I give Percy the signal and watch the ensuing show from relative safety. From the description, I was expecting more of an inside out tesla coil, but there are some very nasty looking sparks that would make me think twice before getting near this thing.

I hear some voices from above me, up on the roof, and hurriedly pick myself up, taking care not to put weight on my right shoulder. I stand next to the entrance and wait for Percy or Mickey to walk in. I’m either going to recover by the end of the day or be out of commission for the next week, it’s hard to tell right now, but being unable to use my dominant arm for any extended length of time would be very bad for me. Percy’s the one who ends up walking in first.

“Are you okay?”

“Never been better.”

I hold up Pandora with a flourish of my (left) wrist and give Percy a satisfied smirk. He nods silently, looking slightly grim. He and I have different reactions to stressful situations.

“You hurt your arm?”

“It’s fine, little bruised maybe.”

Before we can exchange another word, my radio crackles.

“It’s gone.”

I didn’t need Johnny’s confirmation to be sure. Leaning forward as much as I can while keeping a safe distance, I can see the entity. Just like in the report, an ephemeral skeleton figure, giving off a bright blue light and moving around erratically. It looks very angry. Percy’s standing a step or two behind me, looking at the same sight. I turn around and restart our conversation.

“Would you like to do the honors?”

“Sure.”

He grabs his radio and speaks.

“This is Team A, we’ve successfully recontained the entity.”

Disappointing, there’s usually more cheering. Guess they must all be tired; this was a pretty intense mission after all. I’ll have to remember to throw a party once everybody recovers, it’s good for team building. I turn to Percy.

“Back to business then. We should meet up with Johnny and check out the specimen.”

He nods, I guess that didn’t warrant a verbal response. I radio Johnny so he can guide us to his location, with Percy and Mickey in tow, armed with flashlights for the pitch darkness.

Wesley seems okay, well, physically okay. He has a sort of haunted look in his eyes, and I can’t tell if it was something the entity did, or if he just has a weak constitution. Maybe it’s both, actually. Percy already jumped at the chance to start collecting both his and Johnny’s witness statements, which is fine by me, but only Johnny seems to be coherent right now. I’m half listening to his story as I take pictures of the scene, I can always revisit the audio recordings later, but I do catch when Johnny mentions losing my gun, which is now an unrecognizable pile of metal shards at the bottom of a crater. The body on the ground in front of me would probably look like a jumbled mess if I hadn’t already seen it trapped in the machine, all femurs and vertebrae. Of particular interest is the very ends of the legs, which, instead of laying on the ground with the rest of the entity, seem to be embedded in various locations around it. A few stand straight up in the ground, while others stick out of nearby trees. Walking over to one of the bones, I take out a Sharpie and a ruler, making a mark. I then put one foot on the trunk, the other on the ground, swing the limb over my shoulder, and pull. Concerningly, it turns out it was lodged with more force than my grip strength using only one arm, but at least I catch myself before I end up falling. I’m going to need some backup here.

“Hey, Mickey, get over here and help get this thing out!”

“Got it!”

The work goes a lot better with two people, but it still takes a few tries to extract the limb.

“Hey Nick, what’s the mark for?”

“That’s the point where the limb met the tree, I want to know how far in it was.”

“Jesus, that’s gotta be 4 or 5 inches.”

“Yeah, it’s really something, huh?”

“Wish I coulda helped.”

“You and me both, but it’s just how these things go. You drove your pickup here, right?”

“Yep.”

“Pull it around here and bring the body back to HQ. I think there’s space in Unit 9 next to the pile of magic feathers.”

Apparently listening to this conversation, Percy turns around and walks towards us.

“Those aren’t magic, I think we just have a bird’s nest in our ceiling.”

“So, I take it you’re done with the interviews?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

I turn my attention back to Mickey.

“Take Johnny and Wesley with you, they should get out of here as soon as possible. Me and Percy will meet you at HQ.”

“What about Sammy?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, take him too.”

“Alright, got it.”

Man, two detectives staring at a strange corpse in the middle of the woods while talking business. There are times where I really wish I smoked, because if one of us had a cigarette that would really push this to the next level. Do those fake cigarettes they use in movies still give you cancer? I’ll look into it later. For now, it’s debrief time. Percy starts, as usual.

“Anything else I need to look in to?”

“Get your DNA guy to get a test done. I want to see if these are actual human bones, or if they just look like it.”

“Do you have an excuse for why I’m walking into a DNA testing site with a pile of possibly-human bones?”

I pause for a second.

“We’re private investigators, and we found some strange bones while checking out a site. We want to know if they’re human or not before we get the police involved. If they are, just tell your guy that we contacted the authorities and they’re looking into it. Barely even a lie.”

“Why didn’t we call the police right away?”

“Because PI’s and real cops are ancient enemies, your guy will buy it.”

“I can work with that, I guess.”

“Anything else from your end?”

“Not really, I’ll put together a file for the entity once I can get Wesley’s description, but I need to hold off on that.”

“And I’ll deal with Pandora personally; we don’t want to take any risks.”

“Right… I guess that leaves us with the final verdict on the mission.”

“It was pretty close at the end there, but we managed to get the machine running and retrieve a valuable artifact. That’s a successful mission.”

“Are you sure?”

I sigh. Deeply.

“Percy, do you have something to add?”

“Wesley and Johnny nearly died.”

“We all knew the risks when we signed up for this. And they’re not even hurt.”

“Yes, but they were only in that situation because you put them in danger to pursue a secondary goal.”

“I’m not sure that’s how I see it.”

“What?”

“For one, Sammy should have been vetted better, and Wesley should have alerted us as soon as he suggested splitting the group. Wesley needs more training, because he completely froze up when he was threatened. Johnny shouldn’t have been the only available backup for Wesley, and he should have at least mentioned that he didn’t know how to use a gun when I gave him mine. You can’t pin the whole situation on a single decision.”

“But they still wouldn’t have been there if you had let me reactivate the machine as soon as Wesley called in.”

“Yeah, because management would love that. ‘I know you guys were skeptical, but you’ll be happy to know that we electrified the most valuable artifact in the state while it was literally within arm’s reach. Please keep giving us money to investigate things for free.’.”

“I just think we need to re-evaluate our priorities here.”

“Listen, I was given a choice between protecting my team and completing the mission, I assessed the situation, and I found a way to do both. Would it have been better if I hadn’t been in that situation to begin with? Of course. Do I wish that I had been there to help instead of Johnny? Obviously. But these things happen. I appreciate your dedication to caution Percy, but everyone is fine, there’s no need to worry.”

“Is that what you’re going to tell Wesley?”

“Pretty much. And if he has an issue with that, I’d rather work it out with him and not you, so I think we’re done here.”

Percy stands quietly for a while.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll head to the car.”

“I’ll catch up.”

He starts walking away but turns back after a few paces.

“If your arm still hurts tomorrow get it checked out.”

“I’m fine.”

If I had known Percy was going to be so fastidious about every subsequent injury, I wouldn’t have broken my pinkie. I guess that’s the thing with Percy. I like the guy, hell, everybody likes the guy. I’d trust Percy with my life, but if something happened to me, I’m just not sure I could trust him to lead the team. That may be a vanishingly unlikely scenario, but still, it affects the way you look at someone. He doesn’t seem cut out to make hard decisions, and he has this aggravating habit of blaming me any time something goes wrong.

Percy’s negativity must be rubbing off on me, because I have a hard time feeling anything but slightly empty as I stare down at the empty eye sockets of my vanquished prey.

A crow circles overhead; I rub my shoulder and wince.