István and I spent the next three days neck deep in artifacts. My ability to glean information from them on sight was stronger than ever, and we made judicious use of it to catalogue everything. After all, we weren't sure which ones belonged to us or anyone else, so there was a lot of painstaking work going through records.

I was surprised to learn that Viktor was apparently a stickler for recording everything. He apparently had the documentation for every single Artifact he'd pulled from a Rift in the safe inside our office space. "To keep everything on the 'up-and-up'," quoted István, who couldn't really understand why two ups were any different than one. Either way, he seemed to agree with the fundamentals, which made me happy - I'd been quite nervous about my potential role in the whole affair when I'd seen just how many of the Artifacts they were 'extracting' had belonged to us.

I gained new respect for István's spectacularly precise handwriting over the time as well - it was like his fingers emitted some sort of stable font from the ether rather than writing down strokes. Made all of our registries really easy to read, which was good because I'm pretty sure I had some sort of reading issue. Words didn't always look right to me. I'd look at them once and the order would change the next time. Usually it was just small transpositions. But occasionally the mental misunderstanding would change the intrinsic meaning of the word, which was pretty bad. Luckily I wasn't the one doing the final recording, since I knew I had serious issues with writing stuff as well: it wouldn't do to have it be a "Fier" Aligned Artifact.

"That's odd," István said.

"What's up?" I asked, as I sat there massaging my temples. It was starting to feel like my eyes were permanently crossed. Damn paperwork.

"I've been noticing this man hanging out near the corner of the building. He was there yesterday. Today, I saw someone swap places with him." He raised his eyebrows at me, "Meaning we have someone staking us out."

"That is concerning. I'll go tell Viktor." I took off down the hall, but I took a detour. When I hit the stairwell, I went down instead of up. Popping out the door, I hooked a quick left and then found Alex in his little cube, something I'd established when we met up at the park.

"You don't have guys outside, right?" I asked, not even giving him a chance to finish his hellos before jumping right into things. I saw his body tense a bit at the information.

"No, we don't." He said, looking around nervously.

I clamped down a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm going to go let Viktor know, don't do anything stupid in the meantime, okay?" I said, before almost sprinting to the stairs.

Stupid is my job, I thought, Since you know, I'm telling the secret agent man before my own boss, just in case the random goon is his.

I sprinted back up the two flights of stairs, thankful for whatever increase in my constitution was responsible for keeping me from being winded by the time I reached Viktor's office. I slowed down to a more respectable speed and smoothed my shirt and pants a bit before rounding the corner.

Viktor noticed me immediately, his eyes turning to me like a hawk. Almost like he could sense my concern. "Something wrong, Charlotte?"

"Yes sir," I replied, before catching myself, "Well, probably. István noticed that someone seems to be stalking the entrance to the building. We saw him swap out with a replacement, so whomever is doing it seems to be going in shifts."

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Viktor sat in thought. "That is indeed concerning," he said, echoing my earlier words to István, "Come with me." He grabbed a jacket from his setback and was out of the door before the chair had even stopped swiveling around.

"Where are we going?" I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

"To discourage them from hanging around," he said, his massive hands looking a little warmer than normal to my vision. "Think you're up to it? István said you had an Ember."

I nodded, almost missing a step down the stairs at the revelation that he knew. "I do… on both accounts."

He nodded approvingly. "Good. Know how to use it?"

"I haven't really had much of a chance to explore it, but I do know it makes you better at ass-kicking." I replied, unsure of why he seemed so sure I was going to need to use my inner power. I also had a vague feeling that whatever he was counting as an "Ember" probably didn't describe the Core I had resting inside my soul. I also was still a little concerned why he knew I had one. Hopefully he didn't think I stole it from him.

"Well enough of this." Viktor suddenly vaulted over the railing of the stair and plummeted down the center, which scared the crap out of me, since I was still in the middle of a self-recrimination session against myself for swearing in front of my boss.

Which, in retrospect, seemed a little silly when the man thought stairs were just a convenient option and not a necessity.

Since I wasn't entirely sure if Viktor's robustness came from the Ember he had or just being Viktor, I took a more normal path down the the last few flights, even if I was skipping two or three steps at a time.

He was out the door already by the time I got there, somehow having the man in question in a vice grip hold, his massive fist was wrapped entirely around the unfortunate soul's neck. There were other people milling around - well, now frozen - outside, so I'm not sure how he knew which one was the right one.

Right as I exited the building, I noticed that the man had something off about him. Despite what was undoubtedly a lot of force on his windpipe, he didn't seem to be at all concerned. Instead, he was smiling at us. Furthermore, he had some sort of bubbling darkness in his body, different than the dull redness I could pick up off of Viktor. For one, there was a lot more of it.

For another, I could see it right through his body. It was twisting and billowing, growing by the moment.

Oh shit.

"Throw him!" I shouted at the last second.

Surprisingly, Viktor immediately complied, launching the man like he'd been fired out of a cannon. Halfway across the landscaping in front of the building, he burst.

I'd been expecting an explosion, like the extractor, but instead I heard a sickening rip as his torso split like an overripe fruit. Black goo flew out, forming into long whips that snapped around, leaving gouges on the ground. One grazed a spectator, ripping a chunk out out of his leg so deep I could see bone.

Viktor was staring as his hand, as if checking to make sure all his fingers were still there. "Thanks for that," he said, "But how do we deal with this bastard?"

"I have no idea," I replied, but there was a lurch in my Core, and suddenly, the outline of a course of action took form in my head. "Wow, that's stupid," I said, out loud, when it fully developed.

"What is?" The giant of a man next to me asked.

"Oh, what I'm about to do," I replied, before taking off running. "Look out," I yelled back behind me, "There might be more." He shrugged, then started looking around, apparently having zero concern that his expensive new lab assistant was running off to get herself killed. Maybe I'd listed 'death wish' in my job application and had forgot.

I was deeper within this… thing's range than I expected to get before it noticed me. The whips whistled through the air, making it not particularly difficult to figure out where they were at any given time. What was harder, though, was actually dodging the movements they made. I wasn't about to test my newfound resilience against whips that carved through stone like butter.

Instead, I did my best to dodge them. The first couple times were very close, and the third time they snaked my way, I tripped a little, netting a small graze on my shoulder for the trouble. Still, I was making good progress getting towards the epicenter of this mess, the body of which didn't really seem to be aware of anything anymore. I wasn't sure if the man had willingly given his consciousness up, but with the smile I'd seen on his face he had to have had some idea of what was about to happen.

The whip hit its extension with an audible crack then started tracking back towards me. The stumble had cost me, and this time, it didn't look like it was going to miss. I wasn't sure how to use the power I had, as I'd told Viktor.

But it is never too late to learn.

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