Meaningful Artifacts [Edward/Jacob]

ten.

Jacob smells like Edward. It's not apparent to him, but as soon as he steps into the kitchen, he can see Leah and Quil's nose begin to scent the air. It's not long before they're turning to look at him and he can already hear the comments and questions before they even open their mouths. He doesn't bother waiting for the barrage, heading for the stairs and taking them two at a time.

He almost makes it to his room, when he's blindsided by Embry. Embry who has a giant grin on his face as he crosses his arms and leans against the doorframe. 

"Tell me everything, loser."

Jacob was hoping to have a nice, calm day. He was hoping to walk into the security, plop down into his chair next to Mike's and ignore the man snoring like a chain saw, and take a look at a different screen every now and then. He needed a palette cleanser, nothing exciting, just a standard day at work. 

He gets that for a solid ten minutes. 

He's chugging coffee after having a particularly rough night. He'd woken up in a cold sweat, body shivering despite the fact that he was burning up. That mixed with the cramps and the pounding headache and there was no way he was going to be able to go back to sleep. He'd managed to pull himself together to go to work and ten minutes into his shift, there's movement on one of the screens.

At first, he sums it up to sleep deprivation. There was no way someone would be bold enough to do something so unfathomable a second time. There was no way they would do it in such a short span of time. It's not even in the same room. This time he's staring up at the Native American heritage exhibit. He had to be imagining it. Or maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he was having some kind of unhinged dream that was taking some inspiration from real life. Maybe he'd be startled awake by Mike asking him if he wanted something from the vending machine or loudly consuming his lunch. 

That's until he sees it zoom across the screen again. He doesn't hesitate this time. He doesn't even bother to wake Mike. He just hits the button that sets off the alarm and pulls out his walkie talkie.

It's similar to the first incident, a blur across the screen, as whatever it is, darts around the room. He doesn't waste time, hitting the alarm as soon as he sees it, ignoring Mike who almost falls out of his seat at the blaring sound. He doesn't bother answering any questions that his wild-eyed friend has as he tries to collect himself. 

He heads for the door, almost jogging as he tries to get there before whatever it is can disappear. When he gets into the lobby, he has to swim through droves of people who are outright panicking. He's about halfway through the room when his eyes catch a frazzled Angela's. She looks absolutely distraught as she talks to one of the security guards who was over the hall of the exhibition was on. He manages to get across and she immediately races over to interrogate, eyes wide as she spews question after question. 

"What'd you see? Was it the same thing? What'd they take? Did you see them leave?" She yells over the sound of the crowd.

He doesn't bother answering, heading for the hall with her on his tail, trying to get into the room before there was a chance of whoever it was slipping into the crowd. He had a theory and that theory only seemed to be growing more and more plausible every time he saw the flash of a figure on the screen...

Though, when he really thought about it this time. Something seemed to click. 

"Mike said you saw something on the cameras during the break in." 

"Yeah, it was just like a streak, a blur, like someone was moving too fast," Jacob says pointedly, looking at Edward as if he should understand, "that's all I saw."