Angel Face

Where Is Duncan?

L

Duncan knew who planned the accident but he wouldn't tell me. All he would say is that he had it handled. But I still felt on edge, like a lab rat.

It has been roughly a month since the 'accident' and it has been a relatively quiet and cool time. And I was too scared to even consider this as the calm before the storm.

As I had already discussed with Duncan, I had filled up the processing documents for the box and the necklace. I was really looking forward to getting my hands off the trouble stirrer, hoping that it would lower the chances of me facing a murderous psychopath. But unfortunately fate was too cruel to me. Cecelia Hawkins or Cece for short, our curator among other things, along with Julia brought to my notice that even though we were all ready to carry out the transfer and allotments, we had ran into a snag.

As per the contract signed by every museum or association involved in the Luciantra excavation, transfers could only be carried out when every party involved were ready and were doing it simultaneously. But the issue, which I knew because Duncan had already told me, was that since more than half of the museum's or association's project in-charges were hospitalised over brutal injuries. They were still lagging behind in their work.

Which meant that the trouble stirrers stayed.

So, now that our work was done on Luciantra, we were back on completing all the work that we had to drop to make Luciantra our prime focus, in the past. It wasn't too much work but still would take roughly between a month or two, if we decided to take it easy considering that everyone had been working too hard these past months on our dear Lucy. So, after those two months I would start working on finishing those online classes and my thesis.

"Hey, Nick." I called out, as I turned the figurine I was washing in my gloved hands. "Take a look at this." I brushed my thumb over the inscriptions to make them clearer as Nick sidled up next to me, with his newest intern right behind him. "Looks like Nahuatl to me." He mused and I nodded in agreement, while the intern tried to get a closer better look at the figurine. I looked away from the intern, feeling bitterness creep in but shot it down. It was our duty to teach them as much as we could. I couldn't let one betrayal let destroy the experience for others. We discussed a little more about it before they walked away to continue what they were doing.

I paused when I felt my pager go off. That's right, we had pagers now. Ever since Duncan sealed the doors and made them accessible only by the respective group of people, it had been difficult to communicate among different groups. So, now every team leader had a pager of their own. I checked mine, to see one from Drew.

I removed my gloves and gears and walked out of the lab to see him leaning against the wall. He smiled at me which I returned, and pushed himself off the wall. "Hey."

"Hi. You wanted to say something?" I asked him, feeling uneasy to have left mid work. "Yeah actually." He nodded. "I wanted to ask if you could have lunch with me? I wanted to discuss that thing you asked me to find out." My eyes widened and looked around for any eavesdroppers. I stepped closer to him and whispered. "You found something on the Landaverdes?"

He narrowed his eyes, assessingly. "I did."

"I'll meet you at the reception." He nodded before walking away. Once he was out of sight, I walked back in to resume my work.

○●○●○●○

I was filling out the details for a weirdly shaped vessel, when Trace walked past me before telling me that the land-line was ringing up a storm in my office. I smiled and called out a thanks before making my way to my office. True to his words, it was indeed ringing and seemed to be on the verge of disconnecting. I hurriedly, picked it up from its cradle before the call disconnected.