Covenant: Exodus

Chapter 23

Erich sat with his head in his hands trying to make sense of the last few hours of his life. After Malik and his men had escaped with Gema and Isaiah, Erich, Paulus, and Nagato had set out to find Jim. After everything that he had been through today, Erich wouldn't be able to handle it if something bad had happened to Jim. Luckily, they had found him in his office. Once the power had gone out, he had remained holed up inside. With the storm, and the fact that his office was so far away from the exhibits, he hadn't even heard any of the gunshots; until security had come to the office to tell him that there was a situation, he hadn't known anything was wrong at all.

"Ok, so let me see if I got this all straight. You two," he said pointing to Paulus and Nagato, "came here with some bullcrap story, telling me that your ancestors built this Ark to keep me from opening the museum so that some lunatic, that also thinks his ancestors built this place, wouldn't get his hands on an ancient book written in a language that only Erich's eight-year-old son, who he never knew about until today, can read...does that about sum it up?"

"You forgot the part about Paulus being one of the X-men or something, and ripping a security door off the hinges with his mind..." Erich said without looking up, "but ya, other than that, I think you nailed it."

Jim sat back in his chair shaking his head, "Well I gotta say, I have heard some crazy shit in my day, but this is definitely the craziest, and considering I'm the guy who just built a museum for Noah's freaking ark that's really saying something. Do we have any idea how that maniac and his thugs got past our security? I mean, we paid millions for the security system and have a whole team of people in place and backup measure after backup measure. How the hell did they get in?"

"I was wondering the same thing," Erich said, "and I think I may know. I ran into a blonde woman in the hallway today...tall, gorgeous, somewhat cold...anyway, she had no idea who I was and I hadn't seen her before, but I saw her tonight, talking to Malik and his men briefly in the Ark dome. She said that they were monitoring everything on video, it's how they knew where Paulus and I ended up. Somehow, she not only got them past security, but she also took control of our entire system. By the time Paulus and I broke cover and confronted Malik, she was already gone. If we knew more about her, we might be able..."

"Hell, I know plenty about her," Jim interrupted, "I hired her myself six months ago as the new head of security. She was a big shot from California, Kate Renner. Really took control of the security of the place, increased computerized systems and allowed us to decrease staff, saved me a ton of money..."

"Six months she has been working here?!" Erich interjected loudly, "How is it possible that I haven't seen her before now, and how could she not know who I was if she worked here?"

"Well son," Jim drawled, "how often have you really been here in the last six months, with all of the time you've spent working on finishing your book and doing the talk show circuit? Plus, whenever you are here you hole up in the Ark and don't really talk to anyone. I would guess that I've only seen you a handful of times in the past six months, and Kate was typically in the security center anyway, or with me in my office...but don't believe for a second that she didn't know who you were...that's just not possible."

"I wonder why in the world she would pretend she didn't know me then...," Erich questioned.

"I think the more important question here," Jim said, "Is why now...why after all that time would they just come and attack?"

"Clearly, something moved up their timetable, information they didn't have before...they must have found out about Isaiah's ability to read the ancient text," Paulus said, an audible sadness in his voice, "and they decided that with the information we now possessed, and the museum on the cusp of opening, they had to act fast."