Ezra
Breakfast wasn’tmuch but he ate enough to keep himself going if he made it to the dig site. That was the plan, and Drs. Simmons and Myers were staring at him like he’d lost his mind. He was used to that from the people he met over the course of his career.
“You want to go to the dig site? Why in the world? It’s at the center of that unnatural storm!” Simmons burst out, aghast.
“I’m not asking you to come with me,” Ezra replied easily. “You can stay here if that’s what’s got you worried.”
“It’s incredibly dangerous,” Grendel said, drawing his attention. “Getting to the site to rescue the three survivors took us an entire day going in, and getting them out was even worse. We got back on the third day. The storm increased in power and fury, and our staff practitioners had no idea what was happening, other than that it was clearly a hexed or cursed object.”
“It got worse as you were leaving?” Ezra said, frowning. “Typically, an event peaks right after a cursed object is activated. What happened during the rescue, like exactly?”
“Extraction team went in with eight of us,” Grendel said, leaning back on the table that was still a mess of maps, satellite images, and weather readouts. She was tense, arms crossed defensively over her chest. “I lost a man coming out. We stopped for a bathroom break among the trees and a hailstorm hit. Hail the size of a softball came out of nowhere and broke his helmet and skull. He was dead before we even had a chance to throw up shields.”
“Why did you decide to call me in? I’m not complaining, mind, just wondering what the final catalyst was. Losing a man?”
“For me it would have been, but it wasn’t for my superiors, not until this happened.” Grendel twisted and grabbed a remote from the mess on the table, and she pressed a few buttons until the largest screen in the command tent flipped images.
It was the storm, an eagle’s-eye view from a passing military satellite. The date beneath the image was the day of the event—the storm was maybe five miles across, the eye of which hovered almost directly on top of the dig site. The eye was small—not like a hurricane out to sea where the center of the storm could be a hundred miles wide and calm—this was maybe a mile across and wisps of cloud spun out from the eye and into the larger storm body.
“Huh,” Ezra moved closer to the screen, taking the remote as he passed Grendel. She sighed, loudly, but said nothing about it. He winced, forgetting he was supposed to ask first. He thought it in his head but forgot to actually ask out loud. “Sorry.”
She waved him off, pointing at the screen. “Keep flipping through, stop when you get to two days ago.”
Realizing he had no idea how to work the remote, Ezra stared at it for a brief moment before he started stabbing buttons, and thankfully luck was with him as he didn’t end up breaking anything.
Once he figured out the remote, he did as asked and stopped at the right date. The image was similar to the first, but the storm was migrating. The eye had shifted several miles, and not with the jet stream. It was moving against the natural weather systems in the area, and the eye was sending out more tendrils. Lightning activity had increased, and pockets of hurricane-force winds and heavy snowfall, up to three feet in some places, littered the area.
The dig site was covered in at least twelve feet of snow, and that was days ago—it was more than likely over twenty feet of snow by now, if not more. He would need to rethink his plans to head out there to find the artifact.
“Inhuman skull etched in blue flame,” Ezra murmured. “Lots of Elder fae species were considered gods by ancient humans, and their remains were prized as sources of power in proscribed magics. I wonder…”
He leaned forward, squinting at the map as the satellite footage continued to cycle. “Where are we on this map?”
Grendel came up beside him and pointed to the southeast of the dig site. “Here. Fifteen miles from the dig site. The storm shifted over ten miles during the rescue, and when we came out of the storm, I was informed it was moving. I made the call to my superiors, and they contacted you.”
“No one’s gone in there since you came out with the survivors?”
Grendel shook her head. “No one. Too dangerous. Lightning and hail activity increased exponentially, and I wasn’t going to risk anyone else until we got a better handle on things. The camp is right on the outside edge, and unless it moves closer, the camp is where everyone is staying until we figure this out.”
“Good call,” Ezra said distractedly, tracing the route from the dig site to the MERS camp. “Is this the route you took?”
“Near enough,” Grendel took back the remote and hit a few buttons, and then a line appeared on the screen. “There’s an old logging road that goes most of the way, so we were able to go in with snowmobiles and two susvees—small unit support vehicles—one equipped as an ambulance. Air support wasn’t an option due to the storm. It took us twelve hours to traverse fifteen miles, and nearly thirty hours to make the same trek out.”
“Go back two images?” Ezra asked, and Grendel obliged. The eye of the storm tracked roughly with the route the rescue team took on the way out, stopping a few miles shy of the edge of the forest.
The storm was magical in nature. The prevalent hypothesis was that the artifact they found in the chest was the cause. The storm migrated as the survivors left the dig site.
“One of the survivors had the artifact until you got here,” Ezra pointed to a spot roughly three miles deeper into the forest, “And they either lost it in the chaos of the storm or realized they wouldn’t be able to hide it once they got out of the forest, especially if the storm was following the skull. Dropped by accident or ditched on purpose, the skull is roughly in this area along the logging road.”
“What?” Grendel growled, before turning sharply. She shouted, making Ezra put a hand over his ear closest to her, but he knew why she was mad. He got it.
“Find Simmons! And alert the perimeter guards we may have an attempted breach!”
Ezra turned to check the tent, and saw Simmons was gone. He must have left the moment Grendel began showing Ezra the satellite images, realizing he was about to be exposed.
Myers stood where she had been since they started the briefing, her face a story of anger, betrayal, and hopelessness. Grendel strode from the command tent, MERS officers following in her wake, the camp a riot of shouts and engines starting up.
“I didn’t know,” Dr. Myers whispered, tears escaping from under her lashes, her face going pale. “All those people are dead because of him. I didn’t know.”
