19 – Secrets Unearthed and On Display

Erika slipped her phone back into her jacket pocket after texting Anna and doing a quick search on this museum. It seemed like a fairly regular place, opening in the late eighties and closing for refurbishment twice. There were next to no news articles about the place. Nothing interesting happened to it recently or otherwise. Given that Erika came around the Lower West Side on occasion, she had probably driven past it without noticing multiple times.

“You said you scouted the place,” Erika said, walking alongside The Stalker as they passed an empty soccer field. “You see anything suspicious or worrying?”

“Not really. I only watched the main entrance for an hour or so. Didn’t want to tip anyone off that I was scoping the place out.”

Reasonable, Erika thought. That wasn’t something she would have thought of. Her stakeouts of both her mother and, the following day, sitting outside the Old Church watching for that nun again had been impulsive and, in retrospect, reckless. Especially of the church, knowing what she now knew. She had just sat outside in her truck, believing her car would blend into the busy streets of Chicago.

“This is the place,” The Stalker said, stopping at a corner.

A single-story building occupied almost the entire block ahead of them. A red brick building with a fancy pattern running along the top, looking like a mosaic. Greco-Roman pillars held up the fancy pattern section, jutting out slightly over the sidewalk to provide shade. There weren’t many windows. Only one segment on the side they faced, and even then, the windows were tinted to the point of impenetrability.

“Main entrance is down that street,” The Stalker continued, pointing, “but there are quite a few cameras out and about. There’s a side entrance with only one notable camera. We can take it out easily.”

Erika raised an eyebrow. She hadn’t quite gotten around to all the ‘small talk’ information gathering she wanted to do, so it was good that The Stalker wasn’t running off just yet, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder. “Not to frighten you off, but just how far are you planning on going with me tonight? I’ll be honest, I expected a finger in the right direction or even just a text message, not a full partner.”

The Stalker froze. She slowly looked at Erika, her stringy black hair clinging to her dress as she tilted her head. “The Strategist instructed me to avoid antagonizing you, but also to find out more about a potential unknown faction within the city,” she said. Her tone sounded stiffer, more robotic. Like she was reciting something rather than conversing naturally. “Is my continued presence a problem?”

“No, no,” Erika quickly said, a little worried about the sudden change in attitude. “Just thought I was going into this alone.”

The Stalker frowned, almost looking displeased, before nodding her head. “Good, I guess,” she said with a small sigh.

“Did you want me to say no?”

The Stalker frowned again and hesitated just a bit too long before responding with a simple, “No. Come on. Michael, take care of the cameras.”

The old man with their group shuffled forward, leaving Erika a little confused at his name. It didn’t fit the conventions that everyone else seemed to follow. Rather, it was a perfectly average, normal name. With him at the head of the group now, they continued around the side of the museum until he held up his hand in a tight fist. The Stalker stopped then, so Erika did as well.

He continued forward, drawing a pistol.

Erika had been hoping to see some strange magic or ability like her own that would break the cameras. “He’s just going to shoot them out? Isn’t that going to draw attention?”

“Paintball pistol,” the other woman in the group said in a cheerful tone of voice. “We’re talking louder than that thing shoots.”

“Ah…” Erika was somehow even more disappointed. At the same time, she wondered if her ability to break things could work through a paintball gun. She still hadn’t tested with her actual gun—kicking a rock worked, but with all the mechanisms inside, for all she knew, it wouldn’t work with a gun—but if it did, paintball guns seemed less likely to accidentally hurt someone.

Michael stopped a short distance ahead and leveled his gun, gripping it in both hands. He took an extra moment to prepare before he squeezed off a shot. With a slight putt noise, barely louder than Erika scuffing her boots against the sidewalk, the paintball struck the security camera on the side of the building. The ball itself might have cracked the lens, but even if it hadn’t, the contents splattered over the entire thing, covering it in black paint.

He moved forward a little more and repeated his shot at another camera. It was a bit further, but he hit it dead on. Lowering and holstering the pistol, he motioned.

The Stalker stalked forward. She didn’t offer a word of praise for the shots that had to have been difficult. She didn’t even look at Michael as she walked past. The side entrance was a smaller version of the front entrance, just a pair of glass doors covered in windows tinted to the point where Erika couldn’t see through them. It looked like the entire wall could open up—or at least be dismantled, presumably to move large sculptures or other equipment in and out of the museum.

Erika slowed at the entrance, but The Stalker didn’t.

The Stalker froze. Her body turned monochrome, glitchy, and staticy like an old television tuned wrong. A heartbeat later, the static image of The Stalker dispersed, fading away into nothing.

Erika jolted at the sight, but neither Michael nor the still unnamed woman looked concerned. They simply stood, waiting. The woman had a wide smile on her face, watching Erika’s reaction like she was in on a joke that Erika missed.

A loud clicking noise pulled Erika’s attention to the side door before she could ask. The door opened, and The Stalker stood inside, looking normal once again. Her bloodshot eyes narrowed at the wide grin on the woman’s face. “We’re in. We’ve got—”

A rapid beeping noise from within the museum cut her off. “Alarm,” she hissed, whipping her head around. “Of course, there’s an alarm. Stupid…”

“Abort?” Michael asked, drawing a pistol that looked a whole lot more real than the previous one. He stared around the street as if ambushers would be crawling out of the manholes and hopping off nearby roofs.

“They’ll know we were here—”

“Excuse me,” Erika said, squeezing between The Stalker’s body and the doorframe.

The beeping noise drew her straight to a control panel mounted on a nearby wall. Red and black with a digital keypad, it wasn’t a model familiar to her, but she had shut off plenty of alarms in her time.

The alarm wasn’t actually sounding just yet. These kinds of systems usually gave one to two minutes to enter a code before doing anything. The beeping was just to let anyone who entered know that the alarm was active and needed to be shut off. Erika didn’t know the code, but that didn’t matter to her. She had yet to encounter security that she couldn’t break.

The ghost said that her ability was being tracked somehow. However, she had a feeling that The Mummy would know someone had been here before the end of the night, one way or the other. They hadn’t tracked her instantly before, so this would give at least a brief window to look around.

Hand raised to the control panel, Erika concentrated on that little glitch in reality that only she could see. With a slight twist of her wrist and her fingers brushing over the keypad, the beeping cut off. The display fizzled a bit but returned with a simple message.

Alarm Cleared.

Erika turned with a smile.

All three of the others had entered the museum, though they were clearly poised to bolt. They were all armed now. The Stalker had drawn a gun, a heavy-looking revolver, while the woman held a butterfly knife. Michael stared outside the windows, keeping a lookout.

“All clear,” Erika said, glad the weapons weren’t pointed in her direction. She had her baseball bat out and at her side, but that probably wouldn’t help against a gun. “Shall we continue?”

The Stalker stared, eyes flicking from Erika to the alarm panel. “Is it off or broken?”

“Off. No alert was sent; the noise was just to let employees know that they needed to shut it off.”

“You’re certain?” Michael asked, not taking his eyes off the windows. “Venturing further into hostile territory only to wind up surrounded by enemies would not bode well for any of us.”

“What, you want to wait around and see if cops show up?”

“It might be prudent.”

“No. You want to stick around, be my guest. I’ve got work to do.” Erika turned, staring at The Stalker. “Which way? I’ll figure the rest out on my own.”

The Stalker clicked her tongue, shooting a nasty glare in Michael’s direction. “No need. Michael, ensure our exit remains secure. Anyone suspicious shows up, call me. Simone, with me and The Agent.” She drew in a breath. Her eyes shimmered, gaining a faint luminescent glow. She slowly turned her head, then stopped, cutting off the glow. “This way,” she said, moving down one of the halls.

Michael didn’t look happy about that, but also didn’t complain. He remained where he was, ignoring Erika completely as she followed behind The Stalker and the newly named Simone.

Soft lighting diffused throughout the museum. Full room lights weren’t on, but unless The Stalker had flicked a light switch before opening the door, the faint lights must have always been on. It was enough to see by, and that was what mattered.

The walls were adorned with paintings, spaced a bit far apart, all of which looked extremely modern and diverse in their subject. On one side, there was a large portrait of a skull with a small lens over the mouth revealing flesh, while on the other side, there was just a gaggle of industrial-looking machinery that formed odd and extremely suggestive shapes. Five steps beyond was a woman’s head with a snake on her forehead, built into some kind of machine-filled wall.

When Erika heard that they were headed to a museum, she expected typical museum things. Old pottery, statues, bits of ancient civilizations, and the like. Something out of an old horror movie featuring a mummy, given the title of The Fixer’s adversary. Instead, this place was mostly artwork. At least in this section.

There were a few statues, generally set in the open area in the middle of the gallery rooms, but they also looked far too modern. One was a baby-like thing wearing goggles while holding up a sonic screwdriver. Another was a waist-up armless woman with the head of an alien and extremely sharp, extremely long nipples.

Very… strange.

As they moved, Simone stopped them at the entrance to each room. She peered around the corner before popping each camera with a paintball gun. Erika wasn’t sure it mattered at this point. Surely those cameras saw her peering around.

“So you teleport then?” Erika said, focusing on The Stalker as she passed a portrait of dead baby tubes. Not dead babies in tubes, but strange fleshy tubes with the heads of dead babies. “The only other teleporter I’ve encountered had to blurt out ‘teleport’ every time he did so.”

“Sounds like a mage,” The Stalker said, also eying some of the strange artwork as they passed. It was nice that Erika wasn’t the only one weirded out. “I’m a specter.”

“Ah,” Erika said with a heavy note of understanding in her tone. She didn’t understand, but she didn’t want to come across as ignorant. They were just more terms to file away for the moment. “And your cultists?”

“Regular humans. Don’t pay them any mind.” The Stalker glanced back over her shoulder, one eye peeking through her stringy hair as she stared at Erika. Again, she was staring with her ability, making her eyes glow. “Been bothering me for a while. Since the other night. The Strategist wanted me to use tact, but I’m just gonna ask: What are you?”

Erika hesitated. She did not have an answer to that. With the glance and the way she was asking, The Stalker could probably tell when something was strange. Which almost certainly meant that Erika didn’t register as human to her senses. Erika wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Or rather, she didn’t feel much of anything.

Humans couldn’t do the things she and her brother did. Ergo, they were not human. It was something she had known, even if only subconsciously, ever since she could remember. Knowing that someone else also didn’t see her as human wasn’t going to change her.

But she had to say something.

Though it wasn’t going to change who she was, it might be nice to know what she was. If The Stalker could give her some clues in that direction, at least she would have another term to file away and investigate later on.

Donning her best coy smile, Erika said, “No guesses? That’s no fun.”

The Stalker clicked her tongue in annoyance again, looking straight forward. Simone, however, took her turn to glance over Erika.

“Not any undead variant. Don’t look too artificial either.” She hummed, spinning to walk backwards and fully give Erika her attention. “No obvious grafts and Stalky thinks you aren’t human, so nothing like a Cursed, Thief, or Mage. Hmm. I’d guess an Aberrant.”

“Stupid. I know what Aberrants look like.”

Simone shook her head, spinning back around to look at The Stalker. “But there are so many types of them! How do you know she isn’t just a type you haven’t seen before?”

“I know,” The Stalker snapped.

Maybe it was her tone, but Simone elected to remain silent after that. Nobody spoke for two full rooms of the gallery.

Not until Erika got curious. “You ever encounter an Outsider-class Being?” Erika asked as they passed in front of a large portrait of Baphomet—as someone into the kinds of music Erika was into, she recognized the figure immediately… except this one had babies sewn into Baphomet’s chest where normally there were breasts. And these babies were holding grenades for some reason.

What is this place? she couldn’t help but wonder.

It was so distracting that she almost bumped into the other two.

The Stalker and Simone both stopped, turned, and stared.

They weren’t staring at baby-breasted Baphomet. Their eyes were locked onto Erika.

“What?” Erika said.

The two slowly glanced at one another.

“Impossible,” The Stalker said.

“Yeah. Real funny one, Agent.”

“It’s just a question,” Erika said with a shrug, utterly unsure why that provoked such a reaction. “Not necessarily one related to our previous conversation.”

“Of course not,” The Stalker said, shaking her head. “Outsiders are myths. The Strategist didn’t even think they were worth telling me about when I was asking.”

“The Strategist again, huh? You mention him a lot. Friend of yours?” Erika asked, hoping to get the topic far away from Outsiders.

She was pretty sure Simone saw right through her blatant attempt.

The Stalker, on the other hand, twisted her face into a scowl. The way her teeth ground together was both loud and uncomfortable. “Friend? Ha! That man is the verbal equivalent of a machine-mounted dildo made from porcupine quills and fishing hooks.”

Erika blinked twice at that vivid analogy. “Bit of a pain in the ass?”

“He has something to say about everything and always knows best. He even claimed his advice was the reason my skin isn’t cracking and peeling off my bones. Fucking clown.”

“Stalky… not in front of out…” Simone trailed off with a puzzled expression on her face. “Others,” she finished before switching her tone to that of a peppy motivational speaker. “Remember. Unified front!”

Were Outsiders really so spooky that she didn’t even want to say the word in other contexts? Erika wondered if she could figure out a way to ask what an Outsider even was without garnering more looks.

“Well, yeah,” The Stalker said, scratching at her scalp like she was struggling to come up with something to say. “He’s been around longer than I have, so he does know a few things…”

“Try to sound a little more positive,” Simone mumbled.

“Whatever,” The Stalker said out of the corner of her mouth. “The thing we’re here for is just ahead.”

Erika’s fingers tightened around the grip of her baseball bat, feeling about as much apprehension as she was relief. The relief was mostly about being able to move on from this conversation. The Stalker seemed like the kind of woman who had a few too many landmines.

Each of the chambers in the museum was roughly a square room, each with four entrances—except those rooms that were near the exterior walls of the building. There were occasional exceptions strewn throughout where larger artwork occupied what should have been an opening, creating something akin to a maze. This, however, was the first room Erika had seen with nothing but a central statue and some murals painted directly on the walls rather than hanging from them.

The statue here was… certainly something. Humanoid, though barely. More like a corpse, desiccated and thin with bones and ribs showing. It wasn’t quite detailed enough to be a real corpse. The silvery metal it had been fashioned from helped dissuade that notion. It still managed to be imposing and dominating, especially in height; it stood at least twice as tall as Erika. There weren’t any bandages on it, nor any linen, but its face, skeletal with thin, gangly teeth and deep, sunken cheeks, was partially covered with a porcelain mask.

Erika hadn’t brought her mask shard with her, but she had looked at it enough to know it matched almost perfectly. Except for the fact that her mask shard was a shard. This mask was wholly intact.

They weren’t the same masks.

“It isn’t a being, is it?” Erika asked as she kept a fair distance.

The Stalker didn’t approach either, narrowing her shimmering eyes. “I don’t… know.”

“It isn’t reacting to us,” Simone said. She wasn’t staring as intently as Erika or The Stalker. She kept looking around, holding her knife slightly up and ready to use it.

“This does explain why you didn’t see it move for an entire day, though it doesn’t explain why you see this. The mask I found at the scene of the attack isn’t the same.” Erika slowly stepped forward, keeping her bat up and ready to swing. “Does the entire thing light up in your vision or just the mask?”

“Just the mask. Could be cursed, could still be a Parasite despite what I said earlier, just one I didn’t recognize.”

Stopping at the velvet ropes surrounding the knee-high dais upon which the statue stood, Erika stared down at a large plaque in front of the statue. The Semblance of Man. No sculptor, date, or other details were listed. Just the title of the piece.

Erika reached out and bumped the statue with the end of her bat, half expecting it to jump at her.

It didn’t. It didn’t move.

Erika’s eyes drifted away from the statue.

She kept the statue in her peripheral vision, but she looked to the murals on the walls, one of which seemed to depict the same figure, raising its arms high into the air beneath a black sun and a chaotic red background. Smaller figures surrounded it, humanoid figures locked into some macabre dance. There were other scenes. Shadowy silhouettes walking in narrow lines along a desert. Four figures with thick tattoos lurking in the eaves. Structures in a variety of styles, from a Japanese temple to Egyptian-esque obelisks, London’s Westminster Clock, and even the Sears Tower of Chicago.

Erika stopped at an oddly blank wall. While the rest of the murals carried on that reddish background that stemmed from the black sun, this portion was just a plain white wall, save for a handful of black smudges. They looked like a cross between an artist’s starting sketches and ancient cave paintings. It was hard to tell how many of them there were, but the one at the lead was slightly more detailed. Still just a glorified stick figure, but it did look like it was holding something. A rifle, perhaps.

“Well,” Erika said. The other two were slowly moving around the room as well. Simone was next to Erika, squinting at the same cave drawings that Erika was looking at. The Stalker was more concerned with the statue itself. “Any sign of anything else nearby? Maybe tracks someone left while putting the mask on the statue? Or The Fixer, if you can pick up that trail.”

The Stalker scratched at her head again. “It doesn’t work like that…”

“Then any suggestions?” Erika asked. Getting a look from both women, she frowned. “What? I break things. That isn’t exactly helpful in the current—”

“Ope,” Simone said, pressing a finger to her ear. “Mike is saying there are a bunch of people gathering outside.” She paused, then added, “Not cops. Just people. But they’re rubbing him the wrong way.”

The Stalker started smiling. She cracked her knuckles before drawing her heavy revolver. “Well, well… Can’t get answers from a statue, but maybe you can break one of these people.”

“We sure they’re after us?”

“Donno. Maybe you can ask them after we break their kneecaps.”

“I’d prefer to not attack a bunch of people just here to play some late-night soccer.”

“Mike says a few are approaching the museum,” Simone said, finger still at her ear. “Two just put on white masks. He’s retreating further inside and would like to meet up with us.”

Erika let out a sigh, gripping her baseball bat a little tighter. “Guess we are breaking some knees in.”