“What is this place? And why are you in it?” Trevor demanded, his voice still trembling with adrenaline.
“Why am I here?” Brother Mark stammered, his eyes darting between the two intruders. He stopped mid-sentence as Spion leveled his pistol at Mark’s chest. “Please… don’t shoot. I’m just a student!” He threw his hands up, nearly knocking over a stack of papers.
“Spion, is the gun really necessary?” Trevor muttered, though he didn’t move to stop him.
“Answer the question,” Spion barked in a commanding tone. “What’s your connection to the underground cult?”
“Cult? What cult?” Mark looked genuinely bewildered. “This is a private study in the Temple of Ares. It’s a legitimate house of worship. I’m an art student writing a thesis on nineteenth-century Fairylander murals. I have permission to be here!”
Trevor glanced at the mahogany desk. A laptop was open next to a heavy, academic hardcover. He signaled for Spion to lower the weapon. “I think he’s telling the truth. He doesn’t look like a terrorist.”
“Terrorists? What are you, secret agents?” Mark started to lower his hands, but one look from Spion’s sharp eyes made him change his mind.
“FBI,” Trevor lied smoothly, flashing a fake FBI badge.
“An art student acting as an acolyte for a War God?” Spion asked, his skepticism remaining.
“It’s a tough job market for art majors,” Mark sighed, finally lowering his hands as Spion holstered the gun. “Besides, Ares isn’t just about blood. He stands for duty, honor, and discipline. It’s about… masculinity.”
“Have you seen anything unusual in here?” Trevor asked. “Hidden doors? Secret rooms? Things that seem to… teleport people?”
Mark’s jaw dropped. “Is that how you got here? I saw the rug glow, and then you two just… appeared. I’ve studied in this room a hundred times, and nothing like that has ever happened.”
Trevor and Spion looked down. They had been standing on a red rug woven with the pattern of a rounded shield and a spear. It sat in a quiet corner, surrounded by marble busts of ancient deities. They stepped off the rug, eyeing it with deep suspicion.
“Mark,” Trevor said, his voice low. “Have you ever stepped on this rug? Even once?”
“Every day,” Mark said, walking closer to the fabric. “It was a donation, like the busts. It’s just furniture to us. I stand on it whenever I’m cleaning the statues, but I’ve never felt a thing.”
Trevor moved to step back onto the pattern, but Spion caught his arm. “Do you really want to go back to that slaughterhouse? Let’s get out of here while we still have all our limbs.”
“Yeah, we need to get out of here,” Trevor muttered, already turning toward the door. Then he froze, a thought clicking into place. He turned back to Mark, his eyes narrowed. “The rug, Mark—who donated it? Do you have a name?”
“I’m not sure, but I can check the archive,” Mark said. He crossed the room to his laptop, his fingers tapping rhythmically against the keys as he navigated the temple’s donor database. He squinted at the screen for a moment before looking up. “Here it is. It was a gift from Dr. Victor Hoffman.”
“Victor,” Trevor whispered, the name striking a chord. “Professor Antonius mentioned a ‘Victor’ in his journals. We need to get back to the apartment and check the dates.”
“I’ll get you out of here,” Mark said, his face brightening with visible relief. He was clearly thrilled at the prospect of them leaving. “This study connects directly to the adyton and the rear lounge. It’s better if you slip out the back. Less chance of being seen.”
“You should roll that rug up,” Spion advised before moving. “In case any more ‘terrorists’ decide to drop by for a visit.”
“Right,” Mark muttered. Whether Spion was joking or serious was unclear, but Mark still quickly rolled the rug into a tight cylinder and leaned it against the far wall. He then gestured toward the exit. “This way.”
They stepped through the threshold and found themselves in a quiet, dimly lit lounge lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. When Trevor turned back, he realized the door they had just used had vanished; it was perfectly disguised as a life-sized oil painting of a medieval knight in gleaming plate armor.
“Your study is incredibly secluded,” Trevor remarked, eyeing the seamless transition. “Is the rest of this lounge built on secrets, too? Any other hidden rooms?”
“Actually, yes,” Mark said, gesturing vaguely toward a shelf of heavy folios. “There’s a chamber back there that served as a containment area for werewolf soldiers during the nineteenth century, somewhere safe for them to transform. These days, it’s just a rec room where we play video games.” He didn’t offer a tour, however; his body language remained stiff as he hurried them toward the exit, clearly desperate to return to a world that didn’t involve loaded firearms.
They stepped out into the cold noon air, unaware of a black SUV parked a block away, its engine idling silently. Behind tinted glass, a lens tracked their movement until they vanished into the car service Trevor had summoned.
Ten minutes later, they were back at the apartment. Trevor went straight to his study, his jacket hitting the floor as he flipped open his laptop, his mind already diving into the digital abyss. Spion, meanwhile, reached for his phone to order takeout.
“I’ve scripted a quick indexing tool,” Trevor announced as the smell of the takeout finally filled the room. “It’s already parsed the professor’s entire digital diary. Instead of reading through years of his life, we can just query the keywords and let the program find the needles in the haystack.”
“Bien joué,” Spion said, sliding a steaming takeout box across the desk. “Now, eat. You can’t save the world on an empty stomach.”
They worked through the spread of tacos, fresh ceviche, and tortillas, washing it all down with thick avocado smoothies. The brief silence of the meal was the only rest they’d had all day. Once the containers were cleared away, they retreated to the study, the glow of the dual monitors reflecting in Trevor’s eyes as he initiated the search for ‘Victor’ in the Professor’s digitized journals.
“It’s him,” Trevor said, his voice dropping an octave as he read. “Dr. Victor Hoffman brought the Professor to the Temple of Ares months ago. He was a major benefactor. Guided by the High Priest, they were granted access to the temple’s most private relics. Victor eventually showed him the rug. He called it a gateway to the Tower of Babel.”
Spion leaned in, his eyes wide. “A gateway? Like a portal?”
“Victor claimed it could only be triggered by a ‘Messenger of the Gods.’ He said he was a messenger of Ares. According to the diary, they stepped onto the fibers together and were instantly pulled into a damp, subterranean vault, a sprawling palace buried deep beneath the desert sands, severed from the world above for millennia.”
“That place is the Tower of Babel?” Spion’s voice was a harsh whisper. “Did the professor join their cult?”
“No,” Trevor replied, scrolling quickly. “The entry says they only surveyed the ruins before returning. He never mentioned going back. He sounded… frightened by it.”
Spion went quiet, staring at the screen. “If only a messenger can wake that rug… which one of us is the favorite of the gods?”
“I think it’s me,” Trevor whispered, the word sounding like a confession. “Hermes appeared here, in this apartment two weeks ago. He told me that the gods had different views on the future of mankind. He said he hoped I would stand on his side.” He then told Spion what happened the day Hermes abruptly showed up, and told him that the Second Generation of Olympian gods is currently ruling mankind, but some of the old gods—perhaps the first generation, or the Titans—want to seize control.
“You’re not joking, are you?” Spion asked, his usual smirk nowhere to be found.
“I’m not,” Trevor said, his voice eerily calm. To avoid sounding absurd, he didn’t even mention the theory that the world was fundamentally no different from a simulated video game, and that the gods were merely higher-order logic.
“So what now?” Spion asked, leaning back against the desk. “I never thought we’d be in the midst of a war between the gods. Are we expected to save the world?”
“We stop a terrorist attack first,” Trevor said, his voice quiet but firm. “If the cult succeeds, they’ll ignite a war between Persia and the Fairylands.”
“Overthrowing the current Persian regime would be easy,” Spion noted, “but it could be followed by years of internal strife and instability. It’s exactly what happened in Babylon and Bactria, where terrorist organizations would eventually seize the opportunity to gain power.”
“We need to alert the authorities,” Trevor began, but the vibration of his phone cut him off. A notification light blinked urgently. It was a message from James Style: Let’s have dinner tonight at the Salon. We need to talk.