Two Become One - Part 1

TWO BECOME ONE

Part 1

Five years later...

St Cedds College, Cambridge.

Ben, Craig and Anselm walked through the sandstone arches of the college corridors, and went down the stairs to the basement. He knocked on the office door, and it opened.
“You’re late!” Katie Ryan said “I’ve got a lecture to give in five minutes.” She looked at the trio. “Kyle not with you?” she asked, slightly disappointed.
“No,” Ben answered, “He’s with Jake, doing something or other in the labs at OD.”
“So it’s just you three then?” she said, giving a small smile to Craig, but glaring at Anselm.
“I thought it would do Craig some good to get some practical experience, plus I’m not letting Anselm out of my sight again.” He said, glaring at him.
“That’s nice, now I really have to go.” She picked up a laptop from the desk and pushed past them. “The collection is down the hall, monographs are in there, and if you have any real trouble, Frank should be able to help.”
“I do know what I’m doing, I have done this before!” Ben snorted, but Katie had already disappeared up the stairwell. Ben sighed, and lead the way to the collection.
“You see, Craig,” Ben said as the entered the room, “this is the F.J. Lewis collection from All Souls College in Oxford. Apparently he left it to St Cedds because he got into a name-calling match with the Dean at All Souls, and didn’t want it staying there. Rather childish man, by all accounts.”
“I wish Isobel was here…” Craig said morosely, his head hidden inside the hood of his top.
“You know she had to go back to Cardiff, so they could give her a check-up.” Ben said unsympathetically.
“Couldn’t Jake have done it?” Craig asked.
“No.” Ben said firmly. “Anyway, moving on, we’ve got drawers to sort.” He span the handles of the roller stacks, and pulled out a drawer. “Looks like Mesopotamian artefacts today!” he said with a grin. Anselm and Craig did not return the sentiment…

They’d only been working for an hour, and already Anselm was bored. All they were doing was taking out artefacts, rewriting the labels and giving them new accession numbers, and adding them to the card index. Anselm had done this before, but it was still boring. He looked over at where Craig was sitting. He had his headphones in, listening to something depressing, no doubt. He also seemed bored, and was doodling on the cards. They all seemed to be dripping hearts. Ben came over, and nudged Craig’s arm. “You’re meant to be cataloguing, not doodling!” he said.
“I miss Isobel, without her my life is nothing…”
“Oh, stick it in your livejournal!” Anselm snapped. Ben shot him a glare.
“Don’t talk to my nephew like that, Anselm.” Ben scolded, “He misses his loved one! Still,” he added, pointedly, “at least he knows he can trust her!”
Anselm went back to the drawer. It was mostly pottery, all covered with years of dirt. His hands were black, and he’d had to wash them several times since starting.
He moved a large chunk of pot, and saw something that clearly did not belong in the drawer. He picked it up, and held it up to the light.
It looked like part of a bowl, made of glass, it seemed. He turned it in the light, and could see small criss-cross marking within the glass. Ben saw him looking at it, and came over. “What’s that?” he said, snatching it his hand, and holding it up to the light. “I don’t know,” Anselm said “Looks like part of a glass bowl.” Ben took it over to the binocular microscope and peered through the lenses. “Very odd…” he said.
“What is it?” Anselm said.
“These scratches, they seem to be inside the glass. And they look almost completely parallel.”
“Could they be from the manufacturing process?” Anselm asked.
“No,” Ben said. “they’re in some sort of pattern, and…” he increased the magnification. “They’re not scratches!”
“What’s not scratches?” Katie said, walking into the room with a harassed look.
“I’ve found something unusual in the collection” Ben said, invoking a look of annoyance from Anselm. “This fragment of glassware appears to have a fine metal mesh set into it. But it isn’t layered. It seems to have been formed around the mesh.”
Katie’s shoulders fell. “Oh, Ben,” she sighed, “You’re not suggesting it’s alien, are you?”
“I am!” He said.
“Can’t we do anything without it involving aliens?” she said, exasperated…

Craig sat sullenly in the car while Ben, Katie and Anselm drove to Operation Delta’s Headquarters. It wasn’t the large country house that they’d been promised, it was more an old farmhouse, with a lab built into the cowsheds, on the outskirts of Cambridge. Facilities were good, but it was far less than Ben had hoped for. Still, it served its purpose.
They pulled up, and getting out of the car walked across the yard to the shed, where Kyle and Jake were. They had just finished melting down a strange brown substance when Ben burst in, holding up a bundle of kitchen roll.
“Jake, we need this analysed.” Ben said
“What is it, man?” he asked, peering into the bundle. He plucked the glass fragment from the tissues with a dirty hand, and peered at it.
“We think it’s an alien artefact, we need to know if it’s dangerous.”
“Cool!” Jake said, carrying it over to the spectroscope. “Should have some results for you in, like a few minutes.”
“Excellent!” Ben said.
Katie went over to the bench where Kyle was stood. “Hello Kyle,” she said, “been up to much?”
“Alrigh’,” he replied nonchalantly, “we’ve just bin looking at this stuff, and Jake thinks it might be alien resin.”
“Looks like cannabis resin.” She said, sniffing the brown gloop.
“That’s what I said, but he went off on one, saying I was being all ‘negative, man!’, so I let him get on with it.”
“Why does Ben keep him around? He’s clearly a nut!”
“He’s a bit odd, yeah, but he’s bloody good at this science lark. ‘Ere, Craig!” Kyle shouted at the teenager, “You should get him to help you with your homework!”
Craig just grunted, and sat on a stool, engrossed in his PSP.
“He misses Isobel, bless him.” Katie said.
“Well, she’s a good girl, once you get past all the alien superbitch stuff.” He noticed Katie was smiling at him “What?”
She never got the chance to say, as Ben came over. “Nice to see you two being friendlier!” he said, “Until recently, you’ve hated each other.”
“Yeah, well,” Kyle said “we had time to chat in that holding cell on the Dalmanite spaceship.”
“Well, that’s marvellous!” Ben said. “It’s nice to see that even a chav and a University collections manager can get along!”
“What about you and Anselm?” Kyle asked. Ben looked over to where Anselm was hovering, unsure of what to do. “I don’t know.” Ben said. “Do you think I can trust him?”
“He’s a complete tool,” Katie said, holding back her true feelings “but I think…”
“I’ve got the results!” Jake called to them. They went over to where the analyser was, and pulled out a sheet of paper from the printer. “According to this, right, the metals are from somewhere really far out.”
“How far out?” Ben asked irritably. He found Jake’s usage of language quite tiresome.
“Not in this solar system, that’s for real!”
“But what was it for?” Anselm asked from the back.
“Judging from the structure, it’s some form of circuit, possibly an amplifier of telekinetic power, which is really heavy, man!”
“So, ancient aliens were present in Mesopotamia!” Ben said, “Shall we put that on the index card, Katie?” Katie just glowered. “So, put it in the Operation Data collections then!”
“Hang on, you can’t just take it! It belongs to the college!” Katie protested.
“It’s an alien artefact, it might be dangerous.”
“Ben, it’s at least four thousand years old. Anybody who knew how to use it is long dead…”

Frank emerged from his office, and knocked on Katie’s office door. He’d only recently started at the college archive, and Katie was the only friend he’d really made. There was no reply, and he tried the door. It was locked.
He was about to go back into his office when he heard a noise from the rollerstacks. He made his way towards them, and found a tall figure pulling out drawers, tipping the contents onto the floor. He backed away, and made for his office. In doing so, he dislodged a pile of maps from a table in the corridor, spilling them all on the floor. The figure turned, and made for the corridor. Frank ran into his office, and started to dial for security, when the figure burst in and grabbed him by the neck.
“Where is the Crystal Diadem” shouted the creature, it’s foul breath blasting Frank’s face.
“The what?” Frank struggled to say. He could see his tear-streaked face reflected in the creatures large black eyes.
“A dish-like fragment of crystal. It was here. Where is it?”
“I don’t know. Katie might know.”
“And who is Katie?”
“The collections manager. She was here a while ago, with some friends.”
“Do you know when they will return?”
“No.”
“A pity.” The creature said, and it tightened it’s grip until Franks went still. It threw his lifeless body to the floor, and went to Katies office door. It smashed the door open, and looked around. The place was a mess, with piles of books, bits of pot and photocopied pages on every surface. It picked up a photo, and stopped. It showed an attractive human female with a dark haired youth and a blond man. If he could find them, he could find the missing fragment. He looked at a sign in the background of the picture. The Mermaid Winebar...