There was just 1 top Guardian this time. (I guess the most powerful people in the world don’t want to spend all of their time hanging out in rural PA.) She told us that they needed proof that “when the time comes,” we wouldn’t desert the WG to hang out with the Ancients. Their idea of proof was that we needed to do something that would ensure that the Ancients (aka TDH) would see us as the enemy.
I know, fun right? & the Waking Guard was really helpful—they had already decided on what we could do for them to prove we were on their side.
Apparently, when TDH took over all of Darcy’s stuff, 1 thing he inherited was her “signet of power.” The WG described it as being kinda like a sealing ring or a crown that the leaders of the Ancients all have, just to make themselves feel good about being powerful. I get the feeling that they made it seem less important than it is, but I really don’t know. The WG said that if we wanted to prove that we were with them, the only way we could do that was by stealing this signet and bring it back to the Centre. Oh, and replace it with a glowstone that had the magical equivalent of “Chelsea and Deena were here” stamped inside it.
I’m pretty sure C&I both felt pretty sick after this meeting. We told the WG that we’d think about it. Utah seemed to think that we were just scared about getting caught instead of really bothered that we were being forced to steal from someone we thought was a good guy. He tried to be comforting tho, and told us all the ways that the WG would help us do this successfully, and he was all Mr. Supportive Guy again (you know, like how a “counselor” is supposed to act).
Utah kept insisting that what we were supposed to do was just about the same as if we were playing a prank on TDH—no real damage. And the Waking Guard had put together floor plans and security readouts on TDH’s headquarters. (It’s the new ReginaPro building, but he lives on the top floor.) C&I really didn’t feel like we had a choice. We felt really bad about it, but we started planning, and practicing, and pretty soon we were on a private NSC jet with Utah, heading back home to Minneapolis.
We were on official business, a “training mission,” so we couldn’t tell anyone that we were in town, or visit anyone. I really wish I could have seen you then Daddy, and asked for advice. Of course, a big part of why the WG was isolating us seemed to be to make sure that we couldn’t ask anyone for advice, so we had to rely 100% on how they felt. Utah brought us into Minneapolis on a Sunday, late afternoon, and dropped us off about a block from TDH’s building. He gave us a rendezvous point and told us to meet him there in 3 hours, or else.
(We’re pretty sure that “or else” meant “or else we’ll find you and lock you up for the rest of your lives, and so long as we say you used your powers immorally, nobody will question us.” Srsly, must be nice to be an all-powerful organization.)
They had given us a fake security card that would stall the whole system, a couple smoke bombs, and of course a little glowstone that radiated our energy signatures. (Also a floor plan and a schedule for the guards, even tho we had pretty much memorized those.) I don’t know where they got all the materials, but since they’re obviously not the awesome good guys they make themselves out to be—who knows?
The area was all office-building-y, so on a Sunday afternoon it was practically deserted. I guess the Waking Guard figured there was a good chance TDH would be out, too. (They didn’t check his location the way they did the guards tho… probably afraid of what would happen if he noticed them spying on him.) C&I were wearing street clothes. We had super outfits already (the prototypes Brook had put together and asked us to try out and evaluate), but this was so far away from what supers are supposed to do that we decided to go in blue jeans.
We got in thru the loading docks with no problem, and rode the regular-people elevator up to the 16th floor. The penthouse was on the 19th, but we would only get 1 chance at overriding the security system. We took the emergency stairs up to the top, and then we had to use the security scrambling card to knock out the door from the stairwell onto the roof.
We got thru, but alarms started going off less than a minute later. There were a couple of glass skylights that we were careful not to accidentally crash thru (the 1 above the dining room is stained glass), and we had to really scramble across the roof to get to our destination—the door right next to TDH’s industrial kitchen, next to the outdoor barbecue area.
This was just a couple weeks ago, December, so nobody had used that door in a while. I blasted it off its hinges (been picking up some freaky tricks at the Centre), and we hustled thru a few rooms, down hallways, etc. We’d memorized the floor plan, so we knew where we were going. The long hallway in the residential part of the house ended at TDH’s bedroom, which had doors inside it leading to 2 private baths, a walk-in closet, the study, and “the treasure room,” which was built like a panic room and had all kinds of valuable stuff inside.
We were just starting down the hallway toward the bedroom when some guards started running toward us from the main service entrance. There were 3 of them, 1 calling for backup on a headset, and they were armed. I’m better at keeping people back, but C’s the one who can stop armed guards (water + guns = wet gunpowder), so I grabbed the little glowstone and she started building a water wall. The only way out now was the way the guards had come in, so she would have to hold them off until I got back and then we’d knock them out and hustle out down the elevator shaft.
Daddy, please don’t yell at me about taking risks. Trust me, I know. I would never, ever do anything like this if didn’t feel like I absolutely had to. This was a really special situation.
We were past all the locks. I got into the bedroom no problem, and the treasure room door was closed but not locked. I ran inside, hoping to get this finished as fast as I could.
The room was the size of a normal walk-in closet (probably TDH’s walk-in closet is the size of my room. I mean, this whole place was nice.), with shelves along all the walls. Some of the shelves had boxes, but mostly there were a bunch of fancy things—jewelry, small figurines, some stones and gems—on display, on top of draped velvet. In the middle of the room there was a small pedestal, with a glowstone propped on its top that was cut like a diamond and about the size of my fist. There was some sort of shape inside of it, sort of like a tiny carved sea serpent, that seemed to move in tiny circles. I knew it had to be the signet. I started to reach for it—
—and my hand was just a few inches away when cold fingers grabbed my wrist and TDH hissed in my ear, “Don’t touch that!”
(And now for something completely different.)
