Young Writers Society

\/Dwyn Souza\/

Dwyn steamed the whole way home. Whatever they'd discussed after the restaurant was half-faded in her mind, and she had no idea when they'd agreed to meet up, nor did she particularly care at the moment. Seeing Kaique for the first time in several months had pushed on a nerve she didn't like having. And the fact that they were worried about her, as if they weren't the ones who put their foot down and said to stop seeing them? It made her want to scream.

She made sure she wasn't followed home, but for the most part she was distracted. She didn't even want to see Derek now. He was one of the only people who knew about some of the drama within her family, but that didn't mean she wanted to talk with him about it. Besides, if she talked with him now, it would be all business, and she was already so stressed and overwhelmed that she wouldn't be able to keep up a mask around him. And whatever she did, she never let people around her when she couldn't keep up an act. She might let the act down, but if she couldn't keep it up altogether, then she was vulnerable, and she was not going to let anyone see her like that.

She unlocked the front door slowly, peering inside to make sure nothing had been touched and nobody was there. After she'd checked, she opened it unceremoniously and dumped her now bulging purse onto the counter. She slid, piece by piece, all of the jewelry off her arms-- diamond bracelets and watches, anything she could've taken. The only thing she wouldn't take was a middle schooler's friendship bracelet, and even still, she'd been tempted once in a while by the color of the beads.

She pulled all the wallets from her pockets-- she'd put them there when her purse got too full-- and once she'd got everything off her person, she started on the purse. It didn't take long before she realized why it had filled up so quickly. She muttered a curse as she pulled out the disposable phone boxes. She hadn't given them to them-- oh well. At least now she could enter the numbers into all of them.

She sighed and walked into her bedroom, flopping onto the bed. Her stupid family. And her stupid brother. Her stupid sisters, her stupid parents. The only people who weren't stupid were her nieces and nephews, and if she actually got to spend any amount of time around them, that opinion would probably change too. She'd finished high school because of them, the only reason she'd gone to college was because of the pressure of her older siblings, and she hadn't done anything worthwhile there. There wasn't a class on heisting. It was something you learned from experience. The only thing she'd really gotten out of college was meeting Derek at some party, and that was a party with drinks before she was 21, so college wouldn't approve of that either.

She looked at the clock next to her bed-- not even eight yet. Not even eight o'clock, and she felt trapped. What did she usually do at night like this? Sometimes she'd go out, hit some parties to make some connections. Sometimes she'd stay in and watch the cheesy Brazilian love show re-runs just to hear something in Portuguese. Sometimes she messed around online doing nothing.

But tonight, she didn't feel like anything. She'd call Derek in the morning so she could work everything out before meeting up with them. For now, she laid in bed, unable to sleep, her brother's face going across her mind every so often as his words repeated through her head: "Don't lie to yourself."

She laid in the dark, and softly began to sing, "I'm the King of Fools, 'cause baby, you're the Queen of White Lies."

\/ Conrad Selingren \/

There was no way Conrad was making that morning meeting. He had work! And they'd settled on nine am, and he clocked in at eight, so that was too early to take a break, even for the bathroom. And worse, he couldn't even get in touch. Luna hadn't texted to let him know she'd made it to her hotel, and Dwyn certainly hadn't been in a mood to let anyone know anything, and so here Conrad was, sitting in his little sedan in the U of C administration parking lot and wondering how he could let them know he'd be absent.

They knew he worked in this building. Maybe he could put a message in sticky notes on a window? Maybe Luna would text when he didn't show?

In the meantime, there had to be something he could do to help out. He'd gotten those floor plans, but the girls had made all the plans.

Sighing, Conrad reached over the console to grab his briefcase. His gaze landed outside, on a harried-looking man in a tweed jacket and ill-fitting red chinos, and something in Conrad's brain clicked.

He had a good memory for faces. It was necessary in business and finance, after all, to recall people years after meeting them, or to memorize faces on a roster before any kind of social gathering. And he'd only gotten better at it playing hockey, where grills and shields covered half of a player's face, and he had to piece together who was who at drinks after each game.

The tweed man was Doctor Eric Duggar. His bio on the history department's website listed three different kinds of history-related PhDs, which was impressive considering he was only a few years Conrad's senior. His likely-normal-sized eyes peered owlishly from behind thick, round glasses that magnified his eyeballs and made him seem older, and his stick-thin frame implied he was a man so entrenched in academia that he had probably never touched a bench press. He might not even know what a bench press was. And to top it all off, he had a wispy cloud of red hair that made him look like he had just rolled out of bed.

But most importantly, he was one of a small number of professors who directly worked with artifacts.

Conrad squeezed himself out of his car and rushed to catch the man.

"Dr. Eric Duggar?" he called. "Sir? Excuse me?"

Dr. Duggar turned to him and blinked his weird, magnified eyes. "Oh, uh, yes? Can I help you?"

Oh no. Conrad did't have a play for this in his playbook. What should he say? "Uh, you're working on some of the Richard Dedd collection, right?"

The professor pushed his glasses up his nose and tilted his head in confusion. "Err, yes. Why are you"-

"My niece!" Conrad blurted out. "Uh. I have this niece. She's interested in archeology and ancient history? And she's visiting campus today, and I know the history department doesn't do much in the way of department tours, but it would really mean a lot if you could show her some of your research."

"Oh?" That caught the professor's attention. He turned his whole torso in Conrad's direction, and the pale, nerdy palor of his face pinked with excitement. University professors were such nerds, honestly. Once you got them talking about their interests, they could go on forever. "Will she be on the campus tour today?"

"Oh, no," Conrad replied. "One of our other relatives like, just graduated from the poli-sci program here." Would Dwyn be into poli-sci? Conrad sure hoped so. "So she showed my niece around yesterday. I think they were going to see more of the ancient history museum today. I would go with them, but I have work unfortunately."

Dr. Duggar squinted at Conrad. "Ah, you're that pro-bono accountant. Well when is your niece coming? I have a class to teach at ten, but I'm always happy to speak with prospective students."

"She said she was planning to get to the museum as soon as it opens," Conrad said. Wow, this was so easy. "Like nine?" He gave the professor a loose description of how Luna looked and then checked his watch.

"Ah, if you're in accounting you must be with Lisa. She's a real stickler isn't she? Always coming after me for how I report my research hours. I have more important things to think about than exactly which project I should charge my time to."

"Oh, yeah," Conrad agreed. "I'e totally been there. But hey. At least she's taking stuff seriously, right? And if you don't do that time card right, the donors get antsy about what their money is going to. I do kinda have to leave though. Thanks so much for, you know, talking with my niece and stuff bro."

The professor flushed. "Hah. Don't think I've really ever been referred to as a 'bro' before. Yes, I'll keep an eye out for her."

"It was nice to meet you!"

"You as well."

Conrad waved and sprinted away, his long legs carrying him up the administrative building stairs two steps at a time. He blew past Sandra at the front desk and dropped into his office seat a minute before eight.

Lisa glared at him. "Cutting it close, Selingren."

"Haha, but I made it, right?" Conrad tugged at his tie and shot her a smile. He felt good. Today was going to be great, and Lisa could not scare him.

He pumped his fist. Man, he was such a good teammate. Hopefully the girls would be able to play along.

\/Dwyn Souza\/

Dwyn woke to the sound of lies.

"Lalala, lies!"

She groaned slightly and pushed her pillow down over her ears for a few seconds, before pulling it off and slowly getting out of bed to begin composing herself. She put on a blank face, then a smile. She wasn't going to let her stupid family ruin this whole thing for her.

And with that decided, she walked purposely to the other room, where the disposable phone was currently ringing. She flipped it open unceremoniously. "Derek," she acknowledged, walking back into the other room to gather things for the day.

"No teasing remarks? You feeling alright?" he asked jokingly.

"I'm doing great!" Dwyn forced enthusiasm into her voice, trying to will it into existence. "I actually meant to call you last night! We need IDs to get into the University of Chicago History Museum, but they need to be linked up with current IDs in the system so it looks like current employees used them."

There was silence for a while. "That's a high request," Derek said, and she could practically hear his eyebrows raising.

"I think highly of you," Dwyn said sickly-sweet, sarcasm creeping into the edges of her voice.

"Sure you do. You do realize I have other things to do besides help you out, right? I already got you the gig. I was just calling to ask how it was doing, not take your order."

"The gig would go great if you could get us three faculty IDs before tonight." Dwyn riffled through her drawers looking for what persona to put on.

"Before tonight?" He repeated incredulously.

"Oh, and can you look into Philip Fields? I want to see who bought the ID on the black market."

"You realize there are probably hundreds of Philip Fields, right?"

"I believe in you!" She said cheerfully, moving into the other room, now fully dressed.

"Have you got anything besides the name?"

"I've got the fake ID card."

Derek was silent, then sighed. "You're lucky you're my favorite."

"I know I am," she agreed. "Just meet me outside the museum at, oh, I don't know, 9?"

"Like 9am?" Derek repeated. "Dwyn, that's in like, twenty minutes. I can't get you fake IDs in twenty minutes."

"Pm then," Dwyn shrugged. "9pm."

"Fine. But you know this means you owe me."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll take you out to lunch sometime. Just not today:" Then, something hit her. "Wait, did you say twenty minutes till 9am?"

"Well now it's more like eighteen."

"Alright, I gotta go," Dwyn said, snatching her keys and purse and bolting out the door.

"See you at 9," Derek said.

"Yep!" Dwyn hung up the phone and locked the door behind her, flying down the stairs. When she finally got to the museum, she had one minute to spare.

Luna awoke to the sound of her alarm blaring. She'd specifically chosen her "I really need to get up on time" alarm which was a sound that was enough to make anyone want to cut off their own ears. To avoid the feeling of needing to do exactly that, she forced herself to sit up, grabbing her phone from the nightstand and turning it off. She blinked a few times, trying to get herself to full alertness.

On the best of days it took Luna at least an hour to become fully functional after waking up so she'd made the alarm as early as possible to give her brain long enough to kick into gear and have time to go over their somewhat hasty plans that had been abruptly cut off before she returned to the meeting. It would not do to go in unprepared.

Knowing that walking around like a zombie for one hour was probably not an option even if she had gotten up with plenty of time to spare, Luna decided she was going to have to bring in the heavy artillery. She needed to find coffee...preferably more than one cup, potentially with chocolate although that was unlikely to be there in the free sets hotels offered.

With that in mind, Luna dragged herself off bed, resisting the temptation to promptly sink down onto the soft carpeted floor. Tucking the loose strands of her fair away from her eyes, she proceeded mechanically towards the kettle that was inside the hotel.

It took her a few tries to find the correct direction to amble in, after accidentally bumping into both the door of the toiler and the closet but finally she managed to find what she was looking for. She set about making a coffee.

By some small miracle she managed to not burn herself as she made herself an extra strong coffee, dumping three packets of the mix in their. She didn't have to taste it to know that it was gong to taste nothing like the coffee she usually liked to drink, but she had needed to jolt herself awake and this would get the job done.

With that in mind, she let it cool down for a minute before screwing up all her courage and gulping the concoction down. To her surprise it didn't taste nearly as bad as she thought it would. At least that's what she thought until the aftertaste came through. She was going to need a major palette cleanser before she even looked at breakfast.

WIth that thought in mind, Luna rubbed her eyes once again. The coffee was quickly kicking in and the sleep at the edges of her vision was slowly starting to fade away. Things were coming into focus and her brain was kickstarting.

WIth that she quickly set about getting ready for the today, trying to be as quick as possible. She even went with a cold shower, just to add onto the effect of the coffee. If nothing else she was going to end up shivering too much to fall asleep.

Once Luna was finally ready, she checked the time. There was roughly two hours for her to look through some notes for the plans, come up with a few thoughts, grab some breakfast and start heading back. It was going to be another daring train ride but at least with things in the light of day, it should be ever so slightly less scary and now that she'd done it once, she at least had the faintest idea of what she was supposed to be doing stored in memory.

Once she was done having a mini panic attack over what she was going to have to do to get back to the museum she chose to internalize that until later so that she could spend some timing poring over everything without that hanging over her head like an axe. Turning on her laptop, she pulled up the files that they'd used to come up with their basic plan.

They didn't have too much to go on, and with how they'd been interrupted, their plans were definitely far from finished, they'd only realyl thrown a few idea back and forth to each other and sort of agreed, or at least if they had agreed, Luna couldn't really tell. All she knew with some relative certainty was that they were going to be meeting today at 9 to look into the museum more.

She pulled up the few notes she'd taken down on the few specifics they had sort of discussed. Dwyn had mentioned something about getting them student ID"s and that whole bit in general seemed to be the most concrete where their main plan for getting in to the places they didn't belong would be those. Even if those ID cards weren't fully capable of taking them all the Luna wasn't too worried about the locks. She knew she could handle those. She'd opened locks like that before. Granted the ones she had access to were maybe not as strong, but the principle with those locks didn't differ too much and she believed in herself at least on that side of things. In fact, even though she would never admit this aloud in front of the team she kind of hoped the ID cards wouldn't work for a couple of locks, just so that she could feel like she had some sort of purpose.

That situation aside, what they hadn't really come to a conclusion on was the security camera situation. They had briefly dallied with the idea of just blending in at least for their little plan of casing out the place.but she couldn't fully decide if that exchange had been joking or serious and they'd had to leave a bit too soon for her to clarify that properly.

At least she knew that today when they met up, it was definitely going to be for just looking around the place, there was no way that 9 am was the time they were going to conduct the actual heist. That much at least she knew. She did remember Conrad mention something about a possible tour, but she didn't know if she was just imaging that memory or not. She could probably suggest that in an ambiguous tone so if they had seriously decided on it, she could just go with it, if they hadn't decided on it, it was at least a somewhat solid idea.

She continued down this vein of thought, doodling a few things in her notebook as she imagined a few pseudo scenarios for them. It was all probably way too inspired by MIssion Impossible and not even close to the way this heist would actually go down, but then this part of her notes no one was going to see but herself, at least she hoped it would be that way. With Dwyn, she couldn't be too sure.

\/ Conrad Selingren \/

Conrad's boss called at eight thirty. His phone buzzed on his desk, and Lisa shot him a glare over the cubicle wall that might kill a smaller man before pointedly tucking her earbuds in and furiously typing into an excel spreadsheet. Conrad could just hear the faint, tinny sound of metal music playing directly into her ears.

He picked up the phone and stood from his desk. Where would be a good spot to take this call? The administrative building's interior was too old to have phone booths like his usual office. Maybe he could just take up an entire conference room. Or go outside.

He settled on the hallway leading to the bathrooms.

"Selingren," his boss said, when Conrad finally slid the little accept call button over on his phone screen. "Are you almost done?"

"Um. You have me loaned out to the University all week. It's Tuesday."

"I have you loaned out for forty hours," his boss corrected. "You can work that in fewer days, I'm sure."

Well, yes. Conrad could do that. He'd worked over seventy hours in a week once, when a coworker had quit right at the end of tax season. He didn't like it though. People weren't meant to sit around looking at computers for that long. Conrad in particular wasn't meant to have to use his brain for that long.

"I guess?" he replied, not wanting to disappoint his boss. "But I mean, forty hours or not, I'd like to be as helpful to the UC as I can, you know? It's a university."

Conrad's boss groaned. "I'm not talking about the university and their stupid taxes, Selingren. When are you going to be done with your other assignment?"

Ohh. Conrad should have known his boss would be more interested in that. He was always more interested in the juicy stuff. Leaning against the wall, Conrad thought for a moment. He'd set the girls up for their stuff pretty well. If no one managed to get their target during the tour, they'd for sure get it tonight.

"I think we'll be done tomorrow," Conrad offered. It was always better to have some wiggle room. If everything went according to plan, they'd be done tonight. If things went really well, they'd be done before lunch.

His boss grumbled, the sound sad and far less scary on the phone than it was in person, and then cleared his throat with a growl of a cough. "Well. I suppose that's probably the best you can do. Hopefully you're not holding your teammates back."

Ah. Classic boss talk. Conrad sighed and folded in on himself. He felt too big suddenly for the skinny hallway and too small under the open, mechanical ceiling. "I don't know. I think I'm being pretty helpful. And I haven't even needed to throw gloves."

"If you wind up in a situation where you have to"-

"I know. I know," Conrad interrupted, before his boss could say anything more. "But it's going to be fine."

There was a long moment of silence. A toilet flush echoed from inside the bathrooms.

"It had better be fine," Conrad's boss said. "I've been trying to get into this client's good graces for years. I'm not about to let you ruin it for me."

Trickle-down economics implied that if Conrad's boss benefitted from this, Conrad would as well. And, well, they were kind of a team, even if the boss didn't really seem to do much except write the playbook and set up the jobs. Maybe if Conrad did better they really would be teammates.

"Yeah," he replied. "I get it. It's like winning over a really good goalie or snapping up a new billionaire's portfolio management. But there's really nothing to worry about."

The sink in the men's room turned on, and Conrad glanced at his watch. "Listen. I do have to get back to the books? Like that is what I'm supposed to be doing and it'll be weird if I'm not doing that? Like, what kind of volunteer accountant just goofs off the whole day?"

"Yes, yes, I see your point." It seemed like Conrad's boss might leave it there, but then he spoke again. "Just- how do I say this? Don't mess it up Selingren. You don't want to be on this client's bad side. They can do things that you can't even understand."

This was not much of a threat. There were many things Conrad didn't understand, like chemistry and biology and the psychology of children. "Yeah, yeah man. It'll all be fine."

Just because Conrad didn't understand something didn't mean it was going to be that bad.

\/Dwyn Souza\/

Dwyn stood in front of the museum with her hands in her pockets, a large leather jacket on and unzipped, purse pulled up on her shoulder. This time, she'd gone heavy on the eye makeup, no clip-on bangs, and a large pair of cat-eye frames without the lenses in them. She wore jeans that had rips in them, and messed around idly with a piece of bubble gum in her mouth. The entire outfit was far from how she would usually dress-- then again, she didn't usually go into the place she was going to rob two days in a row, so she'd put a bit more effort in changing up the style so she wasn't recognizable.

She hadn't spotted Conrad yet, and though she could see Luna approaching her hurriedly, Dwyn was making it a point not to stare at her or call attention to either of them.

"Hey," Luna said a bit breathlessly. She had a flush of color in her cheeks, like she'd been running. "Wow, you look, uh, pretty. Very different."

Dwyn glanced at her then made a point to let a huge smile spread across her face. "O-M-G, I haven't seen you in forever!" She said loudly, then pulled Luna into a hug, who stayed still with shock through most of it. "My god, girl, let me look at you!" She popped the piece of gum loudly as she held Luna out at an arm's length.

A few people glanced their way, but none seemed super interested in the conversation, and most continued walking by without looking at all. Luna flashed a nervous smile like she'd picked up on the game and wasn't particularly happy about it. "Yes, it is what we're looking for, it is what we're here for!" Dwyn said, praising Luna's looks. "Wait a minute, you need to see this."

Dwyn pulled out a disposable phone from her purse-- one of the ones she was supposed to give to Luna and Conrad last night and had gotten distracted from-- and flipped it open. "Obviously, since your parents are being so strict, I had to get it for you. And obviously, my number is already in there, but if you've got a special guy or whatever and you need to put his number in..."

Luna watched Dwyn, then said, "Oh. Oh! Yeah, yes." She took the flip phone from Dwyn's hands and pulled out a card from her pocket. A business card? Dwyn blinked for a few seconds. Conrad had given out his actual business card? What was he thinking? She rolled her eyes and popped her gum, pulling herself back into the moment. She glanced at her own disposable phone, annoyed to see it was a little after nine. Where was he?

"Maybe you should call to make sure the number is right," Dwyn said nonchalantly.

"Okay," Luna said. A second later, Dwyn's phone started buzzing. She glanced down, then flipped it open and turned away like she was taking an important call.

"Not my number," she said, trying her best to reign in her amusement.

"Oh!" She heard Luna say behind her, then the phone beeped as the line disconnected. She turned back around to see Luna's cheeks a bright red as she pressed on Conrad's number. It dialed for a few tones, then Dwyn heard the click as he picked up.

"Yeah, hey," Luna said quietly into the phone. "Umm... where are you?"

She listened for several seconds and Dwyn pulled out a compact, looking into it like she was checking her makeup but instead making note of how many security guards she could see in various places around the building.

"Wait, what?" Luna asked. "A man with--" Luna looked around them. "In a tweed suit and--" she paused, her eyes landing on someone walking towards the building. She giggled. "He does look a bit like an owl."

Dwyn watched Luna out of the corner of her eye and closed the compact, sticking it into the purse.

"So he's going to-- okay, oh wait, he-- gotta go. Yep, bye," Luna said hurriedly, hanging up the phone as the man in question began to go past them up the stairs. Luna ran in front of him, smiling nervously.

"Sorry, excuse me, but, you must be, uh..." Luna's voice faltered.

"Ah, Dr. Duggar!" The man said, pushing his glasses up his nose and holding a hand out to shake Luna's. His eyes were wide and looking at everything, as if he'd constantly just been startled out of reading a book and wasn't quite back in sync with the world yet. "Pleasure to meet you, I presume you're the niece! I beg your pardon, I'm not sure the accountant mentioned your name!"

"Oh, yes, I'm the niece," Luna smiled awkwardly, "Luna. "Sorry for bothering you, I just--"

"No, no, not at all! I'm told you're interested in archeology, wonderful! Always so nice to see a young mind engaging in the field!" He turned towards Dwyn. "And you're the--"

"Cousin," Dwyn put in.

"Cousin!" He repeated enthusiastically. "The recent graduate who majored in political science! I'm a history man myself, but it is such a fascinating subject!"

Dwyn nodded, smiling like she wasn't dressed the exact opposite of what she'd ever imagine a political science major to wear. "Yes, it is! All the politics and the science of it all." She gave a hearty and confident smile to make up for her complete lack of knowledge about political science.

He glanced at her sideways out of his big glasses, giving a strained smile. "Yes, yes, it is I suppose. Now, uh... Luna, you said? I hear you're interested in coming here! Now I don't have much time unfortunately-- class at ten!-- so I thought I'd skip the general introductions to the department and take you to see some of my research, and then when I have to leave, you can continue your tour of the general campus with your cousin. That way, if you book a tour, you can see all the general information I've skipped over, and you can make the most of your visit here today. Does that sound alright with you?"

"Yes, that does," Luna said, shooting Dwyn a relieved smile. "Thank you so much."

"Yes, yes, of course," he said, beginning to move up the stairs again towards the museum. Both of them followed. "And what sort of archeology are you interested in? Ancient history, your uncle mentioned! Any particular era?"

"Oh, I'm not sure," Luna said after a pause. "I'm really interested in... whatever I can learn!"

"The whole subject in general then!" He said, clapping his hands together. "Marvelous!" They walked through security without even having to go through any of the scanners, right past the front desk and towards an employees-only door.

"Now, unfortunately, some of the main artifacts we're studying currently from the personal collection of Richard Dedd are extremely fragile and sensitive to light, so I can't show you them. I can show you some of the pieces that are currently being studied to add to more of our research though!"

Dwyn and Luna made eye contact

He opened the metal door with his employee card, and it pinged open to reveal a staircase. They followed him down it. "Fascinating thing, history. Never know what you're going to find there!" He said cheerfully.

"Yeah," Dwyn agreed, "like, there's armor and weapons and pottery that tell you about old civilizations, and then there's tablets with writing that actually tell you about the civilizations."

The grainy picture Red Shirt-- a.k.a. Philip Fields, a.k.a. not Philip Fields-- had shown them surfaced in her mind. He'd said he was going to send it to them and never had. It had been hard enough to make out what it was at the time, and now that it was only a memory, it was even harder.

Luna looked at Dwyn, then hesitantly added, "Yeah! Like in ancient languages and stuff. Pretty interesting how even an old tablet with some writing on it can be so valuable."

Dr. Duggar paused for a moment in his walking, blinking awkwardly behind his huge glasses. He glanced at them, then said meekly after a second, "well, yes. Yes, quite, uh... interesting, as you say." His gaze lingered on Luna with a preoccupied vague look like he felt something was off but couldn't quite place it, then shook it away as he turned to swipe his card at another entrance and open a door.

"Well here we are! Not as much time as you'd have hoped, I'm afraid, but still enough time for me to talk about anything you're interested in! Courses, specific artifacts, how we find out information from them..." He trailed off as they followed him into the room. Dwyn's eyes swept the room, looking for anything that might match the horribly pixelated picture.

"So what determines whether an artifact is in here or out on display?" Luna asked.

"Generally speaking, it depends on what we think people might be interested in seeing, as well as what we have to gain from studying some of these items! Most of the items on display are things our teams of students and professors have already studied and approved to be on display, while things back here are taking a bit more time to look into." He said, pushing his glasses back up his nose, then gesturing to a small piece of broken pottery.

"Like this! You see, it seems like it might be a regular piece of pottery, besides the rather faded images on the sides. But, when we ran carbon testing on it, it turns out to be over three thousand years old!" He said excitedly. "This was made by hand by someone who lived around one thousand B.C.E., and they took the time to carve the images onto it! And now, their entire being, their very existence, is captured in this little sliver of their pottery that managed to survive! How miraculous is that? Three thousand years later, and there is still evidence of their individual life!"

Luna seemed to be genuinely interested in the information. "That is really cool. Doing something to be remembered like that."

"Yes, yes, exactly!" Dr. Duggar exclaimed, pointing a finger at her. For the first time in their interaction, he seemed to be coming truly alive. "And it's not even from something spectacular! This person was not a king or queen! They were not a conquerer, or some famed person of their day, or if they were, we have no way to know it! They are remembered by the smallest of things-- a tiny piece of a dish they made-- and through this simple, everyday action, they have made history!" He seemed to be soaring with excitement. "Truly fascinating, is it not?"

"That's incredible," Dwyn smiled, going along with him.

"Yes! Because in this way, everything is linked through history! The political structures of our day will some day be studied in history classes somewhere-- if they even exist! Humanity is constantly evolving! And yet the simplest things like clay, they seem to stick with us! Oh, I could talk for hours on the subject," he sighed wistfully, then glanced at his watch and sighed in disappointment. "Unfortunately, my class is in another building, and I've got to get going to make it on time."

"Oh, that's too bad," Luna said disappointedly.

"Unfortunate," he agreed. "However, I do hope to see you in our program one of these days, Luna! I believe you'd have a lot to offer! And that way, you could get involved with some of our behind the scenes research like this! In fact, let me see... why don't you stop by again sometime next week if you're in Chicago, hmm? I'll schedule a time to give you a real tour of the place-- maybe even see a few of the back rooms!"

Luna smiled hesitantly. "That sounds really great, I'd love to!"

"Wonderful, wonderful. Here you are, let me write down my email address for you..." he pulled a pen and paper from his jacket pocket. "There we are! Feel free to email any time you like. I truly enjoyed this conversation with you, and I hope to see ou in some of my classes in the very near future!" He handed the paper to Luna, then began to usher them out the door. "Now I've got to check one more thing before I leave, but the exit is just down this hall, to the right, and up the stairs! It was wonderful to talk with you!" He nodded with a smile, then headed down the hallway in the other direction. Luna watched him with a sort of dazed look on her face, then turned to go towards the stairs.

"What are you doing?" Dwyn whispered.

"What do you mean? He said the stairs were that way," Luna said.

"You said you're good with locks, right?" Dwyn asked.

"Yeah. Why?"

"Good," Dwyn smiled. "Because we're not leaving until we take a look at one of those back rooms he was talking about."

Luna was currently running a lot faster than was probably advised in a place like this if she wanted to avoid falling flat on her face but she had no choice at the moment. She'd somehow managed to get herself entirely too engrossed in making plans that she'd just about barely made it to the University with time to spare.

As she got closer to the area they were supposed to be meeting up at, she slowed herself down to more of a fast walk, knowing that she was probably going to get some kind of comment from Dwyn about forgetting the meeting time if she ran all the way like she'd lost track of time. Well she had lost track of time, but that was completely besides the point.

Luckily her planned seemed to have somewhat worked, or at least that's what she told herself. The enthusiastic greeting that Dwyn gave here was very clearly for the benefit of everyone around them and mentioning her being late would not have fit in with that particular act.

Luna tried to take all of that in stride. It wasn't that she was exactly bad at acting, but she liked to have a tiny bit of a warning first, not to mention having to talk with yet another stranger was making things difficult. Despite that however, Luna managed to muster up enough courage to do what she hoped was a reasonable job at fitting in with whatever story Conrad had managed to work up. She couldn't even blame him for the very short notice on that. It wasn't like he had a way to contact either of them since they'd forgotten to take those phones they were supposed to be using.

The professor seemed to be at least partially convinced that their story was true and some of the thing he mentioned did honestly seem interesting enough that Luna didn't have to completely fake her enthusiasm. At any rate the fact that the professor was taking them to a few places that would definitely help them with their eventual heist was giving her more than enough excitement to draw from.

She made sure to keep a sharp eye on where they were going, trying to remember the general direction they had walked in and doors they had passed. The key card systems they were passing were ones she recognized from a bit of research she'd one earlier today. It was a little more complicated to get into than anything she'd tried before, but the principle for getting in seemed to be the same and she was about 95% sure she'd have no trouble breaking through if they had to.

As the tried to keep all this in mind and not zone out in front of the professor, their little tour seemed to come to an end as the man realized he had to be getting to his class. Luna didn't' know whether she should be relieved or disappointed. They had definitely got quite a bit of information that would prove invaluable but she felt like there were so many more questions to ask.

At any rate, she knew there'd be a ton of things she could know add to her set of notes. Before she could do that however, it seemed Dwyn had other plans for how their tour here was going to end.

She barely managed to restrain her squeal of excitement when Dwyn suggested they could explore a back room.They would finally be doing something genuinely heist related, well they had done plenty of heist related things when it came to planning, but that was nothing compared to going somewhere you weren't supposed to. If that wasn't enough, they were finally going to do something where she knew what she was doing.

Having supressed her squeal, Luna returned Dwyn's smile. She had no idea how the woman was so good at sounding epic when the situation demanded it while being very realistic about heists 99% of the time but she was not complaining.

"That sounds like a plan."

Before they could do anything though, another thought came to Luna's mind.

"Do we have any idea what sort of back room to look at. The way he talked about them, there's clearly going to be more than one and do we just keep looking till we find the right one or did you notice something I didn't and you know which one to look into," began Luna, before realizing she was currently word vomiting and slowing down and adding sheepishly. "Sorry for the rambling, I'm just wondering."

"Well we're not gonna steal it right now anyway, so even if we don't find it, we're narrowing the list of rooms it could be in," Dwyn shrugged.

"Okay, I guess looking through a few can't hurt then. Knowing where this thing isn't going to be is still just as useful as knowing where it is I suppose," said Luna, nodding.

They stood there for a second. Luna not quite sure if she was supposed to move first given the whole lock side of the equation or if Dwyn was going to lead. Luckily she didn't have to stand there looking like a fool for too long as Dwyn immediately took off, looking almost like she knew the way. Given how observant Luna had noticed Dwyn was it wouldn't surprise her if she did in fact know the way. The professor had pointed out the general direction of the back rooms after all.

As she followed Dwyn through the hallways Luna tried to resist the urge to tiptoe. It felt very wrong to be just casually walking towards a location they weren't supposed to enter but judging by the way Dwyn was walking Luna could infer it was the way to go. Pretending to belong was probably far wiser than acting in any way that could be suspicious. There was a good chance someone could come in and spot them after all.

Luna's eyes widened as that realization spread through. She actually hadn't thought about that. What if someone did in fact come and spot them? Did that mean they'd lose the game? She really wished that Red Shirt would've given them like a list of rules. Heists were cool, but she didn't want to end up accidentally being arrested or something.

She almost opened her mouth to ask about that from Dwyn. Maybe she was better informed about this sort of thing and actually knew it. Maybe Sadie just hadn't been given all the detail because of the whole it being passed around a few people thing. The sound died in her throat however as she realized that was going to end up making her seem even more useless if Dwyn did know more. She'd just follow Dwyn for now. She didn't seem to be freaking out over anything so she probably knew what she could and couldn't do.

It wasn't long before Dwyn came to a holt in front of a large wooden door. It didn't have a label on it, the holder for where one would be slid in empty but Dwyn gestured to it triumphantly.

"This definitely has something valuable behind it," she said casually.

"Wow, you're very good at this," said Luna, eyes widening at how easily Dwyn had managed to figure out this was where they needed to start from the half clues the professor had unwittingly given them.

"No name on the door always means big money behind it," Dwyn grinned. "After you."

Luna gulped as she turned to face the door. "Yup, Gimme about five minutes. These are keycard locks so they are kind of simple but at the same time it can also go horribly wrong. Hopefully that doesn't happen."

"Even if it does we'll just say we took a wrong turn looking for the bathroom. I'll have the keycards ready by tonight."

Luna turned to study the lock. The door itself didn't show any sign of having a lock, just a handle that seemed like it should open pretty smoothly. In line with the handle on the wall though was a small black scanner with a dark greyish circle which was clearly the indicator that let people know if their card was correct or not. The scanner itself seemed like a smooth flat piece of glass on metal, no visible screws or seams. It wasn't exactly the sort of model Luna was expecting but it looked like a very solid lock nonetheless. She had cracked similar before though, so hoping her hands weren't shaking too much, she channelled some confidence, thinking about how this would let her finally prove herself useful and put a hand on the scanner, starting to whisper to Dwyn to keep her mind from letting the nervousness take control.

"Its a pretty interesting lock to tackle," she began, almost talking about the brand before deciding that might be too boring for Dwyn to listen to," you don't have to actually do that much, you just kind of need to make sure you hit the right pixels on this scanner screen there and get it to send the right signal and something along those lines. I don't want to get too technical on you."

Luna stammered out the last part as she slid a hand over the smooth surface of the scanner. The usual tingle of her mind imaging the lock's inner components flooded through her, soothing her nervousness as she felt herself fall into a more comfortable sense of familiarity.

It didn't take long for her to feel the points she needed to be putting pressure on, twisting her fingers in a pattern that probably looked quite wild to Dwyn and she shook her hand around. A few seconds later, like it always did with most locks there was a pleasant beep as everything aligned and green flashed on the indicator, the click of the lock as it unlocked piercing the air.

Luna fist pumped the air about to let out a woo before she quickly clamped a hand over her mouth and looked to Dwyn sheepishly.

"I am so sorry, I'm not used to having to do this discreetly," she muttered, before slowing opened the door. "After you?" She bowed a bit too dramatically if she said so herself but she didn't care. She was far too pumped up from actually doing something for a change.

Dwyn watched Luna, like she wanted to say something, then stopped herself and tilted her head.

Dwyn stepped into the room, the lights inside it coming on automatically as the two of them stepped in. That was a good sign. That meant they weren't going to burst in on someone that was working there and then get chased off but they could spend a few minutes looking around.

Luna stayed near the entrance of the room trying to take it in and looking around for any surprises they might have to watch out for when it would be time for the heist. If the way their plans were currently going were any indication it was probably going to be happening pretty soon considering how successful even this little mission was currently proving to be.

Speaking of success Luna watched as Dwyn seemed to take an interest in a couple of pieces towards the back of the room. She didn't know why exactly but she didn't ask, choosing to stay quietly and observe. The room was much smaller than she thought it was going to be and it seemed like it would be quite echoey if she tried to speak. Unless something important was going down, Luna decided keeping her mouth shut and looking around was the most helpful she could be at the moment.

There were certainly more than enough interesting things flying around for her to notice. It looked a bit similar to what she'd already seen when the professor pointed things out but the equipment scattered about and the state of some of the artefacts in the room made it clear why this was a back room separate from the things outside which was already technically a sort of back room for the artefacts that were not on display.

Luna took care to try and remember the dimensions of the room. There was no telling if they'd be able to spare enough time to get into another back room or two, but she assumed most of them had to be around the same size if they weren't identical, so doing her best to make some rough estimates based on her stride she tried to get a feel for how they might have to go about nicking something from one of these. There was no telling if this artefact was actually in one of those or what could possibly be guarding. For all she knew it could be behind some crazy safe Luna would have to crack (if Luna secretly wished that was how it went down knowing Dwyn would get ID's for the rest of the looks that was her business) or it could just be out on the opening maybe even with a helpful label to let them know it was the correct thing.

After a few more moments of Luna almost absent mindedly looking around Dwyn arrived at the door. Whatever she'd been looking for she seemed to have gotten because she nodded towards the exit.

"Do we go to another room or have we spent too long here already?" asked Luna, trying to keep the nervousness out of her voice as her brain decided to send all her earlier thoughts about getting caught through her mind on replay.

"We won't do it without Radical here, but we might as well look at another."

"Okay...I umm...I guess you know the way," said Luna, flushing slightly. After a pause, she asked, "Radical?"

"Yeah, we can't leave him out of the fun. Wouldn't be fair for him to get all that money if he didn't have to do any of the work, not would it?"

On that note, Luna turned to follow Dwyn again as they headed towards another backroom. Luna supposed one more certainly couldn't hurt and judging by the twinkle in Dwyn's eye, it seemed like the woman was onto something somehow.

The next back room went pretty smoothly. Now that Luna knew she could crack these locks she was much less nervous and this one took barely a prod before it clicked open, her fingers wiggling into the pattern she remembered as having worked on the previous lock. This time she even managed to stop herself from first pumping although she did do an quiet little twirl once Dwyn was inside the room and not looking at her. She couldn't believe how easy these locks were proving to be and the sheer excitement of doing it in secret made it so much more fun than she thought it would be. And they weren't even at the proper heist yet. Luna couldn't wait to get to a place where she could safely do a celebratory dance and get this excitement an outlet of some sort before she spontaneously combusted.

It took a lot less time in that room compared to the other one, or at least it felt that way to Luna. It wasn't like she had timed it although. A glance at her watch only told her how long they'd spent inside the building since they'd first met up. It had been a surprisingly long time now. She was starting to get a tiny bit concerned now. They should probably be getting out. Still, she didn't voice her concerns and lucky they were soon heading outside, the door clicking shut behind them as it locked on it its own.

"So...are we...?" began Luna, trailing off, letting the question hang in the air as she saw Dwyn deep in thought about something.

Dwyn seemed to have heard her however, as she replied. "And thus completes our tour! So little cuz, what'd you think?" She grinned at herself and it was clear she wasn't looking for an answer, so Luna didn't say anything.

On that note the two of them made their way to the exit that the professor had pointed out probably about half an hour ago if Luna had to guess. Luckily for them, nothing appeared to block their way and they were out of the place and into the much safer public side of the museum before long. Luna let out a breath she hadn't even realized she'd been holding. Their little tour was done now. And now that they were outside, well, not outside enough that Luna could break into a celebratory jig but still safe enough to let her mind wander through the amount of information they'd managed to gather. It seemed like once Dwyn gathered those ID's she mentioned, they pretty much just had to confirm exactly what they were after using the photos that would hopefully arrive soon and then conduct the actual heist.

With this running through her mind, they made it out of the museum and outside to where they'd met up in the morning.

"So..." began Luna, trailing off once again, not quite knowing where they were going to be going from there.

\/ Conrad Selingren \/

Dwyn, apparently, had a super secret meeting at nine, which meant Conrad, for better or for worse, had babysitting duty. Not that Luna needed babysitting. It was just easier to generalize all time Conrad spent with Young People as babysitting.

Also tonight was Tuesday, and if he didn't need to be anywhere until after nine, he could go play hockey.

He took her to a restaurant in Chinatown after work, one of those places where the menu was in Cantonese and the owners only spoke Cantonese, and Conrad had to order by pointing at numbers on a menu that he barely remembered from the times his coworker and liney, Thomas Zhang, had made the team eat here. But hey, Conrad had never eaten anything bad here. So while number 23 had been tofu and not pork like he thought, it was still tasty.

"So," he said around a mouthful of rice and chicken and... something green. "How was your tour? Did you like Doctor Duggar?"

Luna blinked at him and fumbled a pea pod with her chopsticks. "Uh. He was really nice actually." She managed eventually to stuff some vegetables in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully before continuing. "The more I talked to him, the more I felt like archeology was actually really interesting."

"Oh that's good," Conrad said through a bite of noodles. "Did you see anything cool?"

"Yeah. Yeah. But uhh, I wasn't sure if I saw what we were looking for exactly? Wasn't Red supposed to send us a picture?"

Conrad looked up. "Oh. I guess he was. I think my boss can get in touch. Want me to ask?"

"Um." Luna avoided answering by nabbing a piece of chicken with her chopsticks.

"I'll just ask." Because he was a hockey player and obviously had the dexterity to handle chopsticks while multitasking (a false statement), he slurped up a string of noodles and tapped out a text to his boss. It would take a few minutes to get a response, so he tried his best to keep the conversation going. "Well since it seems like our stuff at the university is mostly over, you got any tourist things you want to see before you go home? I have a whole list of stuff for when my old junior league buddies come around."

Luna studied Conrad for a moment, her eyes peeking just over the rim of her tiny cup of tea. Conrad always liked Chinese restaurants that had free tea.

"I guess it might be fun?" she said eventually. Then, in an incredible segue, she asked, "What sport do you play? I mean, you throw all this, like, sporty terminology around all the time, and I was starting to wonder..."

Conrad grinned. "Oh my god, kiddo. Bro."

"Uh, what?"

"Luna, my man. You are in for a treat. You ever seen a hockey game?"

\/Dwyn Souza\/

"Alright!" Dwyn said brightly, "Well, that was great. We don't know where it is, but we know it's definitely not in one of those back rooms, so now we won't have to waste time searching them."

Luna blinked, startled. "It's not in one of them?"

"Definitely not," Dwyn said. "Those rooms were full of things to be studied, but none of it was anything that would sell for a high price on the black market. They're keeping their more expensive things under tighter security somewhere else in the building."

"When did you figure that out?"

"After glancing in the first room," Dwyn said, walking quickly down the front steps of the building and onto the sidewalk next to the street.

"If you knew after the first room, then why did we go in the second one?"

Dwyn thought back to how quickly Luna had opened the door, how she'd barely touched the keypad the second time. There was no way she was hacking into those things that quickly-- something else was at play. And Dwyn wanted to figure out what it was. Instead of saying that though, she shrugged. "For fun."

Luna just paused and seemed to process that. "For fun..." she said slowly, then shook her head, like she was shaking herself out of her thoughts. "So what exactly are we gonna do now?"

"Well, I am going to gather everything I need for tonight and meet with a contact about the IDs and Philip Fields."

Luna looked a bit nervous. "Just you?"

"Yeah, just me. No offense, but people don't usually give out their full names in the business. They don't even give out their first ones if they don't have to. Showing my contact's face to two complete strangers without even giving a warning or checking first would be an extreme violation of the code."

Luna stared at her, eyes widening a bit. "The code?"

Dwyn smiled, amused. "It's not a book we all read or something. Just kind of unspoken rules. No real names, no real phone numbers or contacts, no revealing other people's personal information, no ratting each other out. The basic stuff."

Out of all the ones she listed, Dwyn realized that the only one Conrad or Luna hadn't broken yet was ratting each other out, and that was the one rule most people usually broke first in the business. It was usually a "every person for themselves" type of business.

"So," Dwyn continued, "that means you are going to find Conrad and update him on everything and meet back in front of the building at..." she paused, contemplating. "9:20," she decided. "Then we'll talk through anything we need to talk through, make sure we're all on the same page, and start."

She could see Luna was giddy with excitement, even as she tried to hide it. Dwyn felt it too, just in a different way. She wasn't new to this, and she wasn't nervous-- but the thrill of the whole experience was exhilerating. Knowing that you were doing something you weren't supposed to and getting away with it so easily was electrifying.

"Oh, and when you find Conrad, give him this," Dwyn said, handing her one of the other disposable phones. "Our two numbers are already put into it, and he shouldn't need to add any other numbers. Also, make sure that he doesn't call you with his real phone to your disposable again, and delete the call history after you've contacted him about meeting tonight. We want to leave as little trace as possible."

Luna took all the directions silently, just nodding occasionally and watching Dwyn. Finally, she said, "so do we need to bring anything for tonight?"

"Wear something different than your usual style," Dwyn said. "Something that'll go unnoticed. And see if Conrad has one of those pocket knife things that has a screwdriver and all of that stuff in it."

Luna nodded, and Dwyn vaguely wondered if she was going to forget every direction Dwyn gave her a moment after hearing it, but she pushed the thought away. She was beginning to feel the rush of the job, the adrenaline spike that would come, the feeling of "I told you so!" when she deposited the money into different accounts to send to her siblings and parents.

"So you can get in touch with him and meet him somewhere, right?" Dwyn asked. She'd babysat Luna the previous day and it hadn't been bad, but Dwyn was ready to go get prepared with gathering anything she needed, and she didn't have the patience to wait a long time with Luna.

"Uh... yeah, I can do that," Luna said nervously, in a way that made it sound like she really couldn't, but Dwyn ignored it.

"Great!" She said brightly, flashing a big smile. "Well then I'll see you at 9:20."

She walked away before Luna could ask her anymore questions or get more confused, heading towards the tram.

\/ Conrad Selingren \/

"Okay," Conrad said, trying to curb his enthusiasm. One of his teammates had happened to have a daughter's hockey equipment in his minivan, so they'd outfitted Luna in all the protective gear and coaxed her out to try playing during pre-game practice and warm-ups. "You're gonna be fine, I promise. Here, try holding the stick."

Luna gave him a dubious look and carefully stretched out one arm, moving as though one wrong swing would send her toppling to the ice.

"The stick helps," Conrad reassured her. "And besides, you have pads on, and we'll set a handicap so no one checks you."

"Checks me?" Luna asked, planting her hockey stick into the ice so she could lean on it. "What is a check?"

Conrad laughed and patted her on the shoulder. "You know, like when people bump into you a bit!"

Even through the helmet, he could see Luna's face pale. "Can I get off the ice now?"

"Aww, come on. I promise you'll be just fine. Here, skate forward a little bit."

Luna could manage that, at least. She had the balance for it, and a handful of outings-with-friends sort of ice rink visits under her belt, and so with the stick held out like a guide dog leash in front of her, she set off on a shaky circle around the rink.

"Yeah!" Conrad cheered. "Good job! You've got it!"

"I have not got it," Luna muttered. "I absolutely have not got it."

"Nooo, you totally do brah." Conrad took off after her, but not before snagging a puck from the pile in the face-off circle. He caught up, then swiveled backwards and skated in front of her, puck secure on his stick. "You wanna try dangling?"

A few of the teammates hollered. Zhang whistled. The goalie tapped the ice encouragingly with his stick. Luna just gave Conrad a wide-eyed look.

"It's like dribbling but hockey," Conrad explained, before sending the puck toward Luna in a slow, gentle pass. She caught it, just barely, and he moved to skate forward again, right next to her. "Here, watch me. Just shift your torso right and left, and you'll give the puck a little bouce forward on each lean."

Luna tried it. She lost the puck a few times, but she never outright fell over, and even if she was slow, she managed. She was going to be fine. Conrad watched, feeling like maybe he'd missed his calling in coaching. He could totally teach peewees.

The team captain, Wattson (or Zaps, when the team was being cute), paused next to Conrad with a spray of ice shavings and watched with him. "Yo Radsky, your niece is looking pretty good out there."

"Right? She toured at UC today, so I'm kinda hoping she'll stick with it if she goes there."

One of the young guys, Polka, zoomed by Luna and tapped his stick at her. "Pass, pass!"

She fumbled the puck toward him, and he started toward Ginger, who was picking himself up after a save in the net.

"Polka, let my niece take a shot on goal!" Conrad shouted.

"Uggghh," Polka shouted back. He whipped around to skate backwards and sent the puck back towards Luna. "Rads you suck! Let me show her how cool I am!"

"You're too old for her!" Zhang hollered from center ice, where he'd just recieved a new puck to shoot. "Go back to flirting with the hockey moms like you always do."

Zaps tilted his head. "Is Polka too old for her?" Zaps was the one who'd lent the pads - maybe he was looking for people to play on his daughter's team.

Conrad shrugged. Luna might not have been his real niece, but it felt weird to talk about her like this. "She's close enough that it's up to her I guess. But I'm not gonna endorse any of those losers. My niece deserves the best."

Across the ice, Ginger squared up to let Luna take a shot on him. Ginger was the only guy on the team bigger than Conrad, and in his enormous goalie pads, he might as well have been a whole fortress. Nervously, Luna dangled the puck in front of him, considering her angles, and then took her shot, swinging the stick like a golf driver. Somehow, she got the puck in the air, and it sailed up, bounced off Ginger's catching glove, and fell neatly behind his skates, in the goal.

"Whoa," Ginger said, twisting awkwardly to look at the puck drifting behind his skates.

"Yeeeeaaah!" Conrad bellowed. Zhang cheered. Zaps tugged his gloves off and clapped his big ol' Dad Clap. Polka made a strangled cheering noise and checked Luna into the boards with a great, resounding thunk.

Zaps winced in sympathy and clutched his chest like a grandma clutching her pearls. "You know, I think she's probably done after that."

"You're probably right," Conrad agreed. "I'll help her off and we can squeeze in some actual practice."

Luna did not take well to being checked. She wobbled her way off the rink, sending Polka an indecipherable look that lay somewhere between terrified and unimpressed, and set about peeling all the pads off.

"Sorry about him," Conrad said, leaning over the waist-high wall between the ice and the seats. "Do you think you'll need an ice pack or anything?"

"Ugh. Maybe? It's so cold I'm not really sure yet, I guess." Luna patted her neck, trying to find the velcro on her neck guard, and then ripped that off. "At least I'll have something to talk about the next time my friends drag me out to an ice rink."

"Right on. Let me know if you need anything though okay?" And with that, Conrad backed out to center ice and rallied the team for real practice.

He didn't have a change to talk with Luna again until the break between the second and third periods, when she made her way to a seat closer to the players' bench, one of her phones in hand. She gestured vaguely, and Conrad skated to a stop next to her. "Sup kiddo?"

"Um. How much longer are we going to be here?" She held up her phone, which read 8:45. They'd cut it close after the game ended, but surely it would all work out. Traffic after eight was never too bad.

"One period left," Conrad replied, "and this rink doesn't have showers, so we can leave right after."

Luna wrinkled her nose at him. "Oh is that why your car..."

"Stinks? Yeah. Cons of playing a sport I guess. But hey, no worries kid. We'll have time."

Luna opened her mouth to ask something else, but Zaps called for Conrad's line to get in position for the face-off, so he gave her a rough pat on the head, hockey gloves and all, and shuffled back out.

Rec games like this didn't ever have much of an audience. Some of the guys had wives, girlfriends, or partners that dropped in on occasion, but not many. Luna was one of only four people supporting Conrad's team, and the twerps on the other side only had five. Playing hockey here wasn't like juniors, when people had paid money to come watch Conrad play and occasionally drop his gloves to punch a guy. The hollering of the handful of cheerleaders in the rink almost immediately dissipated into the wide, open space, leaving only the cut of blades on ice and of the puck slamming into sticks and boards and padding. Conrad wasn't sure which one he liked better - even without the crowd, he found himself riding a wave of endorphins that carried him all the way to the end of the game, through the changing room, and back out to the parking lot.

He and Luna helped Zaps load his daughter's equipment back into his car, and the dark of night enveloped them in a heavy blanket of sweat and humidity. Conrad checked his watch. 9:06. Maybe they'd get back in time to catch a glimpse of Dwyn's super secret meeting.

"Well, guess we'd better get going," he said, fishing his car keys out of his pocket. He fingered the button to unlock it, but when he looked up, Luna was already sliding into the passenger seat, fingers dancing along the seatbelt in a nervous pattern. Huh, maybe he'd left it unlocked the whole time?

As Conrad turned the ignition and put his car in gear, he took a deep breath and centered himself. He still felt the pounding of blood, the rush of energy. His rollerblades were in the bag in the backseat just in case.

He watched Luna fiddle with the radio knobs on the dashboard for a moment, and then started towards the museum.

\/Dwyn Souza\/

Dwyn's pony-tail swished back and forth behind her as she walked briskly towards the museum stairs. It was only eight fifty, but knowing Derek, she knew that he'd be there a few minutes early anyway. She'd spent her time alone gathering different gadgets she'd collected over the years, most disguised as regular household items, and then swung by a restaurant and eaten a light meal. She'd then stopped by a small run-down shop and inhaled an energy drink. She always had adrenaline-pumped bouncing energy on nights like these, but she didn't want to take any chances on staying awake and staying alert.

A car honked loudly at her as she ran across the street, and she grinned as she made it to the other side. Her eyes calmly took in the museum and the people on its steps, careful to make sure it didn't seem like she was searching for anyone in particular. When she didn't spot him, she walked to the stairs and sat down, stretching out her legs and leaning back. It was good weather today, for Chicago. Not rainy, not too hot or cold. She didn't have to wait long, eyes scanning the crowds coming and going, before she looked over and there he was-- ambiguous dark hair, shaded sunglasses, worn-down jean jacket with his hands stuffed in it, Nikes worth more than a year's amount of rent. Ridiculous. But it made her grin all the same. He kept things in the way she took them-- not to have them, but to have the knowledge that she could. And he showed it off to all the world.

Derek leaned against one of the railings nonchalantly, head tilted down to look at his phone even though Dwyn knew he was undoubtedly looking around at the people behind his sunglasses. She stood up and walked up to him with a bounce in her step, leaning against the railing beside him. Because of the angle on the stairs, she looked slightly up at him as he pushed his sunglasses up on top of his head.

"You're chipper," he remarked, watching her with a hint of a smile.

"I am," she acknowledged, turning so her full back leaned on the railing and she looked out across the stairs at the other people.

"You always are around this time of the season." She understood his words, and knew it was true. These moments, the build-up right before, were the most energy-charged of her life. And she loved them.

"I am," she agreed.

"Well I am not," he said, turning his gaze away from her to stare absent-minded lay at the people passing by.

"Oh?" She grinned. "Not happy to see me?" Her gaze moved to the passing people too, watching them come and go.

"You gave me twelve hours to get you fake IDs and information on a black market identity," Derek said, finally turning to look at her. He was trying to act mad, but she could tell he wasn't.

"Why don't you say it louder?" Dwyn smiled without looking at him. "Make sure everybody hears you!"

"You're lucky you make me money," he said, pulling three cards out of his pocket and handing them to her discreetly.

"I'd say you're lucky I make you money," Dwyn grinned. Her gaze froze as she saw Conrad and Luna approaching. She'd told them 9:20, and they'd come early. A part of her wondered if it was specifically to try to see who Derek was, and the very thought irritated her slightly. "It's so sunny," she commented. "You really should put down your glasses."

Derek lowered them over his face and turned sideways, blocking most of his body from view. "Which ones?"

"The ones who look like they have no idea what they're doing," Dwyn said shortly. "Now, what information do you have on Philip Fields?"

Derek sighed, a faded smile crossing his lips. "Not enough to be helpful. Not in twelve hours. I'll have my contacts keep digging though. So far it's gone through three aliases and two shell corporations."

Dwyn raised an eyebrow. So these people were big. Really big. "Let me know what you find out," she said.

"I'm a phonecall away," Derek answered with a playful smile.

Dwyn laughed. "I'll keep it in mind." She began to walk away.

Derek said, "Do." By the time she'd reached Luna and Conrad, he was gone.

"What're you doing here? You trying to find out my informant?" She said flatly, getting straight to the point.

"What?" Luna asked. They both seemed startled. "What do you--"

It was then that Dwyn absorbed Conrad's sweaty, worn down appearance, and Luna--

"Meu deus... What are you wearing?"

Luna went through several emotions at once she took in Dwyn's questions. For starters she had no idea what Dwyn was going on about regarding some kind of informant. Did she manage to get a hold of someone on the inside to help them? What was going on here? Why did she not remember the various things an informant was supposed to mean in this particular context?

As her mind ran through all that and then tried to formulate a response, they were struck with yet another question., This one Luna did understand. Deciding to go ahead on with that line of talking instead of wherever this informant thing was headed Luna muttered out a reply.

"It’s my hei.... I mean...nighttime activities outfit..." finished Luna lamely realizing at the last minute that she shouldn't announce to everyone that she was wearing a heisting outfit. Then she realized what she'd said and immediately flushed. "Umm, sorry that came out wrong...I meant...well I think you know what I meant. Either way...it uhh...its umm...it’s a different style to what I usually wear which was supposed to be a good thing right?" She looked questioningly at Dwyn.

"You wore all black," Dwyn muttered. "That is somehow even more suspicious than what you usually wear."

"Somehow?" Luna asked weakly.

"I was at this gam..." began Conrad, potentially to launch into a play-by-play recollection of his evening hockey game but he seemed to realize that the second question wasn't directed at him and fell silent.

Luna flushed even more if that was possibly. Well, this night was off to a wonderful start. At least it hadn't been nearly as bad as she'd feared this might turn out to be and whatever
informant situation had begun earlier seemed to be set aside for the moment. Luna was definitely not asking a follow up to learn more.

Dwyn held out two IDs to them, expression schooling itself into something more neutral once again. Well, it wasn't completely neutral. Even Luna could tell from the general way the woman seemed to carry herself that she seemed to be excited, more so that Luna could ever remember seeing her in the past couple of days, at least as far as genuine enthusiasm was concerned. Luna was sure...well 85% sure that all the previous times had been for someone else's benefit.

"Keep up with them kids, I don't have any replacements," Dwyn said.

Luna nodded as she took the offered ID. It somehow looked Identical to the one the professor they'd been with had been using to get in and out the last time they'd gone into the not so public areas of the museum. It looked so real Luna half wondered if Dwyn had somehow enrolled them into the university. She shook her head immediately to get rid of the though. They did not have time tonight to think about any of this whatsoever. Of course, even though she didn't say a word, Conrad didn't seem to have any such inhibition.

"You have some premium connections there," said Conrad, staring closely at the ID.

"Yes," said Dwyn, making it clear she wasn't going to elaborate too much further on that point.

Luna nodded before finally speaking up again. "So, do we just umm.... gooo? We kind of sort of know where to I suppose and we already have the means to get in I guess."

"First step is splitting up," Dwyn said. "Leave a few minutes between each of us going through the staff doors and meet back there."

"That sounds like a good idea, maybe you guys can walk in first since maybe Dwyn you're the one who knows the layout the best here. We'll have to subtly follow you pretty much until we get inside," said Luna, adding maybe a bit too much flair to the last word to suggest it wasn't just any inside she was talking about. She barely managed to restrain herself from a wink on the last part.

Dwyn looked at Luna with slightly narrowed eyes and her mouth open slightly, and Luna couldn't quite tell if it was disappointment or pity in her eyes.

"I think we can totally start now then," said Conrad," It looks like we have our stuff and a pretty good plan."

Luna nodded, feeling the adrenaline rush through her like she was suddenly being plunged into an ice beath. A ridiculously goofy looking grin threatened to break out on her face as she realized this was it. They were finally going to do what they were here for, and it was going to be awesome.

Luna looked towards the entrance of the museum they'd been in and out of several times so far. This was really going to be it. Without another word, Dwyn began to walk off from their little impromptu huddle, taking the lead. No one would be able to tell the woman was about to start on. If Luna hadn't known any better, she'd have thought Dwyn was going to casually saunter off to find dinner.

Once Dwyn had gone a few feet, Conrad started off in the same direction, exchanging a half nervous, half encouraging glance with Luna. Luna gave the man a small smile. She still didn't know what to do with either of the two but from the experience she'd had so far Conrad at least to have some tiny semblance of genuine care...of course she could be imagining all of that completely and she almost definitely was, but she didn't care at the moment. A tiny extra bit of comfort that Conrad could probably punch his way out of any unforeseen trouble for them was something she was going to hold onto until they were safely far away from this place, item in hand.

With that though in mind, Luna walked a little way off and casually pulled out her phone to wait a little. Conrad clearly had been a bit too impatient and the way he was maintaining a barely five feet gap between him and Dwyn was probably more suspicious than if they'd walked in together but Luna was going to do this properly and wait for a gap long enough that on one could remotely connect Luna and Conrad while not letting the gap get so long that she might lose sight of the man. At least Conrad being as massive as he was would make it hard to lose him in the crowd.

After she'd wait an amount of time Luna deemed satisfactory, she put her phone away, doing her best to keep her finger from literally shaking with excitement and wishing she had a bottle of water with her to calm herself a bit. Settling for a couple of discreet deep breaths that hopefully did not look like someone psyching themselves up for a robbery, Luna turned to walk towards the museum, one eye on the door and another on Conrad up ahead.

By the time Luna was at the entrance to the museum, she'd managed to stop shaking and she gave a shy smile to the already sleepy looking guard as she made her way inside. Still with an eye on Conrad, she continued on, doing her best to pretend like she was paying the rest of the world attention, they were in a museum after all, looking around was the only thing to do in here.

It didn't take too long for Luna to find herself with an eye on the door that would take them into the private areas. As she watched, she could just about barely make out Dwyn making her way in. Luna pulled out her phone once again to hide her face as she not quite so subtly glanced at Conrad to see when he'd go in.

As she began typing Euler’s identify into her calculator out of habit to pretend like she was busy doing something, she could see out of the corner of her eye as Conrad walked through. His slightly surprised gasp as the door unlocked easily was probably not a good thing, but it seemed like no one had noticed anything out of the ordinary.

Luna looked down at her phone. She'd somehow managed to accidentally type in e to the power apple pie equals ice hockey. Saving that accident as a screenshot to send Sadie some other time, Luna forced down the smile it brought to her face and put her phone away. Giving herself a minute or so to avoid any sort of suspicion, she began to casually walk towards the door. She didn't particularly want to go through it with such a small gap between Conrad and herself, but she didn't want to wait too long either. She didn't want the two of them to think she'd ditched them or something.

With that thought in mind, Luna straightened up, making herself look like someone that hopefully did in fact belong in the inner workings of the museum and walked through, quickly scanning her card and vanishing before anyone could notice. She knew she was the one most likely to be somewhat suspicious considering she barely looked old enough to be the other student while Dwyn and Conrad could sort of blend in as professors even though Conrad's current look didn't exactly swing matters in that direction.

As the door close behind her with a familiar sounding mechanical click, she turned to see Dwyn and Conrad waiting a little way from the door, Dwyn doing a much better job of looking casual than Conrad did.

Dwyn nodded to the two of them and immediately started towards a direction Luna vaguely recognized as the route that would take them somewhere near the first back room they'd explored. Conrad looked like he wanted to ask a question but given the currently deafening silence in the sound proofed area, he looked like he thought better of it and turned to follow Dwyn. Luna full into step a few feet beside the man, following them even as she nervously glanced around at their surroundings. Every shadow seemed to be hiding someone waiting to jump them and Luna couldn't handle the simultaneous giddiness and some semblance of terror spreading through her. She hoped they’d run into some sort of lock soon, that would probably be the only thing to calm her down somewhat when she was doing something familiar.

They were soon passing through the back room that Dwyn and Luna had explored earlier. Dwyn stopped for a second in front of it and turned to the two of them.

"The deeper into the staff area, the more they don't want it found," she said. "And vague signs are our friend, they're not going to label it for us to find easily. We'll work our way from the back to the front."

"For once I would not mind if they labelled a door with a sign like "All the Good Stuff is in Here" but sadly most people are smarter than that," added Conrad.

Luna nodded. "Let's do this thing then," she said, sounding far more confident than she currently felt, but she knew it was going to be necessary. She couldn't appear to be falling apart in front of her teammates.

After their little discussion, Dwyn increased her pace, her footsteps seeming to have a light skip to them. Conrad on the other hand seemed surprisingly normal as he stalked off after her, at least certainly more normal than Luna's current mood where she half jumped at every tiny noise in the still air.

It wasn't long before Dwyn after walking back and forth a couple of corridors, pointed to one, looking quite pleased with herself as she pointed at a half-faded sign that currently read. "stricte rea". They ID cards were brandished once again and they were through the door before Luna could even register the fact that they were probably entering the place where the artefact, which thanks to the photos they'd finally received earlier in the afternoon, they actually knew the exact look of now.

Luna took a minute to survey the room they were now in. It looked fairly similar to the back rooms in terms of its general feel and the way things were placed about. The biggest difference was the look of the equipment, and artefacts scattered about and the fact that this room was easily four times the size of one of back rooms they'd explored earlier.

Despite what the fading sign on the door seemed to suggest the inside would be like, every piece of equipment in here looked like it cost about as much as the average car and almost seemed to shine in the dim orange lights that had flickered on automatically as they walked in. Luna remembered a vague explanation by the professor yesterday about how they needed a specific kind of light to help preserve some of the more delicate samples and assumed that pretty much everything that made it to this room was probably in that delicate item category.

Dwyn also seemed to be looking around, drinking the room in while Conrad was inspecting a few items that were on the desk. His phone was out, and Luna guessed the man was trying to identify the artefact.

Luna had the feeling that Conrad wasn't going to be successful, this is not the sort of item that would just be laying on a bench especially considering no one was currently in here working on anything. Luna didn't know what level of clearance the fake ID's here had, but if they were this easy to get a hold of, or at least Luna assumed it had been easy given how little time it had taken to get them, they probably couldn't be the only line of defense against someone wanting to steal something as valuable as the thing they were here to take.

Either that or Luna was overthinking this way too much. It wasn't like this was meant to be a real heist after all even if this was in fact a real museum. Before she could spiral too far down that path, Luna refocused on the room around them and saw Dwyn staring at a painting on the wall.

That was definitely out of the ordinary. Dwyn wouldn't just be randomly appreciating art, would she? With that though in mind, Luna headed over to the woman to take a good look at said painting. It didn't seem to be anything special at first, well it probably was special given it was in here, but it seemed like a normal enough scene of what appeared to be a bank from around the 1800's.

Then it suddenly struck here. When she'd read that book on heisting not too long ago it had mentioned something along the lines of how paintings were common ways to hide safes. Did Dwyn think this was hiding one. It would be a little on the nose given it was a painting of a bank, but considering the number of paintings in here, having something like that to remember it by was probably their way of ensuring they didn't lose the location of the safe.

She was just about to excitedly gush about the whole painting and safe theory and probably go off on some sort of long rambling theory about the painting being of a bank and how that could mean it was keeping something safe. She didn't get the chance to utter more than "So you know painti..." before she was quickly cut off by Dwyn's declaration, excitement coloring her voice in a rare moment when the emotion in her tone was noticeable enough for Luna to come to an actual conclusion.

"This is it," Dwyn announced proudly.

"I thought we were stealing a... why are we all interested in a painting again?" he began, looking up from the item he was inspecting but before he could say anything Luna cut in.

"I was jus..." began Luna. before she thought better of it. Dwyn had definitely though of the thing first, there was no point in her starting this conversation, not when there was very soon going to be a safe to crack. "So should I..." she began, trailing off when Dwyn gave her a nod.

"Do your magic, middle schooler," Dwyn said.

"Oh, that's where the safe is...that makes a lot of sense. Well let's see what you can do then bro," said Conrad, walking up to the painting himself.

Heart starting to beat even faster, Luna wrung her hands together in an attempt to get them to stop trembling and slowly reached out for the painting, glad that the black gloves she was currently wearing while technically only fashionable would hide her fingerprints well enough or at least the book had said so.

Prying gentling on the right side of the painting she gently gave it a tug. It didn't budge. She frowned for a moment before she felt the familiar rattle of a lock. Thinking quickly, she brought out her ID and swiped on the side of the painting.

It swung open easily, the machinery working in the background making barely any noise as it revealed a gleaming metal box set carefully into the wall: The safe. Luna nearly drooled at the sight of it. It was something much higher end than the ones she usually got to crack every so often.

Restraining herself from gushing about the safe too much, she managed to just blurt out a "This thing is awesome, like there is awesome and there's awesome ..."

Before she could embarrass herself too much or get told to shut up by Dwyn, she turned to the safe, taking a deep breath. She gently felt around the edge of it, inspecting how many locking bolts were holding the door in place. Most safes she cracked had two or maybe four for the really good ones, this one by the looks of it had roughly 14 holding the massive door in place. She got the feeling that even with this safe actually unlocked, only Conrad would have the strength to actually pull this door open.

After checking the bolts, she focused on the keypad set right in the middle of what was a pretty large wheel that Luna assumed was the way to unlock to it. Looking through the keypad she felt around. Something seemed to scream the number six in her mind.

"It looks like a six-digit combination," she said absently, and began to feel for the mechanism, trying to imagine which numbers would pull this open. These were usually a bit harder than the safes you had to rotate into position since you couldn't quite feel the pins inside set one by one, but it was still pretty doable. Closing her eyes, Luna touched the keypad, gently, pressing the numbers that seemed to give off a slightly warmer feel than the rest.

Before she even realized it, six digits were typed into the safe. She smiled to herself. Her internal radar for this sort of thing had yet to let her down. Confidently she put both hands on the massive wheel and turned it. It was a bit stiffer than she was expecting given how smoothly the door had opened but after a couple of tugs it came away with barely any resistance and she could feel the satisfying thudding sound of several inches of solid metal retracting from the frame around the door unlocking the safe.

"And tada, " said Luna, trying to keep her voice down and not quite succeeding." That was easier than I thought it was going to be. Now umm...I don't think I have quite the strength to open this door, it seems like it weighs half a ton or probably more. Conrad, could you maybe do the honors?"

With that she stepped away from the safe.

Luna watched carefully as Conrad cautiously opened the door of the safe. He theory about the thing being far too heavy was probably right given that even Conrad seemed to be putting in a bit of effort to get the thing open if his grunts were anything to be judging by.

Or more likely it had just been a bit stiff, because once the door had been cracked open gently, Conrad swung it open the rest of the way with much less resistance and the momentum of the door almost carried it straight into the wall where it would probably have left a good sized hole if Conrad hadn't caught himself in time and eased up on it, preventing it from causing unnecessary trouble.

With that taken care of, Luna peered inside the safe to see if their efforts had been worth it after all. She was almost 150% sure that the artefact was inside this place but there was no telling for certain. One look inside however, confirmed they had been right all along and Luna let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Unless they had somehow swapped in a very convincing fake at the last moment to fool any would be robbers, the thing inside was a definite match for the picture they'd received earlier in the day.

Luna let a goofy grin spread across her face as she took the artefact in. It may have been something random they were assigned to steal but she could appreciate why someone might want to have it, or at least in this case why whoever designed this game would pick something like that to be the artefact they had to steal.

It shone even in the dull lighting of this room, as if somehow there were a few rays of the sun personally assigned to keeping it glowing or if someone had strung up a whole bunch of LED's across the inside of it. It wasn't nearly as large as Luna had expected it to be, what with the picture having basically no reference to go off on and the safe being huge, but it was still a pretty sizeable artefact, Carrying the thing out wasn't going to be quite as simple as stuffing it into one of their pockets, that much was clear.

As Dwyn gently took it out, probably to examine it a bit closer and confirm, Luna noticed it was indeed some sort of clay tablet like she'd suspected, and there was in fact a clear jagged edge like she'd seen in the picture. There was a very good chance this was a fragment of something larger.

Luna almost wanted to ask for a chance to hold it but held back, taking a step closer instead to sneak a better look at it. The completely unrecognizable writing she'd been able to just about make out on the picture was there, now clear as day. Of course that didn't make it any more readable though. It might've been some sort of ancient language she'd never heard of, or Luna though, it was most likely some random gibberish they'd produced just for this heist.

After a few more minutes of staring at it, Dwyn nodded to the three of them.

"This is it," Dwyn said, a small triumphant smile on her face as she said it.

"Sweeeeeet."

"I guess there's no sense in waiting around here, Conrad, can you quickly close the safe, I'll make sure it's locked again so no alarm or anything goes off. It shouldn't happen from what I learnt from all those files you brought since we did open it legitimately but there's no harm in being thorough and leaving this safe wide open and clearly empty is not a good idea in general I think."

Dwyn scoffed, but it was mixed with laughter. "Obviously. It could take hours for them to notice it's gone closed. If we left it open they'd know immediately." She looked to Conrad. "Alright Radical, your time to shine."

Conrad quickly moved to close the safe door, doing it surprisingly carefully given how easily it seemed to close. It only made the slightest of thuds and soon he was stepping away as Luna stepped up to dial in the combination. She didn't have to feel around this time, already remembering the combination that she had used to open it by heart. It wasn't exactly the hardest number to remember. Clearly whoever had locked this inside knew they'd wanted to keep the artefact safe but probably hadn't taken a lecture on how to come up with a secure combination.

The safe closed itself with a satisfying click and all the bolts slid into place smoothly, leaving no evidence that the thing had ever been opened at all. The painting swung closed smoothly, seemingly linked to the closing sequence of the safe and with a final thud, Luna turned around to face the other two.

Dwyn had already tucked the fragment of the tablet away somewhere. Luna couldn't even see an outline. Dwyn had probably estimated the size of the thing precisely somehow and found a way to hide it well in advance or just come prepared well enough to be able to hide for a whole range of sizes. It could easily be either one of the two.

Dwyn turned to leave first, plunging back outside the room they'd come in, taking the lead once again. Conrad hesitated for only a moment before he was also quickly following along. Luna stared at the painting of the bank for a second longer, thinking about what was going to happen next. She assumed that they'd be handing this thing in probably tonight, or just maybe the next morning at the latest and then it'd be time to head on. It still felt like it had been only yesterday when she heard about this. Time had gone by entirely too fast.

As she saw the door into her start to slowly close behind her, she shook herself out of her reflections and rushed forward, not wanting to get left behind. She could wallow in the sadness that came at the end of something fun later and enjoy the rest of this for now.

She charged out of the room as fast as she could, sliding out of the door right before it closed, hoping she didn't look to suspicious as she basically ran out of the place. It was very bad form she knew, but the excitement of everything and not wanting to get left behind were much stronger motivators at the moment.

Once she was finally outside the room, Luna let our another sigh of relief, spotting the other two not far off now. She stayed a few feet behind them as Dwyn guided them towards the exit. She was pretty sure they'd be using the same strategy of not sticking together on the getting out part as well. Just because they'd so far pulled this all off flawlessly was no reason for them to be getting complacent with something like that.

With that on her mind, Luna tried to stay focused on the moment, although her earlier paranoia was now completely gone as she motored through without caring what shadow were where. Then out of nowhere she heard a noise from up ahead cutting through the silence of the area. It was unmistakably the sound of someone talking, and talking quite fast by the sound of it. It was too far away for Luna to make out any words, even in a room as quiet as this, but it was definitely getting louder by the minute.

She stared, eyes wide at Dwyn. The woman didn't look anywhere near as concerned as Luna currently was but it was pretty clear she'd heard the sound too as Dwyn proceeded to gesture towards a closed door a few feet down the hallway.

Conrad frowned at the door, raising his shoulders in question. By his silence, Luna assumed he heard the voices too and she jumped into action, not wanting to waste any time potentially getting caught. She still has no idea how the rules of any of this work but Dwyn's gesturing is enough for her to assume getting caught is still a bad idea.

Passing Dwyn, she slid to a stop in front of the door, pressing her hand to the keypad. The door swung open immediately with a pleasant click. It took her a second to realize that she didn't actually have her key card in hand but she chalked that up to them working at a bigger range than she'd initially anticipated. As she ducks inside, Dwyn quickly follows, looking like she maybe wants to tell her something, probably about not running, but she remained silent. Given just how quiet the area is, that's probably for the best. Luna was pretty sure even just a loud heart beat would be audible in this corridor. Conrad joined them a second later and Luna gently lets go of the door, letting it shut with the barest of clicks.

\/ Conrad Selingren \/

Their little trio slid behind the door just in time. The echo of footsteps grew louder and louder with every heartbeat, and the voice grew from indecipherable murmuring to a full conversation. With a deep breath, Conrad tried to slow his pulse. He could hardly hear anything over the blood rushing in his head.

"I don't understand," one voice said. It was a pitchy tenor. Maybe Dr. Duggar? "My team and I were in the middle of getting a specialist out here to look at that tablet, and now you're saying we have to cancel? For security reasons? This is one of the best-preserved examples of Cretan hieroglyphs ever found. Not examining it would practically be a crime!"

There was a pause, like someone talking on the other side of a phone, and then Dr. Duggar continued. "You're not making any sense. Who would even want it?"

Below him, Conrad felt Dwyn and Luna shift. Dwyn slipped away from the door, her face set in determination, and Luna resettled to a more comfortable eavesdropping position.

Well. Dwyn could take care of herself. Shrugging, Conrad placed his ear back against the door and watched as she crept into the darkness of the room they'd hid in.

"No," Dr. Duggar said. His voice was starting to get quieter, his footsteps softer. "No, that's too vague. The funding from the Dedd will is barely enough to last the year, and if we're going to get more grants, we need to study that tablet so we have something to prove. And can you imagine the publication money we'll earn?"

This was true, actually. Conrad had seen the accounts. And while the Dedd will included a sizeable contribution to the history and archeology departments' budgets, his one million wasn't actually that much. Well. It wasn't much after the estate tax and accounting fees and lawyering had taken a bite out of it.

Conrad felt a little bad. He was about to steal the department's ticket to a bigger budget. That wouldn't be very nice of him. But he had to remind himself. This artifact was supposed to belong to someone else anyway. He was just... returning it.

Dwyn returned, cool as a cucumber, and pressed an ear to the door. The professor's footsteps had faded away entirely, and his conversation was a faraway whisper now. A few seconds later, he was gone entirely.

"If I remember correctly," Luna whispered, "this hallway turns pretty quickly in both directions. We should be okay to leave."

"Dang, kiddo. You memorized that fast." Slowly, Conrad turned the handle and nudged the door open. He glanced both ways, then stepped back into the hallway. A bit of light spilled into their hiding place, illuminating a room full of pottery pieces.

Dwyn and Luna followed after, and the door closed with a near-inaudible click behind them.

"Well," Dwyn said, crossing her arms. "Sounds like we'd better hurry up. We don't want to run into anyone else."

Conrad took the front of their group. If they ran into anyone unexpected, he'd be able to knock them out before they could be identified. Behind him, Luna murmured directions for where to turn and how to avoid the security cameras' ranges. Their footsteps echoed softly off the walls and tiled floor as they passed door after door and intersection after intersection, until finally they made it to the exit.

After a long breath, Conrad pushed the crossbar and opened the door.

Then he immediately closed it. He looked at the girls and raised a finger to his lips.

"Um, what?" Luna asked. "Why"-

"You can come out again when I knock."

Conrad heard Dwyn speak as he opened the door again. Something about not being seen. But the door slammed shut before he heard the end of the sentence. And besides, he had other things to deal with.

Right outside the building sat a pair of grad students, their legs hanging off the edge of the building's loading dock. They had a box of Trader Joe's wine each, and they looked well on their way to passing out. Conrad was just going to give them a little assistance. One of them looked up at him, surprised, and fumbled for the wine box.

"Hey are you"-

Conrad reached for the student on the right, a young man with a lanky frame and a shock of red hair, and pulled him to his feet. The upward momentum carried the kid right into Conrad's other hand, positioned to strike his neck, and the student fell unconscious a moment later. The second student, a girl, blinked up at him, dazed.

"Sorry about your friend," Conrad said, before pressing the same spot on the girl's neck. She fell over her wine box, one arm out, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. Carefully, Conrad rearranged them so it would look like they'd just passed out together, and then knocked on the door.

Luna stepped out first. "What was that about- oh."

Cool as always, Dwyn poked her head out and took in the scene. "Wow. I'm actually kind of impressed, Radical."

Conrad might cry. "Bro. That is the nicest thing you've ever said to me. Now let's call the campus night walk for them and get out."