Jax clung to her mug like her life depended on it, the mug trapped between her hands. Something stronger than coffee would be more to her taste, but it would only make things worse. The department's fastest rising star had crashed down even faster. The magic detective who knew the answers, where the bodies were, where the evidence was hidden. Even those that had doubts were quiet about them, after all, she was always right.

Until she was wrong. Thirty months as a detective until her first appeal hit the courts. Thirty months until someone looked at one of her cases, someone who believed in her without any doubts. But even a fan can't deny missing evidence, evidence that never existed, and that brought in Internal Affairs. People remembered it, they swore they saw it, there were even records to support that, but suddenly the evidence was gone as if it had never existed.

For three months they dug, IA diligently trying to find fraud that wasn't there, although they couldn't explain why the facts were missing. Swiss cheese had less holes than what had been air tight cases, but no fraud, no proof that she fake things, that she lied or made up evidence. Ninety days before they gave up, and declared her clean, not that it mattered. IA investigations leave you tainted, a stink that won't wash off. She'd still be a detective, shoved off into a corner, to some precinct where careers go to die. That was what she had to look forward to.

So lost in her misery, she didn't at first notice that she had company at the counter. Perched on the stool next to her was a short old black man dressed in a dark suit and wearing a straw hat. Finishing off a glass of tea, he set it down and slid from the stool. Walking past her, “One door closes Detective Jackson...”

It took more than a few minutes to register that he'd spoken to her, known who she was, and what she was facing. Dropping a few chits on the counter, she abandoned her mug to go after him. Having seen him shuffle out the door, she expected an easy chase. As the door closed behind her, she looked left and right, spotting him half way down the block, moving smoothly through the crowd.

Darting after him, moving this way and that, she found herself wishing for wings. Despite his slow shuffle, his timing was uncanny, gliding easily through traffic, reaching intersections just as the light changed, it was everything she could do to keep up.

Panting as she came to a stop, she was sure she'd lost him, only to see a door close behind him, the door of a bodega... Breaux Mart? Since when was there a cajun grocer down here she thought. Following him in, the cashier barely looked up, nodding his head towards the door in the middle of the back wall, one of the three with cheap 'Employees Only' signs taped to them. Reaching for her piece, she cursed herself for not carrying a back up. Taking a breath, she took hold of the door knob, braced herself, and yanked it open.

Storming in, she almost fell over her feet when she found herself not in a stock room, but a sitting room. Looking like something out of Gone with the Wind, the wood paneled room held two old style high backed chairs with a small round table between them, and a fan turning lazily on the season. The thick carpet completed the improbable site. Sitting in the chair on the left, the old man smiled, “Welcome detective, would you care for a drink,” he says as he pours one. “Have a seat, I'm sure you have questions.”

Checking the seat for bombs, traps, anything she could think of, she slowly sinks into it, “I do indeed, starting with who you are, and how you came by information on me.”

“Jax, my name is Mister Stephens, and I work for people that know far, far more about you than you can imagine, perhaps more than you yourself know. I'm glad that that is one of your first questions, but perhaps you should be asking me what happened to your career if I'm that smart,” smiling enigmatically at her.

Waiting on him, she realizes that he really does expect her to ask, and so she does. Smiling, “Do you have a good luck charm? Something you got around the time you became a detective, say a lucky coin, a family heirloom, or even something you bought yourself as a reward for the promotion?”

She shook her head, her family wasn't poor, nor were they rich, just public servants, “No, nothing... Well, I did buy this stylus,” pulling out a piece of an old fountain pen. Probably broken at one time, it had been used to make a rather elegant stylus harking back to the style of the early twentieth century.

His eyes lit up, and he reached into the left side of his jacket, pulling out a pair of purple rubber gloves, and what looked like a cross between an evidence bag and an antistatic bag. Putting the gloves on, he held the bag open to her, “I hope you don't mind humoring an old man, but would you mind dropping that in there?” He turns his head as she does, expecting the sparks that fly out and startle her. Zipping the bag up, he smiles, “Feel better now? The tea will help, its mint, my own recipe, it'll fix you right up.”

As the sparks fly, a wave of dizziness washes over her, taking with it a weight she hadn't realized she was carrying. “How,” but he ignores her, tucking the gloves and bag back into the left side of his jacket before pulling out a metal box from the right. She's not surprised to see that its some manner of communicator made to look like an antique, “Warehouse, I have a guest I'm bringing home,” he says as he shuffles to the back of the room. Twisting a pair of ornaments quite precisely, there is a soft pop and the wall begins glowing like nothing she's ever seen. Putting the box back in his coat, he tips his hat, and shuffles towards the wall... and disappears.

Jumping to her feet, she starts after him, stopping where the wall should be. Reaching forward tenderly, she expects to get burned, or shocked, or find a wall hiding behind an elaborate light show. Instead, her hand continues forward as if there were no wall there. With a deep breath, she steps forward, closing her eyes...

A soft tingling is the only change, and then she opens her eyes, finding herself in a reception area, woman wearing a rather antiqued headset sitting before eight old fashioned tube monitors arranged in two uneven tiers. At the end of the desk, Mr Stephens drops the full bag into a basket, and retrieves an empty from another.

“Welcome to Warehouse Sixteen, your new home and job. We've been collecting artifacts since near to forever. Agent Coalpepper will handle your orientation” he says as he shuffles back towards the still glowing wall. Smiling at her before he disappears, “Welcome aboard, Agent Jax,” and with a pop, nothing remains but an ordinary wall.

Before she can say anything, he's gone. Turning, she founds herself facing a large cat... What are they called... a chakat. Of course that thought barely registers before she finds herself wrapped in a bear hug, “Hi there, welcome to Warehouse 16, I'm Agent Coalpepper.”

Picking up the bag, the cat... The chakat pokes at it curiously, “So what has Mr S brought us aside from you?” Putting hir finger to hir lips in an exaggerated shushing motion, shi whispers conspiratorially, “Don't tell him I call him that. Come on, I'll show you around and introduce you to the boss, he'll give you your Tesla, authority and send to you the inn to get settled in. Then the real fun begins.”

Jax simply nods her head as she follows her through a door into the warehouse proper. Her jaw drops once she sees the scale of the place, easily a mile wide and more than twice that in depth, warehouse seems an understatement.

The chakat smiles as shi works at a computer terminal, “Impressive right? So, what'd this harmless little bugger do to you?”

Jax almost growls, “Harmless my ass, gave me the greatest career in the world, only to take it away thirty months later.”

As she watches, the chakat frowns, “Thirty months, fountain pen... Nothing on record known or historically likely, that's odd.”

“What is?”

“We can usually predict artifacts, so we should have something in here for this.”

“What if you leave off the measure, just thirty?”

Pecking at the computer, “Oops, guess that's why they hire people like you for the field, you're cleverer than I am. That's got it, this was probably Samuel G Soal's pen... Well part of it at least. I hope the rest isn't out there.”

“Who's he?”

“Near to the middle of the twentieth century, he proved telepathy existed, even his detractors didn't make much noise about their suspicions. It wasn't until about thirty years later when a believer tried to prove the validity of his work that it all came apart, suddenly everyone stopped believing him.”

With a chuckle, she found herself smiling, “Well that certainly sounds familiar. Not sure i'd call it harmless though.”

“It is, artifacts tend to be either disruptive or dangerous. The really dangerous ones we keep in the dark vault. I'm getting ahead of myself though. I'm a research agent,” looking up as Jax does, “Oh, that's George.” Overhead an upside down modified bicycle travels across a wire, “He's a cutey, though very shy. Raised Pentecostal, one of the old Christian beliefs, very strict about swearing, gambling, and drinking. I think he's still going to confession after what happened on his first mission. He forgot to bring gloves when he went to pick up Jack Daniel's whisky thief.”

“We arrest people?”

Coalpepper looks confused for a moment, “Oh, no, its not a person, its a sampling tool. Its a tube, tapered at one end, capped at the other. The cap has a small hole in it, stick it into the whiskey barrel, put your finger over the hole, and voila, you have a sample. Poor George got really, really drunk... And experienced. And hungover.”

Looking at the chakat covering her face, Jax finds herself doing the same thing, trying to stifle the laughter, but a second look, and it escapes.

After their giggle fit ends, Coalpepper grabs a glowing tag from the basket, “Like I was saying, I'm a research agent, I usually don't go out in the field. Before that I was a linguistics expert working on the recovery of information from old museums, libraries and schools. In the back room of a museum I found a rock, unlabeled, it looked like a piece of an old building. Was it ever, a piece of the legendary Tower of Babel. I wound up in the hospital speaking random languages. Mr S neutralized it, and here I am, in the universe's junk drawer helping to figure this stuff out.”

“And where's here?”

“Warehouse sixteen. The first half dozen or so warehouses were nothing more than treasure houses, starting in around 325BC, until someone noticed that some of the treasures had a bit of an attitude, especially when they came near each other. Until this one, they've always been in the center of the world, Egypt, London, America, and so on. This was originally Warehouse thirteen, we re-activated and expanded it since the modern world doesn't really have a center. Besides, this is the best place we could hide, since there are always people looking for the kind of advantages artifacts could give them. A writer in the twentieth century said that technology would appear as magic to the more primitive. I've begun to think that he was onto something, science and technology are simply magic for the unskilled. Simple reproducible tapping into the magic of the universe. It would explain why these things exist,” dropping the bag on a shelf as shi walks by, pausing to attach the info screen to the shelf, “What you have here is wild magic contained in objects, and all of us have absolutely no idea how to control them.”

“That's done, lets go find the boss, R'Marliss is prolly at the inn. We'll get you set up with an authority, I forget who we are right now, plus your Tesla, Farnsworth and a room.”
Jax follows hir, grinning wryly, wondering what she's gotten herself into, but at least it won't be dull.