"Then we need to find William Dyer." Leo's grasp of the obvious did little to advance our situation. "If the Nazis don't have him already."
"They don't." I replied.
Leo wasn't about to just accept that the Nazis didn't have Dyer at my word alone, and I didn't blame him. "But, how can you be certain?"
I shrugged, "We only went looking in Utah because we couldn't find William Dyer in the usual locations. I'll bet the Germans did the same thing. As of our parting with them in Utah, the Germans don't have Dyer."
"What about Dyer's office?" Leo asked.
Leo hadn't been there when the same idea had passed through my mind. Dr. William Dyer had been a member of our Geology department at Miskatonic University. He was never released of that position, and his tenure kept him in ownership of his office even though he hadn't been there for more than a year.
I nodded. "I went to look, but it was locked up."
Leo scoffed. "Locks stopped you?"
"Locked with magical wards," I corrected. Whatever Dyer had learned when he had been in those frozen mountains, it had taught him at least how to make strong enough wards to keep out a practitioner as powerful as myself.
Leo smirked. "I did not know that doors were such a formidable for the great Dr. Andrew Doran."
I glared at Leo for just a moment before making a decision. Standing, I stormed out of the library, knowing Leo would be fast on my heels.
We arrived at Dyer's office at the same time. It was a simple wooden door and, aside from the plaque with his name on it, it looked like every other office door.
Unless you could see the powers that leaked from the void into our world.
I pointed at the door and threw a glance at my companion. "Can you see them?"
The door looked to me as if symbols had been carved into the reality around the door. The wood was untouched, but the reality that was the wood had been carved into wards. Each ward was filled with the faint purple hue that my mind associated with the void. It wasn't really a color, but it was the best description of a color that could not be described.
Leo had been touched by the void enough that he should have been able to see something on the door.
He squinted at it before saying, "It has a color. Almost purple?"
I nodded. "That would be the wards." As I had feared, Dyer had learned much more than he had told in his loudly voiced warning.
Leo nodded and continued. "While I can see the wards, this changes nothing." He waved his hands about indicating where they were. "We are on the first floor. The windows should be easily accessible."
I could have slapped myself right then. In my haste to enter the room, I hadn't even thought of the windows. I pushed past Leo and headed back the way that we had come and then out of the main hall.
We circled around the building until we were right outside of Dyer's office when Leo voiced the obvious. "Someone has already broken into Dyer's office."
My righteous fury took over, and I corrected Leo. "No, they broke into my school." I nodded toward the window as I walked toward it. "Give me a lift."
Leo crouched quietly under the window and laced his fingers together in order to saddle my foot. Using my friend's lift, I peered into the shattered window.
Inside the office was a mess, and I could quickly tell that it wasn't entirely the due to the actions of the vandal. William Dyer had the office of a professor and it was a clutter of books, loose papers, and more books. On the contrary, the vandal didn't even seem to be making a mess, instead putting everything back to where she found it as she searched for something.
She was only a few inches shorter than myself with shoulder length blonde hair. She wore a leather jacket and trousers, which made sense: a dress wasn't thieving wear.
I hadn't realized that Leo was no longer supporting me until I heard the click of a hammer being pulled into place. Glancing down, and hanging on the sill, I noticed that Leo had drawn a pistol from seemingly nowhere.
I nodded to the gun. "Hold back," I whispered. "I'm going in. I might need you out here."
Leo returned my nod, but said nothing. Leveraging my elbows into the window, I pulled myself in. I tried to be quiet, but it didn't matter. My quarry was so engrossed in whatever was at Dyer's desk that she wouldn't have heard if the entire school had been collapsing around her.
I slid my upper torso into the window and was drawing my leg up as she spun. I must not have been as quiet as I had hoped. She saw me and roughly threw down what she'd been examining back onto the desk.
The would-be thief knocked over a precariously leaning stack of Dr. Dyer's books, throwing debris in my path as I completed my journey into the room. She spun away from me then and toward the door.
Before I had time to warn her that the door had been warded with a slew of unknown spells, she flung the door open wide and ran from the room with absolutely no consequences.
Of course, if I were to have warded the door, I also would have only warded against intrusion, and not escape. My hindsight was in full focus.
I hurdled over the fallen stack of books and to the desk, only quickly examining what had held her attention.
It was a picture in a frame.
I didn't slow by much and scrambled from the room and down the hall. I silently cursed myself for not alerting Leo, and I hoped that he had caught on and was circling around to the front of the building.
The halls in the University were tight, so both of our speeds were slowed by the back and forth traffic moving through them. Two more bookshelves, for public reference, were hurdled into my path before she cleared the hall and exited the building.
Jumping over both fallen shelves, I called back to the nearest young student, "Bonus credit for cleaning this mess!"
Leo met me at the front steps with his right hand inside his jacket. I glanced at the crowd that surrounded us and then down the street, before shaking my head at Leo. We couldn't use guns here. Our culprit was heading for an empty car and there were way too many students between us and her.
I renewed my charge after her as she slid into the car and took off, her tires squealing as they spun on the road. This time, though, my target wasn't the woman who had fled Dr. Dyer's office, but instead the motorcycle that was parked right out front as if it had been prepared especially for me.
Of course, the student who was standing beside it didn't think so. I offered him a 4.0 for the semester and then took off on his shiny 1941 Crocker.
The Crocker was the perfect blend of solid craftsmanship and organic design. The colors were a splattering of black around the fenders and seat and then chrome everywhere else. The curves to the machine reminded me of some sort of elegant sea creature. I had never been much into motorcycles, but this bike could easily change my views.
I weaved the bike between the oncoming traffic and pedestrians. Sidewalks and lanes didn't matter to me. I hopped the curb and gunned the engine as I found an open stretch of sidewalk. It helped me to close the distance and I hopped the curb again and came up directly behind the trespasser.
Without a doubt, the roar of the motorcycle warned my quarry to my presence. Against my assumption, she didn’t speed up. Instead, with me close on her tail, she stomped heavily on the brakes.
The car screeched to a halt, sliding a little bit as it did. Only my fast reactions saved me from the surprise maneuver. I leaned to the left and hit my brakes as well. I only narrowly slid past her on her driver’s side of the car and was too busy righting myself to notice as she then put the car back into gear and took off.
Once I had the Crocker back under my control, I looked behind me just in time for my target to zoom past me. As she did so, she opened her door and hit me with it.
My balance was destroyed and I went sprawling with the bike onto the roadway. Together, the beautiful machine and I slid for about twenty feet before I was able to get it back up and down the road again.
I went into this race assuming that her age placed her in the novice
weight class in regards to car chases. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again. I had been in more car chases, wrecks, and fights than she had, of that I was sure.
The Crocker roared down the street with me leaning forward and into the wind. I closed the distance to my quarry again, and this time I decided to test her. I pulled up right next to her window and reached out for her. I wasn't actually trying to grab her, but I wanted her to think that I was.
My trick worked and the would-be thief swerved to the right slightly to avoid my grasp. Her reaction told me two very useful things.
The first of which, I had already began to expect: she wasn't German. If she had been working for the Nazi's she would have pulled a gun and gotten rid of me already. No, she just wanted me to leave her alone.
The second thing that her reaction told me was that, despite her clever move with the brakes previously, she was a novice to car chases. This wasn't only new to her, it was foreign to her. She wasn't a professional crook.
Betting on my hunches, I sped up and advanced just ahead of her front left tire. Being that much in front of her, she couldn't tell what I was doing when I lifted my arm, reached across my chest, and then quickly swung my arm back and took aim at her face.
My index finger had never been registered as a lethal weapon, but the criminal mastermind behind me didn't take the time to evaluate the caliber of my weapon.
The novice thief swerved to avoid my imaginary pistol, exactly as I assumed she would. Doing so had the intended result of putting her car directly into the path of a brick wall.
The crunch of the car hitting the wall drowned out the sound of the roaring motorcycle.
I parked the bike and ran back to the car to check on the driver. She was moaning and blood was dripping down her forehead.
"Are you alright? Can you hear me?" I shouted to her. Her attention suddenly snapped back to the here and now and her eyes darted to my face. Before she could say anything, I punched her in the temple, knocking her out cold.
It probably wasn't the most intelligent thing to do, but I wasn't going to let her try to run again. As the crowds gathered around, I dragged her from the wrecked car and flopped her over the handlebars of the bike. I mumbled to the gathering spectators something about taking her to the hospital and then revved the engine toward Miskatonic.
***
"This," Leo stated dryly, "is when you choose to use your office?"
I ignored Leo and his slight smirk and instead studied our prisoner.
She was still unconscious, but I wasn't certain whether or not she was faking it. I hadn't hit her hard enough to keep her out that long, but the car accident might have jostled her brain, so I was unsure.
Once I had pulled the Crocker up to the school, Leo, who had been awaiting my return, helped me carry her up to the office. Once there, we threw her down on the nearest chair and began tying her to it as tightly as we could.
Looking at her for really the first time without anything else going on, I did not recognize her at all. She had short blond hair that went only a little past her jaw line. Her eyes were hazel and her face carried a youthful quality to it. She wasn't older than her early twenties at best, but she would also keep that youthful look for a long time.
Without warning, the phantom from the shadows of my mind, Olivia, sprung into existence directly beside my captive.
"Just take the information from her mind." She pressed. "You know that you can do it without hurting her."
"No," I responded with heat in my voice, both at the intrusion of my would-be imaginary friend and at the suggestion.
Leo snapped from his own examination of our trussed up thief with surprise. "No?" He asked. "No what?"
Much to his chagrin, I continued to ignore Leo.
Olivia wasn't giving up. "We can't afford any delays. Reach into her mind and find out what she knows and why she's here."
Olivia paused then, realizing that I wasn't going to reply to her and then lifted her own phantom hand. "Or I can do it..."
Olivia had been born from the insanity induced through channeling the powers of the void through my brain. Because of those pathways, she was capable of doing anything with magic that I was.
Olivia reached for our guest's head with her hand and I shot her a glare.
"No," I growled at Olivia, and immediately was rewarded with Olivia sliding away from the thief as if she was being pushed by an unseen force.
I smiled inwardly, proud of myself for still having at least that little bit of control over my sanity. Pushed by an unseen force was exactly what happened, and the unseen force was me.
"She is here, no?" Leo asked, obviously referencing Olivia. I nodded and he frowned, uncomfortable by her invisible presence.
Olivia crossed her arms and frowned at me. "If you won't take what you need, then at least tell me why not."
Not caring that Leo was only going to get half of the conversation, I answered Olivia. "For starters, reaching into her mind isn't as safe as you would have me believe." I paused and sighed heavily. "And I don't think that our little trespasser here is a bad guy."
"Or gal," Olivia replied and I nodded absently and then turned my heated gaze to meet Olivia's.
"You already knew she wasn't necessarily evil, though, because I did."
Leo ignored my accusation toward Olivia and asked me, "If she is not a villain, then who is she?"
I knelt in front of our captive and leaned in close, looking closely at her face. "When I found her in Dyer's office, she was looking at a framed photograph. It was of Dyer with a young girl." I nodded toward the girl only inches from me. "I think this is here." Leaning in just a little closer, I asked, "You're his daughter, aren't you?"
With her eyes still closed, she produced a tight-lipped smile. "You're good." She opened her eyes and her face took on a smug look. "But you're only half right. I'm his estranged daughter." She put an emphasis on the word estranged.
I straightened up and looked down at her, jabbing my index finger in her direction. "Stop talking."
She jumped, as did Leo and Olivia, although Olivia did so mockingly.
"Whether or not your Dyer's daughter doesn't really matter, because it doesn't change the fact that you were caught breaking into my college." I hadn't realized how territorial I was becoming until that moment."For reasons that I hope you never discover," I continued, "that was ridiculously stupid."
Leo was nodding and I had to hide a smile.
Regaining my composure, I continued, putting strength behind my voice. "This is how we are going play this game: I am going to ask you questions..."
Leo coughed loudly.
"...and so will my friend." I pointed again at her. "You will answer them. The more questions that you answer truthfully, the more trust we will be able to put in you." I softened my voice. "If we trust you, we don't have to call the police."
The bound blond scoffed at us. "Police? That's your threat?" She laughed again. "The police are the last thing that I'm worried about."
I gave no ground. "Do you see?" I pointed out. "That is a great start. I believe you." I walked across the office and grabbed a chair. I carried it over to where I had been standing and set it down in front of her.
I sat down. "Let's start simple: Who are you?"
Her mouth drew into a tight line and for a moment I thought that she wasn't going to be cooperative. Then she relaxed and said, "My name is Nancy Dyer."
I nodded. "Nancy, why were you breaking into my college?"
Nancy leaned against her ropes, bringing her face closer to mine. "Fair is fair. Why did you break into my cabin?"
I froze for a moment, and the smile the flashed across her face showed me that she noticed my hesitance. "We didn't. We chased the ones who did."
"That isn't an answer." She countered.
She was right, so I answered her. "We were looking for your father."
Nancy leaned back and lost her smile. "So was I." She looked at Leo and then back at me. "If yo
u weren’t the guys who trashed my father's cabin, then who was?"
"We'll get to that." Was the only answer that I was willing to give her, and she seemed to accept it for the moment.
"Why are you looking for your father?" Leo asked, and it was a good question.
Nancy glared at Leo, and I could tell he was happy that we had decided to tie her up. "He is my father and he is missing. I don't need a reason."
"If that were the case," I pressed, "you would have met with the campus Dean or gotten the police involved."
It was a test and I was filled with a sick satisfaction as Nancy failed it.
"Well, the Dean was supposed to meet me to let me into my father's office." She looked from me to Leo. "When the Dean didn't show for our meeting, I got tired of waiting and took the initiative."
Leo laughed loud and hard. It was a hearty laugh that filled the entire office and after several seconds of his laughter I joined in. We laughed for another fifteen to twenty seconds before Leo said, "If you were supposed to meet with the Dean, then why did you run as soon as he climbed through the window?"
Nancy's rage drained and her face paled as her eyes registered understanding.
"Oh." was all that she could bring herself to say.
I gave a little bow while remaining seated. "Dean Andrew Doran of Miskatonic University. It is a pleasure to meet you Nancy Dyer."
I leaned forward in my chair and folded my hands. "I'm going to be generous," I said. "I'm going to put our cards on the table." Nancy didn't look like she believed a word that I said, and she probably expected the next words that I said to be a lie, but I didn't care.
"We're interested in your father's Antarctic expedition. Unlike the rest of the world, I am willing to bet that you know a little bit more than anyone else about what actually happened to your father."
I was watching Nancy for any sort of tell. She gave no sign that she agreed with or disagreed with what I had just assumed about her.
"Unfortunately," I continued, "your father wasn't quiet about what he found and now the entire German army is interested in conducting their own expedition." I sighed. "Contrary to American hopes and dreams, the German's aren't stupid. They know that your father wasn't spinning tales. They know that what he was warning the world about was most likely true, and they aren't about to rush to Antarctica unprepared."
The Adventures of Andrew Doran: Box Set Page 25