Burnout, part 1

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Pete and Myka took a redeye flight to St. Louis this morning in order to check up on a gas main explosion under the 83rd precinct police station. At least, it was reported as a gas main explosion; Artie has his doubts. For one thing, six people were burned to a crisp, but there's no sign of a fire beyond that.

For another, Pete and Myka have just reported that they found the remains of a long-dead Warehouse agent handcuffed to a water pipe in the bowels of the station.

"Look, he has a Secret Service star, but his ID and his credentials are dust," says Myka over the Farnsworth.

"I'm sending for the body right... now." Artie taps the last key on the computer keyboard and scoots his chair back over to where the Farnsworth is propped up. "Okay? And meanwhile, what I want you to do is, I want you to get me pictures. Meanwhile, I am going to find who this Agent is..." He marches over to the bookcase by the door and returns with a stack of recent field activity reports. ('Recent' being from the last seventy years or so.) "I'll ID him, and I will find out, if I can, what mission he was on."

"It looks like the blast opened up the wall and somehow... people were fried." Myka shakes her head, frowning. "I mean, could an Artifact cause an explosion like that?"

"Or," interrupts Pete, "Did the explosion release the Artifact, and then burn everybody up?"

"Well, that is a very good question, Pete," says Artie. "A very good question. That's exactly what you have to figure out. Bye." He thumbs the On/Off button and starts shuffling through the stack of reports. "How the hell...?" he mutters to himself. "How in the hell am I gonna figure out who that mysterious Agent is?"

Not from the field reports, that's for damn sure. They're little more than a list of Artifacts retrieved on a given date and who was involved. Not nearly enough information for Artie's purposes. And that means one thing: it's time to go into the stacks.

[Dialogue from Warehouse 13 episode 1x07, "Burnout."]

Comments

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

'The stacks,' in this instance, are behind a dust-covered metal door on the far end of the Warehouse offices. "Unfortunately," remarks Artie as he rifles through five pounds' worth of door keys in search of the one that unlocks this door, "the Warehouse filing system never quite caught up to the computer age."

[claudiometer]

"Like your wardrobe?"
It's a good diversion from the tail end of her repurposing project, at least. But she's not liking the look of all this dust already (seriously, did no one clean before she got here?).

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Yeah, k--what?" He stops when his brain catches up to him. "W--y--these are earth tones! They never go out of style!"

[claudiometer]

Claudia just snorts, and shakes her head. Maybe earth tones don't go out of style in general, but those clothes in particular? Seriously.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Well, Artie certainly has better things to do than swap fashion tips.

The unlocked door swings open with a grooooan of rusted metal-on-metal and a fresh swirl of dust from above. Artie fumbles for the light switch, and an amber glow bathes the room, illuminating metal shelves stacked to the ceiling with numbered file boxes.

"The files on all Warehouse agents for the last two hundred years, give or take," he says. "And missing agents, too, somewhere..."

[claudiometer]

Claudia smiles. "Excellent. You can teach me about scrapbooking."

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Yeah, okay, I'll call you if I need you." Artie all but shoves Claudia back out the door.

[claudiometer]

"All right, all right, I got my own stuff." And him pushing her out the door is easier than trying to explain what her own stuff is, at the moment.
She wrinkles her nose, as some of the dust Artie just stirred up hits her face. "Besides, I'm allergic to old."

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Artie gives her a sharp glance over his shoulder before pulling off his jacket and proceeding further into the stacks.

[claudiometer]

A few minutes later - just as she's putting the finishing touches on her project, as it happens - Artie's computer goes beep. Since he's still being eaten by the Files That Time Forgot, Claudia figures it can't hurt if she looks to see what's up herself.
"Hey, Myka just sent pics from the scene!"

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Yeah, no, we're getting the actual body later today, so we don't need that digital crap," Artie calls back, testily. He's busy trying to get a hold of the file box he wants; as luck would have it, it's on the very top shelf, and there's no stepladder that he can find.

[claudiometer]

"Digital's just as good, Artie. Welcome to the new millennium."
...She might possibly be smelling an opportunity here. Maybe.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Yeah, you know what? Pixels will never replace the real thing." Artie shrugs his jacket back on as he marches back into the office. "Pixels, you know what they are? They're just--look, they're a start, but they're..." He frowns at the grid of photographs on the computer screen. "God, they're a really small start."

[claudiometer]

"Oh, but they don't have to be. They can be so much more."
That opportunity she was smelling? Well, now she's glad she brought the projector into the office to work on it, even though she's got it covered up again. "I've been working on something, okay? I really wanna show you--"

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Oh, God, another mad-scientist wannabe. The Warehouse seems to attract them like flies. "No, I really, really don't need any kind of new-fangled--"

[claudiometer]

"Chill, this is totally old-fangled! Check it out."
And she pulls the cover off the hologram projector, before Artie can come up with any more protests.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Artie staaaares.

It's... it's very... what the hell is it.

"W... is... is that... is part of that a Bell and Howell spectroscope?"

[claudiometer]

"Surprise! I repurposed it."
:D?

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

>:(

"What, without asking me?!"

[claudiometer]

Yes, without asking, because if she'd asked he would have said no and nothing would ever happen.
"What? It's just a hologram projector. it's perfectly safe." And it'll make digital useful until they get the Corpse Groom here in person.
"Now, behold..."

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"I don't need to behold. Can we behold a whole other time?"

[claudiometer]

"See, I've composited all of Myka's pictures, and--" She presses the power button, which... fails to power.
"Wait. Nonono, hold on, no, I know this works..."
This is why she would have preferred to test it before showing it off... but oh well?

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Yeah, I'm sure it's fabulous," says Artie dryly. "Can we just do this at a more appropriate--"

[claudiometer]

A lesson that has served Claudia well over the years: When in doubt, hit it. So she smacks the projector, and it starts projecting the composite of Dead Guy, caption and all.
She grins. "Percussive maintenance. Wait, it gets better..."

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Artie barely hears her. He's staaaaring again--this time, at the slowly rotating hologram.

"What did you... what did you do?"

[claudiometer]

"I upgraded the whole megillah. Strung together a bunch of Haswells on a Cray XT backbone I found in the Warehouse." With assistance from her multi-construction-toy-extravaganza mock-up in Milliways, but there's no need to mention that yet.
"I mean, I guess keeping me around wasn't the worst idea you've ever had?"

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Artie steps forward to squint at the hologram of the corpse's arm. "What is that--is that a... tattoo on what's left of his skin there?"

[claudiometer]

"...Could be." It's hard to tell, and probably would be even if she zoomed in, but... could be.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Can, can you zoom in on...?"

[claudiometer]

"Okay, yeah." She fiddles with the dials a bit, and presto, close-up on the tattoo.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Which is still utterly illegible. "Yeah, I can't, I can't--could you digitally reconstruct that?"

[claudiometer]

"Couldn't any genius whiz kid?"

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Okay, you do that. I'll be in the records room." Artie pulls his jacket off again and slogs back into the stacks. He's got a lot of searching ahead of him, and just his luck it involves heavy lifting as well.

[claudiometer]

...
"'Really brilliant job, Claudia. Love the initiative.' 'Oh, thank you. Thanks, Artie...'"
She can fill in her own praise, when she has to. She just wasn't expecting to have to.
---
It takes some doing, and the tattoo is a pain in the ass to sort out from the charred skin, but eventually, Claudia has enough that she feels comfortable calling details back to Artie.
"Okay, uh, it's an eagle... and an anchor... and... just a circle, I guess."

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Could it be a globe?"

[claudiometer]

"Yeah, why not?"
She can't make out quite that much detail, but it makes more sense than a random circle.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Okay, so, eagle, anchor, globe--he's a Marine," realizes Artie. "He's a Marine! That's gonna narrow it down, I mean, there's only like a, a dozen or so agents who were former Marines, so, y'know, we can--" He finally reaches over to slap the On/Off button on the Farnsworth, which has been buzzing insistently for the past ten seconds. "Yeah?"

[k39zzz]

Pete and Myka are both on screen, apparently in a crowded area. "There're more bodies," says Myka. "They're burnt to a crisp again, but there's still no sign of an actual fire."

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"No fire? Wait a minute..." Artie sits down, rubbing his forehead with the side of his hand as he tries to think. "No fire, okay, so, there was a... there was a Babylonian battery, it was, uh, unearthed and then lost again in 1952, in Texas, not Missouri, but there was also a rumor that Edward Teller was working on a microfission thing, but I don't think that that--"

[k39zzz]

"Well, here's a wrinkle," interrupts Pete. "There's a handprint on each of the bodies. It's the only part not burned. And our only suspect was one of the victims. It's like he was, I dunno, followed from the police station, Artie."

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Oh no, not like he was followed," says Artie. "He. Was. Chased. I don't think these deaths are random."

[k39zzz]

"So maybe somebody at the station last night found the Artifact, whatever it is, and used it to settle some old scores?"

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Yeah, okay, you know what? You trace the victims, you see if they've got any enemies, then maybe you can get ahead of this guy before he settles more 'scores.' Okay? Bye." Artie switches off the Farnsworth.

"If that's what it was, which I doubt--" he turns to give the holographic corpse a death glare-- "would it have killed you to leave a note?!"