006 made no effort to hide his envy as he watched her work. "Do I have any talent for it?" he asked. "Magic, I mean."
Bella was still processing the divination results and didn't look up. "You think magic works like that? Like I pull out a scanner, run everyone through it, and hand out results—one person can use earth magic, another water magic?" She finally glanced over. "It doesn't work like that."
"Ancient texts—a lot of them—claim that magic was originally a gift from the devils of hell. Take that with a grain of salt, but the idea behind it is worth understanding."
Magic had once belonged to everyone. In a time so remote it barely registered as history, every person could learn it and use it. It wasn't arcane or forbidden—it was infrastructure, technology, the foundation of both civilization and warfare. In that era, it was about as remarkable as knowing how to fire a pistol or drive a car.
"Do you think guns and cars have talent requirements? Magic was just part of how people lived. But the rules changed. Now we're in the age of science, and magic has become something only a tiny fraction of people can access."
She set the papers down and looked at him plainly. "To be straight with you—you have no talent for it. None at all. If you were willing to offer your soul to a demon, you could probably manage two spells. But the moment the magic leaves your hands, the demon takes what it's owed. Which means that's also the moment you die."
She let that land, then shifted direction. "Mr. Eric—what did you see in the divination just now?"
006 thought carefully, hesitant. "An arrow. Iron, I think. And then… two more arrows after it. Moving fast. A lot of force behind them."
Bella offered nothing in response. "Watch yourself around anyone who shoots. Be careful." A beat. "Get some rest. Then get back to work. And keep following up with Ben Gates—let me know the moment anything develops."
I've been through all this and you're telling me to go back to work? 006 had been about to ask about changing his name to change his luck. He swallowed the question whole.
Two days later, he was effectively discharged.
He worked through the backlog at Weyland, then reached out to Gates. Between recovery time and the expedition itself, another twenty-four days passed before Ben Gates finally located the Charlotte within the search area Bella had marked.
The ship had originally gone down in the Atlantic, but ocean currents had pushed it more than three hundred nautical miles north. When an ice shelf collapsed, it buried the wreck beneath the glacial mass entirely—which was why every Templar agent and archaeologist who'd spent years hunting for it had come back with nothing. The ship wasn't where it sank. Without both the luck and the means to account for that, you'd never find it.
Ben Gates and his assistant were practically vibrating with excitement. 006, as the expedition's backer, had come along in person. They found the ship's captain still at his post—what was left of him—and beside the remains sat an ornately decorated wooden box. Inside was a beautifully crafted pipe.
While 006 wandered the ship in a fog, trying to locate some actual treasure, Ben Gates spotted something on the pipe's stem—an engraved riddle: The legend writ, the stain affected, the key in Silence undetected, fifty-five in iron pen, Mr. Matlack can't offend.
006 felt completely out of his depth. He arranged his face into an expression of intense, confident deliberation—the look of a man who had clearly cracked it—but his open mouth gave him away entirely.
What kind of nonsense riddle is that? Why couldn't they just leave an address? Bella took shots at the Templar Order whenever she had the chance, and it was rubbing off on him. Theatrical nonsense, the lot of them. Don't let me catch you in person—because if I do, I'll take you apart.
While 006 stood there looking puzzled, Ben Gates's mind was already moving. From dye to iron pen to the secretaries of the Continental Congress.
"'Fifty-five in iron pen' — that's the Declaration of Independence! The real information is written on the back of the Declaration! It has to be!" His voice was firm and certain.
The confidence lasted about three seconds before the doubt set in. He had absolutely no idea how to actually get his hands on the Declaration of Independence.
006, for his part, was the kind of man who had once seriously considered launching a Jericho missile at Buckingham Palace. That plan remained indefinitely shelved, but it told you everything about how little he respected government property. American or British—he wasn't particularly concerned.
"The next clue seems to be on the Declaration of Independence," he murmured into his earpiece. "Thoughts?"
From a safe distance, Bella considered. "Pocket the pipe. Tell your new friend you're done with the treasure hunt. Then leave. We don't need him for what comes next."
"OK."
006 picked up the pipe, said he wanted it as a souvenir, and announced—under Ben Gates's deeply skeptical gaze—that he was withdrawing from the search entirely. No more treasure hunting. He was out.
"Ian, please —" Gates had known him only as Ian throughout. It had never occurred to him to question it.
The archaeologist's expression was anguished. "You're just… giving up? You've put in more than thirty-eight million dollars. You don't want to know what the next clue says?"
006 privately thought he looked like an idiot too. All that sacrifice, all that grinding—for what? But Bella's instructions were clear. He put on a mild smile. "I'm not going to steal the Declaration of Independence, Ben. That's a crime. This is as far as I go. Thank you—genuinely—for everything."
He led his team out first, leaving Ben Gates and his assistant standing in the wreck's dim interior, staring at nothing.
"No. He's got an angle. I know people—he absolutely has an angle." Gates muttered at 006's retreating back.
His assistant was young and currently very content. They had found the Charlotte. That was a win. Seeing Ben spiral back into conspiracy mode, the young man stepped in quickly. "Even if he does have an angle, it's not your problem anymore. You can't go to the police and report someone for almost doing something wrong."
"He might not be anything close to a good person. He carries a gun, and those bodyguards of his don't look like they're from a staffing agency." Gates shook his head. "I made a mistake telling him about the Declaration. He's going to cut me out and steal it himself."
The assistant privately thought this theory had several notable holes. "…So what are you going to do about it?"
Gates went blank.
Right. What was he going to do?
On the other side of the operation, 006 sent his team ahead and boarded a helicopter. He handed the pipe to Bella.
Where he was bundled up in thermal gear—parka, knit hat, insulated gloves—Bella was dressed for early autumn. She wore a cream wool coat, black slim-cut trousers, and ankle boots. The bitter cold hardly seemed to affect her. She turned the pipe in her hands, studying it carefully.