The three slabs had done something to 006 that the treasure hadn't.
He kept thinking about them on the drive back. During an MI6 assignment years ago—a collection seized from a prominent contact in Turkey—he'd seen something similar. A slab with the same style and the same subject. That meant there were more of them out there. More than three, more than four, scattered across the world in places no one had thought to look for patterns.
Alien life. An ancient technological civilization on Earth.
The mystical path wasn't open to him. He'd accepted that. But going back to science—that was a different matter entirely.
He wanted to use Weyland's resources to launch a dedicated search program. Even without a spacecraft, even without any way to leave Earth's atmosphere in the near term, they could do the preliminary work and start looking.
And on a more personal note—his luck had been catastrophically bad lately. For a man in his line of work, bad luck was more or less a terminal diagnosis. A Japanese industrialist he knew, Yashida Shingen, had recently mentioned a shop: Max's Mystical Goods Store. Under normal circumstances, 006 would have written it off as the kind of urban legend that circulated among the superstitious wealthy. But his circumstances were no longer normal. He'd visit in person. If they had something that could turn his fortune around, it would be worth whatever they were asking.
Bella spent the whole night inside the vault.
A significant number of the artifacts carried traces of magical energy—some laced with curses, some inscribed with dark hexes, some forged through blood rituals by sorcerers who had been dead for centuries. The Templars had buried this hoard deep beneath Trinity Church for a reason; it was possible they'd intended the sanctified ground to slowly cleanse the artifacts over time. Whether it had fully worked was another question. Most items held only the faintest residual energy—enough, at worst, to give the handler a persistent headache—but Bella sorted and catalogued everything regardless, working through the collection methodically. By the time she climbed out of the underground chamber, the sky had begun to pale.
Outside Trinity Church, William Miles was still directing the operation.
Wealth was a dangerous thing. Most organizations wouldn't survive a single night guarding a fortune like this without fractures forming. The Brotherhood's members held—a testament to the moral standard the organization had always demanded of its people—and William Miles could barely contain his relief. The moment Bella emerged, he crossed to her at once.
"Mentor! Our haul is—I can hardly believe it. I did a rough count and —"
Bella was running on no sleep, but she listened with patience, nodding at intervals.
"... I understand," she said when he finished. "The specifics of liquidation—that's a decision for the Council of Elders. My part is simple: three requirements, and three only. Keep it discreet. Keep it safe. And wherever possible, use neutral third-party contacts to move the goods—Brotherhood members should never be the ones facing buyers directly."
No lengthy speeches, no elaborate conditions. She said what needed to be said, then excused herself to rest.
The Brotherhood had the infrastructure for this. Transport, distribution, recovery—it was all mapped out in advance. This operation had been exceptional enough to warrant Bella's direct involvement. Under normal circumstances, logistics weren't her concern.
She spent three days in New York, until there was nothing left to verify. Before she left, she reminded William Miles to set aside any scrolls and manuscripts for her. Then she changed out of her Mentor's robes and headed back to Los Angeles.
She'd left at dusk. By the time she reached Los Angeles, it was nearly dawn. She drove home, eased the front door open as quietly as she could—and found Natasha, freshly back from her morning run, watching her from the entryway.
Ever since that night, her little sister's tone had developed a certain edge. Warm, but watchful. Like she was keeping guard against something.
For heaven's sake, Bella thought. I've been running myself ragged. When exactly would I have time to fool around on the side?
"I, um—I'm dead on my feet. Can we talk after I've slept?"
Natasha waved her off—but dropped her voice. "Go. Dump your clothes in the washing machine. I'll take care of it." A pause. "You smell like you've been buried underground."
Back in Los Angeles, she kept returning to the scrolls.
Most of her free time disappeared into decoding them. Spells that had once moved mountains now barely stirred the air, their mechanisms worn down by millennia. But the theory behind them—the underlying frameworks describing the Astral Plane, the celestial realms, the infernal depths, the dream dimension, the nature of the soul—that was something else entirely. Page by page, it was rewriting what she thought she understood.
Then the news reached her from 006: Ben Gates had turned himself in to the authorities, and shortly afterward, disappeared.
She reached for her divination tools and cast twice. The results were hazy—she'd never had direct contact with the man, and that made the reading imprecise at best. All she could determine with confidence was that he was still alive. Where, exactly, remained unclear.
She called 006.
"Mr. Eric." She kept her voice steady. "Watch yourself. If anyone moves against you, you'll be their first target."
She felt a flicker of guilt as she said it. 006 had poured himself into this operation—spent a fortune, carried personal risk, and now stood as the most visible party if anyone came looking for a scapegoat. That wasn't fair, and she knew it.
She arranged a transfer through the Brotherhood: one hundred million dollars, wired to 006's accounts. It didn't undo the exposure, but it at least covered his losses.
Then she went to her workroom and prepared several Eastern talismans—protective wards, the kind intended to deflect harm at critical moments. She sent those over as well.
By her calculation, they were more than sufficient to keep him alive when it mattered most.
Life returned to its quieter rhythms.
But the ancient scrolls had changed something in her understanding of soul mechanics, and she couldn't un-know it.
She'd realized her earlier assumptions had been wrong—seriously wrong, in at least one key area. Without wasting time, she arranged to have both Violet Harmon and Shaw transferred to Clone Island.
For revival to work with the best possible compatibility, a soul needed to grow alongside its clone body. Not inhabit it after the fact. Alongside it, from as early a stage as possible. The difference in compatibility wasn't marginal—it was the difference between a fitted key and a borrowed one.
Root was there when they arrived. She cared deeply about her partner's revival and had followed along to Clone Island. Now she stood at the edge of the chamber, watching Shaw's clone sleep in its tank, and turned to Bella with worry written plainly across her face.
"Are you sure this is going to work?"
Bella had been confident before. The more she'd read, the less certain she felt.
Violet's case was manageable. One soul, one body, a clean pairing. The integration would take time—longer than a forced possession, but far cleaner in outcome. Given a full year, it should hold.
Shaw was a different problem entirely.
Shaw and Pika—the pickup truck—had fused. The soul wasn't clean. It was entangled with a machine at a fundamental level, and Bella had yet to find a method of separation she trusted. You couldn't just force a half-truck, half-human soul into a clone body and expect it to work. She had no reliable framework for that kind of soul surgery.
Her working solution: give it time, and give Shaw the Shikon Jewel.
Shaw's revival timeline was two years. The Shikon Jewel would be placed in the tank as a failsafe, to bridge any rejection that developed between the fused soul and the clone body.
It was the best she had.
"Resurrection has always been divine territory," Bella said at last. "We can only push as far as our abilities allow. After that, it's out of our hands."
She meant it. She had no guarantees to offer, and she wasn't going to pretend otherwise.
First, she'd see how Violet's revival progressed. That would tell her more.
If Shaw's case proved truly intractable—if there was no path forward through conventional soul work—then there was a last resort she'd been turning over in the back of her mind. Design a mechanical housing for Shaw's clone. Reinforce the carbon-based biology until it could sustain a transformation function. Integrate the Pika framework directly. Essentially: Transformer conversion. Build Shaw into a two-in-one, and let the truck and the soldier coexist in a system designed to hold both.
It was absurd. It might also be the only workable solution.
Bella filed the thought away and hoped it wouldn't come to that.