I sighed and shook it. 'I'll need full access to the investigation.'
'Deal. You're not what I expected from an ex-member of the Faceless,' Olivia said as we left the room together. 'Every member I've met before was very cold, almost clinical, closed off to others. You're not like that.'
'Probably why I'm an ex-member.'
Olivia's phone rang and she walked away to answer it.
'You two sort out what we need to do,' Tommy asked as he came in from the kitchen, apple in hand.
'Did you leave me any food at all?'
Tommy bit into the apple and shrugged. 'Hungry.'
Olivia returned and removed her coat from the back of a nearby chair. 'Well, you might not be in a minute,' she told Tommy. 'That phone was from one of the attendants at the morgue. Apparently there's something we need to see.'
Olivia and Tommy took his truck and, as the weather was nice, I decided to use my bike again. Not only did I enjoy riding it, but it allowed me some time to think about what I'd gotten into.
I'd left Avalon in 1890, under what couldn't exactly be considered the best conditions. I cut all ties and spent the next hundred years doing jobs for friends and travelling the world. It had been a good life, and now I'd almost come full circle, although I hoped this agreement with Olivia would be short-term, letting me slip back once again into blissful obscurity
I resisted the urge to over-take Tommy, now driving at a reasonable speed, so that I didn't arrive at the LOA headquarters in Winchester by myself, and have to explain who I was and why I was there. Much easier to arrive with their boss and have people leave me alone.
I'd never actually been to the Winchester office before. It had been built four years ago, when I was in the middle of my memory-wiped years. But as I pulled up to the huge steel entrance gates, it certainly made an imposing impression.
Anyone coming over the fifteen-foot-high, barbed-wire topped brick walls would have to contend with a few hundred yards of open field before getting to the main building. There were two guard posts, one sat on either side of the front gate, and both appeared to be manned. Further inside the compound, to either side of the main building, were two smaller buildings. Each of these had a sniper nest towering at least sixty feet off the ground. Those inside would have complete view of anything coming from any side of the compound.
Tommy had told me that the rear of the building was used as a training facility, and often full of highly trained, not to mention heavily armed, Avalon personnel. The only way someone was getting to the main building was if they were allowed in or if they had an army.
I pulled up behind Tommy's truck as Olivia spoke to one of the guards, who in turn signalled for the gates to be opened. Soon after, I was parking my bike and looking up at the structure of the main building.
Thirty stories high, and a mass of steel and glass, it dominated the landscape. The edges of the building were curved slightly, giving it the unusual appearance of twisting as it rose, but it was impressive nonetheless. The front entrance reminded me of Tommy's business. Completely circular, it sat in front of the main building. Although it only had one floor, it had a huge dome of stained-glass atop it giving it the height of a four story building. From the top of the larger building to the ground that we were standing on had to be over three-hundred and fifty feet.
I removed my helmet and placed it on the bike's seat. 'You work in there?' I asked Olivia as she left the truck.
She looked up toward the top of the building. 'Floor twenty-nine,' she said. 'It has one hell of a view.'
'How many people work inside?' I asked as we entered the building.
'Over three hundred during the day, maybe fifty at night,' Olivia replied as she nodded to several armed guards who watched us enter.
A woman with dark, curly hair that reminded me of Medusa sat behind the receptionist's desk and waved at Tommy and Olivia, reserving a scowl for me as I passed and waved, too.
The stained glass dome above looked even better from inside the building. It depicted the removal of the Sword in the Stone by Arthur, and as beautiful as it was, I wondered how many people here knew exactly what Merlin had done to ensure that Arthur became King. How many lives had been sacrificed. I swallowed my anger. Damn him to hell.
'You okay?'
Sara sat on one of the many leather chairs in the lobby, reading a magazine, which she placed on the glass coffee table in front of her. 'You okay?' she asked again as she walked toward me.
'Miles away,' I said with a genuine smile.
'I called Sara, and asked if she'd meet us here,' Tommy said.
'At the morgue,' I pointed out.
'We're not going to dissect anyone, Nate,' he said, exasperated. 'But if there's anything that you're uncomfortable with, Sara, just walk out. After yesterday, I certainly wouldn't be here if I didn't have to be.'
'I'll be fine,' Sara said, as the lift doors opened and we all got inside.
Olivia removed a long, thin key from her pocket and inserted it into a panel under the buttons of the above floors. The panel popped open revealing several hidden buttons, L1 to L6. She pressed L5 and the doors closed.
'Are all six levels the morgue?' I asked as the lift began to move down.
Olivia shook her head. '1 through 3 are all rune work and security, 4 to 6 is where the morgue is. Sometimes you want as much distance between the dead and the living as possible.'
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the journey was completed in silence.
The lift reached its destination with a slight shudder before the doors slowly opened, revealing a corridor straight out of every hospital in the world. The only remarkable thing about it was that the signs on the walls had arrows that pointed to 'magical dissection' and 'rune removal'. Not something you see in most hospitals.
Olivia led us past several men and women, all of whom were either reading from clipboards or talking to someone else about what was on a clipboard.
We made our way to the far end of a corridor, and Olivia went through one of two doors next to one another without knocking. It led to a wash area, with one long metal sink, taps above, and liquid soap dispensers fastened to the wall. The opposite wall had a glass window that allowed us to look into the room next to us. A bald man sat beside a desk, writing — probably something to go onto another clipboard. I smiled. It wasn't funny, but when surrounded by death, I'll take levity where I can get it.
Behind the bald man were several dozen closed, silver hatches. On a table lay one body, thankfully covered in a dark blue sheet with red symbols etched into it. Sometimes the dead really don't want to stay that way.
Olivia passed each of us some green scrubs and waited until we'd put them on before she opened the door next to the window.
'Doctor Grayson,' she said.
The doctor stood and shook Olivia's hand, smiling the whole time. 'It's good to see you, Director. Well, sort of, you understand.'
'Of course,' she introduced Sara and Tommy, but stopped when it came to me. She obviously wasn't sure if I planned on using my real name or not.
'Nathan Garrett,' I said with a shake of his hand. 'Nice to meet you.'
'An outside contractor I assume,' Doctor Grayson said. 'I hope you can help.'
'I'll do my best.'
The doctor walked past us to the table. He was short, no taller than five-foot one or two, with a small white goatee which did its best to cover a noticeable scar along one cheek. I'd seen scars like that before. Whatever had done it was sharp, and if experience was any indication, it had probably been deliberate.
'So what do you have for us, Grayson?' Olivia asked.
Doctor Grayson picked up a file and started to read from it. 'Female, Caucasian and human. She was twenty- four, her name-'
'Amber Moore,' I said.
The doctor glanced up at me. 'That's right.' He grabbed the side of the sheet and hesitated. 'Are you all okay with this?'
