Veronica was not having a good day. After telling the rest of her team what she had heard while they were away, she was stuck with the aftermath of that confession. Beale's storming off and insisting that he needed to be with another team was hardly the most mature reaction he could have had, but it somehow didn't surprise Veronica that it was the one he had chosen. He'd always been the type to run away if things got sticky. Regardless, she was now having to deal with the rest of the team, who were, predictably, at odds regarding what they thought they should do about what she heard.
Nuereddin believed that the only thing to do was to ride into combat right away, that very minute, and to hell with the consequences. It didn't matter to him that they had no idea what kind of plan Randulph and Cassidy had in place, or what their contingent plans might have been, or even what their target was. They were Up To Something, and that was enough for him. To be fair, he had made quite a rousing speech about the whole situation, but it wasn't enough to convince anyone else that it was the proper time to head out to war.
Niles, on the other hand, believed that the only way forward was to tell the powers that be in the Library, and let them handle things. Since Cassidy had worked in the Archives, he reasoned, Sofya should be responsible for informing the head of the Archives, Jane, about the alleged double-crossing. Cassidy having access to the entire Archives was something that made Veronica a little sick to her stomach, but she didn't quite understand how the Archives worked exactly, so she didn't know what Cassidy would actually have access to. As for Randulph, as far as Niles was concerned, there was one being above him in the hierarchy of the Library, so it would stand that they should receive any reports of alleged wrongdoing on Randulph's part. (Veronica had begun to regret teaching Niles about the importance of the presumption of innocence, and how suspects were 'alleged' to have done something until they had been found guilty in a court of law - he now loved to toss the word 'allegedly' around in as many different circumstances as he could.)
Sofya brought up the valid point that, while they may know the name of the person Randulph reported to in his day to day work, it was very different from actually knowing the person, and it didn't feel like they should just barge in on that person and tell them that their employee was plotting to destroy the Library. "Not without proof," she added, and Veronica was almost immediately put in mind of a school teacher lecturing her students about the proper way to handle a scientific equation. "We can only really approach them if we have proof that there's a plot, and we know more about what it is."
Sofya's demand for proof was what sent Veronica over the edge in terms of deciding her next step. She thanked the rest of the team for their comments and points of view, and told them that she was going to get to work on some things around the Library - paperwork, mostly - and learn a bit about what had called them to the Library this time. It struck her as odd that no one from the report center had approached them at all yet, when they'd arrived the better part of a day earlier. Beale had obviously spoken to someone at the report center, as Veronica could see that he was getting the forms and facts for a mission and would be joining Cassidy's team. That was a whole other situation that she didn't really want to think about just yet, and so she had firmly moved it from her mind for the moment. "I'll let you know as soon as I hear something," she promised her team. "Meanwhile, you should get some rest in the rooms nearby, and just have a bit of a relax. Treat it like a mini-vacation, even." She smiled at the team members, willing the smile to reach her eyes and knowing that it probably hadn't. It had been worth a shot, at least.
Still, she managed to see them off to the apartments nearby, even going so far as to help Sofya walk back to her door. It worried her that her friend was in so much pain, particularly when being in the Library usually prevented Sofya from feeling so poorly. She said as much to Sofya as they limped along together, and Sofya gave a sardonic laugh.
"I'm not sure what's going on there, that's for certain," she said, eyeing the cane she was using in the hand on the opposite side from where Veronica stood. "The pain started getting worse in my universe, and ever since last time, it hasn't quite been the same. I need to schedule an appointment with the specialist in my universe when I get the chance to show my face there again, but something tells me that won't be for a while yet." At the door to Sofya's apartment, she turned and gripped Veronica's hand tightly.
"You aren't going to go off and do something ill-advised and dangerous, are you?" She looked into Veronica's eyes so deeply that Veronica was certain she could read the thoughts right out of her head. However, Veronica had experience hiding her thoughts, and did so now.
“I don’t have the energy for anything like that, dear,” she said lightly, dropping a kiss on Sofya’s cheek. “I just plan on going over some of my notes regarding the previous author appearance, and make an early night of it. Maybe a glass of whiskey, if I’m feeling particularly ‘dangerous,’” she added with a laugh, seeing Sofya’s disbelieving face. That at least made her friend laugh enough to let go of Veronica’s hand, and with another stern look (made less intimidating by the smile she couldn’t quite keep off her face), Sofya made her way into the apartment and closed the door behind her.
Veronica walked slowly back to her desk, thinking hard. She wouldn't say that what she wanted to do was 'dangerous,' exactly, but it might fall into the category of 'ill-advised.' But that would only matter if she got caught, which she had no intention of doing. All she wanted to do was get some more information about the things that had been threatening the Library in the missions she'd been hearing about from the other teams in addition to her own, and find out what kind of things people had been finding when they went to investigate anomalies. If she happened to find something that indicated a specific person or persons from the Library might be involved with planting some of those things in the books, or anything else that would lead a reasonable person to suspect that there was something nefarious going on, well...she'd cross that bridge if she came to it.
The important things were to get prepared, and to stay hidden. The first part would be easy enough; Veronica had handled enough investigations over her time in her own universe and then as a Library agent that she knew how to prepare to do some digging. She sat at her desk and pulled a well-worn leather satchel out of the large bottom drawer of her desk, rummaging through it to make sure she wasn't bringing anything unnecessary. It hadn't been used in a little while, because she had a different bag that she used for in-universe missions (the in-universe bag was a bit more universal in its design, making it easy to blend in regardless of where or when she was; the research bag was of the style more closely aligned to her personal universe, and had belonged to a dear friend.). Reaching into the main pocket, she pulled out a few scraps of paper with rushed notes scribbled on them, and she took a moment to read each one before deciding if they needed to be kept. Most of them, naturally, went into the trash, as they were related to things she had last researched months, even years prior.
Veronica did find one note that wasn't something she had scribbled down, but rather was tucked into her bag carefully, the paper soft from being handled over and over. As soon as she unfolded it, she recognized Beale's distinctively blocky handwriting, and a smile involuntarily crossed her face. No matter what, the man had a way of making her feel better, even if just for a moment. She sobered then, remembering how he had looked when he'd stormed off earlier that day. Veronica had never seen him looking so cold, much less looking like that at her in such a way. She had to hope that she found some kind of evidence that would convince him, as well as the rest of the team and everyone else who needed to be convinced, that something was wrong and Cassidy and Randulph were trying to destroy the Library. She read the note from Beale over again, then folded it carefully and put it in the pocket in the back of one of her hard-bound notebooks. It would serve as a reminder of what she was trying to do, and what she was working to save.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
The satchel was fairly large, but Veronica didn't want to fill it up too much. From experience, she knew that she might need to bring files or notes back from whatever she had found, and she wanted to make sure she left room to stash those pages safely in the satchel. She added two more notebooks (one small and spiral-bound, one larger and with a soft cover) to the hard-bound notebook already there, along with a handful of pens and pencils. Veronica remembered with a grim smile the time she had been trying to take notes on a conversation between two high-ranking mob members, and her pen had run out of ink. She vowed then and there she would never allow herself to go anywhere without at least two back-up forms of writing instrument. She also added the portable tape recorder she had liberated from a raid on a Russian spy novel ring a few years prior. There had been a large number of similar devices found in universes that were, chronologically, a bit too early to have such advanced technology, and she and her team had spent weeks ferreting out the last of them from the spies who had bought them on the brown market. Finally, she tested the batteries on her large metal flashlight (good for both lighting her way and smacking heads, if need be) before adding it to her bag and closing it up. She set it on the floor just under her desk, where it wouldn't be immediately visible to anyone walking by. Now all she had to do was wait.
Fortunately, Veronica had plenty to do while she waited for things in the work room to quiet down. She had meant at least part of what she told Sofya when it came to looking over the information she'd gotten about the previous author appearance, and it seemed like this would be the perfect time to learn more about the book and its author. She opened her main notebook, the one she used for her regular, day to day research, and began to read what she had previously found.
In the last six months (as the Prime clock ran), the four main teams that handled anomalies had gotten an increasing number of calls for items appearing in universes in which they did not belong. This was bread and butter for the anomaly teams, of course, but the items had become more strange and diverse than the ones they were accustomed to finding, and they seemed to be causing more damage to the universes before the teams were called to handle them. Veronica remembered that when she first started working with the Library (more years ago than she could remember), her team would get the call to handle anomalies nearly as soon as they appeared in-universe, and their goal was to handle them before they had the chance to even be noticed by the characters or universe itself, much less cause damage to the universe.
The laser gun in the werewolf barista universe, for example, had not only been found by a character in the universe, but had contributed to the beginning of a subplot to assassinate the werewolf protagonist before she had a chance to finish the campaign. Veronica had been fortunate that she and her team had been able to find the laser gun before the assassination attempt, but it had been a near thing, and even at the time, it seemed like an odd amount of time between when the anomaly appeared in the universe and when the team had been called to handle it. Veronica tapped her pen against her notebook, thinking hard.
She’d spoken with Murchand, a HistFan duke (earl? Veronica could never remember his title, just that he insisted everyone called him Murchy), talking about how his team had nearly been too late in handling an anomaly that had ended up in a town filled with werepigs. Somehow, a town set in the 17th century had wound up with a Tommy gun from Veronica’s in-universe era, and that gun had ended up in the hands of the leader of the town’s church. As far as Murchy could understand, the priest had planned to use the “tool of God” (as the priest called it) to smite the unclean, which in his case meant the non-werepigs. It had taken a great deal of persuasion to convince the priest that the Lord would handle the “unclean” in His own time and manner, and that the Tommy gun had actually come from the Devil. Murchy had rolled his eyes at it all when he related the story, but he was able to pull rank in the end and get the priest to hand over the gun before the great slaughter. “Veronica, it was with no little relief that I took that implement from his eager hands,” Murchy had recalled, stirring his tea in his personal porcelain teacup. “I shudder to think what would have happened if my team had been even one day later than we had been.”
Veronica frowned as she reviewed her notes, drawing lines under the common elements. Apparently, the problem was becoming more obvious in worlds that had some sort of “shifter” element embedded in the universe. She’d known that werewolves had been regular and important elements in multiple universes for generations, though they generally stayed in the greater branches of Fantasy and Horror (and their various sub-branches). In more recent years, there had been a pull into the Romance branches with creatures beyond the typical werewolf, and Veronica had noticed that the branches joining Romance and Fantasy had gotten much broader as the “shifter romance” universes had expanded. Veronica had seen more were-creatures showing up in the tunnels, and there was even April, a new library agent who was a were…llama? Alpaca? Veronica frowned, knowing that it was important to April that she get that right, but for the life of her not remembering which one it was.
The point was that there were enough shifters in the various universes that the Library had called one of them to be an agent, which only happened once an archetype reached a critical mass. At least, that was what Veronica had gleaned from her years of experience - there was nothing in any of the manuals or histories of the Library that explained exactly how agents were called to the Library, or what led to certain characters to be called and not others. The manuals for agents focused more on the work of being an agent, searching for anomalies and working with their teams to keep the integrity of the universes into which they’d been sent, which made a certain amount of sense. After all, it didn’t matter why someone was called to be an agent once they began the work, just that they had been, and the work needed to be done.
Veronica tapped her pen against her notebook again, the steady beat helping her focus her thoughts. There were three reported incidents of anomalies that had made it into the fiber of universes that contained shifters, and had nearly (or in the case of the werelions, had in fact) caused damage to the universe itself. She knew that these were the crest of the wave, and there was bound to be more information about incidents that had happened before these - the ones that hadn’t gotten to the level of danger that these three had. Because they hadn’t been bad enough to raise the level of alarm, they were likely to be buried in the report center.
She sighed, then stood, stretching and taking the opportunity to see if there were other people around. She had been pretty sure she was going to have to break into the report center, she had just hoped she was wrong for once. Veronica had broken into her fair share of places over the course of her work as both an investigative journalist and an agent of the Library, but that didn’t mean she liked it. It was breaking the rules, and she hated having to do that. Still, it wasn’t like she could ask Randulph to let her read through the recent reports to find information about damage that he himself might have been causing, and it was unlikely that the reports she was looking for were old enough to be in the area of the Library where she’d found the information on Children of Darwin.
Seeing that no one was around, she scooped up her bag and walked briskly toward the report center, acting like she had every right to walk over there and enter the room if she wanted to. Veronica had learned a long time ago that walking as though she had the authority to do the thing she was doing got her halfway home. At the door, she briefly worked on the lock with her picks and opened it quickly, closing the door behind her as quietly as she could and waiting for her eyes to adjust before pulling out her flashlight. She had just managed to get her hand on it before someone reminded her that she had missed an important step in breaking and entering - making sure the place was empty.
