Half a team. That was all Salem could characterize their trio as, given the sparse amount of time they had spent together despite the obscurity of the situation. Maybe it was the combination of losses of the other ‘half’ of their team or all of the things they had seen and done just to survive. They didn’t want to end up like the other half, rotting in the ground somewhere centuries ago--a place none of them ever wanted to go back to. Reagan knew that for the remainder of his life, anything even relative to colonial Massachusetts would trigger a variety of reactions in his mind and body, and not a single one of them good. He wasn’t even convinced he knew how he had gotten there or why or what the purpose of any of it was. He just felt as though he had lost total control of his life and his situation.

Then there was Salem. Even now as she stood at the bathroom sink in her own house, almost four centuries later, there were visible reminders of the hardship she had endured. There were terrible burn marks around her wrists and neck from where they had tried to hang her, where they had imprisoned her, and the feeling of water on her skin still caused her to feel as though she was fighting for her life in the river they threw her in. She had never felt so helpless, so animalistic in the way she had to struggle to fight for her life. Perhaps the trio only felt like half a team because Salem only felt half-alive.

The world around her had done nothing to help the emotional turmoil that still resonated in her being upon her arrival home. Though she felt most alone, most helpless, most scarred in the quiet moments, the media had ensured that there would be very few of those, if any. The means which had brought her from Istanbul to Massachusetts had returned her from Massachusetts to the public park near their family home in Washington. And when she arrived home, a large congregation of photographers, journalists, newspeople, government officials, and more were swarming her front lawn like a colony of bees. It was day five now, and she hadn’t left the home once. Her mother had gone to stay at a friend’s house after the first two days and endlessly questioned her daughter about what in the world had happened to bring every media member in Washington to their front lawn. Now alone, Salem spent much of her time either researching what in the world had happened to them or reading the news reports from South Carolina and New Zealand just to ensure that Wi and Reagan were real people, and the utter chaos that her life had become wasn’t some fever dream or distant reverie.

Then it happened.

It was the same as last time in many ways, yet so different. In the middle of the night, someone had dropped a printed note on her doorstep with a set of coordinates, nothing else. She had picked it up with a latex glove and placed it in a glass box in a safe in her room after writing the coordinates down on a piece of paper. Then, she sat down at the kitchen table, wondering what to do. She had smashed her burner phones and deleted her email accounts, thus removing the only pieces of presence she may have had in the world. But now she had no way to communicate with the two other members of her team--she could only hope that they had received some sort of message like hers. She could only hope that she wouldn’t be walking into this alone, regardless of how little they felt like her team members.

...

Paris, France. A particular location in the Louvre. That was where the coordinates had led her. She had gotten on a plane in the middle of the night, and used the time to think and record all of the questions she had. If they all re-entered modern day through the same portal, why didn’t they all return to the same place? Surely they had all survived it, she had seen their faces on the news as she was sure they had hers. Who had leaked their names to the press? Was it for material gain? Or did someone have it out for them? How much did they know?

Salem sighed, putting the journal away and vowing to return to it later. She had heard the distant ringing of the airplane speakers, then the voice of the pilot. Only a few minutes remained until the plane would land, and she would hail a cab to the front steps of the Louvre. She wondered what would await her there, and then she wondered who would await her there. She couldn’t trust whoever was doing this, whoever had chosen her--and why had they chosen her? She refused to trust any piece of this process, and reminded herself for the nth time that she had a choice in whether she continued to follow these hints and cooperate with the anonymous source. Yet, something deep down told her that she was far from finished, especially if it led her any closer to finding out who had taken her brother away from her.

…

It was a rainy evening in Paris. The plane had slipped around on the tarmac during the landing, and it had made Salem’s first few steps in France rather shaky. She felt slightly lightheaded but shook it off hastily for the sake of the mission at hand. Hiding her relic in her pocket and her journal under her long green overcoat, Salem maneuvered her way through the busy airport, catching a familiar gaze on her way through the American terminals.

“Hey,” he said in a low tone, “do you think they know us here?”

Salem gazed up at the brawny figure with her keen, green-eyed stare. She didn’t hold eye contact, however, she was busy scanning the area around them for potential threats.

“Ma’am, are you doing okay?”

Salem nodded to one of the airport security guards who was looking up at Reagan with a standoffish expression plastered loudly to her face. “Just fine, thank you.” She then returned her gaze to the figure towering above her, gesturing for them to keep walking. “If anyone were to recognize us, it would be one of them. We’ve got to keep moving though.”

“Did someone drop a note in your mailbox with the location and the time?”

“Yours had the time?”

“Five, fifty-eight in the morning, just about twenty-eight minutes from now. But it just says the Louvre, it doesn’t say where.”

“I have the exact coordinates, but I don’t know which floor we’re supposed to be on. If yours had the time, though, maybe Wiremu’s has the floor or the exhibit or something.”

As they stepped out of the airport, the rain contrasted the vibrant cityscape making everything luminescent. Even in a bustling metropolis such as this, though, the fleeting moments between night and morning were quieter than could be expected, and it made one ponder for just a moment why so many roads and walkways had been created for so little traffic. Reagan was grumbling--something about hating the way rain made his head feel--and Salem walked in complete, intimidating silence.

After hailing a cab and walking the remaining distance, the pair ended up at the front steps of the looming monstrosity of a building with mere minutes to spare.

“The museum doesn’t open until nine. How do you reckon we’re supposed to break into one of the most high-security buildings in the world?”

“Follow my lead,” Salem replied, casually strolling up to a woman who was sitting on the front steps near the entrance. She was dressed professionally with a key card around her neck.

“Parlez-vous anglais?” Her French was very Americanized, and it became glaringly obvious that she didn’t speak any of the language other than the very basics. However, the girl looked up and smiled.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact I do. My name is Rachel Vaughn, and you’re not going to believe this but I was expecting you.”

Glancing to each other, they said nothing before Rachel continued. “Someone slipped a letter in my mailbox here at work with your names and pictures. I don’t know who you are but I sincerely hope that you’re here for good reasons. I was told to wait until all three of you came to let you in, but I hope you don’t mind I let the dark-haired man in earlier. He said he was headed to the fourth floor.”

Checking her watch, Salem thanked the woman before sprinting in the front doors, Reagan trailing behind. “We only have four minutes to find Wiremu and get to exactly the correct location.”

“Wiremu,” Salem greeted, “Thank God.” She was tall, long-strided, and fit, but her insistence on taking the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator had still left her breathless. She nodded at his question and glanced to Reagan, who had taken his out of a small leather pouch. She glanced at him suspiciously. “You keep that in your wallet?”

“Where else would I put it? All my important stuff in one place.”

She sighed, glancing up to their third team member. Reagan and Salem had been left plenty of time to catch up on the trek over from the airport and they hadn’t said more than a few words to Wiremu since they’d gotten back. Reagan had considered emailing the two of them, or maybe even calling them on burner phones, but every time he considered it his military background reminded him of what a terrible idea that was with most of the world breathing down their necks after them, their information, and anything else that stood in between them and the restoration of this artifact. Yet his humanity reminded him of the aching loneliness he felt and how he wished to share in the trauma of this adventure with the people who understood it best instead of being trapped in his basement drinking warm beer.

“Over here,” she guided them towards the left corner of the exhibit, her gaze gliding between a makeshift map she had drawn on her hand and the scene in front of her. She touched the corner of a painting that hung, a landscape of the storming of the bastille. “One of these things is not like the other,” she observed, glancing at the other works beside it. They were featuring paintings that had been done by European royalty, and this entire section was filled with paintings by a young Iberian prince. She could barely make out his name scribbled on the bottom of the paintings--all the paintings except this one. When she touched it, it moved. It wasn’t locked in place like the others.

“Be careful, we don’t know if this is a trap or not. It could be a bomb.”

She slowly lifted the painting off the wall, revealing another shard that was carefully hidden in a small vault in the architecture that had been left unlocked and half-open. Yet, when she reached her arm in to grab the shard, she realized that this wall had the same strange qualities as the wall in Istanbul. “We found it,” she acknowledged, “I’ll go first.”

“Right behind you,” Reagan said, stepping in after her, feeling as if he was being absorbed by quicksand. Everything he thought he knew was a blur that kept speeding up until finally he blacked out.The next time he opened his eyes, he was lying in the corner of a plaza on dry, warm ground, most opposite to what they had traveled in. Salem was sitting beside them, watching Wiremu. He still hadn’t stirred and by her unmoving position, she hadn’t realized Reagan had awoken.

“I’ve been waiting for you two to wake up,” she said without flinching. Reagan nearly flinched. She hadn’t even glanced down at him before she had started speaking. “I’ve been busy dragging your lifeless bodies to a more private location than the middle of the Place de la Concorde,” she hissed, throwing some sloppily folded period clothing on top of Reagan. She placed Wiremu’s beside him, then hesitated, then nudged him with the corner of her shoe. It became glaringly obvious she didn’t like to touch people, more so than it had been before. “Don’t ask me how I got our clothes, it’s better if you don’t know.”

The slightest boyish grin crept onto Reagan’s face as he accepted the clothing, slowly getting up and ensuring he hadn’t hurt himself in any way. “Thank you ma’am, I suppose I won’t question why it smells like sweaty old French man then.” With that same smile on his face, he got up to go find a more private place to change out of his clothing.

Salem nudged Wiremu again with her shoe, then she softly tried to move his arm. She studied him again, the impact of the stress of their last mission apparent in the way he looked. His hair was longer now, curlier. There were dark circles under his eyes and though he looked peaceful now, still blacked out, she could tell he hadn’t been taking this well. She knew Reagan hadn’t either, but he was doing a better job of showing it. “Wiremu,” she said once more, moving his arm. “Come on, wake up.”

A matter of minutes later, the three were all dressed in period clothing and they lingered in a quiet alley near where Salem had dragged them. She handed Wiremu the shard she had obtained from the Louvre before speaking. “So here’s what I know. We’re in Paris in July of 1789. I don’t really know what that means because I never paid attention to World History in school but I’m sure we’re here for a reason. Then again, there wasn’t much of a reason behind the last mission other than rescuing people we failed to save.”

Reagan’s brow furrowed, thinking about the losses of his team members. Salem and Wi hadn’t known them like he had. It felt like losing his own family members. Yet, he didn’t address her insensitivity. He just gulped, feeling doomed. “It’s the French Revolution. What if they led us here to kill us?”

Upon seeing the faces of the two people he had somehow ended up missing greatly, Wiremu resisted the impulse to give them a tight hug. He didn’t think that was the sort of thing either of them liked – and even if they did, it would seem odd. Weird even. Despite not taking part in the banter, hearing them made him acknowledge that he had, despite better judgement, also missed their maddening retorts. Meeting Reagan’s eyes, he shrugged casually, “Salem’s too scary. I wouldn’t want to say anything that can get me on her naughty list.”

Following Salem, Wiremu firmly gripped his own Shard, uncertain of the tumult that he was feeling in his stomach. Now that they were so close, there was a last-minute hesitation. The intricate paintings made no difference to him; they all seemed to have no meaning. Well, what could one expect? Every painting of this kind is just a snapshot of a frozen action scene. Not much meaning in that.

“I doubt it’s a trap at this point. If we were supposed to be killed, there are many easier ways than to blow up the Louvre. Kind of overkill, if you ask me.” His words fell on deaf ears as the other two passed through the wall. Going last meant that he had the opportunity now to observe how the little portals behaved. It bulged inwards, bursting almost as Reagan’s hand passed through. As the rest of the fellow’s body passed through, the wall wobbled and rippled, Wiremu’s imagination filling in the missing ‘twang’ sound. Now the only one left, he too stepped into the wall, ignoring the sensation of being suffocated and allowing himself to succumb to the darkness that inched into peripheral vision. He really hated that feeling.

The next thing he became aware off was the toe of a shoe jabbing into his side. Reluctant to awaken, he kept his eyes firmly shut and ignored all the pushing and poking, but at the sound of her voice Wiremu brought himself into a sitting position almost instantaneously, hitting his head against hers. “You know, your voice is more annoying than the sound of the bloody alarm at home. It just scary.” Her response to that was her hurling a set of old clothes at him. Rather well-deserved though.

Though complaining, he had complied and swapped his clothes for the ones she’d given him. He was a comical sight in the dull colours, the outfit straining slightly at the seams. The original owner had been a tad smaller than himself. But by the time they were in the alley, he had almost gotten over his pointed disgust at the clothes he was wearing. What he now had a problem with, was the fact that he had been given the Shard. Wiremu knew himself, and that part of him was obviously going to lose it before the day ended. This was going to be peachy.

Resisting the urge to give the Shard back, he tied it into the twine next to his own one and place it into the deepest pocket that he had, that also had a button to close the opening of the pocket. Directing his focus back to his companions, he paused to think before contributing. “Yes, Reagan. We’re in the first year of the French Revolution. In fact, the Revolution has already begun. And if it is July, we’re looking at the Siege of Bastille and the Sporty-Something Oath.”

“To kill us, no. There is no benefit in killing us here. Not yet anyway. Although, we should be ready to die. Lots of people died in the French Revolution. And the Siege of Bastille isn’t exactly the prettiest – though it isn’t the worst either. If we get caught up in the middle, I would like to say, I’ll miss you all if I die a-and I don’t know what I’ll do if…if I can’t get a loaf of bread! Gluten and I really can’t live apart. Er, well aside from that, I, uh, can’t speak a word of French.”