István was 'hiding' in his lab - if you could call doing normal work hiding. He was back to sorting Artifacts. There was a man tied up in the corner of the lab, bound by electrical cables, which was an interesting if fairly strong choice. The intruder's face had been beaten into a pillowy-soft state, apparently by István himself, who didn't have so much as a hair out of place, lending yet more credence to why Viktor seemed to have so much faith in him.

Maybe I could ask for pointers.

"He broke in, I broke him back," István said, gesturing with something that looked like an incense tray. My unique vision told me it was aligned with something I didn't recognize, which was a bit surprising. I figured it'd be Fire aligned, considering the use. A formless purple cloud swirled in slow eddies at the center.

Viktor shrugged his shoulders. "Seems fair to me."

"Any idea what they were looking for?" I asked, resulting in both of the men looking at me, something that unsurprisingly made me twice as nervous.

"Logic dictates that we have something beyond just the artifacts here," István said, waving his purple-y Aligned Artifact around again. I was beginning to realize he had a habit of using Artifacts as pointing devices. Being the history buff he was, I figured he'd treat them with a bit more genuflection, but no, cat toy.

I looked around myself, almost feeling the whiskers and claws growing as I followed the end of the tray as it swept the room. I was tempted to abscond with it out of his hands. "I wonder what that could be."

"Who knows," Viktor grunted. "That lot has never needed much of a reason to interfere with people just minding their own business."

It was tempting to me to point out that sorting out the bits of their exploded building wasn't entirely minding our own business, but I was able to restrain the urge. It was pretty easy not to countermand a man that could wrap your head in his hand.

"That lot?" I asked, garnering another shared look. Clearly they both knew something I didn't.

"I wouldn't worry about it for now," Viktor said, seeming bored of the conversation as he turned to leave. "Good job, both of you." He said with a wave over his shoulder. "I'm off to get coffee."

I was running through the logistics of Viktor using all the little buttons on the coffee machine when István held out the Artifact again, evidently having noticed my gaze on it earlier. "Any idea what Alignment this is?" he asked, "The machines can not figure out anything about it."

Taking it from his hand and turning it over in mine, I asked if that happens often.

"Fairly," he acknowledged, "About one or two in every hundred is something this lab has trouble identifying."

"Well, I'm afraid I'm not a ton of help here," I said, "Unless 'purple cloud' tells you anything."

"Is that the 'vibe' you get?"

"No, it's what I see," I replied, immediately realizing I'd messed up from the way he went all still and stared at me.

"Wait," he said, after a pause that was at least nine months along. "You see the Alignments?"

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Uhhh," I stammered, not really sure how to respond to that. I'd kind of forgotten that a lot of what I did was abnormal even by the new standards of this hidden world of Motes I'd found. Whoopsie-daisy. I still wasn't sure just how screwed I was yet, though.

István seemed to sense my hesitation as well as the reason for it. After a moment of thought as per his usual, he said: "We need not talk about this outside the confines of this room."

I let out the breath I'd been holding in a whoosh of air, afraid I'd really put my foot into it. Not that that still wasn't the case, but at least for now it hadn't been quite the disaster I was fearing it would be.

"Well, in that case, yes. I can see them… the Alignments, that is, like little symbols floating in the Artifacts. That one has an indistinct purple haze kind of swirling in it."

"Believe it or not, that is rather useful," he said, surprising me, as I had assumed it really wouldn't be. "Hold on a moment," he said, walking back to where several machines were pointing at another Artifact, held in a small vise like the one a jeweler might use. He extracted it after a few moments of fiddling with the knobs and moved over to me with it in hand.

"What about this one?"

He held out a hand, and in it was some kind of ornament, a round ball with a little hook at the top, evidently meant to be hung on something. Inside the clear center sat some sort of quill or stick. Staring at it, I could see some little yellow-orange streak blasting to and fro, never staying in any one spot too long. It reminded me of something, but exactly what I couldn't quite put my finger on, until something clicked.

"Oh," I said, and István held out a pen over a paper, about to take notes. "I'm pretty sure that's electricity or lightning." And I was, the little spark or whatnot reminded me of what happened when two overhead wires shorted together, only the color was a little off, as if the scene had been dyed as wool might be. My intuition wasn't helpful for that part, but it did come through on the remainder at least.

István's letter-perfect writing continued far longer than it had any right to given how little I said, before he stashed away that artifact and pulled another one out of a different machine. Even as he was bringing it to me I could tell it was going to be harder than the other's I'd faced so far. It essentially looked empty. Both physically and metaphysically, if you wanted to look at what I saw that way.

"Mind if I hold that?" I said, reaching out to him. He nodded and handed it over. I really was starting to think that István played rather fast and loose with these Artifacts. Who else would hand them over to a clumsy idiot like me to hold on to? Hopefully they were tougher than they looked.

With the artifact in hand I could tell that it was fairly complex. It was like someone took a three-dimensional representation of a copse of trees, as viewed from the side, and collapsed the trunks down into two dimensions. It was like a bunch of interlocking lines that played tricks on my vision. Or so I thought. Then I looked closer.

Once I was firmly staring at the arrangement, I realized there was a shade or shadow flicking around between them, possibly something only I could see, but I had to confirm.

"You see anything moving in this?" I asked, looking up at István.

"No, nothing but a bit of eye fatigue if I look at it too long."

"Hmm. Probably going to say this has something to do with a shadow then. I swear I see something flitting between the lines, or whatever, but I can't pin it down when I see it move."

"Fair enough," he replied. "You are already telling me way more than any of the machines in the lab could. Some of which are expensive enough to replace both of us twice over. Or more."

Cool. Or maybe not. Was I a scanning machine now?

"Glad I have a use then," I said, earning me what can only be described as a scowl from István.

"Pardon me," he said, looking down his glasses at me, "But I do not believe I have described you in anything less than glowing terms. It would not do for you to be down on yourself like that. I think we both know you have been more than helpful today."

"Fair enough," I replied, well and thoroughly told off. I thought about a way to change the awkward conversion. "Here's hoping we figure out what it is they are looking for and yeet it out of the building."

István raised an eyebrow at me. "Forgive me, but 'yeet'?"

"Uhh," I said, realizing that the - ahem - 'common vernacular' was probably beneath his language education. "To eject with great velocity. It's an expression."

This seemed to satisfy him. "Not sure that is the best way to deal with it, but I think I get the idea. I agree, we shall 'yeet' it."

Pretty sure I leveled up my poker face on the spot.

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