Chapter 1

If You’re Going to Fight a Manticore, Take Back Up

A crash, an alarm, and screaming erupted from somewhere in my museum. Listening to the radio attentively, I sprinted to the location of the disturbance. While travelling down the hallway on the fifth floor, passing by priceless artefacts from native African cultures, I bumped into two strange men running in the opposite direction. They didn’t seem to be tourists. A calm demeanour enveloped them both.

“Sorry, excuse me,” I said, turning around quickly to bow and apologize. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t tell where they were from. As I turned and took off running to the incident, I heard the shorter one speak.

“Callum, did she look familiar to you?” He said, even something about his voice resonated with me, but it was a problem for another day.

“Ya, but I’m blanking on from where,” Callum replied. After that, I turned the corner, disappeared and heard no more.

Two minutes later, I arrived at a giant broken window with my boss standing before it. “Yo, boss, what the shit?” I said. Rick was easygoing with his security officers and their swearing.

“Cal, good you’re here. Check the perimeter and the exhibit. Make sure that everything is OK,” He said, a curt cut in his voice. With that alone, I knew whatever he had seen had shaken him. I had worked for him here in the museum for eight years, three as a supervisor, and I had never...