The human, Charles, ushered them down a dim hallway cluttered with interesting things in glass boxes. Bel repeated his name a few times, doing her best to remember it. James had warned her that the Old World would be crowded, and if she forgot the first name she would probably forget all the rest.

  Charles talked to his unseen companion as they walked, although he frequently interrupted himself to yell at them about touching the display cases or disturbing the colorful decorations that filled the floors and walls. He struck Bel as a nervous person.

  “Where are the people?” Orseis finally asked, bored now that she was keeping her tentacles to herself. “This world is full of humans, right?”

  Charles half turned around and looked at Orseis. He ran his hand through his increasingly messy hair, pushing his blonde strands into random positions.

  “We’re in a museum,” he finally answered with the defeated huff of a tired mother. It was the same tone Beth would use when Bel and James used to keep her up all night.

  Orseis turned to Bel and whispered. “What’s a museum?”

  “A place with old things in it,” Bel whispered back.

  Charles shook his head. “Museums can have new things in them, too. You know, like art. They just don’t have people sleeping in them.”

  “Sleeping?” Bel looked around. “Is it night?”

  “Is it…” Charles shook his head. “Don’t you know what time it is?”

  Bel and her companions shrugged. “How would we? We can’t see the sun. And why was there another building in this building?”

  “Another… you mean the temple? It was brought here from Egypt, I think. And it’s three in the morning.”

  “Three what?” Orseis asked.

  “What?” he asked, spinning around again.

  “That’s what I asked.”

  Orseis looked at Bel. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

  Bel shrugged. “James was very annoying about times. Maybe it’s an Old World problem.”

  Charles scowled. “What language is that supposed to be?”

  “Mycenaean, I think,” Bel answered. “That’s what some people told me. Do you speak it here?”

  The man’s eyes flickered a few times, and Bel saw some tiny dots swimming across his vision.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, leaning towards his face. Her snakes eagerly flicked out their tongues.

  Charles stared at the serpents before leaning away. He pointed to his eye. “I’m reading my display. Trying to look up that language.” He squinted at her snakes again and shook his head.

  “Look, it’s so late that it’s early and you aren’t supposed to be here. Let’s just hurry to my car, okay?”

  “Is there food there?” Orseis asked.

  “Food? We can feed you, I guess. We try to be nice to children who get dragged into crazy things by their…”

  He glanced at Bel and Manipule. “Let’s say guardians.”

  Orseis nodded, but she quietly turned to Bel when the man looked away. “Why does he talk so fast?”

  Bel could only shrug. “I guess he’s in a hurry. Maybe he wants to go back to sleep?”

  They walked in silence for another minute before reaching a pair of wide metal doors. Charles pushed on one of them and they swung open to reveal a wide cave with a rectangular opening and Bel got her first taste of outside air. It was thick and humid, with the lingering scent of grease, distant urine, and crumbling stone. Far better than what she expected in a town.

  She rushed towards an opening to look, but Charles quickly blocked their paths.

  “Oi,” he grunted, pointing to a strange box with a shiny black exterior. It looked to Bel like an angular beetle with glowing eyes.

  “Don’t just gawk, get in the car.”

  “Oh,” Bel breathed. “So this is a car.”

  “Of course it’s a… you guys are taking this too far. Can you come back to reality for a minute?”

  Manipule was more interested in the shiny beetle that whatever Charles was talking about, so she climbed into an open flap on the side.

  Bel hesitated. “Is there room for my stuff?” She lifted her box.

  Charles rolled his eyes. “That’s not stolen, is it?”

  “What?” Bel exclaimed. “It’s my books and my change of clothes and some food.”

  “Anything from James?” Charles asked.

  Bel nodded. “He wrote some instructions, and the message for his parents.”

  “Better bring it along as evidence then.”

  Charles waved his hand at the beetle and its back popped open with quiet squeak. “Just toss it in the trunk and we’ll sort it out later. We’ll have to check it for genetic material.”

  Bel shrugged at the unfamiliar words, but did as he asked, placing it gently into the wide space. She could hear Manipule talking to someone inside the car, so she quickly circled around to join her inside. Orseis climbed in after her.

  “This is Jasmine,” Manipule said, introducing her to the new person in one of two front row seats. “Jasmine, these are Bel and Orseis.”

  Jasmine was nearly as wide as Charles, but she had an edge to her that Bel recognized in a fellow warrior. The woman was acting nothing but friendly, greeting them with a smile and a slightly hesitant handshake when she got to Orseis. She wore decorative paint over her lips and cheeks and around her eyes, reminding Bel of some of the rich land owners from Baytown.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Her looks were misleading though, and Bel could feel her sizing them up with every glance. Bel had sized her up too: her skin was dark from being outside, and from her muscles Bel knew the woman spent time doing wrestling or other physical conditioning. Bel guessed that she was a fighter.

  Jasmine awkwardly turned in her seat and her eyes settled on Orseis. She turned back to Charles. “You promised them pizza and ice cream,” she repeated. “That’s not healthy. How old is this kid?”

  “I’m ten,” Orseis proclaimed proudly. “Where I’m from I’m an adult.”

  “No, she isn’t,” Bel said.

  “She is still a child,” Manipule added.

  “Then why d’you want to feed this scrawny girl pizza and ice cream?” Jasmine asked. “Girl needs some protein. One of these pizzas is gonna have some buffalo chicken.”

  Charles glanced at his companion. “Isn’t that your favorite topping?”

  “You hush. And make it two with buffalo chicken.”

  Bel glanced back and forth, inspecting Charles and his newly introduced companion and the inside of the car. It had more lights than she expected, and they were the magical non-burning ones that James had bragged about. The seats were soft and comfortable and Bel spent a few moments bouncing up and down.

  Bel didn’t see anything to pull the car though, so she wondered how they would leave. Before she could open her mouth to ask, Charles poked a few of the lights and the car rolled into motion. Blue and red lights flashed from the car’s exterior and it emerged from the dark cave into a wide, artificially lit road.

  Bel clapped her hands. “It’s just like James promised.” She was in the middle seat, but now she regretted it; Manipule and Orseis immediately burst into surprised gasps as the vehicle left the cave.

  “Look! Pictures of food!”

  “Look at that huge building!”

  “What kind of bird is that?”

  “Look at the lights! They are so many colors!”

  “Hey, more food!”

  “Was that a human? What were they wearing?”

  Bel was getting a sore neck from spinning her head back and forth.

  I want to see the Old World too!

  She could see things through the front window, sure, but the view was mostly of other vehicles as they swerved out of the way of Charles’ carriage and its angry, flashing lights.

  “Is this safe?” she asked as she watched the other vehicles flee to the side of the roadway. “They seem to think we are moving dangerously.”

  Manipule laughed. “Bel doesn’t like fast things,” the other gorgon teased.

  “What? That’s not true,” Bel objected. She pointed her thumb at her chest. “I fought way tougher and faster things. I could take this car down right now.”

  “It’s totally true,” Orseis piled on, “Bel is scared of anything faster than she can run.”

  Bel angrily crossed her arms. “I fought a giant building, okay? I’m not scared of a giant beetle with glowing eyes.”

  “Okay, we’re gonna be gettin’ real serious. I’m gonna have to ask you to stop larping,” Jasmine said sternly.

  “Stop what?” Bel asked.

  “Turn off your…”

  Jasmine’s words trailed off as she squinted at them.

  “They aren’t wearing any,” Charles said.

  “So where are you folks from?” Jasmine asked with a smile. “I heard a bit of your conversation with Charles, but I’d like to verify a few things.”

  Bel noticed that Jasmine’s tone and words were different than they had been a moment ago. They reminded her of a bureaucrat.

  “When and where did you meet James Hill?”

  “In prison,” Bel answered. “Technis would threaten to hurt him if I didn’t do what he wanted.”

  “And why were you in prison? Did Technis kidnap you from somewhere?”

  Bel frowned. “I think that Technis may have made me,” Bel admitted. “But my mom had way more to do with it,” she added in a rush. “He just wanted to study me, but he kept me locked up so my mom couldn’t use me for revenge.”

  “Alright, this is getting confusing. Technis kept you locked up so he could study you?”

  Bel nodded. “Yeah, but then someone broke me out. I went on a long quest to get powerful enough to fight him, but then he came here. So I followed him.”

  Bel squeezed her fingers together. She didn’t mention that Technis had kicked her ass. Her abilities had been completely useless again him. And it hadn’t even really been him, it had been a body he was puppeting.

  “Technis as in the cult?” Jasmine asked.

  Bel pursed her lip. “It’s more of a religion, I think. James says that cults are small and religions are big.”

  “How big are we talking about?”

  “James guessed that there were ten million people in Satrap.”

  Jasmine turned to look at Bel.

  “I know,” Bel said. “There’s no way he could count that high. He said he estimated it from the amount of food that they harvested. Beth – that’s the person who broke us out of prison – had other estimates from the size of their army.”

  Jasmine held up a hand. “Whoah. Let’s back up. Harvests? Army? It sounds like you’re talking about an entire country.”

  Bel nodded.

  Jasmine closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Let’s start over. Where are you three from?”

  “We crossed over here from a world called Olympos,” Bel explained. “To chase Technis. James told me I should make it really clear that we’re not invading.”

  Jasmine looked upwards and shook her hands. Bel looked up too, but she couldn’t see anything through the roof of the car. Jasmine started talking again before Bel could ask what she was looking at.

  “Could you explain what you mean by ‘crossed over’? For example, do you mean in a boat or some other vehicle?”

  Bel frowned and looked at some of her snakes as she searched for words. “We walked, I think. First we had to open a portal that goes from there to here, and then we walked through it.”

  “A portal?” Jasmine repeated. “To the Met?”

  “The what?”

  “The building where we found you.”

  Bel nodded.

  Jasmine looked at Manipule and Orseis. “And you two agree with that? You walked through a portal and into the museum?”

  Orseis made a ring with her tentacles and turned them a bright yellow with vivid streaks of purple. “The portal looked like this!”

  “Yes, like that. Also, very bright,” Manipule agreed.

  Bel wondered if her companions were having trouble following the conversation. Jasmine’s words were coming hard and fast, and Manipule seemed to only respond to a few words rather than the full question.

  Jasmine tapped something on the screen in her hands. “Magic portal, got it. Any magical talking lions over there? Maybe people flying on broomsticks?”

  “What’s a lion?” Bel asked.

  “And what’s a broomstick?” Orseis added.

  “A broomstick is a stick with a broom on the end,” Jasmine answered. She tilted the screen towards Bel. “And this is a lion.”

  Bel leaned forward, examining the screen with interest, but the woman jerked it away when Bel got close.

  “I’m not good with snakes. You need to turn those things off. I’m not playing around, miss.”

  Bel reached up and patted her snakes. They were behaving, even her little venomous monster, Vex.

  “Is something wrong with them?” Bel asked. “What do you mean, turn them off?”

  “They’re animatronic, right?”

  “They’re what?”

  “Like a robot.”

  Bel paused.

  “A robot is a metal person?” she asked after thinking about it.

  “That’s an android,” Charles interrupted. “Don’t mess with the snakes, Jaz.”

  “Sure, okay. Fine, I can deal with that.”

  The woman hugged her screen back to her chest and regarded Bel with narrowed eyes.

  “So what did you do to those security guards?” Jasmine asked.

  “The who? Those men who yelled at us?”

  “Yes,” Jasmine replied, “those men who yelled at you for jumpin’ in the damn museum pool.”

  “Sorry. There wasn’t a sign that said we couldn’t.”

  “Pretty sure there was,” Charles said.

  Bel crossed her arms harder. “Sorry, we didn’t see it.”

  “So the guards?”

  “Oh. I glared at them. I didn’t mean to hit them so hard, but they threatened us.”

  “Glared?” Charles said.

  “You know. Glared.”

  Bel plucked one of her snakes from her head and shook it until it hissed. “I’m a gorgon. James said you know about them here?”

  “Oh yeah,” Charles said. “A gorgon. That explains it.”

  “Is your evil eye under the eye patch?” Jasmine asked.

  Bel tapped the metal cover that hid her spirit eye. “No, this eye is special.”

  “Special how?” Jasmine asked.

  Bel pulled the patch up. She grinned, suddenly seeing the world in a riot of indescribable color and motion. Jasmine had a different reaction.

  “Stop the car, Charles,” she gasped.

  “Why? What–”

  Charles made the mistake of looking into Bel’s eye, and soon he was clutching a hand to his mouth. The vehicle jerked and there was a loud squeal of protest before it came to a sudden halt. Jasmine and Charles kicked their doors open, and within moments they were retching outside.

  “You should keep that hidden,” Manipule told Bel with a gentle pat on her shoulder. “It’s lovely, but no one feels good looking at it.”

  Bel snorted. “It’s just an eye. How bad could it be?”

  The sound of retching continued and Orseis and Manipule looked out of their windows.

  https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/543937