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Alex Reagan is fairly certain that this just happens to be the smallest elevator in existence. She’s been a lot of places in the world, but the one at the Usher Foundation that leads to the archive is the smallest modern one for sure. It’s barely big enough for three people honestly and that normally doesn’t bother her in the slightest. While Alex has a fair amount of fear for the things that she’d discovered over the last few months (the hunt for example is the one that sticks out the most considering it’s why she’s here) but the Buried wasn’t one of them. Alex was the sort of person who turned her bed into swaddling nests and burrowed into them. Honestly that buried blanket nest is where she felt the safest.

No. The elevator itself wasn’t the issue here. Alex Reagan has ridden it more than a few times since she’d started working in the archives a month or so ago. While she would rather be out there being a reporter, Alex had blown out all of the credibility that she’d ever had when she’d told people that the things that went bump in the night were real. In the end Tannis Braun was right about how her skills would be valuable here investigating the validity of the statements. In some ways it was almost freeing—when she was working for Usher, Alex didn’t need to worry about pesky things like journalism ethics. Instead she could lie and make someone believe whatever they wanted in order to get their story from them.

In a way it was all kind of freeing.

So if it wasn’t the elevator itself, and it wasn’t the confined space that bothered her what didn’t bother her exactly was the man who she was currently sharing the elevator with. His size in it, with the foot of height that he had on her, the more bulk that he’d had on his frame (not that Alex was calling him fat by any means) instead it was just the way that he loomed over her and seemed far larger in the space than he actually was. And the fact that he was attractive and god was he attractive. Alex has said hello when she’d gotten into the elevator with him, and saw that he’d already pushed the floor for the sub basement level archives.

But the problem was that somewhere between the archives and the first floor, the elevator had just decided to stop. Not just stopping which would be bad enough, but stopping and losing all power. Normally the dark wouldn’t have been a thing, because Alex would have just pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight app or call someone even if her phone didn’t have great service here. That was part of the reason it was still plugged in at her desk. Artifact storage was only three elevator stops away, and Alex was delivering some information she’d had on a statement. But now here they were in the small and dark with the extremely attractive man she doesn’t know.

This is fine. This is all fine.

But Alex just gives a grin that she knows that he wouldn’t be able to see in the pitch blackness so deep that it feels like she could hold it in her hands like dirt. “Well, I guess this is one way to avoid that meeting with my boss.” There isn’t fear in her, just the bad joking tone that Alex makes to lighten a situation. The meeting with Tannis was supposed to be in half an hour and she was supposed to be meeting someone important to the Foundation.

The fact that it could be the person in the elevator never even crosses Alex’s mind. After all, that man had been described to her as being ‘Old Man Strand’ and this man definitely wasn’t old in the slightest.

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HE can smell the hunt on her. He can't see that attack, the claws and the blood but he can smell the hint of a wolf about her. That desire for the chase. It's got it's claws in deep.

She is dangerous.

Better to know where she was and what she was doing. He had to keep her close.

The air around them grows stiffer by a hair, "You'd be surprised about what we're willing to believe." He inhales the suddenly moldier smelling air, "What you can find buried in the vaults where we keep the statements."

"IS that something you've found yet? That you like?"

“I know. It’s why I had come here in the first place. This seemed like the only one who would believe me. But then Nic offered me a job and now here I am.” Alex just laughs, and the staler air doesn’t bother her.

Home for Alex has always been a little associated with the smell of dirt and mildew. Her father's office had been in the cellar, and she would go down there and sit on their old couch and read while he did his paperwork. In some ways she’s more comfortable than she has been yet, and the edge of fear thins and wanes around her. If anything, Alex is more at ease than she has been since they'd both gotten on the elevator.

"The archives? Yeah, I found it. It's fascinating, really how far some of these things go back. And yeah, I like it in there too. I mean, it's not bad! I don't know why people don't." Alex has heard that it was creepy from some of her coworkers, in particular her boss Tannis. Speaking of, "it's probably why whenever he needs an older statement, Tannis sends me in there to get it. It doesn't bother me. I've sort of become the go to girl for anything needed in there. Pretty sure I'm spending about half of my time in there at this point, if not more." It's definitely more, Alex just doesn't notice due to the way time seems to work within the vaults, and her own workaholic tendencies.

Interesting.

He leans against the wall and smiles, "Is that right. It seems to fit the picture of a reporter - digging through archives..." He pauses, "Though I thought new hires would be more upset we've been slow translating things to digital."

She really is intriguing. Considering her, he flicks his wrist - and the elevator lurches downward.

He needs it. He needs to taste her fear.

Alex just shrugs again at that, her smile brightening up her eyes behind her glasses. When she begins to speak, it's clear that this is a question that Alex has asked many times over the past few weeks when she'd started needing to read them into the tape. It had been an affront to her digital loving senses. But then, like everything else, you get used to it.

People can get used to almost anything after all.

"Well, I mean I'm not in love with it but..." The lurching of the elevator cuts her off, and Alex doesn't scream, but she does gasp loudly in the small space of the elevator. As if it would do some good, she presses herself even smaller into the corner of the elevator, her hands clamped against the hand rails. Anyone would be afraid of that in a stuck elevator, and Alex is definitely one of them. Being buried doesn't bother her anywhere near as much as being dropped and smashed on the floor when this thing hits the ancient landing pad in the archives.

The lurch stops. It's a low blow. Dropping and nearly hitting the bottom? That's a VAST line. Still that fear - even that taste of it, free falling - she's against that creature that his family has struggled to cope with. Lovely. Utterly and absolutely deliciously lovely.

His face is absolutely stony as the elevator begins to descend.

"If you like seeing ancient things let me show you something interesting. We can have our meeting there if you like - Did Tanis go over what you'll be asked to do?"

He should thank the man. Send him on to others for praise for this.

"Namely I might have some work for you to do as well. All the more reason to get used to artifact storage."

When the lurch stops, Alex lets out a deep breath that she'd been holding that had just started to burn within her lungs. The relief rolls off of her in the same way that the fear had, and she stays tucked safely into the corner and it's enclosing walls. Her hands let go of the railings, and she shakes them out a bit, the white from her knuckles slowly turning back to the proper pale state of her skin.

But he had her attention though, that much was sure. Her eyes met his stony face, but she's clearly listening, and her head tilts a bit in interest. "Only the general broad threads of it," Alex admits with a little bit of a smile. "Just that doing research for you was being added to the things that I was already doing. I'm pretty sure it's just because Tannis doesn't like the archives or artifact storage."

And because she's Alex, she needs to ask: "what kind of things do you need researched?"

Pointless things.

Useless things because honestly Tanis will be commended for sending her to him but he can look things up himself.

That said. The elevator continues to slide downward and he leans back casually, calmly and unbothered, "Do you like treasure hunts? The search for Gold and Silver? Or are you more of a historical artifact person."

“Well, Dr. Strand I’m a reporter. Or was at any rate. And it’s a big part of a reporter’s job to tell stories. So, historical artifacts would win over gold and silver all the time. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with them but I’m not a geologist so I wouldn’t even begin to know how to tell their story.”

Alex just looks over him curiously. “What about you, Dr. Strand? I mean you taught Religion and Mythology and both of those are kind of nothing if they’re not the study of stories that humans have been making up since the beginning of time in order to make themselves feel better.”

The elevator stops with a whumph - and when the door opens there's a smell. Dust and decay and mildew. Old books and leather that hasn't seen the sun in years. It is wet and cold and perfect and he seems decidedly more animated as he gestures for her to follow him.

The smell is the most interesting because it's a yellow hallway filled with decaying lights and doors. It could almost pass for an academic hall.

One of the lights flickers and he slams a hand against the wall with a shrug, "Power down here is touch and go at best."

Her question gives him pause as he gestures for her to follow him, hands back in her pockets. She moves with care, and he can sense the hunt in that. The eagerness of the chase and the preparation and willingness to run if needed.

"I pursue facts. Despite the circumstances I'm always interested in the reasoning behind things. The roots of the problem, the roots of the story. All of the things we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel comfortable are just that- roots to greater emotions."

"take for instance the story of Hercules. The "Heroes Journey". Campbell used it as a basis for why the modern stories of heroes appeal to us - but why start with Hercules? Who were these beings who influenced people so often? Are they men? Are they gods? Are they something else entirely? And what did they do to influence us in such a way?"

Upon taking his mantle, upon realizing the truths of the world, Richard Strand had accepted his place as one of those beings. He simply moved things behind the scenes. Hercules was the Hunt - hunting down monsters and other beings just as this girl did.

This woman did.

He stopped at a plain brown door and produced a keycard from his belt, scanning it, "...You're not particularly squeamish are you? Allergic to anything?"

"I'll need to remember to bring a battery charger for my phone so I don't end up getting endlessly lost down here or something." It's said matter-of-factly, something added to Alex's mental list for what she's going to need for work. It's not even like she doesn't have three in her bag at her desk right now; some habits (like those involved in having the need to recharge phones and recorders, things that were generally useless to her now.) were difficult to break.

It's easy to see that he was a good teacher. If nothing else, Alex was willing to bet that he was an interesting one. The sort from who you learned a lot but who also you spent many nights cursing the name of as you tried to write whatever assignment that you'd been given. Those were always Alex's favorite kind of classes, and the ones from which she learned the most.

That said, she wouldn't be Alex if she didn't push back. "Doesn't Campell's hero's journey theory only really work from the standpoint of a white European-centric narrative? So all of those ideas are based in the history of colonialism and oppression, completely ignoring the stories of earlier not so white mythology."

Alex doesn't even notice how she moves anymore, she doesn't know of how the mark in her stomach from the Hunt is more than simply a scar on her skin. She doesn't know what it means to be marked by an entity like that, and she doesn't know that basically it goes down to her very soul.

Still, the question would have caught Alex off guard when she'd started at the Foundation, but now even after six weeks here, she'd gotten used to that whole crazy thing that they'd had going on. "No, I'm not particularly squeamish anymore, and I don't have any allergies." That said, she does ask, her interest and desire to Know unmistakable: "what's in there?"

"Ask yourself why. Why we pursue a narrative wholly rooted in fear with dogged determination and why fear is something we center in our lives."

He's glad he's turned away from her then as he unlocks the door,a cruel smile on his face. "Welcome to artifact storage."

The room is massive. Seemingly impossible given the space - and right out in front are several skeletons - with flesh seemingly still on their bones.

they lay spaced apart - a closer inspection might reveal they are covered in stone as he shrugs his shoulders.

"An expedition we engaged in. Those are from pompeii."

Buried by one of his spiritual ancestors.

"Well, because fear is the one thing that we have in common, isn't it?" Alex just asks as she walks into the room, not minding the skeletons in front of it at all. "It's the one thing that we always come back to," moving forward, Alex just tilts her head to look at them, considering them from different angles as she does.

Clearly she catches how they were entombed and calcified even before he says that they were.

But Alex doesn't stop her response to what he's saying, even as crouches down to look at the feet on them. "All of humanity being chased by their fears forever. How could we not set them at the heart of every story that we've always told."

She looks up at him as she says the next bit: "I mean, isn't that what this place is about really? The things that we fear? Cataloging them and understanding them? Is it alright if I?" Alex gestures to the skeleton as she rises to her feet again.

"I mean with gloves or whatever obviously, I wouldn't want to do something to harm them. The artifacts I mean."

"Let us assume there are some groups of people more fearful than others."

He nods, "But you're right. We do focus on fear here. Oftentimes to the detriment of all else. Which is important. To master ourselves we must first master our fears. That is mastering our animal instincts."

"There's gloves over there."

There is a box and a section of work tables and tools, he nods, "...It's fascinating isn't it?"

They're all laid out in a circle. They were half buried - ready to receive more buriel from his patron, "They were frozen like this."

He moves to pull on a pair of gloves himself.

"We think this was a religious ritual. Or perhaps some sort of ceremony to honor the dead."

Alex moves to grab a pair of gloves that would fit her small hands, and then she moves back over to the circle of statues, walking around them for a moment.

"Huh," Alex just says softly before she looks to Strand once more. "A ritual that was happening before Vesuvius burst?"

Moving onto her toes, Alex looks into the face of one of the statues with a puzzled look on her face. "They definitely look terrified. But someone would have had to have like... looked at the ash and rocks coming from the volcano and maybe decided to do something about it?"

Alex moved onto the second one, and this time she touched the face carefully and gingerly, with only the barest brush of the pads of her fingers. She could feel the stone there where it had been made over flesh.

"Maybe some sort of like... weird sect or something? Trying to appease Vulcan so it would stop?"

Then Alex remembered where they were and asked: "or to make it worse?"

He tilted his head.

The buried leaves nothing hidden to those who know how to traverse it. He knows how to work through it. To claw through the dirt and relish in the act itself. So when she says "make it worse" he can see them in his mind's eye. Clawing dirt and burying themselves in it, a few unwilling -

They are all unwilling and they scream as they face the magma and the fire...

He is silent for a moment longer than normal before he blinks and stares at her, "What makes you think that?"

"They're here right? Isn't Pompeii a world heritage site? If there wasn't something more to it than just Pompeians worshiping their gods, they'd either be at the site itself or in a museum. Definitely not gathering dust here in the basement of a Foundation in America."

It's not a question, those words, even when Alex looks to Dr. Strand for a conformation on it.

"So if we're talking something being covered in dirt and rocks and magma and whatever else, we need to be talking about The Buried, right? Like what else could it be?"

Alex has done her reading, and she's done her homework and then she'd done even more, working through the archival system as she learned it and about the Powers that were forces in and of themselves. Honestly, there's no small part of her that thinks this is some kind of test to see if Alex had learned what she was supposed to during her probationary time at the Usher Foundation.

"Hmm. But why five though? Were others just sent someplace else? Or was it simply these five in offering?"

He tilts his head at her. She is close. The Buried chose it's avatars in strange ways and these were the remains of that test. His smile is surprisingly genuine at that as he studies her with the air of a professor.

"Perhaps there was a sixth? 6 is a more significant number. The number 6 is the symbol of a man animal - significant in the bible - the holy trinity doubled. If there are five...that's the going theory at any rate."

A buried avatar. Arising from magma and fire.

It was awe inspiring.

Alex had thought earlier about how Strand reminded her of all of her favorite professors from college and the way he was talking now reminded her all too well of the Socratic method of teaching from that period. So, she just looks at him before she looks down at the feet of the poor burned bastards who were around them.

The pattern between them, from the way that the stone had formed over the Buried bodies was inconsistent, and Alex just walks carefully back and forth for a moment, before she bends down and touches the increased amount of calcification on the inside of one of the victim's feet, and then, on the outside of the other one.

"Six makes sense, especially because there definitely was something that was between these two." Alex looks up at him from where she's crouching on the floor. "What do you think it was, Professor? Or are you still giving me a pop quiz?" It comes with an extremely easy smile at that.

"You're on the money. We think this was a ritual of some time to honor the buried and that someone got up from this - space." Moving to stand beside her, shoulder to hers, he gently put a hand to the empty space where his ancestor of a sort had occupied.

When he spoke again his voice was filled with thoughtful speculation.

"...If this was a ritual to summon a buried avatar, than someone climbed through the magma and the dirt and mud and rose. It's a terrifying thought. That these entities could manipulate the human body in such a way to have it withstand that much punishment."

But his hands still stroke the stone before pulling away.

"Come on. I'll show you something else."

He gestures at a huge stone statue - worn away - of a creature with four limbs on all fours.

The Hunt if she was truly touched by it she would be able to see what lay beneath it. Feel called to it in some way.

He wanted to see it.

Alex is quiet for a moment, lost in thought even with his body next to hers as she considers his statement. "It's..." Alex begins, because other than her statement, she hadn't told anyone else this part, and her statement had been given directly to Nic rather than to Tannis.

"The werewolf that came after me, she was strong. It was like getting hit by a mac truck. Someone put multiple bullets into her, but it didn't even slow her down."

It's unlike Alex to be quiet as she considers and she's not really paying all that much attention when she walks towards the artifact that was covered over without really seeing it but still moving in that direction anyway.

"I mean, most people wouldn't give up their humanity without something in return, right? So I guess being strong enough to survive the Buried ritual is the trade off, plus whatever it is that goes along with it."

And then she's standing in front of the statue like she was made of iron and it drew her to it. "What is this?"

"The hunt."

Richard Strand is now officially interested. She is touched by the Buried and the hunt, "An idol of sorts from the tigris. One of the first statues we've found." Heedless, he gently taps it, "... It's made of stone. Beautiful isn't it?"

The hunt and the buried have no objections. He would rather sway this girl to his side though - given how the hunt's avatars tended to be...

"Does it still hurt? Where the werewolf attacked you?"

Alex isn't stupid--the first thing that she'd searched down was what was a monster like the one she had seen. It didn't even take her very long when she managed to find out everything she could about it. She knows that it's the Hunt and Alex had torn through so many statements that had to do with the things with claws and teeth.

"It is," Alex looks at it like a fine piece of art that one can admire, but she doesn't look at it with any sort of primal connection to it. She brushes her hand along the idol, and then she pressed her hand to her stomach as she colored brightly.

"Sometimes. I mean, it wasn't all that long ago, and she went deep. I'm pretty sure she was actually trying to you know eat me." Thinking about it makes Alex shiver, and she steps away from the statute as if it was the cause of the fear and not the woman's claws ripping and tearing into her soft belly.

Just a touch then.

Good. All to the good. Bound to the foundation of the eye and touched by the Buried. It was...intriguing.

"...So you'll be working down here for me. The statue isn't going to bring up any bad memories right?"

He sincerely hoped it would.

Alex just blinked again, and for the first time she looked conflicted about something. Her hands twitched and braided together in an effort to try and keep them still. Looking away from the statue and to him, she doesn't say anything for a long moment, and instead she tries a wavy smile. It's not anywhere near to what her smiles earlier had been, but Alex at least is trying.

So of course, bad joke. "Well, I mean if I'm going to avoid statues that remind me of that whole time a werewolf almost ate me, I'm going to have a bad time of it considering all the lions and whatever basically in front of so many buildings around here."

The laugh isn't anywhere near as robust as others have been. Because Alex hasn't lied even though yes, it's obviously going to bring up memories. Unable to stop herself, her hand filters from where she had been holding onto her fingers and presses against her stomach. The worry and unease had been there, background level fear since he'd asked the question that Alex hadn't considered.

Then the fear spikes, just a little bit. A sharpness to it, all new and shiny making her want to flinch away from the statute entirely.

"I'm not going to become a werewolf, right? Or a member of the Hunt, right? Have to chose it, blah blah blah." It's fairly certain that Alex wouldn't chose the Hunt, even if she did have that mark in her.

His mouth opens at that and he chuckles before moving to lead her away from it. Thinking, thinking of the memories of his ancestor of sorts from Pompeii.

"From what we've learned, Avatars must make a mutual choice - and the entities seem to make real overtures. Unless you're dreaming of blood and teeth and the thrill of a heavily terrified heart...no. I doubt you would."

He sounds more human than than he ever has.

"...You would know. I've seen and fought against Avatars. You would know."