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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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"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."

Alex notices the change in him, the way that he’s different even if she doesn’t know the hows or the whys of it. But she lets him lead her away, her dark eyes peering at him from below the horned rim of her glasses. Well, that was at least one good thing: Alex hadn’t had any overtures made to her that she’d been aware of. When she’d dreamed of the incident it’s in flashback; there’s no joy to the chase of it, no wanting to savor blood and teeth. From what Alex had been able to tell from the research she had done on the internet, those had been normal nightmares brought on by a traumatic event, and she couldn’t think of something more traumatic in her past than that.

That didn’t explain the whole seeing of Eyes in her dream, which is something that Alex isn’t going to mention to anyone here, and definitely not her boss.

But his saying that he’d fought avatars before makes Alex’s step pause and then draw out to an entire and full stop. Without even thinking about it, Alex places her hand on his arm in order to stop him as well. “Wait, you’ve fought avatars? I didn’t think that you could do that and live. I mean, I almost didn’t and it was a single one. I just got lucky that she didn’t get the chance to finish the job before something came along that caught her attention more than I did, honestly. How do you fight more than one?”

"I should say I've supervised it." He shrugs, then looks faint, "IT's sad, but we've lost lives that's what we do here Alex. We prevent the rituals from happening."

Leading her back to the elevator he lowers his gaze, "We've had some terrible luck."

When he looks faint, Alex frowns, and she stops him before they get back onto the elevator properly, resting her hand on his arm again.

She knows what could happen, she's not an idiot and more than that, Alex is someone who has already beaten death once so who even knows if she'd manage to do it again?!

She doesn't think she will.

But this isn't about Alex Reagan, this about Dr. Strand when she asks him softly: "are you okay?"

"...It is tough remembering those we lost."

It's overwhelming really. Stepping back onto the elevator he smiles at her and offers her a hand, "Let's go back up to the so-called land of the living."

He could spend hours down here.

Wandering the rooms.

But looking at this hunt touched woman he wanted to find out more about her and for that he needed his computer.

Damn.

Alex can’t help but to look down surprised at the hand he’s holding out to her for a moment. It’s not that Alex hasn’t been at extremely lax places to work before (PNWS comes to mind) but it’s that she wouldn’t have expected it from Dr. Strand. That said, there’s only a second’s hesitation before she takes it allows him to draw her into the elevator with him.

Even if she’s still not exactly sure what it is that she’s supposed to be going down here.

“Sure.” Alex just agrees and gives him a smile. “Here’s hoping the elevator doesn’t misbehave like that on the way down.”

The elevator shudders to life with a click and a hiss before starting to move slowly upward. He withdraws his hand without a second thought.

"They are...finicky. Take someone with you to get over pratfalls and broken tiles. I love it down there. I feel like I'm surrounded by ancient history."

“I like history too,” Her voice is soft as she steps into the corner that Alex had sought refuge in before when the elevator had lurched. It’s a precautionary measure; she really doesn’t want to die in a fall, thank you. But even with the haste that he lets go of her, Alex keeps her eyes on Dr. Strand.

“I’m pretty sure that getting someone else to come down here with me is going to be next to impossible. The other assistants don’t even like to go into the archives, never mind down here with this stuff.” And then there’s time for a bad joke, because there always is. “Unless you’re offering to come with me which may defeat the purpose of like...me doing research for you, I think.”

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