Quaranteam

As much as Andy wanted to sleep in the next morning, there was simply too much to do and not enough time to do any of it, so his body decided for him that he would be up at nine, late by anyone other than a writer's standards, but at least two hours earlier than he liked getting up. The bed was empty except for Ash and Fiona, the two of them each with one arm draped over his chest, him on his back, their heads nestled in against his shoulders.

He hated to wake them, but time and tide wait for no one and all that.

"C'mon ladies, up up up," he said, using one hand each to rouse them from their slumbers. "We've got loads of shit to get done today, and as much as I would love to stay in bed all day and be lazy, we simply don't have the time."

"Fuck off," Ash grumbled. "I wanna sleep another half an hour or something..."

"Then you're gonna have to do it without me, Aisling Rook, because I have got to get my ass in gear," he said to her as Fiona sat up in the bed.

"Nope," Fi laughed. "If Andy's getting up, so are you..." She grabbed her pillow in both hands and swung it around to bring it down on top of Ash's head with a loud thwomp.

"You lousy bitch!" Ash giggled, grabbing her own pillow as Andy slid out from between them quickly, just moments before Ash clocked Fiona across the face with

her

pillow. "C'mon Andy, help me fight off the invading forces!"

"No no, he should help

me

make sure you aren't sleeping like a log!" Fiona giggled back.

Andy stopped at the door to the bathroom, shaking his head. "Last one into the shower gets the least time under the hot water," he said before immediately rushing into the bathroom, hearing both girls scramble behind him to close the gap.

After a long hot shower in which they all shared the hot water equally, the three of them got dressed and headed downstairs to the kitchen and dining room area, where Andy was surprised to find Nicolette, Whitney and Tala all sitting, eagerly waiting for him. Nicolette was dressed in the French maid's outfit she loved so much, Whitney in a sort of gray business suit with skirt combo, and Tala in an oversized tye-dyed t-shirt and jean shorts, with leather cowboy boots on.

He cocked his head to one side, looking them over, each of them with a

huge

shit eating grin on their face. "Clearly I'm missing something, ladies, but I have to ask, is this truly so important that it can't wait until tomorrow?"

"It can't," Nicolette said confidently. "But, to make up for it, we've had Jenny wrap your breakfast burrito in tinfoil so you can walk and talk with it, and I'll carry your bottle of juice for you."

He glanced over at Aisling, who shrugged, then over at Fiona, who also shrugged. Neither of them genuinely seemed to have any idea what was going on, or they were much better at hiding it than Andy had given them credit for. "Okay then, lemme get my burrito and we-" Jenny was quick on the draw, handing the mostly wrapped burrito to him and the bottle of juice to Nicolette. "Away we go then, I suppose."

"We actually need to grab a couple of other girls first, though," Tala said. "You're going to want to have Neeks and Lexi with you for this..."

Andy's brow furrowed even more, not with annoyance, but with stumped curiosity, as he fished out his phone from his pocket. "Where should they meet us?"

"In the home theater," Tala told him, and he texted them both to meet them there.

The group gathered in the home theater, which sort of doubled as their living room when watching television or anything else. He ate most of his burrito while they waited for Lexi and Niko to arrive. He was comfortable in the home theater. He spent a good amount of time in here. The room had five rows, most with six loungers each in staggered levels, although a trio of couches on a level formed the first and fourth rows instead. There was a master control remove that Andy typically kept on the center couch on the fourth row, as that was his and Ash's usual spot to watch television if they weren't in the main living room. There were mock electric candelabras on each wall, and the lights were controlled by the remote in terms of dimming up or down, and just straight on/off by the switch at the top of the theater.

Andy noticed Nicolette had picked up his black cat Huginn somewhere along the way during the trip, and the rascal seemed to be happily purring in her arms as she scratched the underside of his chin, a move he'd always loved.

"Is Huginn pertinent to our conversation?" he asked her in amusement before downing the last of his burrito, crumbling up the foil and tossing it into a nearby wastebin.

"He very much is, Master," Nicolette said to him, that grin having dampened not one bit.

"What's shaking?" Niko said, coming into the room with Alexis. "We were just starting to get prepped for security for the house party tonight. This important enough to interrupt that?"

"Oh, absolutely," Tala said with a cackling laugh. "So last night, while you three were off visiting pretty much all of the other houses in New Eden, we were having something of an adventure here at home."

"I somehow doubt it was as exciting as our night was," Niko said with a dry laugh.

At that, Whitney reached up and grabbed the candelabra down closest to the front row and rotated it ninety degrees, like pulling a handle on a slot machine. There was a very soft sound and suddenly everyone noticed, just off to the side of home theater's main screen, a hidden unseen door popped open, as people looked on in amazement.

"No. Fucking. Way," Niko muttered beneath her breath. "A second secret fucking passage?"

"More than that, Neeks," Tala laughed. "Way, way,

way

more... shall we give you the tour?"

"How the hell did you discover this?" Andy asked Whitney.

"Actually, Master,

he

did," she said, nudging her head towards the black cat, who was currently content and getting his ears scratched. "Nic and I were here watching 'Killing Eve' when Huginn was stalking throughout the theater because we weren't paying attention to him. He was playing with a balloon on a long string that we gave him, and it got tangled up in the candelabra and pulled it, and we suddenly found... well,

that

," she said, gesturing towards the door, which none of them had stepped towards yet.

"Which is

really

funny to me," Tala said, "because I was over in the pool house, examining the space when I found something similar by accidentally turning a decorative sconce in the woodwork in one of my hallways."

"Wait," Niko said, "you mean-"

"They're connected and we nearly scared the shit out of ourselves by running into one another down there?" Nicolette said with a giggle. "You bet your ass. But that's not even the start of it. You ready for a tour for the part of your house you never knew you had?"

"God, I'm a little terrified now, but sure," Andy said with a laugh, as Nicolette put Huginn down and he immediately bounded confidently through the newly open door. "How much is there to see?"

"Quite a lot!" Tala said.

"To be fair, Master," Whitney said to him. "I could tell there were portions of the house we didn't have access to, simply because of the mass of built-in fiber into the walls, and because there were at least fifty outlets that I simply couldn't

find

. There's simply too much data and too many cables that seemed like they weren't connected to anything, and I was in the process of trying to determine what that all was when we stumbled across this."

They walked down towards the door, and everyone let Andy walk in first, with Niko and Alexis immediately in behind him. The door led into a small tunnel, no more than five or six feet wide, that sharply turned right and then began to slope downwards along a gradual path, lights turning on above them as they detected motion. The tunnel moved further down until they reached another door with a big button next to it. Andy couldn't stop himself and pushed it without thinking, as the door in front of him swung open to reveal a large lounge, the lights springing to life as the door opened.

It was almost styled like a speakeasy, a card table in one corner, a fully stocked bar in another, a jukebox along the wall and a small stage off to one side, with a handful of tables and chairs filling up the center of it. Above the bar, in neon letters, were the words "Hazel's Hideaway," glowing in a soft tropical pinkish yellow.

"As soon as we found our way in, after we were done exploring anyway, we started cleaning it all up, dusting mostly," Nicolette told him as Huginn hopped up onto the bar countertop and then laid down on it, sprawling out comfortably. "It seemed like nobody had been in here for years."

"Oh shit," Andy said. "I know whose house this was supposed to be..."

"So do we!" Tala chimed in. "What gave it away to you?"

"The name of the bar," he said, pointing to the sign. "And it sort of puts everything else into context. He loved this kind of shit."

"Who did?" Fiona asked him.

"God, I thought I made you read some of his books back in college, Fi," Andy laughed. "And you're sure?" he asked Tala.

"Yeah, there's even a message. Not for you

specifically

but for whoever inherited the house, I guess," she told him.

"This was supposed to be Devin McTaggart's house," Andy said in shock. "He was one of the best mystery writers from like 1976 until he stopped writing in 2015. He wrote all the Alan Diamond books. Shit, he basically

invented

the subgenre they called 'sunset noir.' He had taken the private eye cliché out of the 1940s New York vibe and moved it into California in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Alan Diamond was the detective in most of them, and he hung out at a bar and underground casino-"

"-called Hazel's Hideaway!" Fiona said, as it all came rushing back to her. "Shit, I haven't thought about those books in over a decade!"

"He lived down in Santa Cruz for the latter part of his life," Andy said, "but I never had the guts to go and seek him out, even though he's always been a big inspiration for a lot of the Druid Gunslinger books. He died a couple years back, though."

"April, 2018," Tala said. "One week after the house was finished being built. We looked into it this morning, trying to fill in some of the gaps."

"McTaggart didn't have any heirs," Nicolette told him. "Nor any living relatives. In fact, the house wasn't even built under his name. It's technically owned by someone named John Curtis."

Andy nodded, as this information made sense to him. "That was McTaggart's real name, I'm guessing. He'd often claim his real name was boring and problematic, because it was two first names, and so he'd reinvented himself. What happened to the house when he died?"

"There's apparently been some massive complication with his will, and so the house was sold off to Inner Light Investments," Whitney said.

That gave Andy pause. "Nathaniel's company?"

"Apparently Mr. Watkins moved into the house after McTaggart's death, lived in it for six months, but in the end he decided he liked the

area

but not the house itself, so he built his own and gave this mansion to the government in exchange for the surrounding land on which to build New Eden," Nicolette told him with a shrug.

"I wonder if he found any of these secret rooms and passages," Andy asked out loud, mostly to himself, but Nicolette was ready with an answer.

"We're

certain

that he didn't, Master. One room in particular will convince you of that."

"One

room

?" he asked. "How much here is

here

?"

"There's an entire floor and a half down here, Master Rook," Whitney told him.

"You're exaggerating. You have to be. ... Aren't you?"

"Let's see. There's this lounge, another living room, six bedrooms with attached bathrooms, a couple of additional bathrooms, a wine cellar, a security office, an armory and two offices, one of which doubles as a very large library," Nicolette said. "All completely furnished. I'm going to be cleaning down here all fucking week, although it turns out there's a small army of those little Roomba vacuum robots squirreled away around here and those things have been running once a month or so."

"There's about half a dozen ways in and out of this floor, but they're

all

concealed," Tala told him. "There's a tunnel to the guest house, the door to the home theater, there's a door in the garage, one in the pantry, a large freight elevator concealed behind the main stairwell upstairs and one more in the other ground floor living room."

"How the hell did Nathaniel not

notice

any of this?" Fiona asked incredulously.

"I mean, we've been here for months, and

we

didn't," Nicolette said. "Once we found our way in, though, it's much easier to find all the ways out. Plus, y'know, why would we be suspicious?"

"What do you mean?" Fi queried, still not quite understanding. "Nobody thought to check and see if the mansion we were given has a

basement

?"

"You have to understand, Fi," Andy explained. "Our here in California, there's almost never any frost, so the foundations for houses don't have to go very deep. Because of that, like,

nobody

out here has basements. They're practically unheard of. So why would Nathaniel expect any different?"

"We don't have access to the armory or part of the main office, although we can kind of see in, but not really," Tala said. "We were hoping you might have some ideas."

They headed to the armory, where they came across a Post-It Note outside of the room. "The only reason we even know this is an armory is because of the placard," Nicolette said, tapping the sign that was on the door.

Andy leaned in and read the Post-It Note, grinning. It read 'Jewel's Genesis' in elegant, if a little shaky, handwriting. There was a keypad next to the door and so he typed in 1-1-1-9-5-2 and the door beeped and popped open. "Alan Diamond's fictional birthday," he told them with a smile. "Born on New Year's Day, 1952. McTaggart was a bit of a gun and weapon nut, so who knows what's we're gonna find. Let's see what's inside..."

They opened the door and inside the lights sprung to life. The room was a little dusty, clearly having not been opened in a couple of years. There were plenty of swords lining the back wall, but the two sides had rifles and machine guns, with the center having a table that held at least a dozen handguns of all sorts. The blades were shown clearly for decoration, but the weapons looked like they were stored in places easy to get at, as if McTaggart had been suspecting a home invasion at any moment. Andy didn't doubt that the man had known how to use every one of them.

"Well, I guess I don't have to worry about getting us a lot more guns," Alexis said with a laugh.

"This dude was

definitely

a gun

nut

," Niko said. "I'm fairly certain like half of these can't be legal in this state. Hell, maybe even in this country."

"Well, I won't tell anyone if you won't," Alexis said to Niko with a grin. "Shit, we might need to use them at some point, with the way things are going. So let's you and me both remember they're here, and you don't touch anything you can't handle, okay, Andy?"

"Sorry," Andy said with a sheepish smile. "I was sort of caught up in the fact that there's a Spanish saber, a Middle Eastern scimitar and a Japanese tachi hanging side by side by side. That's a pretty long and impressive history of melee combat, just, y'know, chilling..."

Niko nudged Alexis with an elbow and a smile. "Isn't he adorable? Batshit Matrix level guns and he's caught up with the swords."

"Why the hell did he need so many guns?" Fiona asked Andy.

"Oh, he lived a pretty weird life if you scratched beneath the surface, full of all sorts of strange and tragic events," Andy sighed. "He was robbed once, in the 80s. Two guys broke into his house, tied him up, stole a bunch of his things and beat him pretty badly. After that, McTaggart got a little crazy and reclusive. I don't think he ever did a public signing after that. He, Thomas Pynchon and Salman Rushdie used to be pen pals."

"How much you think he knew about how to use these?" Ash asked Niko.

"Everything you would need for upkeep in here," Niko said before noting a door off in the corner. "Plus this looks like it's a small firing range, so he could stay practiced."

"Guess I don't have to practice outside any more," Alexis said.

"Well," Niko countered, "you'll still want long range practice, and there's no room for that down here. The shooting range in there looks like it's only good for small arms fire."

"You said you couldn't get into another room?" Andy said, looking back at Tala.

"Part of it, yeah, what we assume was this dude's office. C'mon, I'll show you."

They moved further throughout the underground portion of the mansion, lights always flickering on when they moved into the zone, eventually flickering off behind them after the area hadn't detected motion for a while.

"If you wanted to move the Master Bedroom somewhere safer," Nicolette said as she stepped into a room. "This would probably be my suggestion. Just a little stop on the way to where we're going, but I think it's worth the looksee."

It was a very large master bedroom, and the bed zone - Andy thought it safer to think of it as that rather than a singular bed, as it looked like it was probably four queen sized beds slammed together into a giant rectangle - could've easily held everyone in it, although it was raised up higher than he would've expected, with a ladder to climb up onto it. The top of the bed was parallel about with his shoulders. "Why's the bed zone so high up?" he asked, walking over towards it with Nicolette.

"It's all storage underneath," she said, pushing on one side of it, as a series of shelves on wheels rolled out, all filled to the brim with books. "It's all books, too, although I don't know how valuable any of them are. They look like they're most cheap paperbacks, and a lot of them aren't in great condition."

Andy chuckled, glancing at the spines of several of them. "It's all populist fiction. Stuff that was in massive demand before television took over, but that history has sort of forgotten about. Westerns, court room dramas, mysteries... this is a pretty damn impressive collection. I bet he's got all of his own stuff in here too."

"Well, it's under all of the bed space in here," she said. "There's a ramp with a railing that goes up the back of it, in addition to the stairsteps here in the front."

"He didn't want to waste space, that's for certain," Fiona said.

"It'll be a nice play room," Ash said, "but I don't know that you want to move the main bedroom down here full time. There's no windows or natural light."

"There's no

actual

windows," Nicolette said, "but I found this when I was poking around." She walked over and picked up a remote control of some kind, pushing a single button on it, and the walls of the bedroom sprung to life, large LED screens that showed the outside of the mansion from what had to be its highest point. The air conditioning also kicked in when they did, making sure to keep the room from getting too warm. "Impressive, right?"

"How much did he spend on this fucking house?" Lexi asked.

"In his last several years, the paranoia had seemed to get a bit more intense, and even his closest friends described him as volatile and temperamental," Andy said. "There were reports that maybe he was dealing with early onset dementia or Alzheimer's."

"How old was he?" Nicolette asked.

"He published his first book in 1976 at the age of 20, so he was, what, 62 when he died?"

"Cause of death?"

"Complications from colon cancer," Andy said. "That was the official report, anyway."