Chapter 10: The Break in

“Shh... quiet! I thought I heard something?” A muffled female voice said.

“What are you, nuts? There is no one here. The professor lives alone. His car is not in the driveway and he has the proposal meeting.” A muffled male voice said.

“But what if he has a dog?” A second male muffled voice said.

“He doesn’t have any pets. Stop acting so childish and let’s just do what we came here to do.”

(This is almost too easy. They have no idea that I am here. How shall I mess with them? Hmm, I cannot do anything that will damage professor Thelete’s home and I do not want to draw too much attention from the neighbors. I need to be discreet but scare them off so that they never come back.) Zenobi thought to herself.

As the three thieves that work for the Atlantis secret society searched the professor’s office, a voice spoke.

“You know, it really isn’t nice to trespass on someone else’s property and attempt to steal their life’s work,” the disembodied Zenobi said.

All three would-be thieves turn around at once and look to the location of where the voice was coming from, but to their surprise, they saw nothing. A few seconds later and Zenobi materializes her head right before their eyes. All three of them start to scream at once.

“What’s the matter? Never seen that trick before,” Zenobi said mockingly. “Why don’t you run along now?”

“This cannot be real. It has to be fake.” One of the male voices said.

Zenobi, at this point, takes it up a notch and materializes her arms from the elbow downward and begins to form miniature tornados in the palm of her hands. She blows a third one into existence using her mouth and sends one towards each of the trespassers.

The wind speed from her antics makes papers go flying throughout the office and sends all three of them flying backwards. Completely stunned, the would-be thieves can do nothing but stare at the floating head and arms in total disbelief.

They then look at one another and all climb back out through the window as fast they can, nearly falling off the roof in the process.

(That was fun. It’s been so long since I got to show off my powers like that. Luckily, no one will believe that a disembodied head floating in mid-air with arms that make mini tornados is real. Everyone will think that they are completely nuts. Damn. I made a mess of the professor’s office, though. Guess I will have to use my powers once again in order to clean this place up.)

Zenobi creates a whirlwind again, but this time she uses it to close the window that the secret society members used to break in and to put all of the miscellaneous papers that were strewn about the room from her earlier antics back into their proper place.

***

After speaking with Nathan Bauer, Professor Thelete went to collect his belongings and head home. It was so late now that by the time the professor would reach home, it would be after 2 A.M. When he arrived home, he went to his bedroom to find Zenobi fast asleep inside of his bed.

The Professor sighed deeply.

(Figures. I was hoping to just go straight to bed, but I do not want to disturb her. I will grab some blankets and a pillow and go to sleep on the couch.)

Despite how late it was and how physically tired the professor was, he could not go to sleep right away. His mind was swirling with all that had happened in the last sixteen hours or so. His life had been completely uprooted; it was hard to grasp everything that had occurred.

(First, I was visited by two governmental agents that tried to recruit me. At the time, I wasn’t sure exactly what they wanted, but it is clear now that they wanted to recruit me for my research on the location of Atlantis.)

(Then I was ambushed by the young woman in the parking lot, telling me not to go to this proposal meeting tonight that scarcely two hundred people had attended. She claimed to be a representative of a secret society with its sole purpose of protecting the actual physical location of Atlantis to prevent its technology from falling into the wrong hands.)

(As strange as all that was, the events at the proposal meeting were nearly as strange. There were so many unprecedented things that occurred because of my proposal in over 100 years of the organization’s history.)

(Of course, there was also Nathan Bauer, the eccentric billionaire. He was at the proposal meeting, and it made little sense that he would be there. Is that what was bothering me about the situation? I cannot come up with why he would attend such an event.)

The professor paused and took out the note that Zenobi had handed him earlier. He re-read it again. This was perhaps the strangest thing that had happened to him during all of chaos of these last several hours.

(The letter talks about some sort of grander purpose, explicitly states that gods exist and never left, warns me not trust governments because they are power hungry, warns me that the secret society of Atlantis will go to extreme lengths to protect it, and states about my having lost memories.)

(Just who the hell could know all of this? Not to mention the fact that whomever it was knows where I live. At least nothing in the letter indicated that they wish me any harm. Quite the opposite, in fact, stating that her failures were my failures and vice versa. At least it appears to be a woman based upon the name of the person at the end, Hypatia Valemiya.)

(Then, of course, there is Zenobi herself. That is a name of supposed Atlantean goddess, specifically the one of the northern winds of Atlantis. Zenobi... There is something about her just feels otherworldly to me when I interact with her.)

(I definitely do not want to jump to conclusions here, but the note indicated that gods exist. Could that actually be possible? Could the seemingly innocent young lady that is asleep in my bed be, in fact, a goddess...? God, this isn’t helping. I need to sleep. I should contact my former mentor when I wake up and get his opinion on all of this.)

With that, the professor turned off the light in the living room area and crawled into his makeshift bed on the couch, completely exhausted, and fell promptly to sleep. Unbeknownst to the professor, the reason why he could fall asleep so fast is because Zenobi had entered the living room and her very presence put his mind at ease.