Pete and I were the last ones to arrive, which probably didn't make for a great first impression, but Renee didn't seem to mind.

"Jamie, you've decided to join the ranks, eh?" She looked ridiculously proud of herself. "And Mr. Lancaster. Good to see you back." The tone she used to address Pete had a shade of steel in it, and Pete winced. "Damn," Oliver whispered, from where the spot by my side to which he had gravitated. "She still pissed at you?" Pete nodded weakly, and Oliver turned to me, hissing, "She and Pete when out when we were teenagers, and Pete dumped her the night before our first expedition for Je..." 

He stopped short at the way Pete's face went empty. I could almost hear him slamming the shutters that lay behind his eyes. I knew that trick. Hell, I invented that trick. Just shut yourself off, and the world doesn't hurt quite so badly.

Oliver tried to recover, "Anyway, Pete dumped her, and she had to sleep like two tents away from him for the next five months."

I glanced at Pete.

He sighed. "I lacked both timing and tact." 

"Willifred, Lancaster, stop corrupting the newbie. Newbie, feel free to smack them." All of the sudden, she seemed to realize that I didn't know most of the people here. "Right, introductions! Sorry. Okay, so you know, Oliver, Pete, and Minnie. That's Katie. She's our best in hand to hand combat." She indicated a petite girl in the corner, who was giving off a very Lara Croft-y vibe, with cargo shorts and a black tank. 

"Hand to hand combat? I thought you guys were historians."

Oliver smirked, and leaned across Pete to say, "But without a few rash decisions, we get bored."

Renee glared at him. "By which he means, there's usually assholes there who want to weaponize or sell whatever we're looking for. And sometimes they have guns. Is that a deal breaker?"

"Not really, I just wasn't expecting badassery, I guess."

"Well, yeah, we do have a good bit of that around her," Renee said, a small smile on her face, though she was obviously trying to remain professional. She proceeded to indicate a short red-haired guy in the corner, who was fiddling with a lighter.

Renee grimaced. "Felix, not near the books, please." Felix shot her a grin and flipped the lighter off, leaning back against the shelves, seemingly just to irritate her. She sighed. "Felix is our best from the engineering department, and that's saying a lot."

"The engineering department is massive," Felix said. "Five full floors dedicated to it." His voice was greasy, and it almost sounded like he was trying to... impress me?

Oliver bristled. "Stick to women at least half your age, perv."

Felix muttered a string of obscenities and flipped the lighter back on.

Renee shot Oliver a warning glance, but didn't disagree. "Anyway, that's everyone," she said lightly. "Pete's our best on-field researcher-"

"Like Nathan Drake, but sexier," he cut in.

"Sure. And Oliver is our best people person, not to mention incredibly nimble."

Oliver scowled jokingly. "By which she means that I'm the one jumping into bottomless pits and climbing crumbling ruins all the time."

Obviously, everyone here had been working together for a while. They fit together like jigsaw pieces, balancing out each other's skills, or lack thereof. "So why do you need me? You seem to have it covered."

The light air dropped out of the room at once, and everyone looked to Renee, like they wanted to know how she would handle this. "Well, there's a- the thing is-"

Katie rescued her. "It was your parent's brain child. It's only right that you're the one to see it through."

"And from what I've seen, you can handle yourself pretty well," Oliver said. "And you're not stupid, that's for sure. McGovern's writing is full of pretentious, long winded metaphors that take a whole lot of effort and mean a whole lot of nothing, if you ask me."

Pete, who had been slouching against a wall, snapped his head up. "You read McGovern?" There was an intensity in his voice that I hadn't heard before, an almost accusatory shade. "Yeah," I said with a shrug. "I like history and stuff." I was trying to play it down, be as apathetic and teenagery as possible.

He nodded. "Oh. Cool." He retreated back into the tranquil guy I'd met an hour ago.

But everyone still looked a little unsettled.

"Right," Renee said with a cough. "So, as we all know, we have reason to believe that Marco Polo has a cache of artifacts, most likely either terribly dangerous or terribly valuable-"

The two were synonymous, if you asked me. 

"-Hidden somewhere. Our reason in believing this is this document." She pulled up an image on the computer screen, and we all moved closer.

The photo was of a piece of parchment so thin that it looked like it would disintegrate if you breathed too hard on it.

We all stared at it for a moment. The parchment was swathed in swirls and symbols. Despite the paper's age, they had remained startlingly black.

"Sorry, but that looks like nonsense. And look at the date. January 6th, 1324. He died two days after this was written. Who's to say it's not just the ravings of a man on his deathbed?" Oliver asked, breaking the silence.

"Probably, but we can't take that chance, Oliver," Renee responded calmly.

"Whoa, hold up. 'Probably?' You kidnapped me for something that's 'probably' mindless babble?"

Pete broke in grimly. "You're both forgetting his last words."

Felix pulled a face. "Why do you know people's last words? Kink or somethin'?" Katie socked him in the shoulder.

"Just before he died, Polo said: 'I did not write half of what I saw, for I would not be believed.' Which, of course, led to a whole debate over what he was hiding when he wrote his memoirs. Just memories, or something more tangible?"

Minnie spoke up. "Okay, so what now?"

Renee smiled. "Now, Jamie needs an amorum fratem."