Albuquerque. Snorkel.

Riley can't remember what this museum is. They all kind of blur together after a while. There's old stuff. It's in display cases and hanging on the wall. Blah blah blah.

There are old people, too. A lot of them. So many tuxedos, gray beards, and long-sleeved glittery gowns that look like they belong on Barbara Bush circa 1988, so little time.

(To be fair, there are plenty of non blue-haired museum patrons in attendance, too. There aren't so many who are in their twenties, though.)

Ben and Abigail are in here somewhere. Supposedly. Riley hasn't seen them in a while. They're in their element, wherever they are. Riley, meanwhile, is staring up at a huge carved stone wall that was taken from some temple somewhere. He squints at it over his ridiculously tiny glass of champagne. "Is that supposed to be a kid or a dog?" he asks doubtfully.

They're standing just inside the front door of the townhouse, in the front hall. It's a lot more spacious inside than you'd think from the outside (definitely big for one person), and while it's clearly an old building, the architecture is pretty modern and clean-looking. That's courtesy of the owner before Riley, who apparently didn't appreciate the ancient plumbing and wooden panels.

The only rooms visible from here are the hall that they're standing in (Ava will find herself almost face-first against the coat rack heaped with dark-colored jackets, an umbrella, and a hat or two) and half of the kitchen, which has a lot of gleaming silver appliances and also some random items (CD's, computer parts, a pair of gloves) scattered across the countertops.

"You're facing the wrong way," Riley says, helpfully.

When Riley shuffles up to the bar, his clothes are rumpled and wrinkly; there's no need for his new (nicer, more expensive) duds during a marathon Resident Evil 4 session with Mike, his former roommate. He's wearing jeans, a T-shirt, a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, his lucky scarf, and socks, with his glasses tucked into his slightly-unkempt (but artistically so, or so he'd like to think) hair.

He plants his elbow on the bar and then scrubs his face with his hand. "Pancakes," Riley decides after a long moment, resting his chin in his hand. "What this morning needs is pancakes."

Explaining to Mike where they came from is something he'll worry about later.

Or he could just eat all the evidence now.

When Riley comes downstairs, he's wearing a backpack, dragging a suitcase, and carrying a box, with a heavily-weighted paper shopping bag dangling from a forearm as he makes his swift, awkward way to and through the door, his head down.

When he comes back, hours later, his face is set and closed, his eyes just a touch red around the eyelids, and his shoulders are drawn inward. This last is difficult to see, though, as he's rather absorbed in carrying a medium-sized, full cardboard box. He rests it against the edge of the Bar, hesitates a long moment, and then pushes it entirely onto the counter.

"Would you give this to Chloe Sullivan, please?" he asks, voice low, and the box of hastily-gathered notepads, chunky jewelry, assorted toiletries, brightly-colored tops, and a few DVD's, vanishes. Riley opens his mouth and half-stretches a hand toward the box -- but it's gone, and after a minute, he lowers his hand. Closes his mouth. He digs through his pocket and comes up with a room key. He runs the pad of his thumb over the familiar teeth and notches, then places it on the bar with a soft click (trying not to think of the other key he's seen treated in the same manner; tries not to hear shades of Riley, I love him).

He turns toward the door and starts slowly heading back to it.

Riley takes the front steps of the Gates-Chase mansion a couple of stairs at a time, whistling a tune that would be off-key, if it wasn't so tuneless. He's cheerful this afternoon (hard not to be, being back in D.C. after he's been out of it so long), the Ferrari parked in the drive behind him and a paper shopping bag in hand.

Doorbells are for losers (as are simple alarm systems designed to keep intruders off the property, which he bypassed with ease without even stepping out of the car). Riley just opens the massive door and steps into the grand, spacious foyer.

"Hello?" he shouts, grinning to hear the way his voice echoes. "Ben Gates! Anybody home?"

Riley's mouth is set thin and tight as he steps through the door of the room that he and Chloe share, iPod clutched tight in one hand and small, flat case of tools in the other.

The three of them walk the grounds in a loose line, through the grass, among the trees. Everything is lush and green and blooming, in the height of the Mid-Atlantic coast summer.

Ben and Abigail are enjoying it. They casually hold hands, swinging them a little, and Abigail has a book tucked under her other arm and a smile on her face under the warm sunshine.



On the end of the three-person line, the resident third wheel is on the phone.

Life has been weird.

Everything’s so slow to get back to normal; Riley can Google himself and the reporters are hanging on the bell day and night, which – he likes, don’t get him wrong. He grins cheekily for the cameras and soaks up the attention like a pro. It’s just been weird.

Mike says he’s glad Riley’s alive and all, but he’s pissed about his van.

Riley tells himself that's why it's been easier to spend more time in Milliways than out.

In DC, he really hasn't been doing anything. The problem with suddenly becoming famous is that once the Today show and Larry King Live and Dateline appearances are done - now what's he supposed to do? They found the treasure, which was great, really, it was, but now he's kind of out of a job.

Not that there haven't been offers. Ben has been publically generous with his praise of Riley's skills in finding the Charlotte. Riley has gotten all kinds of calls, some weirder than others. His favorite so far is the couple from New Mexico who wanted him to write a program to track the incidence of alien abductions in the American southwest and midwest. He'd taken some of the offers more seriously. They're coming in from across the world. After the call from the British government and the Russian military, he'd quickly received one from the NSA. They'd offered him a position in the same department he worked in, but four or five levels up.

It's all a little overwhelming. Riley doesn't know if he wants to sit at a desk, programming, for the rest of his life, and everyone seems to assume that he does.

He's spending a lot of time wandering the city, these days, avoiding his roommates and their not-so-subtle hints about rent, and so when he gets the call from Ben one morning, even though the guy won't say what he wants over the phone, Riley's more than cool with heading over to Ben's place.

It’s downright creepy under Trinity Church. There are platforms and elevators and long spiral staircases, all built out of wood, all 200 years old, and all leading down, down, down deeper into the ground. Even with the torches that they’re all carrying, it’s dark.

“How do a bunch of guys with hand tools build all this?” asks Shippen in awe.

“The same way they built the pyramids,” says Ben, looking down into the blackness, “and the Great Wall of China.”

“Yeah,” says Riley. “The aliens helped them.”

It’s dark and there are bugs. Creepy, gross bugs, and the whole place shakes when the subway passes, and the stairs creak frighteningly as the group descends.

And then a crack and a crash ring out, and Shaw screams as the step gives way underneath him.

He falls far too quickly for anyone to do a thing.

“Oh God,” Riley breathes, heart thundering in his ears. He doesn’t want to, but he listens for the impact.

Eventually, he hears it.

He thinks he might be sick.

---

It gets worse before it gets better. The homemade elevators aren’t especially sturdy, it turns out, and after a whole lot of yelling and sliding around and nearly falling and jumping (and the last was Riley; no way was he standing on that thing when he could escape back onto the stairs), nobody falls. Nobody falls, but it’s a near thing.

Ben and Abigail are fucking nuts.

(Oh, and they also kissed when they first entered the tunnel. Riley may have been walking ahead of them, but he wasn’t deaf, jeez.)

“I’m sorry,” Ben is telling her. “I’m sorry I dropped you. I had to save the Declaration.”

“No, don’t be.” Abigail smiles. “I would have done exactly the same thing to you.”

Ben starts to smile back – then looks somewhere between amused and bothered. “Really?”

“I would have dropped you both,” Riley says, coming down the stairs to them. “Freaks.”

Ian lowers himself on the other elevator; the one that didn’t snap its rope cables. “Get on,” he says, coldly.

Ben looks up. “Ian, it’s not worth it.”

“Do you imagine any one of your lives is more valuable to me than Shaw’s? We go on.” It’s less Ian’s eloquence and more that he’s punctuating his words with a pistol that convinces them to climb onto the elevator.

---

At the bottom, there is a room.

And in that room, there is nothing.

A packed dirt floor. Dark walls with a couple of designs. Cobwebs. Nothing.

“So where is the treasure?” Shippen’s the one to ask it, but they’re all thinking it.

“This is it?” Riley demands of Ben, silently begging that it isn’t true. “We came all this way for a dead end?”

Ben looks at him wearily. “Yes.”

Riley shakes his head obstinately. “There has got to be something more.”

“Riley, there is no more.”

All this time, all this near-death and craziness, Ben has been the one to push them on, to assure Riley that yes, there was a treasure.

Riley doesn't know what to do, hearing those words come out of Ben Gates' mouth.

“Another clue,” he says desperately.

“No,” Ben snaps. “There are no more clues. That’s it. It’s over. End of the road. The treasure is gone. Moved. Taken somewhere else.”

Riley flinches back from the other man’s anger and everything slows down. He listens dumbly as the others argue; as Ian insists that Ben knows where the treasure is and Ben insists that he doesn’t. They try to reason with him; Ian and Shippen get back onto the elevator. Ian tells his loyal henchman, “Okay, go,” and the elevator starts to rise without them.

“Hey,” says Ben, “wait a minute!”

All four of them cry some variation of, “Wait!” or “No!”

“Ian,” says Abigail reasonably, “wait.”

“You can’t just leave us here.”

“Yes, I can,” Ian says pleasantly from atop the elevator, looking down on them. “Unless Ben tells me the next clue.”

“There isn’t another clue,” Ben tells him.

Riley can’t stay quiet any longer. “Ian, wait. Listen,” and he takes a step forward and ignores the hand that Ben lays on his shoulder to try to stop him, “Listen, why don’t you come back down here and we can talk through this together.”

Ian points the barrel of the gun in his face. “Don’t speak again.”

Riley freezes. “Okay.”

He doesn’t speak again. He listens silently while Mr. Gates gives up the next clue, against Ben’s objections; tells Ian that the treasure is in Boston. There’s some crap about King Solomon, some directionally-named church, lanterns, Paul Revere, blah blah.

Riley’s only half-listening, staring at the gun in Ian’s hand.

Until he hears, “Why? So you can escape in Boston? Besides, with you out of the picture, there’s less baggage to carry.”

“What if we lied?” says Mr. Gates, his chin tipped up defiantly.

Ian’s eyes harden. “Did you?”

Ben steps in fast. “What if there’s another clue?”

“Then I’ll know right where to find you.” Ian smiles and clicks his tongue at them, pointing as the elevator begins to rise. “See you, Ben.”

“No!”

Riley breaks his silence, and he doesn’t care if his voice cracks, doesn’t care if it’s pitched high and scared. “There’s no other way out!”

“Come back!”

“You’re going to need us, Ian!” Ben shouts up, and then the elevator is gone.

The four of them stand in the small area lit by the torch.

Riley says woodenly, “We’re all going to die.” Riley doesn't want to die. He's young. He has a decent life, a good family, a good girlfriend, a magical bar to get back to. He likes his life. And he's all about self-preservation. He really, really does not want to die.

“It’s going to be okay, Riley,” Ben says, and he points an energetic, apologetic finger at him. “I’m sorry I yelled at you.” Then he’s taking the torch and moving back, toward one of the walls.

Mr. Gates follows. “It’s okay, kiddo,” he tells Riley in passing.

“Alright, boys, what’s going on?” asks Abigail. “The British came by sea. It was two lanterns, not one.”

They’re moving, then, away from the huge elevator shaft and back into the room, Ben waving the torch in front of him.

“Ian needed another clue, so we gave it to him,” says Ben’s dad.

“It was fake,” says Riley wonderingly, his face lighting up. “It was a fake clue.”

Ben is being cryptic and muttering, holding the torch up to the wall.

Riley deflates, his smile shattering. His voice echoes hollowly off the walls. “That means by the time Ian figures it out, we’ll still be trapped here and he’ll shoot us then. Either way, we’re going to die.”

“Nobody’s going to die,” Ben says absently, impatiently, still studying the wall and its strange designs. “There is another way out.”

“Where?”

Something twists under Ben’s hand on the wall, and, with a low rumble, a wall rolls back. “Through the treasure room.” He glances back, his face lit by the leaping flame of the torch and a huge, boyish grin, and he steps through.

---

Riley is the last to walk through the door, but he still knows something’s wrong even before he’s all the way in. He sees Ben’s face.

And then he sees the dusty room. It would be the perfect shape and size for holding a whopping treasure beyond compare. Riley can even see the places in the dust where items once rested. But now? Now, it is completely empty.

His smile crumbles. “Looks like someone got here first.”

Abigail is watching Ben, worried. Sad. “I’m sorry, Ben.”

“It’s gone,” Ben says, and he looks – lost, standing in the middle of the big room. It’s scary. Ben always knows what he’s doing; where he’s going.

“Listen, Ben,” Mr. Gates starts.

Ben interrupts and says that it doesn’t matter; that Mr. Gates was right all along and there was no treasure. Mr. Gates says no, he wasn’t right; the room is real which means the treasure is real which means Ben is brilliant, and he did it for the family, and he’s proud. It’s a regular freaking Kodak moment.

And what does Ben say? “I just really thought I was going to find the treasure.”

“Okay, then we keep looking for it,” says his dad firmly.

Abigail holds up a hand, smiling. “I’m in.”

Ben looks at both of them a moment, gratefully, then stands straighter. “Okay.”

Leaning against a back wall with his arms crossed, Riley has had enough of all of this pointless optimism. “Not to be Johnny Rain Cloud, but that’s not going to happen,” he drawls bitterly. “Because as far as I can see, we’re still trapped down here. Oh Ben, where’s this other way out?”

“Well, that’s it, it doesn’t make any sense,” says Ben slowly, in that 'I am talking out loud to myself, not to you' tone that Riley knows all too well. “The first thing the builders would have done after getting down here was cut a secondary shaft back out for air…”

Mr. Gates says, “Right,” but Ben is too busy practically sticking his nose into an area carved out of the wall to pay any attention.

“…In case of cave ins.” He pulls a bundle from his pocket and unwraps the meerschaum pipe. “Could it really be that simple?” He pulls out the stem and fits the ivory carving into the small hole in the wall. It fits. Perfectly. Riley pushes himself off of the wall, because – no. Fucking. Way.

“The secret lies with Charlotte,” says Ben, and he turns the pipe.

---

This room is full.

Statues and boxes of scrolls, small piles of gold and jewels and old-looking things. Riley stares up at a particularly ugly statue. “It is a big, blueish-green man, with a strange-looking goatee,” he says. “I’m guessing that’s significant.” He throws himself forward and suddenly hugs the statue with all of his strength.

Up ahead, Ben’s shout is sudden and sharp. “Dad!” Riley reluctantly lets go of his blue-skinned man, and he other three move to join Ben, and then—


The four of them stand on stone, looking out across a dark, cavernous hall. Massive pillars disappear into the darkness above them, presumably supporting the ceiling. Riley stares as Ben touches his torch to a long trough on the floor. Something in it goes up in flame with a dull whump, and then the line of flame stretches down the steps — and on, and on, and on. It doesn’t stop; far be it for Riley to use sports metaphors but the hall’s at least the size of a couple of football fields – and it glitters.

The light glitters off of the gold and jewels, priceless treasures beyond compare, heaped as far as the eye can see.

King Solomon’s treasure.

The hidden knowledge of the Knights Templar.

The secret lies with Charlotte.

Ben and his dad are laughing, their arms around each other; Abigail’s staring in astonishment, grinning from ear to ear, and Riley? Well, he stands frozen.

Abigail turns to him after a moment or two, and she frowns and leans in. “Riley, are you crying?”

“Look,” Riley says, and he sniffles. “Stairs.”

It's a bright and sunny morning in the city of brotherly love (Riley doesn't have any brothers, so he can only assume that flipping someone the bird is a particularly brotherly thing to do, as he has already had it happen to him three times), and Riley Poole has a job to do.

He sits on the bench across the street from the Franklin Institute, listening to the traffic on the street in front of him and the birdsong and voices coming from the park behind. He watches the figure of the kid in the public school uniform as he darts down the steps of the Institute and across the road.

The kid gives him the letters (S, S, A, N, D), carefully written down in his little kid handwriting (which, if Riley is being entirely honest, is neater than his own scrawl), copied from the Silence Dogood letters that're on display inside the building.

The kid gets mouthy at him about his handwriting.

Riley pulls a sour face at the kid that has absolutely no effect. "You know what? Here. One more dollar." He slaps the dollar into the kid's hand. "Go get the last four letters. Go get 'em, chief." As the kid runs back across the street, Riley looks at the notes scrawled across the paper in his hand and he mutters to himself. "Come on. Okay. 'The vision to see the treasured past comes as the timely shadow passes in front of the house of pass and' what? 'Pass and' what? 'Pass and'…"

A city bus roars past.




Riley stares at the advertisement on the side of it for a long moment, and then he flies off the bench.

Five minutes later, 11-year-old Marvin Wilmott comes running out of the Franklin Institute-- and stops dead as he sees that the funny man with the glasses is gone. He hops up and down on the sidewalk, craning his neck, looking around, and just as he starts to leave, a tall blond man steps up. He has a funny accent and a $100 bill, and he wants to know what Marvin told the first man. Marvin can't remember, but he does have the last four letters (S-T-O-W), which he hands over, and then he escapes with his prize. He is already concocting the story of how he found $100 to tell his mom.

Ian Howe, on the other hand, is rather busy with Google search.

---

Ben and Abigail are right where they said they'd be -- Urban Outfitters, picking up clothes that aren't dresses or tuxedos, flirting.

Well, okay, maybe they didn't say they'd be flirting, and maybe he's not sure they were, but he definitely interrupted something when he comes jogging up the stairs, and maybe he disguises with cockiness, the sour taste that it leaves in his mouth.

Either way, they're both all, RILEY DID YOU FIND SOMETHING,

and Riley's all, OKAY, 'THE VISION TO SEE THE TREASURED PAST COMES AS THE TIMELY SHADOW CROSSES IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE OF PASS AND STOW.' NOW, PASS AND STOW MEANS--

and they both interrupt him to say, "The Liberty Bell."

Riley hates being upstaged.

So then they look at the back of a $100 bill, designed by a buddy of Ben Franklin's, because Ben just has to be Mr. History Genius, and because there's an etching of the clock tower on there with a time on the clock, and then some other stuff happens, and the long and short of it is that Riley is right and Ben and Abigail don't know something about history that he knows. Ha! HA! (Ben calls him a genius. Riley glows with puffed-up pride, even when they show him up again shortly.)

Time to hit the Liberty Bell.

---

Long story short, they're in deep shit.

Ben has the Declaration of Independence's carrying case and these funky x-ray specs that the clue led them to in Independence Hall (apparently where the Liberty Bell is).

Riley and Abigail have the Declaration itself.

They split up. It's never a strategy that works out well in Scooby Doo; Riley doesn't especially want to get attacked by a swamp monster a la Shaggy and Scoob. Still, Ben's the brains here, and what Ben says, goes. So when Ian and his lovely friends showed up at Independence Hall (just as they were debating the next clue: "Heere at the wall" with two e's, whatever the hell that meant) and Ben said, "I’ll take this and those, you take that. Meet me at the car and call me if you have any problems," Riley didn't argue.

He only said, "Like if we get caught and killed?" his face unusually somber, reflecting his extreme misgivings.

Ben's eyes held his for a moment. "Yeah. That would be a big problem. Take care of her."

Abigail, clutching the Declaration tightly, nodded and said, "I will," just as Riley said, "I will." Riley and Abigail stared awkwardly at each other a moment, then both looked away (even if Riley's still pretty sure that Ben meant the girl, not the Declaration). Then it was time to walk out onto the Philly street like nothing was wrong, going their separate ways, but Viktor and Shaw catch on quick and it's only a moment or two before Abigail says his name and Riley says grimly, "Time to run!"

They do.

They run like hell down the street, pushing through pedestrians, and maybe it's stupid of him, maybe it's lame, but he almost likes this. Oh, sure, he's terrified out of his mind, yeah, but -- he doesn't have to think, doesn't have to worry, doesn't have to freak out or plan. He can just run.

The unlikely duo flies into an indoor market. Abigail says something and Riley ignores it, saying, "This way!"

He dives behind a kiosk loudly extolling the virtues of Verizon Wireless, and he only has about a split second to realize that stupid Abigail isn't there, isn't with him anymore, before he spots Viktor. He catches a quick look at the gun tucked into the man's waistband, hidden by his jacket, and he hurriedly ducks back into a clothing shop. He was intending to dart underneath a rack of long coats, the same place he used to hide as a kid when his mom would drag him shopping, but, as ever, fate has a different idea.