Lincoln held his breath standing amidst tourists breathing heavy in the mineral exhibit of NYC’s American Museum of Natural History. The combination of free and readily accessible drew the swarms into the wide halls filled with items one wouldn’t normally bump into during their stroll through New York’s metropolitan scene.

The glass displays stood erect, illusory in their durability. Any well timed strike could have procured a crack onto their foggy facades. The fog came from the breaths of the little-sized tourists with grubby hands and lack of self-restraint. Their adult counterparts saw very little wrong with allowing their little ones to interact with the displays despite the “do not touch” signs splattered professionally throughout the museum. They too were part of the problem which could not be eradicated at the moment.

All of this to say, Lincoln placed as wide a distance he could from anyone and anything, a foot length, a leg length, even a whole comatose corpse-length away from the warm bodies that swarmed around with the mind of a schizophrenic beehive.

Shiny rocks hid behind the transparent barriers, unearthed ages ago and incorrupt in their illustrious adornment. Topaz, aquamarines, diamonds of various cut and cut varieties, schist, heavy metals, soft surfaces, rough edges, all now above the ground they had been incubating in for centuries if not millennia.

Lincoln held his Canon EOS E3 camera with trepidation. Unlike the valuable minerals behind display cases, he had only his elbows and tepid, polite speech to protect his own treasured object. The shifting shadows of the individuals around him distracted his ability to take the perfect shot without interference. So much so that after multiple takes in multiple locations, he was ready to send his grief to the the assorted gods and goddesses of the Universe and conjure up a formal complaint for their permissive benevolence towards the chaos of tourism.

In his disorientation, his eye caught the glimmer of a gemmed treasure not stolen and confined behind crude glass. A multifaceted amulet of pearl-like obsidian lay deserted between the busy Nike’s and New Balance sneakers zooming about, smack dab in the center of the exhibit’s space. Not one to normally perform an act of charity, it was as if the amulet beckoned him to reach for it. So, as one who obliges to royalty should they present themselves, Lincoln bent down to reverence the object.

Its golden chain slinked around his fingers as his face displayed in a miniature reflection looked back at him from the amulet’s core. He swiveled his head for a moment with hope that no one noticed him pick it up. Seemingly, no one paid any mind to the photographer standing idly with an expensive piece of jewelry in one hand and an expensive camera in another.

Lincoln did what one would likely do in this situation— he rushed to the nearest restroom to stare at the amulet in the privacy of a public stall. Seat down, pants on, of course. And with his phone in hand to take pictures that he then sent to his girlfriend, who was on a trip in Cali, too busy at the moment to respond right away.

“I wonder who you belong to.” Lincoln asked the amulet, and it was almost as if he heard the gem respond back to him with the whisper of his own reflection.

The museum seemed much busier than normal, in Elizabeth’s experience. She chalked it up to a number of new exhibits all opening up within a few days of each other. A display on Egyptian artifacts and a new one on insects and other arthropods were the two that had drawn her from her paperwork at the mansion. She was scouting them out to see if they’d be worthwhile for a field trip for her students.

An ironic smirk stayed glued to her face as she deftly navigated the herds of onlookers. What the museum didn’t know was that they already had a rather wide array of bugs outside their exhibit. It wasn’t their fault, of course - few people who weren’t psionically sensitive to the presence of such tiny animals would be aware of (or care about) the spiders in the high vaulted ceilings, the roaches running deep below the floors, or the sporadic flies buzzing in and out with every opening of the doors.

She took pity on the museum, though, and decided to help relocate the critters. For free. As she made her way through the gemstone exhibit en route to the proper bug display, she was continuously gathering a growing mini-horde of multi-legged animals. Spread out over a two-hundred foot radius, spiders skittered from shadow to shadow on the ceiling, obeying her commands to avoid bunching up or attracting notice. Flies and mosquitoes zipped in seemingly random patterns as they trailed behind her. Silverfish and roaches crawled through spaces in the floor beneath the notice of everyone.

Liz didn’t want to terrify anyone with a swarm of invertebrates, so she did her best to keep the bugs out of sight of everyone, yet still within her psychic range. When she left the museum, she’d take them all with her.

With a decent chunk of her attention taken up with masterminding an arthropod mass migration, it took several seconds later for Liz to realize she’d just witnessed someone pick up something that looked extremely valuable and then bolt. She didn’t have enough time to see the person when he was still close by, but Liz didn’t really need too: she had many, many eyes in the skies.

Two flies diverted course and found the man who was beelining for a toilet. A third joined up inside the restroom.

Interesting. A bathroom wasn’t where Liz would run if she was stealing something, or even if she’d just found something she’d lost. She listened in as best she could through the weak fly senses.

Ah. So maybe not a thief. Just an opportunist. Well, Liz was certain whomever had lost such a…shiny gem would probably want it back. An evil idea formed in her mind and before she realized it, many of her minions began enacting it.

Three dozen flies, spiders, and ants swarmed into the man’s stall and used their bodies to form the words “Return Me” in rough, scratchy letters on the floor.

For curiosity's sake, Linc's finger scrolled through a list of black gemstones he pulled up on his phone. Black Cairngorm, Cassiterite, Garnet, Spinel... all the way down to Moissanite.  A rare, man-made gemstone that is known to be nigh-indistinguishable from Diamond. A seemingly popular choice for engagement rings. 

The amulet flashed in the fluorescent light of the restroom, as if to say "Yes, that's the one." 

Linc reattached his gaze to the deep abyss that stretched into the gem's obsidian facade. If it weren't for the skittering of legs against his neck and the sound of a sudden, intense surge of buzzing appendages, he might have gotten himself stuck inside the amulet's gravitational pull, a handheld black-hole attached to a golden chain. 

Insects of the household variety, squirmed their way onto the few tiles in front of Lincoln's Black Converse. Some sluggishly meandering, others skitter-like and jittery, as if impatient little hounds tied down by an invisible leash. Of course, a single glance was enough for Linc's adrenaline to rocket upwards like a firecracker on the front porch of a hick's lawn on the Fourth of July.

"Holy Sh*t!" He clutched the amulet to his chest and dropped his phone onto the mass of insects, sadly crushing a few. Though, it did not seem to hinder the rest from reforming over his phone, absorbing the handheld device into its neatly worded message.

"Not... Now." Lincoln closed his eyes shut, but it felt almost too late for him. The sudden surge of Surprise exacerbated a chemical response akin to Fear in his body, triggering the onset of his mutation. His body underwent a trembling, an imperceptible vibration to anyone observing from afar, but almost akin to the contractions of child-birth, had Lincoln the emotional vocabulary to impress this connection.

He stood up from the toilet as his body zippered into two, his left and right halves undoing from each other in a mitotic formation. Just like that, there were two of him, one still clutching the amulet and the other initiating a deep inhale that would eventually form into a scream.

Lincoln had the wherewithal, with his now phone-less hand, to reach forward and clasp his Surprised Motus on the mouth, and with his amulet-garbed arm, pulled his clone tightly to his chest in a Jiu-jutsu esque grab. The clone's own reflexes initiated, and pressed his knees against the wall of the stall, pressing the original Lincoln against the other side of the stall's wall. They were now both pinned against each other.

The two of them paused when the crack of their phone against the linoleum floor sounded, as one of them had stepped on it in their scuffle.

"Stand down, now."  Linc removed his hand from the clone's mouth. The one benefit of his mutation, was that he often, as the original, remained the clear headed one.

"B-bugs! You've got to be kidding right now." The Suprised Motus, shivered with alarm.

"Stop. Breathe. Don't trigger anything else, Surprise." Lincoln released his grip on his clone and sighed in relief as they both slowly released the tension in their system. They took a sage-stance and coordinated their breathing until the two of them both relaxed and merged back into each other.

With a more-level head, Lincoln sat back on the toilet with his eyes closed. Then opened an eye-lid to see just how much bug splatter existed on the floor.

"Return Me" etched in living and non-living insect guts was sprawled out on the tiles with his phone screen cracked like a frozen-lake.

"Oh, you mean this?" Lincoln held the amulet in his hand and stared deep into it. The amulet refused to glimmer for Lincoln this time. He took this as a sign that the insects were not connected at all to his precious new artifact.

"Show yourself, bug whisperer. Why do you seek to threaten me and this object?" He tucked the amulet in the pocket of his hoodie and reached down through the bugs to pick up his shattered phone. As much as he wanted to give into Disgust, Linc's little meditation session with Surprise left him enough will-power to stand up, ignore the splatter on the floor, and make his way to the bathroom sink to clean the carcasses off his device. 

He remembered his girlfriend's nickname for him and repeated it to himself in front of the mirror.

"Stoic. Stoic. Stoic."

Elizabeth blinked and then her eyes widened in quaint surprise. “Self-replication,” she mused. “Unexpected.”

The insects and spiders had told her that the entity had grown and there were more of them. She’d risked a peek and thanked the Lord that the guy hadn’t been using the stall for any of its intended purposes. Panic had then lanced through her as half of her spies died to foot and phone and the letters scrambled as she swiftly directed everything to scatter.

More critters made their surreptitious way into the bathroom, lurking in corners, even as Liz herself took a seat on a bench outside the bathrooms by a water fountain. She pulled out her phone and proceeded to mindlessly scroll through social media as she launched a surveillance and psy-ops mission.

Spiders scuttled down to the top part of the mirror and formed a shaky, thin arrow pointing to the bathroom door. Most of the other bugs were moving in singles or pairs, trying to be subtle and sneaky as they obeyed Elizabeth’s wishes, as they set up positions around the bathroom, playing to their natural instincts of keeping out of sight and out of the way of the human. Liz did not want more of the bugs to die, so she set to work preparing them to evacuate any given area lest a foot or hand should fall on them.

As Linc clasped tighter to the amulet in his pocket, the temptation to glance at it again crawled up his arm and to his temple like a slithering viper. He couldn't resist.

The golden chain almost embedded itself into the skin of his fingers as the Black Moissanite shone even brighter now by the light above the mirror. For the first time, too, Linc saw himself and the amulet in the same picture. An image flashed of him placing the amulet around his neck and flaunting it around for all to behold. Its grasp, alluring to every portion of him.

Again, the insects broke Lincoln's trance as they formed a shifty arrow on the mirror, interrupting his intimate moment with the amulet. His reason settled in briefly, and turned to gaze toward the bathroom's entrance. Their insect charmer must have been close, unless he was about to be led through various corridors to a trap of some sort.

A surge of self-confidence brought Lincoln's hand to his chin and emotions surged up into his chest. He was "Stoic" and he had many, quite potentially his own army on his side. Had his girlfriend seen him now, she would probably slap him across the face for being so prideful. That image as well, caused more Pride to swell into his chest until the mitotic-like action ripped Lincoln apart again.

This time, the new Motus grasped the Amulet out of Lincoln's hand and wrapped the gold around his neck.

"That doesn't belong to us, Pride." Linc reached for the amulet, but his Motus put up a finger at him.

"I thought we agreed that you refer to me as Rey." Pride took a stance in front of the mirror beside Lincoln and caressed the jeweled accessory as it dangled snugly from his stately, poised neck. His eyebrows lowered and he subtly licked his lips in satisfaction.

"You may be Stoic, but I'm Rey. We didn't train with our partner just to dismiss everything she taught us, correct?" 

"You and I both know you are one to not--"

"No emotion is forbidden. Might I remind you, Stoic? Now, I know you were planning on hatching a crafty plan to avoid this bug whisperer, but why hide? See to it that you provide me back-up. I will apprehend our nosy little compatriot." Pride reached forward to the mirror and pointed towards the insects, allowing a few of them to crawl upon his hand, should they feel inclined.

"Wonderful, obedient little ones. Aren't they? You've done a wonderful job subjecting these creatures to your whim." Pride knew the bug whisperer was listening and flattery flowed from his lips.

Lincoln held his breath and clutched his camera bag to himself. His eyes focused on the seemingly familiar aura of the Amulet and his Motus' speech and thought patterns. Familiarity and quaintness sent tickles across Lincoln's temple. The amulet gleamed like Pride's lucid smile. He gave Pride a small nod, allowing silence to sheath his intentions for now.

Linc then slipped one of his burner phones onto the counter in front of Pride, which the Motus took and slipped into his own pocket.

"Come." Pride spoke to the insects and indirectly to Lincoln, as he walked to the door and held it open for the insects to lead the way.

Lincoln took inventory of the two other burner phones he had on him in addition to his broken Android device. If he hadn't heeded his girlfriend's warning to keep a couple extra in his camera bag, he didn't know where he'd be right now had a circumstance appeared which would potentially cause him to split.

Linc followed after Pride.

It was strange listening in on this conversation in another room. Elizabeth’s mind captured fractured moments of it from a dozen different sources, all of varying quality. Varying low quality. None of the insects in there were particularly known for eyesight or hearing, same with the spiders and other arthropods. Oh what Liz would have given for a wolf spider or a dragonfly right then.

Well, actually, she was extraordinarily tempted to raid the insect display but she felt that would be bad manners. She would make due with the resources at her disposal. It wasn’t like she was doing anything crucial at the moment, just being a strange, creepy fairy godmother to a delinquent.

Still, despite the lack of keen senses, Liz felt like she caught the general sense of what the cloner said to himself. It was still confusing. However, he was leaving the bathroom and following her bugs.

Liz had her insects scatter almost immediately after the man started leaving. There was no way they were going to lead a person at a person-paced journey, especially not through the crowds of people moving from exhibit to exhibit. Instead she took five flies and landed on the hand of the clone holding open the door. The flies immediately formed a little arrow that would lead them further into the crowd.

All the way to a security guard that Elizabeth had sourced out in the meantime.

Pride, aka Rey, strutted out of the bathroom with the merry little band of flies dancing on his left hand. He gave a small giggle, watching them do their little shuffle to form a compass of sorts. Then he disappeared, to follow their direction.

Linc brought a finger to his mouth and stared at his reflection in the mirror. With the amulet gone, it was as if he could think clearly again. He grasped at his neck as if the amulet had been there and looked at his cracked phone in his hand. 

"That amulet must have been planted." He spoke to himself, and a sudden surge of tension built up in his lower neck and upper back. The scuffle of shoes in the busy room. No one else noticing him pick it up. His fixation on the gemstone as if it were the greatest item in the world. A shiver ran down his spine and all the way down to his toes, a new emotion, Anticipation. He pictured himself scouring the rest of the exhibits, Neanderthals, Open Ocean, Fossils, to see if any more of these amulets could be identified.

Shivers ran through his body one more time and he split.

The new Motus, grabbed Linc by the arm and locked eyes with him knowingly.

Linc handed his new Motus another burner phone, leaving the last one for him to use. "If you see another one-"

"I'll text you the exhibit. Then move on to the next." He slipped the burner into his pocket and nodded with apprehension before heading toward the exit.

"Avoid looking at the gemstone, Ant." Linc called out, and his Anticipation Motus gave a quick affirmative glance before disappearing.

Lincoln then pulled his cracked phone to his face and tried to turn it on. The screen flashed- a red depleted battery icon flickered. "Shit. How am I gonna call Cass, now?" He tried again, to no avail. He typed in as many numbers of her number as he could remember, but his dependancy of keeping contacts in his phone memory and not his head failed to support him. He scrolled through the burner and the only other numbers were the other burner phones.

Linc breathed deeply, to keep a level head. He exited the bathroom and made his way past the water fountains before he caught sight of a woman scrolling through the same electronic device he held in his hand. She had beautiful blonde hair and seemed engrossed in her handheld cybernetic attachment.

"Excuse me miss. You don't happen to have a charger, do you?" He showed her his cracked phone screen, of which was the same brand. "I need to call someone real quick. My battery died."


---

On the other end of the Museum, Rey strutted about the exhibits with his nose in the air, as if he had an escort of the finest imported servants. He spotted the security guard right away, but kept his pace steady. The amulet glowed with reassurance.

"Officer? Could you direct me to the exhibit with all the bugs?" He spoke with the amulet slinked around his neck dangling in plain sight. The thought of being separated from the charmed object tickled him, but brought little perturbance to his haughty demeanor.

Elizabeth was vaguely aware the cloning man hadn’t devoted his full attention to following her flies. She had enough spies keeping track of his other forms and the small posse he developed as he made his way over to her. As a result, while she was surprised he started talking to her, she’d had plenty of time to predict his course and gave no indication that she’d been caught doing anything other than scrolling through her phone.

She looked up only when he addressed her, and she gave a polite smile. “Ah, sorry,” she said, about to lie through her teeth. “I don’t have a charger on me. Didn’t have room in my purse,” she said, indicating her small purse on its strap that was still hanging diagonally off her, so that it would have to be pulled over her head. The purse was only big enough for about two squirrels to fit in - it was a surprisingly common unit of measurement for her - so it could easily have been full of many other things beyond a phone charger.

It wasn’t, but he didn’t need to know that. After all, she knew for a fact he had a tendency to walk off with things that weren’t his.

She kept smiling in the polite way you did when you didn’t want to be rude and just start ignoring someone, but at the same time you wanted them to go away now. The kind of smile you give anyone who distracts you from your phone. Liz wasn’t really paying attention to her phone, though. Her mind was dancing across other minds.

In addition to keeping the insect hordes out of sight, she was now running two surveillance operations, one on the clone that was being led by her bugs (that is, until he left her range, which is when she recalled those flies to rejoin the masses) and the other on the second clone who’d peeled away into the crowds.

It was a lot for what was supposed to be a simple trip to the museum.

The officer's eyes gleamed, his irises swelling in size akin to the Black Massionite itself. Though nothing else about his countenance changed, not even the subtleness of a smirk.

"The insect exhibit is right past this adjacent one on Egypt. You can't miss the looming, man-sized Praying Mantis sculpture." He gestured with a gloved hand, and returned to scanning the crowd with his five-oclock shadow and bags under his eyes.

Rey noticed the flies disappeared as soon as he spoke to the guard, and he took this as a sign he asked the guard the right question.

"Thanks." Without his insect entourage, Rey stifled a soft sigh, then continued to strut as if he had on a heavy cape to accentuate his Pride. He glanced to his left and his right, keeping his eye out for a certain individual who could be their bug whisperer. 

---

Ant darted his gaze to the floors, the exhibits, to people's pockets, purses, necklines. He crossed his arms, a feeling akin to anxiety and fear, but guided by curiosity tickled his shoulders and behind his ears.

"It could be anything." He whispered to himself, holding his burner phone open, thumbs at the ready to text Stoic any detail that caught his eye. A maniacally laughing couple. A golden chain dangling from someone's pocket. Even any kind of jewelry that gave a similar vibe as the Amulet.

A movement to his left caught his eye, and as he stood beside a sarcophagus, a police officer with bags under his eyes made a beeline toward him. Not pacing too fast, but with a gait displaying he desired to speak to him.

Ant began to draft a text to Stoic, but once he pulled the phone to his face, the guard spoke out.

"You. You dropped something." The guard leered at him with an amulet in hand, his eyes as dark as the Black Massionite dangling from the golden chain.

Ant's heart began to race, as he pulled up his phone and texted quick. "[Guard. Egypt.]" As soon as he clicked send, the guard's black dress-shoes pulled up in front of him. Upon looking up, the officer graced Ant's neck with the weight of the amulet.

A sudden surge of Pride swelled up within Ant, so much so that it overwhelmed his chest and pushed out almost every ounce of Anticipation inside him. The lights around him grew intense before darkness invaded his mind and Ant slumped to the ground, unconscious.

---
“Ah, sorry,” The woman said with a polite smile. “I don’t have a charger on me. Didn’t have room in my purse,”

Linc's heart almost began to sank, but he clenched his fists and nodded in apology. "I simply need to  check my contacts. May I borrow your phone to login to my account? All I need is one person's number. That's all."

Linc held up his burner phone to her, a flip phone with very limited capabilities. As soon as he did, however, Ant's text lit up on the screen. "[Guard. Egypt.]"

"Strange." He diverted his attention away from the woman for a moment, trying to figure out what this could mean. Just then, a resurgence of Anticipation flooded his head and slinked down his back and to the pit of his stomach. 

"Ant!" He yelled out at the phone, and he shuddered as he fell to his knees as the emotion disappeared as soon as it returned to him. He looked up at the female, as a surge of sadness began to well into his eyes, which he did his best to recoil.

"Miss. Where's the Egypt exhibit? Do you know?" Linc's voice quivered, hands drooping at his sides.

--- 
Rey circled the Preying Mantis statue once before his curiosity got the best of him and he turned back to the Egypt exhibit to glance at the peculiar guard who didn't wink an eyelash at his new, gemmed companion.

His eyebrows perked up upon seeing his splitting image, Stoic he presumed, standing as the security guard made his way towards him. Rey felt a buzz notification in his pocket, but decided not to look, as he witnessed the guard put his hands around the other Motus before he slumped to the ground.  A glimmer of gold around his neck, all too familiar. The immediate unconscious rendering, also a familiar sight.

"Backup? Stoic's backup already failed. Hm. They had only one job and they couldn't even accomplish that." Rey clenched the phone in his pocket tightly and looked at the group message sent to all the phones.

"[Guard. Egypt.]"

The security guard immediately called for back up, as he snuck the amulet off of the unconscious Motus's neck and tried to stand him up. To no avail.

"Our bug whisperer? Or our unconscious Motus. I'm sure Stoic would want me to help, but he ought be on his way here soon. No need for my intervention, just yet, if at all. Hmmph." Rey pouted his lip and leaned against the praying mantis statue.

Another guard came to assist the one holding the unconscious Motus, trying to hush the crowd that began to form. Rey pulled off his hoodie and tied it around his neckline, watching as the two guards wrapped the arms of the immobile body around their necks and walked away, not even caring to perform CPR.

"Hm. They should be quite aware that he has no pulse. Either incompetent or up to something." The Amulet around Rey's neck gleamed, and he felt his body drawn towards the direction of the guard that had seemingly knocked his fellow Motus unconscious with a similar amulet.

"There could be only one, anyway." Rey maintained his distance but kept the two guards in sight as he trusted the Amulet's sudden pull to lead him forward.

Elizabeth’s smile slipped and she allowed a frown to emerge. “I do not feel comfortable handing my phone to you,” she said, turning her phone off and sliding it into her purse. She glanced pointedly at the phone already in his hand which was already lighting up and clearly not dead. Even without having been spying on the man for the last ten minutes, Liz was not accepting his story.

There was a chance she had trust issues. Or paranoia. But it wasn’t really paranoia if you were right, was it?

She kept a solid grasp on her purse as she just stared him down, displaying every “leave me alone” signal a human could while also making any attempt to steal her phone significantly harder.

Then she watched in stunned disbelief as he started telling, shuddering, and collapsing to the floor before asking her about the Egypt exhibit.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, recalling all the arthropods within her control. The other clones were beyond her reach and honestly? She decided she couldn’t really care less about a thief having a public meltdown. She didn’t really need to see the new displays - she could probably recreate the bug display herself.

She stood up and started to turn away.

"Please, help me." Lincoln stood up after the woman. He hesitated to call out to her again, but the minutes seemed to slow into hours. His Motus had just been knocked out, and in broad daylight as well. Sweat dripped down his forehead as he fought the urge to panic, afraid to feel a surge of Pride. Afraid to learn Rey had fallen too.

"I have reason to believe I'm being targeted. I just got a text from my friend that he was stopped by a security guard in the Egypt exhibit and..." Lincoln began to panic. Anxiety rippled all through his chest, as he realized his words would fail to convince this person otherwise.

What was he going to say? He had clones and they just got knocked out? He picked up a crazy amulet that latched itself onto him like a parasite and is now with another clone of his? That he isn't crazy and that she had to trust his half-story? Lincoln almost felt compelled to tell her the truth and all of it. 

He could not go into this without back-up. And if the truth was enough to get her to hand him her phone for just a few seconds to grab the contact he needed, then to hell with it all. All the sheer what-if's trembled inside Lincoln. He still had to go save Ant, and he was the only one who could do so.

Fear finally overtook him and a fissure-like wobble permeated his body causing it to split one more time. 

"Tim, explain to her. I'm going in." Linc handed his Fear Motus his broken phone and kept the burner for himself as he sped down the corridor. He would have to find Ant himself and absorb him back before anything worse could happen to his comatose body.

---

Tim, short for Timid, 

"Ok. You may not believe me, but look. I'm a mutant. I can make clones. I need help. I have reason to believe I'm being targeted for some reason, and one of my clones just got knocked unconscious in BROAD DAYLIGHT. My main guy is going over to Egypt now to help." Words cascaded out of the Fear Motus' mouth, as he followed the plan Stoic set of spilling the truth. He even closed his eyes, terrified of watching the woman's reactions to his insane little story, his flurried thoughts expediting his speech.

"We can't -- I can't go into this situation without back-up. Please. If you won't call 9-11 for me, at least allow me to call and explain. There may be a hostage situation. You see, I picked up this amulet earlier and it's hexed or something. I don't know. We don't know. And things just got super complicated. I was going to call a local friend for backup but at this rate, I don't know how much time I have. We have." Tim took a series of short, rapid breaths as he caught up after his words. His eyes were closed and the woman could have walked away at any point in the telling of his story. But at least he did it. He told her the truth.

---

"Stoic is sure taking his sweet time." Rey snarled under his breath as the two guards dragged Ant's lifeless body into a surveillance room. Probably for safe-keeping until a mortician arrived to determine the cause of death.

There was little the Pride Motus could do nor wanted to do, so he waited. Debated whether he should even text Stoic about where they were taking their friend. Instead he stalled at the corridor of the Egypt exhibit, his eyes rolling deeply at the sticky situation they found themselves in. 

"Would suck to be Stoic, right about now." He waited until the man, his original self, gallivanted through the halls with an expression as bland as beige on beige. 

Upon making eye-contact, Rey pointed to the surveillance room. Half-engaged.

She knew she should’ve kept walking. They were already causing a scene, mostly because the man was giving an….exuberant…begging right after his yelling and breakdown in the middle of the walkway in a crowded public museum. She heard his increasingly convoluted story only grow more and more unbelievable.

Elizabeth didn’t bother hiding her annoyance.

From the theft, or at least the confiscation of something clearly very valuable and clearly not his, to the inability to take her “no” for an answer, and the lack of any kind of consistency to his story, as well as his spontaneous emotional meltdowns, Liz wasn’t dealing with this any more.

She turned to glance back over her shoulder at the clone that was babbling. “It’s not a hostage situation if security is detaining you for stealing jewelry,” she said. “It serves you right. Now leave me alone. I’m sure the cops have already been called on you.”

She started to beeline toward the main doors of the museum, her insectile entourage stealthily moving through floors, ceilings, and walls in their induced exodus.

Tim's open ears and closed eyed shuddered in defeat.

 “It’s not a hostage situation if security is detaining you for stealing jewelry,” 

The woman's response sent Tim down to his knees again. . “It serves you right. Now leave me alone. I’m sure the cops have already been called on you.”

With that, Tim was left still paralyzed in his fear. He planted himself against the water fountains, with Stoic's broken phone. He curled into a ball and waited, having failed his mission and not wanting to even think of what was happening to Stoic, Rey and Ant.

---
Lincoln arrived to see Rey pointing at the security room and him just standing there, idle like a diva awaiting her posse.

"I've had enough." Lincoln stepped up to Rey and pressed his arm against the Pride Motus' chest, pinning him against the wall. His eyes glared at Linc, but Lincoln knew he'd be too prideful to even lay a finger on him.

In a moment, the Amulet was off Rey's neck and onto Linc. The emotional energy seeped from the Motus into him, the original, and soon the two were reunited. All of Rey's memories then merged with Linc's consciousness as he held on against the wall for a moment and sifted through everything Rey remembered. 

"Two cops. Another Amulet. Unconscious." 

Linc stepped up to the guard station and knocked, then yanked the Amulet off his neck. After reabsorbing Rey, Lincoln was no longer able to feel Pride as strongly, and used this to detach from the Amulet's power. As soon as a guard opened the door, he held it up to his tired-looking face.

"You sir are not allowed in here."

"I'm returning what isn't mine. I found this on the ground of another exhibit and have not left the premises with it."

The two cops stared at Lincoln then at the unconscious clone on the ground, which they had strip searched and left with his clothes all awry.

He wasted no time and lunged forward to touch his clone by the leg and Ant reabsorbed into him. For a moment he knelt, disoriented, but better.

"Son, you cannot just barge in here. Excuse me this is against protocol!" The two reached forward to grab Lincoln by the arm but he leaped back and tossed the Amulet to them instead.

"I've done nothing wrong officers. Just having a rough day. You were the one who placed another one of these amulets on my clone. I remember everything. And though it's my word against yours, you know as well as I do security footage doesn't lie."

The two officers leered at each other, both weighing their options. The silence in the air would have been enough to terrify Linc, but he was already drained of both Fear and Anticipation. They nodded in unison and agreed to let Lincoln go.

"Thank you."

He escaped out the guard room, with the guards still in there, and placed all three burner phones back into his camera bag. One more Motus to reattach to himself and he could get the hell out of here. No more museums.

No. More. Museums.