Finally, the posting period for the FMA Big Bang has arrived! :D It will last until November 19th, and, as this is a long fic, my idea is to post a new chapter every 2-4 days, depending mainly on my schedule.

My partner for the event is wls-arts on tumblr, who also beta read the story and has been a joy to work with :) I'll let you guys know when the art is posted! :D

Well, here we go. Olivier/Roy Harry Potter crossover. I hope you like it.


Chapter 1

Roy went motionless the moment he snapped awake, his battle instincts coming to life at the feel of the hard ground —a sidewalk, it felt like a sidewalk— under his body. He listened attentively, but there was nothing to be heard aside from some distant traffic and the soft rustle of leaves. There was no sound that would signal the presence of people around him.

Maybe a minute later Roy was reasonably convinced that there was nobody with him. He cracked an eye open.

Roy was greeted by the sight of a darkened alleyway filled with a few trees and lined by walls on one side and what might be a row of garden fences on the other. It was clearly night, but aside from the moonlight, there was only faint street light bathing the area. It came from both ends of the alley, as the alley itself had no street lamps.

He sat up gingerly, holding back a sigh of relief when no part of his body protested the movement, and looked around.

Roy wasn't alone after all.

Olivier Armstrong lay, unconscious, a few metres away. She didn't appear to be injured, and she was still clad in the blue dress she had been wearing... tonight.

Roy glanced down at himself to confirm that he was still wearing his best suit.

"Lieutenant General?" Roy called out softly. He didn't approach her, just in case Olivier's battle instincts kicked in as well. He enjoyed being alive.

Olivier's eyes shot open and she took in her surroundings. Her sharp gaze settling on Roy, she sat up as well.

"Mustang? What the hell happened?"

"I'm not certain. Last I remember, we were walking through a run-down library. Whatever happened, we clearly haven't been attacked," Roy said, raising his right hand to show her one of the intact ignition gloves he was still wearing.

Olivier felt around the ground with her hands and frowned.

"Where is my gun?" She stood up to look around the alleyway and her frown deepened.

Roy stood up as well and reached under his jacket for his own gun, still secured in its holster.

"Here," Roy said, offering it to her.

Olivier took it with a curt nod and looked around again.

It was then that they heard voices coming from one end of the alley. Tensing up, they both moved to hide behind a large tree. Roy was ready to snap his fingers, and he heard Olivier switch off the safety of the gun.

"He cheeked me," one of the voices said, the first words Roy could make out.

"Yeah? Did he say you look like a pig that's been taught to walk on its hind legs? Cause that's not cheek, Dud, that's true," another replied in clear mocking.

They didn't sound like a threat, but Roy didn't relax.

The owners of the voices turned a corner and the light from the other street backlit them in a way that prevented Roy from seeing any of their features. All he could tell was that they were two men, one wide enough that he might have trouble walking and the other lanky.

"Think you're a big man carrying that thing, don't you?" the first man, the large one, asked. Roy was starting to think they might actually be just teenagers.

"What thing?"

"That-that thing you are hiding."

Olivier glanced sideways at Roy with a raised eyebrow, and Roy returned the gesture. Was the lanky boy hiding a weapon?

"Not as stupid as you look, are you, Dud? But I suppose, if you were, you wouldn't be able to walk and talk at the same time," the lanky boy said in an even more mocking way than before, and he pulled out... a stick. Or at least it looked like a stick from Roy's position. It was certainly too thin to be any kind of knife.

The other boy turned his head sideways.

"You're not allowed," he said, and he sounded scared. "I know you're not. You'd get expelled from that freak school you go to."

Definitely teenagers, Roythought.

"How do you know they haven't changed the rules, Big D?" the lanky boy asked.

"Kid's looking for a fight," Olivier muttered under her breath. She had lowered her arms somewhat, but she was still ready to shoot.

"They haven't," the large boy insisted, sounding unsure, and the lanky boy laughed. "You haven't got the guts to take me on without that thing, have you?"

Roy relaxed. They were just two boys who might or might not start a brawl, but they weren't enemies. Certainly not the alchemist he and Olivier had been trying to arrest.

Roy tapped Olivier on the shoulder and pointed in both directions of the alley when she looked at him. He had no idea where to go, he didn't recognise the area, so he thought he could leave the choice up to her. That way she wouldn't blame him if they went the wrong way. Perhaps.

The boys were still arguing, coming closer to their position.

"Do you think they'll start fighting?" Olivier asked conversationally, not bothering to keep her voice down anymore. The boys didn't seem to hear her.

"Maybe," Roy said, leaning his back against the tree trunk. "Do you want to stop them?" he teased.

Olivier scoffed.

"We could ask them for directions," she said.

The boys had stopped a few metres away from them and looked as if they were squaring off against each other.

"Oi, brats!" Olivier snapped, stepping out from behind the tree when the large boy was mocking the other about nightmares —that was a low blow, in Roy's very experienced opinion. Roy followed Olivier.

The boys startled and turned around to look at them.

"Who're you?" the large boy asked rudely, a very bad move when one was dealing with Olivier Armstrong.

"None of your business," Olivier snapped, and the boy took a step back, his eyes widening. She had clearly glared at him, then. "We need directions."

"To where?" the other boy, who had hurried to put the stick away for some reason, asked cautiously. He didn't look afraid like his most-likely-not-friend.

"That depends. Where are we?"

The boys blinked.

"What?" asked the scrawny one, confused.

Roy chose to intervene before Olivier snapped their necks for being too slow on the uptake. She certainly couldn't have much patience left tonight.

"I'm afraid we're a bit lost at the moment. Could you tell us where we are?" he asked politely.

The large boy snorted derisively.

"You're lost? What kind of morons get lost here?"

Roy found out that he didn't have enough patience left himself when Olivier advanced on the boy and he didn't even move to try to stop her. It had been a hard day, and he wasn't in the mood to deal with rude, entitled brats who knew nothing about the world.

Before Olivier could do anything more than being her intimidating self, the scrawny boy spoke again with a frown on his face.

"You're in Little Whinging, between Magnolia Crescent and Wisteria Walk."

Olivier glanced back at Roy, her expression saying she hadn't heard of the place either. It seemed they were no longer in the same area of Central (Roy would be surprised, but he remembered the horrible sensation he had felt once, when Pride had forced him through a transmutation circle that had transported him straight to Father's lair).

"In what area?" Olivier asked.

The boys glanced at each other, no trace of their animosity left, before the scrawny one responded with hesitance.

"Surrey?" he offered, and he was looking at them oddly, as though he couldn't believe they didn't know that.

It was disturbing, and Roy felt worry growing in his gut as he realised that, whatever had happened, they hadn't just been dumped in a street halfway across town. He remembered the five disappearances the alchemist they were after was suspected of.

Cold trickled down Roy's back and he startled, his right hand poised to snap without a conscious thought. For some reason, he could hear screams and words in his head, ones usually reserved for his nightmares.

"You're the last one, old man. Do you have any last words?"


The cold caught Olivier off guard. It was a warm night —far warmer than it had been before they entered that damn house— and she had been trying to find meaning to the way the kids were reacting when a piercing cold stabbed her, raising goose bumps all over her skin.

Everything had gone dark.

She turned to look around, raising her gun (the kids gasped, but she ignored them), to find the source of the cold, and her eyes caught sight of Roy. He was in a ready stance to start snapping his fingers, but despite the darkness Olivier could tell that he was far too tense. She couldn't make out his face, though.

What the hell?

"W-what are you d-doing? St-stop it!" the large kid demanded in terror.

"I'm not doing anything! Shut up and don't move!" the scrawny kid replied. It brought up some interesting questions —was the scrawny kid an alchemist?— but this was not the time to think about them.

"I c-can't see! I've g-gone blind! I—"

"I said shut up!"

"Both of you, shut up!" Olivier ordered. A difficult situation was not the time or place for bickering children. She opened her mouth to ask what the hell was going on, but then she caught sight of someone.

Or something.

"Who's there?" Olivier demanded, training her gun on the newcomer.

The being didn't reply, instead advancing towards them. It drew rattling breaths as it moved, and wore a long, billowing cloak. She couldn't make out any features in the darkness, just a tall outline.

"W-What's hap-pening?!" the large kid asked, even more terrified, and Olivier heard stumbling, followed by a short scuffle. "LET GO!" the kid yelled.

There was a snap and one of Roy's flames lit the alleyway, finally showing what was going on. Roy had the large kid held against a wall —had the idiot tried to flee when he didn't know the situation?— and the kid was frozen, staring in horror at the fire above Roy's free hand. The scrawny kid had his stick raised, and he glanced sideways at Roy, but he didn't seem nearly as scared or surprised as the other one was. As for the being... even with the light, it was difficult to tell apart many features, but Olivier caught sight of a hand. A misshapen, decaying hand. The being was still moving.

She fired.

The being flinched, stumbled, and continued to advance as though its chest hadn't just been pierced by a bullet.

Olivier had a sudden flashback to the white dolls from the Promised Day, to Sloth and that horrible fight that never ended no matter how many times Olivier killed him, to Father...

Next to her, the scrawny kid yelled something, but Olivier didn't listen to him.

She grit her teeth and fired again, this time aiming at the head.

Another snap, and fire engulfed the thing.

The thing emerged from the fire, slower than before but still moving. It should have been burnt to a crisp. The fire had worked on the dolls, it had worked on homunculi. Olivier shot again.

"There's another one," Roy hissed, and Olivier cursed. She couldn't see it, which meant it was at their back. On this narrow alley, unless they took off through one of the gardens...

Again, the lanky kid yelled something, but this time a bright, silver light burst out past Olivier, and she saw it take the form of a huge stag that, somehow, drove the thing away in a way that neither bullets nor fire had managed to do.

"THIS WAY!" the kid yelled, and the stag turned around, heading towards the other end of the alley. "GET IT!"

And then, suddenly, the dim light of night was back. Streetlamps, stars, the moon... The trees were visible again, and Olivier could make out the shapes of the nearest fences. There was no trace of the silver stag left.

Roy's flame vanished, but neither of them lowered their guard. There might be more of those things around.

Olivier glanced back at the lanky kid, who still had the stick raised. He was sweaty and had a scared but determined look on his face. That, at least, spoke well for the kid's character.

"Good job," Olivier said with a curt nod.

"W-What was t-that?" the other kid, who was curled up on the floor on the same spot where Roy had left him, asked in terror, cutting Olivier's question before she could speak (the same one, but for a very different reason). "What did you do?!"

"I drove the dementors away," the lanky kid said, annoyed.


Dudley was confused, to say the least. Well, he was terrified, but he didn't want to admit it. There had been something in the alley. At first, Dudley had thought it was Harry doing whatever had happened with the sudden cold, but then Harry and the two freaks in the fancy clothes had started attacking thin air (a gun, the woman had a gun, and the man had created fire out of nowhere —Dudley shuddered).

Mrs. Figg, the old woman his parents usually asked to babysit Harry when they went anywhere, showed up before Dudley could get any answers, and things just turned weirder and weirder. He had always thought Mrs. Figg was a bit out of her mind, but it turned out she was one of them too. She had arrived telling Harry to keep the thing out and muttering about killing someone. When she noticed the two weirdoes, she thought they were normal people (as if!), but Harry confirmed that they were freaks too.

And now Dudley was barely managing to trudge along with this strange group while Mrs. Figg and Harry talked about that Dumbly-guy and what had happened. The other two were silently looking around, and the woman hadn't bothered to put the gun away. For once in his life, Dudley chose to stay close to Harry.


Olivier and Roy had agreed to accompany the group when the woman —who was so agitated she was barely holding herself together— had suggested it, even if she had muttered something about 'who goes around without a wand?' when Roy had told her that no, they didn't have them (Olivier had guessed she meant the stick). Harry, the lanky kid, was the only one with one, and for some reason he seemed reluctant to keep it out in case there were more of those dementors around.

Olivier was listening in on the conversation between Harry and Mrs. Figg, even if she didn't understand much of what was going on at the time. It was clear, though, that Harry was in some sort of danger, and someone called Dumbledore was very invested in keeping him safe.

Trouble, clearly, Olivier thought. She glanced sideways at Roy, who was listening to the conversation and keeping an eye out for any threats as well. He appeared calm, too calm, and Olivier had no problem recognising one of his many masks when she saw one. Whatever had happened back in the alley had unsettled him greatly, but he seemed to have put it aside for now.

There was a loud crack while Mrs. Figg was speaking, and Olivier trained her gun on a dishevelled man who had appeared out of nowhere and smelt strongly of alcohol.

"MUNDUNGUS FLETCHER, I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!" Mrs. Figg shrieked, walking up to the man.

So this is the missing guard, Olivier thought, thoroughly unimpressed by what she was seeing. Mundungus pathetically attempted to excuse his disappearance, and the situation eventually devolved into Mrs. Figg repeatedly hitting him with her shopping bag before ordering him off to inform that Dumbledore person of the situation.

Just like he had come, Mundungus disappeared.

It took all of Olivier's self-control to keep her composure at the disappearance, even as she glanced down at the ground to check for a transmutation circle that wasn't there. She remembered well how Izumi Curtis had suddenly disappeared shortly after the fight with Sloth, but this clearly wasn't the same.


Arabella Figg was not having a good day. She was going to kill Mundungus if Dumbledore didn't do it himself.

Dementors in Surrey! Who would have expected that? She had thought the dementors hadn't sided with You-Know-Who yet.

But, aside from that, she wasn't sure what to think about the two strange, wand-less people that had helped fight the dementors off. Arabella was inclined to believe they weren't enemies, given that Death Eaters wouldn't have protected Harry Potter or his muggle cousin, but she would feel more comfortable once they had successfully crossed the wards at the Dursleys' house.

And, who knew, maybe they would be willing to believe in Harry's story about You-Know-Who's return after witnessing the dementors' attack. Merlin knew the Order needed as many allies as it could get.

Finally, number four of Privet Drive came into sight.

"I'll take you to the door," Arabella told Harry, pondering how best to ask the two strangers to accompany her to her house and wait there until someone could talk to them.

"You're leaving them?" the blonde woman asked, clearly unimpressed.

"They live here," Arabella explained as they entered the garden. The wards didn't react.

"And? They were just attacked and you want to leave them in an unprotected house?" the woman retorted brusquely, and Arabella was both impressed and slightly intimidated. She wasn't surprised, though, because she was talking to someone who had faced dementors with only a muggle gun without any hesitation.

Arabella nearly said that the house did have protections and that she needed to go home in case she received new instructions, but she stopped herself. The woman had a point. Dementors might not be able to cross the wards, but there was no way that the Dursleys wouldn't notice something had happened and jump to the worst possible conclusion. Arabella had already blown her cover, and she would be lying if she said she hadn't wanted to have words with the Dursleys for a while now.

Besides, instructions could reach her here just as easily as at home.

"You're right, I should stay. Would you mind staying with us? Some friends of mine will likely want to ask you two about what happened tonight."

The woman glanced back at the man, and they exchanged a look that Arabella couldn't decipher. It was the man who nodded.


What happened once they reached number four was odd enough that Harry started to think this night might just rate amongst the oddest ones he had lived through, and that was saying something.

Aunt Petunia opened the door shortly after Mrs. Figg rang the bell, and she stared at them uncomprehendingly for a moment before her eyes caught sight of Dudley's too pale face. She rushed to him and started checking him over and asking what was wrong. Dudley surprised Harry with his words.

"T-There was a... a thing. O-One of theirs," Dudley replied softly, clearly still affected by the dementors. It wasn't a lie, it wasn't even an outright attempt to get Harry in trouble, but of course it had a similar effect.

Aunt Petunia whirled on Harry.

"What did you do to my son?" she demanded.

"Saved his worthless ass."

Silence followed the statement, and everybody turned to look at the woman in the blue dress. She was frowning, as intimidating as Harry had thought her since she had approached them in the alley, and the gun was no longer in her hand. Harry caught sight of the man's face next to her, a barely-there smirk quirking his lips.

"Who are you?" Aunt Petunia demanded brusquely, and Harry replied before the woman decided to pull the gun out from wherever she had stashed it.

"She's a witch," Harry said, and Aunt Petunia paled. "She and her friend helped us fight the dementors."

Even though it should be impossible, Aunt Petunia's face lost even more colour.

"D-Dementors?" she stammered out, and Harry had the very odd feeling that, somehow, Aunt Petunia knew what a dementor was.

"You know what they are, don't you?" Mrs. Figg asked, confirming Harry's thought, and Aunt Petunia turned to look at her. Comprehension dawned on her face.

"You're one of them," Aunt Petunia hissed accusingly.

Mrs. Figg scoffed.

"Of course I am. You didn't think we'd leave Harry unwatched, did you? Now, why don't we go talk inside before the neighbours start wondering what's going on?"

Harry had never thought Aunt Petunia would willingly allow wizards into her house, but that was exactly what happened after Mrs. Figg spoke.


Roy looked around as they were led through an extremely clean hallway into an equally clean kitchen. He wasn't sure what was going on, the talk about wands, witches and magic was impossible at best and crazy at worst, but he appreciated the chance to focus on anything other than the horrible memories that had come out of nowhere during the fight against those dementors.

(For a moment Roy would have sworn that he could smell burnt flesh back in that alley.)

Soon something else distracted Roy from the talk about magic. A very large man waddled into the kitchen and started asking the shocked boy (Dud-something, but Roy was reasonably certain they were using nicknames) about what had happened. These adults were clearly his parents, and the scene would have been heart-warming if they weren't so adamant on blaming the other boy, Harry, for their son's condition.

Mrs. Figg wasn't having any of it and she started yelling at the parents.

Then an owl flew into the kitchen, straight towards Harry, carrying a letter, and the large man started screaming about how he didn't want owls in his house, slamming the kitchen window shut as he did. Mrs. Figg snapped at him to shut up and they were off again.

"Why send a letter when there's a phone in the hallway?" Olivier muttered, her voice covered by the yells.

Roy shrugged.

Harry was ignoring everybody and had ripped the envelope open. Roy saw his face morph into a mask of dread and dejection as he read the letter. Then Harry jerked, as if startled, pulled his wand out and turned towards the kitchen door.

"Where do you think you're going?" the large man yelled. "I haven't finished with you, boy!"

"Oh, yes, you have!" Mrs. Figg yelled back at the same time as Harry spoke.

"Get out of the way."

"You're going to stay here and explain how my son—"

"If you don't get out of the way I'm going to jinx you," Harry threatened, raising the wand.

Next to Roy, Olivier smirked, clearly entertained.

"You can't pull that one on me!" the man snarled. "I know you're not allowed to use it outside that madhouse you call a school!"

"The madhouse has chucked me out," said Harry. "So I can do whatever I—"

"What?!" Mrs. Figg yelled, horrified. "They can't expel you!"

Olivier scoffed.

"They're expelling you for defending yourself? That's pathetic."

For the first time since they entered the house, Roy and Olivier became the focus of everybody's attention. Before anybody could say anything, there was a loud crack.

Roy raised his right arm, fingers poised to snap, Olivier drew the gun from her thigh holster, the family shrieked and ducked for cover, Mrs. Figg frowned and Harry looked around with his wand still raised.

There was an owl perched on the windowsill on the other side of the closed window. It had a piece of what looked like parchment tied to its leg.

Harry rushed to open the window as the large man started going on about owls again. Roy remained ready to snap his fingers; as far as he knew, there was something out there trying to kill Harry, and Roy didn't feel comfortable with the idea of leaving a child unprotected. Olivier trained the gun on the window.

"A gun!" the large kid's mother shrieked in terror, pulling her son back. The father stepped before his family, his face missing all colour.

Harry glanced back, his eyes opening in shock when he saw Roy and Olivier, but he took a step sideways and out of direct sight from outside. Roy and Olivier lowered their arms.

"It's fine," Mrs. Figg told them softly while Harry opened his letter. "This house is warded, nobody can get to Harry here."

Roy held back the impulse of asking what she meant by 'warded' and nodded instead, trying to appear as though he understood what she was talking about.

Harry glanced up at Mrs. Figg.

"It's from Mr. Weasley," he frowned. "He says Dumbledore is trying to fix things," he said dubiously, then glanced at Roy and Olivier, "and he asks if you two can stay here until Dumbledore can come by tomorrow. Do you two know Dumbledore?"

"We've never met him," Olivier said nonchalantly.


Olivier could hear the continued yelling from the kitchen. Instead of replying one way or another to the request in Harry's letter, she had said they needed to use the phone and had left the kitchen, ignoring the protests from the family.

"Where the hell are we?" she hissed, looking down at the phonebook they had found next to the strangely-shaped phone, the contents of which made absolutely no sense.

"Well," Roy started, crouching down. He rummaged through the shelf at the bottom of the hallway table and brought out what looked like a handful of maps. "Let's find out."

They didn't find out. Neither of them could make heads or tails of any of the maps full of unfamiliar names and shapes.

From the kitchen, they could hear the complaints over the arrival of a new owl.

"This makes no sense," Olivier muttered, tapping one of the maps. "This area," she gestured at the islands depicted, "has got to be reasonably large, but I've never heard of a 'United Kingdom' before."

"Neither have I," Roy said with a frown.

"Where the hell did that array dump us?"

"I guess we'll have to figure it out," Roy said, reaching inside his suit jacket. Before Olivier could snap a scathing comment, he pulled out a small notebook. It was similar in size to the one he usually carried around, but it wasn't that one.

Olivier smirked.

"You stole that guy's notes?"

"Confiscated," Roy corrected, flicking the notebook open. "This can't be his entire research, though; it looks more like jotted down thoughts and reminders."

"Now's a good chance for you to prove you're as smart as you like to boast."

"Oh, dear me. Is that faith in my skills I hear?" Roy asked teasingly and Olivier snorted.

"It's not like if have any competent alchemist around."

Roy's smile didn't vanish, and he leant his back against the wall.

"What do we do for now? Should we stay here and wait for this Dumbledore to show up?"

"I don't think we have much of a choice," Olivier reluctantly admitted, settling next to him. "We barely know anything about this place, and what we do know is... disconcerting."

"So we wait, see what we can learn, and leave?"

Olivier nodded.

"Don't lower your guard. If anyone pulls one of those sticks on us, burn it," she ordered.

"That's exactly what I intended to do."

On the background, Olivier could hear even more yelling as a fourth owl arrived.


Arabella Figg finally left the Dursleys' house after a harrowing discussion. She was glad to have been present, because she didn't want to imagine how Vernon Dursley would have reacted without her there to inform him that wizards were keeping an eye on them.

Finally the two strangers had decided to stay, much to the Dursleys' dismay. The Dursleys hadn't dared to argue, though, not since Petunia's eyes travelled to where the blonde woman had pulled her gun from earlier. Petunia had even offered them the guest room, albeit extremely ungraciously.

Arabella belatedly realised that she hadn't asked for their names.

Oh, well, she could still write to Dumbledore to tell him everything she knew. She suspected these two would make good allies; at the very least, they had amazing reflexes, judging by how quickly they had reacted when the second owl had arrived.


As Harry climbed up the stairs, he sullenly thought that he would have found this situation hilarious if he wasn't so frustrated by the absolute lack of information about what had happened tonight. The Dursleys were hiding downstairs, waiting until their unwanted guests had gone to bed before heading upstairs. It was clear the only reason they had agreed to let the man and the woman stay was that they were too scared to refuse.

Harry had been sent to his room without supper as soon as everybody else from the wizarding world had left the kitchen, but he didn't care. Food was the last thing on his mind right now.

Harry stopped. He needed to go to the bathroom, but the door was closed. Harry heard water running inside before it went silent and the door opened. The man stepped out and for just a moment he looked surprised to find Harry there.

"Your name is Harry, isn't it? Can I ask you for something?" he asked politely, stepping fully into the hallway.

Harry raised his eyebrows, surprised that this man hadn't recognised the oh-so-famous Harry Potter.

"Yeah, sure," Harry replied, trying to be polite. Harry reminded himself that this man had helped him, that maybe he wouldn't have managed to cast the patronus in time if he and the woman hadn't delayed the dementors.

"Do you have a newspaper? Or anything to read, really. I'm not sure I'll manage to sleep after that encounter with the dementors," the man said, self-deprecation in his voice at the admission.

Harry understood. He was reasonably certain he would manage to fall asleep (he had suffered from nightmares since the start of the summer, so today wouldn't be very different), but he knew that many people would have it difficult after running into dementors.

Unfortunately, Harry had no chocolate to offer.

"I only have this summer's newspapers and my old school books," he replied.

The man smiled.

"That's better than nothing."

Harry nodded, asked the man to wait a moment and went into his room. He grabbed a handful of the more recent newspapers and, after considering his school books (because he wasn't letting the ones about quidditch out of his room), he picked up the Charms tomes. If Harry had to reread any of his school books, revising old charms was the least boring prospect. He figured the woman might have trouble sleeping too, so he took all four books.


"What did you get?" Olivier asked as soon as Roy closed the door behind him. Roy had been lurking in the bathroom for the last ten minutes with the express intention of getting some useful reading material from whoever climbed the stairs first.

"Recent newspapers and some school books," Roy replied. He walked up to the bed and sat next to Olivier. Setting the books aside, he picked up a random newspaper.

Olivier leant into his shoulder to have a better look at it and blinked.

"Is that picture... moving?"


"Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong! We've secured the house!" Sergeant Major Denny Brosh announced with a sharp salute.

"The generals?" Alex asked, though he didn't expect good news. Olivier would be yelling at everyone if she was here.

Brosh shook his head.

"We found Lieutenant General Armstrong's gun, but that's it. However…" Brosh hesitated for a moment. "It was next to a rug, and Jenkins noticed a pattern on that rug."

Alex didn't like how that sounded.

"What kind of pattern?"

"We're not sure, but we think it might be an array."

Alex froze. His first impulse was to charge towards the car where they had secured the prisoner, but he shook himself.

"I'll go have a look. Take charge here, Sergeant Major Brosh."

Alex marched towards the house. Olivier and Roy had gone in first, and nobody had seen them since. Their prisoner had been positively giddy since Alex caught him, but he hadn't answered a single question so far.

To be continued