Shay's Warehouses

IFNE 01/2, 9 In the various series in which Shay is starred, she owns various properties, one set of which is a series of warehouses, in which she stores properties and goods of varying importance. The buildings were conveniently located only a half mile from a Pizza Coast, one of the better pizza joints in L.A. Primo pizza locations were a prerequisite for the location of any of the warehouses.

Warehouse One: She stored the least valuables there, and it was basically her training facility, containing a few weapons (prerequisite for all). The boxing ring dominated the center of the room. A black Everlast punching bag that hung from a heavy chain near the roll top door. A climbing wall stood near a corner. An obstacle course ringed the room, starting with the wall. To do a course, Shay easily jumped onto the first handholds, digging her fingers into the small nooks and crannies, her feet lightly touching down. She wasted no time and scurried up the wall, letting go as she let her weight fall back. At the last moment she pushed off, leaping from the top to a bar resting in the bottom rungs of a salmon ladder, the muscles in her shoulders flexing under the black sports bra. The echo of the metal clacking on metal filled the cavernous room as she moved up each rung of the obstacle toward the sunlight streaming in along the ceiling. A slight ache hit her arms as she got to the top of the ladder, and let go with one arm, swinging out and grabbing on to the next challenge. A narrow metal balance beam connected to the ceiling by bungee cords. The balance beam swung back and forth as she pulled herself up and got her feet under her. Shay stretched out her arms on either side, determined not to fall. Shay nimbly arrived at the end of the beam, even as it continued to sway, and jumped onto a small flat-topped pole anchored to the floor that only had space for one foot. She pushed off, immediately jumping to the next, completing a circuit of six poles with a last jump to a freestanding ledge near the wall that faced an alley. A thick blue and white rope hung underneath and Shay knelt down, going over the side as she grabbed onto the rope and rappelled to the floor. A series of truck tires lay in front of her. She moved from tire to tire with quick feet, jumping in and out, before hitting another climbing wall. Shay moved right up the handholds, taking her up fifteen feet to a series of chains and ropes hanging from the ceiling. Each hung too far from the other to reach without a hard swing and letting go of one to grab onto the next. She jumped to the first chain, swinging even as the muscles of her legs were taut and grabbed the next rope without a second thought. Several more exchanges followed, including a turn in the corner of the room that forced her to push off the wall to regain her forward momentum. The final rope brought her to another ledge connected to a wooden ramp angled down at forty-five-degrees. The ramp fed into another steeply curving ramp set up on an incline that was connected to a tall concrete block wall ten feet high. Shay ran down the first ramp at full speed, feeling the muscles in her thighs engaging, and charged up the second, sucking in air, as she pushed off from her toes, catching the top of the wall with her fingers. She pulled herself up and rolled over the top of the wall, dropping down to the other side. Then she did it again, and again. Warehouse Two was mostly for old junk. Costumes and things from old failed movies, computer office, stuff she just hadn't gotten rid of yet. It's where the crates were in which Peyton had found all of the old clothing. When she was talking to Peyton there, her alarm went off, telling her that there might be a lead on one of the artifacts that she was looking for. Peyton asked her what triggered the alarm ( “Spiders crawling the web and the dark web, mostly. They are looking for certain combinations of information.”) so that he could make the alarms more meaningful and effective. He wanted to earn her trust Shay shrugged. “We’ll do this a day at a time. You’ll earn my trust, and then we can talk about other shit.” “You have to give me a chance if I’m going to earn it.”

Warehouse Three: Equipment needed for expeditions. Shay went here to supply herself for the Lake Toplitz event. A brown van that sat parked near the door that she needed to get a decent amount of equipment to the airport. High-pressure SCUBA gear (rated up to 400'). Submersible drones. Definitely need a couple. Waterproof-augmented reality goggles. Drones. an amphibious needle-gun and a box of magazines (It was like a semi-automatic gun spewing little metal arrows). Underwater flares. Maybe some grenades.

Warehouse Four: Shay's favorite. Rated more concern than her weapons warehouse. Her personal library, where the spines of the books filled the many bookshelves lining the twenty-foot walls of the warehouse. Wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled the main warehouse space, along with several rolling library ladders. The collection ran into the thousands of volumes and represented a multi-million-dollar investment. The vast majority of the books concerned history and the occult, with a smaller number focused on related subjects such as archaeology, anthropology, and even a few newer books on extra-dimensional engineering, the fancy university term for magic. Scientists kept trying to make it catch on with the public, but almost everyone preferred to use the simpler and more familiar term. There were even two books on magic bionics – a frowned upon topic even in the dark underworld. Shay preferred the heft of a book in her hands and a physical book wasn’t something that could be hacked or disrupted with an EMP. It wasn’t that Shay didn’t mind the use of technology, magic, or whatever tool would help her the get the job done. Simplicity wasn’t her focus, success was. But, when it came to owning knowledge, she made sure no EMP or lightning spell could wipe everything out. Some of the books were so rare that she owned the last existing copy. Many had never been digitized. Her finger stopped on a slim monograph detailing a Polish graduate student’s thesis on the magical beliefs of the aristocracy in ancient Japan. It was written over a hundred years ago and was the only copy. But anyone looking into the past couldn’t be sure if they were reading about someone’s misinterpretation of nature or an actual eyewitness report of something magical. Shay’s glance ticked up a few rows to the translated, Annals of the Joseon Dynasty, records from medieval Korea. Most of the records concerned the most banal of government functions, but there were hints of more mysterious events and potential contact with magic or Oriceran beings, including a report from September 1609 that spoke of a strange flying “washbasin” that made a thunderous sound despite appearing in cloudless skies and flying as “swiftly as an arrow” before “disappearing into sparks.” Before everyone learned about Oriceran, many people thought the incident was proof of aliens from beyond the stars visiting ancient Korea. That might still turn out to be true, too. Shay had learned to stop guessing at what came next a long time ago. Shay let out a relaxed sigh and smiled warmly at the collection in front of her. Even before she had decided to become a tomb raider, she’d had an interest in history and had started collecting the books through rare dealers, even if she didn’t always take the time to read many of them. I’ll have the time in the future. If there is one. Maybe in another life Shay would have become a history professor instead of a killer. She amused herself with the thought far too often.

Warehouse Five: the most valuable items were stored in ,including a vault, with enough money in it to start over for a long time. Stored extremely high-valued goods, and magic artifacts. When she saved Payton, and brought him to LA., she "stored" him in Warehouse Two.