The B-loot-ish Museum, Part II
In the magical sense, a golem is a collective term for any entity animated by an artificially grafted soul. It is relatively easy to engrave magic onto organic matter and its soul, while inorganic matter excels at maintaining the stability of a spell once cast. Thus, the goal is to combine the two and reap only the finest fruits of both. Since a human soul serves as the raw material, a humanoid form is naturally ideal, but contrary to popular belief, it doesn't strictly need to have two arms and two legs. As long as a soul extracted from a human can be grafted in some way to achieve a specific magical purpose, anything can be considered a golem.
By this loose definition, a pistol, a wristwatch, or even a conveyor belt or a rocket engine could all be golems. Of course, the body and the soul are not separate entities. A soul without a body begins to crumble and decay in less than a second unless subjected to special treatment. Therefore, the shorter the time it takes to prepare a new inorganic vessel for a secondhand soul to inhabit, the better. Unless this stability is guaranteed, golem creation remains an incredibly inefficient endeavor. This was especially true because re-inserting an extracted soul back into its original body came with no shortage of complications.
Fortunately for me, I had nearly a three-digit pile of body-and-soul pairs waiting to be "disposed of." This meant I had more than enough material to practice extracting souls, engraving magic onto them, and grafting them onto inorganic objects. Thus, if I unleashed these makeshift golems inside the museum, it would be more than enough to instantly draw the attention of the Ministry wizards stationed there to guard the Rosetta Stone. While ordinary civilian visitors would undoubtedly panic, any sufficiently trained wizard would immediately realize that the presence of a golem signaled a magical terror attack. Since only a wizard could halt this wave of malice, I wanted them to be thoroughly buried under their sense of duty.
The Spiegel was an anomaly; normally, stealing a national artifact required far more effort than this. In fact, the more I prepared, the more shortcomings I seemed to find, which was rather frustrating. The only saving grace was that I couldn't keep preparing forever. The eleven days leading up to the operation were a blur of non-stop, frantic activity.
And so, at noon on Friday the 22nd. Accompanied by Pavel, I headed toward the largest museum of stolen goods in the world.
"Wow, there are so many people. How on earth are we supposed to steal an artifact in the middle of this crowd?"
"Cut the idle chatter. We have a lot of work to do before evening."
"I know, I know. More than half of this is my plan, so how could I not? If you keep acting so serious all the time, girls won't like you."
"..."
The execution time for the operation was set around 20:00, just as the museum was about to close. We chose today because Friday was the only day of the week the museum extended its hours. This was also due to London's high latitude. In the summer, the sun set incredibly late. If it weren't for Friday's late hours, we couldn't ignore the risk of a comedy of errors where we'd be caught on camera stealing loot in broad daylight.
Anyway, I wondered why my security chief had to take a joke so seriously. I nudged Pavel, who was scowling as if I'd struck a nerve.
"What are you doing? You were the one who said we have a lot of work to do."
I actually intended to tour the museum until evening. Of course, it wasn't for sightseeing. I wanted to see if there were any other valuable artifacts worth taking that I might have missed from my desk research. Besides, this was my first time visiting the British Museum in person. I couldn't exactly visit every other day under the pretext of scouting the location.
If I did that, security cameras would capture a young girl snooping around every corner of the museum day after day. No matter how much of a prejudiced, old-fashioned crowd the Ministry of Magic was, that would do far more harm than good. So, while I had done plenty of map exercises using museum maps and blueprints, the reality of the actual site—which could never be fully grasped through mere desk theory—was something I couldn't afford to ignore.
Taking Pavel with me, I traversed the various floors and exhibition halls, first checking if there were any other low-hanging fruits worth picking. Naturally, I didn't neglect to observe and study the museum's layout. I memorized how the exhibition halls connected and through which passages just as diligently as I examined the archaeological relics on display.
"So, did you find anything else useful besides the Rosetta Stone?"
Pavel asked from across the table in the central hall's cafeteria, after our five-to-six-hour search disguised as sightseeing had concluded. I shook my head gently and let out a soft sigh.
"No. Setting aside the storage vaults since we couldn't even access them, there was absolutely nothing in the exhibition halls either. It seems they've already siphoned off all the magical artifacts beforehand."
This was also a somewhat expected outcome. Magical artifacts were to be monopolized by the oh-so-noble wizards; how could they possibly display them to the public? However, this elitist attitude wasn't entirely a bad thing. At least, not for me right now. I took it as a sign to focus solely on the Rosetta Stone instead of poking around needlessly. Fortunately, there were no issues with my plan to utilize the golems.
As I killed time double-checking our routes and plans, the clock ticked down to just one hour before the operation. Pavel checked his watch and spoke up.
"It's about time. I must go and rendezvous with the men now."
"Is it that time already? Right, don't worry too much about my end. Go on."
The strike team entrusted to Pavel was the core of the museum raid's diversionary operation. Their job was to prevent—mostly physically—my theft of the Rosetta Stone from being captured on CCTV or noticed by the control room staff. To counter the risk of the strike team itself being exposed, we replaced all their gear with equipment sourced from the Provisional IRA, thereby diverting any suspicious eyes. It was, so to speak, a diversion within a diversion. My security chief, whom I trusted more than anyone else in the entire syndicate, was a reliable subordinate who could provide immense help not just in training, but in actual combat.
"Then, I shall see you later."
Pavel stood up first and offered a polite bow. I responded with a faint smile.
"Not here. Let's meet back at the base later."
If I ended up seeing Pavel inside the museum, it would mean things had gone horribly wrong. If I ran into fully armed troops wearing ski masks, the eyes of the Ministry of Magic and the Metropolitan Police would inevitably lock onto me afterward. Furthermore, the Ministry didn't just leave the security of the British Empire's national artifacts entirely to the museum's staff. In an emergency, there were several wizards who would abandon all other archaeological relics and rush in solely to protect the Rosetta Stone. The longer things dragged on, the more our escape routes would be cut off, and the higher the likelihood that enemy wizard reinforcements from near Westminster would arrive one by one. And if this highly undesirable scenario unfolded, I would have to face the enemy wizards entirely on my own. There was no reason to put my subordinates in unnecessary danger. While I wouldn't lose, unlike in Belfast, there was no guarantee I could fully protect the strike team members.
Delis's role will be crucial too.
The wizards the Ministry dispatched to the museum daily weren't just combat wizards. Their ranks also included magical bureaucrats performing administrative tasks, and the person dispatched to the museum today was none other than Delis. Unlike before, when I had erased the CCTV footage of the subway station leading to the undersea tunnel, I couldn't think of a way to secretly access the data in this massive museum. This wasn't some minor subway station; the control room monitoring the entire British Museum was always staffed by multiple people. Even if I used Charm to sway a single guard and order them to delete the data, they would immediately be stopped by their colleagues and subjected to interrogation. Thus, my presence being captured on camera was unavoidable. My movements from lunchtime until now would have been recorded along with all the other ordinary visitors. However, pinpointing me among over ten thousand daily visitors would be virtually impossible. To blend in more naturally, I had made sure to pretend to look at the exhibits with utmost interest while traversing the halls. Since the strike team would disable the CCTVs once the operation commenced, the assumption that they wouldn't be able to track me still held true.
At exactly 20:00, I got up from the cafeteria to put the golems to use. Taking the west staircase, my destination was Room 62 on the third floor. Room 62, which exhibited ancient Egyptian mummies and coffins, was always bustling with visitors. Even now, with fifteen minutes left until last entry and thirty minutes until closing, the forest to hide the tree named Yerina Bronska was still dense.
Standing before a mummy tightly wrapped in bandages, I reached into my handbag and released all the souls I had been keeping. What I had stored in the test tubes inside my handbag were formalin-treated brain fragments of traitors. The process of binding the souls was, in a broad sense, not much different from how I had modified the Spiegel to shrink its size while preserving its function. It involved slowly driving a complete soul into a specific part of the brain, instantly ending the body's life, securing the soul so it wouldn't disperse, and quickly treating the brain fragment with formalin. Although it had the fatal flaw of dispersing within half a day, it was more than sufficient for my current purposes.
Under my will, the souls of the traitors began to inhabit the mummies scattered throughout the exhibition room one after another. The glass walls separating the archaeological mummies from the visitors posed no obstacle.
Clack! The sound of a mummy, regaining life after thousands of years, twitching inside its coffin. It was a scene straight out of a horror movie, making it hard to suppress a chuckle even with the operation looming ahead.
"Honey... I think that thing just moved. No way, right...?"
"What? You must have seen things. How could that thing possibly move?"
A couple standing right next to one of the mummies exchanged a self-fulfilling prophecy that would soon become reality. The mummy golems, hastily crafted on the spot using the mummies as inorganic vessels and human souls as magical organic engines, would begin their full-scale activity in about twenty minutes.
After creating the golems, I returned to the central hall on the first floor. This time, I intentionally took the long way around the museum and descended via the east staircase.
How should I construct my alibi?
While the best-case scenario was to avoid suspicion entirely, always assuming the worst-case scenario was the correct approach when formulating a plan. And so, twenty minutes that felt like an eternity ticked away.
"Attention, all visitors. The museum will close in ten minutes. We kindly ask all visitors to follow the staff's instructions and exit the premises in an orderly manner."
The announcement echoed throughout the museum from the speakers mounted on the ceiling. The sun had already dipped below the horizon, and London's characteristically overcast weather prevented even the moonlight from penetrating the glass ceiling.
"Once again, attention all visitors. In ten minutes—"
And that broadcast was the signal. As if intercepting the announcement mid-sentence, every single light in the museum instantly snapped off.
"What the?"
"A blackout?"
Amidst the murmurs of the crowd gathered in the central hall before exiting, the emergency backup power kicked in, casting a much dimmer light back over the interior.
"Everyone, please remain calm! This is just a simple power outage. Please calmly follow the staff's instructions!"
Since the sudden power outage had caused a voltage spike that temporarily fried the broadcasting equipment, the museum staff were shouting at the top of their lungs to keep the crowd calm.
Looks like the strike team did their first job properly.
Destroying the main power grid drawn from the external power plant was the first step. However, I couldn't make my move just yet. There were still the diesel-powered emergency generators, and the uninterruptible power supplies (UPS) in case those failed or were destroyed. The strike team still had a mountain of components and areas left to sabotage.
And now, the tool to escalate the chaos was finally ready.
"What on earth is...?"
"Mummies...?"
"No, wait... zombies...?"
From the west staircase, a total of fifteen mummy golems, their bodies studded with shards of shattered glass, began to shuffle forward, gathering in the hall.