Warehouse Fourteen

It had been ten years after Ms. Irene Frederic had ceased being Caretaker of the Warehouse, in which were stored some of the most dangerous objects ever created. They were often seemingly benign objects, but so often the most benign objects could be the most dangerous. One such "artifact", as they were called was Frances Farmer's Music Box, which caused it's user (or victim) to experience uncontrollable telekinetic outbursts when angry. This particular artifact had affected a young girl named Claire Donovan, older sister to the Warehouse's current Caretaker, Claudia Donovan. The artifacts could be neutralized to stop their effects, but unfortunately Claire had hurled the music box into the fire during one of her telekinetic fits and destroyed it so that it could never be neutralized. Thus, the effects remained inside of Claire and Arthur Nielson, a former Warehouse operative, had been forced to put her into an artifact-induced coma using a combination of Oliver Sacks' Record Player (to keep her in the coma) and Joseph Pilates' Resistance Bands, which were used to keep Claire's muscles from moving but keep her circulatory system active. Claudia had vowed on the day she discovered Claire was alive, that she'd never give up trying to cure her of the music box's energy. She had already tried using Alessandro Volta's Biscuit Bin in combination with Bob Dylan's Bus Pass to attempt to transfer the energy out of Claire to wake her up, but had only succeeded in transferring the energy to former Warehouse agent Myka Bering, instead, with extremely disastrous results. As a result, Claire had volunteered to be put back into the coma to spare Myka from her fate. Artie had later showed Claudia a list of all the things he'd tried to cure Claire. However, Claudia had never given up, even now that she was thirty-two and Claire was forty. At that moment, though, her attention soon turned back to the computer screen as she heard a ping, which meant that an artifact had just been detected. So Claudia set off for the location given, New York.

Young Tony Wyzek was with his friends in the Jets gang hanging out in an antique store. Normally Riff and the Jets would've been bored stiff at a place like that, but the place had a fascinating collection of antique guns that enthralled the boys. All but Tony, that is. Tony had had a feeling of foreboding ever since they'd arrived and the feeling was getting stronger. Just then, Riff and Action picked up a couple of rifles from the display. "Hey cool! Check this out! You look through the aiming scope of one gun and you see the view from the other one!" "Put them down, you dorks! They're bad!" Tony shouted at them in desparation, but none of the boys believed him. After all, how could Tony explain that he'd seen both guns glowing faintly and had received a very bad vibe off both of them? Then suddenly the guns began firing! " What the heck?!" Riff exclaimed, startled. "I told you they were bad!" Tony shouted, not knowing what to do, as the guns appeared to be firing on their own. Just then, he saw a woman in her early thirties walking nearby looking at various things and putting them inside some sort of bag before taking them out again. Not knowing why he felt so drawn to her, Tony went over to her.

"Please help me! My friends are at the mercy of two guns that seem to be firing by themselves! I can't figure out how to make them stop!" he pleaded. "Wait, what? Your friends found self-firing guns?" the woman asked. "Yes! I tried to tell them they were bad, but they wouldn't listen to me!" Tony cried. "What do you mean by 'bad'? How did you know they were bad?" the woman asked. "You won't believe me," Tony said. "Kid, you might be surprised what I would believe," the woman told him. "They glowed, and I just had a really bad feeling about them," Tony told her. "Glowed? Like with a kind of pale blue-green aura or something?" the woman asked. "Yeah! Exactly like that!" Tony exclaimed. He thought he heard her mutter something like, "I'll be darned. A future Caretaker." He didn't know what that meant, though. "Listen, I need to show you something and you tell me if it looks familiar, okay? I have pictures of some guns here and if you see the ones your friends have among them, I need you to tell me," the woman requested. Tony agreed and was able to readily identify one particular set of guns as the ones currently in his friends' possession. The woman then identified herself as Claudia Donovan and informed him that the guns his friends had used to belong to the Hatfield and McCoy families. Tony knew who they were, so Claudia told him the guns were very dangerous and asked him to take her to them. Tony did and Claudia put the guns in a bag she had with her and surprise registered on the faces of the boys and Tony when sparks flew up from the guns.

Claudia bagged the guns and informed them she was taking them to a safe place to keep them out of the wrong hands. She asked Tony to come with her and went to talk to his parents about getting him a job working with her on North Brother Island near the Bronx area of New York. His parents were willing to let him because Claudia had an impeccable reputation and was well-known in the community. Tony packed up his things and they left. They had managed to establish a type of bed and breakfast run by a young woman who was an excellent cook and housekeeper. They got tony set up in a room and then Claudia took him to the Warehouse, where she explained to him what it was, what they did there, and the rules. She explained what a Caretaker was and revealed herself as the Warehous's current one and that he was the next one. He would need to be trained, but once he was, if anything happened to Claudia, he would be ready to take her place.

Tony helped Claudia gather many artifacts to take back to the Warehouse over the course of his time in training. The artifacts ranged from deadly to downright useless or silly and Tony learned a lot. Unfortunately neither he nor Claudia was able to cure Claire and she died in the coma. Eventually Tony took over the Warehouse from Claudia and continued fighting the fight, waiting for the day when someone would succeed him too.

The End