Snippet #1175676

Artie took in a deep sigh. He simply felt overwhelmed. The timing of all of these situations was extremely inconvenient. Myka was gone, Pete was practically clinically depressed and has been MIA for the past five days, he had a new agent to train who didn't even know what a 'ping' was, and he had 10 artifacts around the world to scrounge up.

He looked up at his two youngest members of the team. They were both giving him very questioning glances. He breathed in and out again.

"First, we calm down. It might not be that big of a deal."

He was trying to convince himself that the fact that ten popped up at once was merely a coincidence. It was hard to believe, but he had to put on a face for Claudia.

He looked at Alexei with slight sadness. The fact he didn't know what a 'ping' was seemed like it would be something that Pete would have to have a crack at. Myka might have made a comment about having not read the manual. Artie shook the sickening feeling away and informed Alexei what 'pings,' were:

"'Pings' are bad. They are used to track the activity of artifacts."

Brief and to the point, just how he liked it.