The Vault of Hercules

Chapter 1

“You know, Nina, whoever created tight jeans had your ass in mind,” the grinning, red-haired trainer said to Dr. Gould. “If I may be so bold.”

“You may not,” she bit back, although there was plenty of appreciative humor in her tone.

Two young wrestlers smiled like fools from behind their coach, no more than twenty years of age and clearly not accustomed to such a forceful lass occupying such a delectable body. Coach Weland had told them in confidence that she was old enough to be their mother — just — only lending more to her appeal. Her dark eyes flashed rapidly into the glares of the young men, rendering them instantly impotent from her intimidation. With bowed heads they sauntered towards the changing rooms without looking back.

“I see you still have that… that thing… you do,” Coach Weland chuckled.

“What thing is that?” Nina asked as she grabbed her towel from the bench where she had just completed her last forced reps.

“That death stare you were oh-so-generous with in high school. Remember? Geez, it was like a punch to the gut back then.” He cocked his head with attitude and sighed as he grazed his abdomen with a sliding hand. “But back then I didn’t have a washboard iron gut.”

Nina giggled in amusement, raising an eyebrow. “Now, now, Weland. We both know I aim for the sweet spot,” she said in a husky drawl. The sexy historian came really close to the coach and placed the tip of her index finger right between his eyes. “Right… there.”

He merely smiled, unable to think of a smooth retort. Nina Gould had never been easy to impress, and it seemed that the trait had only grown stronger with age. With a dumb grin he said, “Touché.”

Nina almost felt sorry for him, but instead of saying so she only winked and walked across the floor of the free weight section of the gym to punish her glutes on the Smith machine, towel-over-shoulder. She could feel his stare burning into her. “And stop looking at my ass, Steven!” she said loudly without looking back.

“What ever do you mean?” he asked.

Nina pointed diagonally in front of her to her left, “I can see you in the wall of mirrors, Coach.”

Her condescending manner was highly amusing to the body builders training around them, sending Steven Weland off the section with a light jog and a mute mouth. He descended the stairs to the cardio area where the whirring din of spinning stationary wheels serenaded the babbling of housewives and teenagers socializing. Above it all, the bad techno pulsed monotonously while patrons stared at overhead flat screens like comatose drones just beyond the cycles. It sporadically gave way to the sounds of the aqua trainer's whistles in the echoing cavern of the indoor pool.

“Excuse me, but I haven’t seen you around here before,” a rather attractive, steroid fanatic announced.

Really? Nina thought. Is that your opening line? Jesus, the single life is pitiful, especially around here.

“No, you haven't,” she half-smiled, annoyed. Nina was trying to adjust the uncomfortable hooks of the bar onto a lower setting and did not need distraction.

“Are you local?” he asked as he gripped the bar and pulled it off the hooks for her. “Where do you want it?”

Nina bit her lip. “Um, two down. Thanks.”

Seeing her expression, he quickly set the hooks and said, “Oh, please don't think I don't think you can do it yourself. It's out of chivalry, not to patronize you.”

Good one, she thought.

“Of course, these days most ladies see chivalry as some form of chauvinism. There is just no place for blokes who simply want to assist…” he continued.

“Listen, I appreciate the help. Really, I do,” Nina said as amicably as she could during a brush-off. “But I’m here to train, contrary to what people think most lassies do with the weights up here. I really didn’t come here to chat. If you don't mind?”

He stepped back, feeling a bit stumped. “Of course. Of course, I understand. Well,” he said sincerely as he started moving away, “if you need a spotter, just yell. I'm Colin.”

“Will do,” she winced as she ducked under the parallel bar and pressed it up onto her shoulders. “Bye now, Colin.”

“Bye,” he replied reluctantly, still considering just asking her name since his hint hadn’t received a reply. Nina smiled as she watched the bulky blond man join two others on the leg press machine. Their cackles betrayed his ridicule among his pals.

As she completed her third repetition, her eyes wandered to the window to appreciate the cool rain over the Quartermile developments in Edinburgh. It had been only three months since she’d almost died while serving as guest lecturer at St. Vincent's Academy in Hook, a small town in northern Hampshire. Since then, she’d rejected medical treatment and elected to heal her body the way in which she did everything else — her way.

She’d recovered remarkably, past her previous good health, to attain her current state of obsessive training. Feeling better and gaining weight to a healthy level was addictive. Nina could never be big, but her petite physique remained intimidating, especially since she discovered the glorious, yet painful pleasures of bodybuilding. She was not hell-bound on spiking her testosterone by using steroid stacks to imitate She-Hulk or anything, but Nina found that hitting the weights hard was a shortcut to feeling stronger than ever and enjoying the effects of a faster metabolism. Above all, this fitness regime offered her a challenge. There was, after all, only so much one could do with cardiovascular conditioning, and Nina had not been blessed with the virtue of patience.

Her thighs burned under the intensity of her eleventh deep squat, and Nina dared not pay attention to the immense strain that had her knees buckling dangerously. Puffing unusually hard, she drew the short-lived attention of some of the males nearby, but fortunately managed to push her way up well enough to feign an effortless feat. As soon as they returned to their training, she hooked the bar for a break.

Breathing deeply, Nina smelled the fresh scent of fabric softener on her towel as she buried her face in it. She stood for several seconds like that, just catching her breath. When she finally peeked over her towel, the world on the other side of the window seemed like another realm to her. She was certain by the looks of the gray buildings and wet droplets racing down the windows that everything was different out there. In contrast to the cold wind, pattering downpour and wetness outside, the interior of the health club had temperature control, vibrant colors and something some could construe as music.

“How terribly apt,” Nina pondered softly, walking to the widow while sipping from her water bottle. The contrast of the two worlds occupying one space fascinated her. Nina had often wondered if anything was real anymore, for this very observation. Two people could occupy the same room of an establishment, she thought, and have completely different problems, lives, vocations, et cetera. She found it eternally intriguing, the way in which things could be great for one person and utterly horrendous for another, even while they were surrounded by the same things in the company of the same people.

“Are you done with this machine?” a mature voice asked from the direction of the Smith torture rack she’d been using. Nina swung around from the sudden address and found a man behind her with a most peculiar appearance. It almost had her dumbstruck, but she didn’t know why.

“Aye,” she replied, trying to smile in order to conceal her shock. “Go ahead.”

“Much obliged,” the man said, nodding and proceeding to set up the heavy discs on the sides of the machine. Although his response to her had been courteous, it had held no sign of congeniality. Not that it mattered much in this environment of mingling strangers, but Nina found his entire presence ice cold. He fascinated her. Towering at over 6'7”, his bald head only drew considerably more attention to his frigid eyes.

His voice did not suit him. It was thin in tone and very raspy, reminiscent of an old narration from a 1940s film noir. Apart from his voice, the rest of him seemed like a three-dimensional replica of a villain from a science-fiction graphic novel, complete with a sick pinkish scar dripping jaggedly from his temple to his jaw. Elongated musculature erroneously marked him as stringy and weak. Nina was astounded at how easily he lifted the bar while it carried a dozen large steel discs on each side. She pretended to admire the streets below the second level window while her dark eyes haunted the mirror to observe him.

Even the body builders and power-lifters present had wandering stares, some even ceasing their sets to make sure that they saw what they thought they saw as the tall man pumped out rep after rep until Nina had counted close to thirty. She looked at the other men and caught the eye of the chivalrous babbler she’d sent off earlier. He, too, vaguely shook his head at her to convey a similar disbelief and Nina gave him a widening eye to confirm that she agreed.

As the strange man hooked the bar for a rest, all the people in the weights section snapped back into what they’d been doing. They didn’t want him to know that they’d been watching his unusual ability in awe and risk making the man so uncomfortable that he’d want to leave. He was simply too interesting, even to the coach and some of the other personal trainers leering from afar.

“It could be Samson, you know, after his bint cut his locks, aye?” one of the overweight football bullies remarked quietly a few feet from Nina. She chewed her lips in an effort not to laugh and dropped her eyes to the floor as the man stepped under the bar once more. Once more the peculiar man punched out a full set without much effort as the others watched surreptitiously in the vast mirrors while continuing their own feeble attempts.

Nina was impressed, but she would never show it. After all, her own recovery from a skeletal shadow to a staunch and symmetrical specimen was quite the feat as well. Considering the short frame of time it had taken her to build up her body to look like a minuscule Amazon, what she had accomplished had been nothing short of a miracle. But that was of no consequence here. She eventually tired of staring at the extraordinary man and made her way to the triceps machine. Gripping the handles, she pressed them down, going through the motions she’d been training so hard to do correctly these past months few months.

Yet something urged her to look up at him again. Through the cables and the sliding of the flat weight slabs Nina noticed that the strange man's water bottle contained something milky, unlike most water bottles the gym rats filled with their water bottles with. It perplexed her. What could be inside? Could that be what made him unnaturally strong, defying all rules of physiology? The buff little historian had to investigate.

How does one procure a bottle from under the nose of a patron at the gym without them realizing that it was missing? she wondered as she pushed the heavy weights downward, burning up her triceps. In fact, she was so distracted with this thought that she didn’t even notice when she exceeded her set. The bald man changed his weights again, leaving the peculiar liquid unattended. Nina had to act quickly, so she resorted to the prerogative of beautiful women — beguilement.

She looked toward the group of young men she’d previously shrugged off and singled out the babbler. His eyes instantly found her glare and Nina smiled. “Hey, Colin, could you do me a huge favor?”