The car that was sent to pick Julia up was a plain black sedan, the license plate, no doubt, would be replaced right after this mission. She sat in the back seat, fidgeting. Her gaze landed outside the car window. The darkened, moonlit streets were lit by only street lamps. Night had fallen, and a few stars were peeping out of the velvety sky.

Julia had no idea how to pull his off. The only information she had on this mission was to guard some ancient relic from impending theft. Her parents, who must have been mortally embarrassed by her Mission Aptitude test, hadn't spoken to or contacted her since her failure.

This didn't faze her too much. Her parents had never really loved her, or been proud of her. They had both grown up in spying families. Her mother's maiden name was Viktoria Ivanov. Viktoria grew up in Moscow, as her father was a devoted KGB Operative. Her mother had then been assigned on a mission to infiltrate the Central Intelligence Agency. Viktoria had realized on that mission that she liked the C.I.A. much better, and decided to disown her family and use her Russian intelligence, to help the C.I.A.'s counter-russia movement.

Julia's father, Terrance Tremaine, was from a long line of Tremaines that dated back past the revolutionary war, to England. Christopher Tremaine, protector of King Henry. Loyal bodyguard, royal hit man, spy in chief. That is until, he sailed over on the mayflower. He stood by America's new leaders, defending and spying until his death from fever in 1790. His son, Danson, carried on his legacy. Danson's sons, Rodger and Marco, did the same. When the CIA was founded on September 18, 1947, you can guess who was the first agent. That's right, Corey Tremaine. Every Tremaine since Corey had been a CIA agent, and a prestigious one at that.

Her father had simply followed on the well worn Tremaine Path that every agent since Corey had done. Sure, he had completed only a couple mission's before retirement. That's what very modern Tremaine has done; represent the family nicely, prove your worth, then add your name to the long list of perfect Tremaine's, and then retire early before you have the chance to screw something up and mess up the last name.

The car slowed down as they drove into a large and almost deserted parking lot. A large sign announcing museum closing times, today, Julia noticed, the museum closed especially early.

Despite her short mission brief, Julia didn't understand what the big deal was about this ancient thing. Honestly, whatever was so special about it didn't account for the museum to be closed early, and for a C.I.A. special operative to be placed on guard. Something bigger was going on here, and she couldn't quite put her finger on it with the lack of information she possessed. She would figure it out though, despite being a second rate spy, she was a good one, even if she was not good by Tremaine standards.

The car pulled into the parking lot, and she was wordlessly let out. Looking at the towering museum, the words "Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History" illuminated in light.

Julia swallowed, and entered the museum through a special staff door, she had been given a key card to be swiped in an fancy electronic card reader, and had stood in front of the monitored cameras until her presence had been cleared. She entered into the museum, the thump-thump of her heart the only thing she could here in the exhibits. It was so quiet, she could hear a pin drop.

Then, having previously memorized the blueprints, she crept through the eerily empty exhibits. Most of the lights were off or at least dimmed, which made it so much more creepy. After exiting the ancient greek exhibit, Julia entered into Ancient Egypt.

Huge replicas of stone sphinxes loomed over, their features lost in the shadows that wrapped themselves around the edges of the walls. The "Sunstone" was kept in a separate room all to itself, carefully making her way through the large door in the center of the stone sphinxes, Julia crept into the room and observed the area, keeping her presence hidden deep into the shadows on the outskirts of the expanse. It was a large room, and the sunstone took residence in the center of it, a single light in the room illuminated the big, glossy, almost see-through stone the looked like a strange hunk of yellowish-orange quartz.

After checking, double-checking, and even triple-checking she was alone, Julia slipped out of the shadows, as lithe and lean as a panther. She made know sound as she moved, she was in the zone.

She moved soundlessly, with all of the skill that was expected of someone who had literally been training for this her whole life, until she reached the Sunstone.

A small, obsessively polished plaque informed her that the Sunstone was a special variety of the mineral called Citrine. It was found in ancient egyptian times, and proclaimed by the pharaoh to be a gift from the sun god Amen-Ra. Since then, it had been revered as one of egypt's greatest treasures, and handed down from pharaoh to pharaoh. Egyptian myths also told of the sunstone as a key to the since deemed unreal legend of Egypt's last treasures. Julia, of course had heard of this in school. Ancient legends recall that when the Romans invaded Egypt in 30 BC, The Pharaoh Queen Cleopatra had ordered for all of Egypt's most priceless treasures be hidden in great secrecy so that the Romans could not loot them as they did with the Jews and many others. After Cleopatra's death, the story had been reduced to a simple myth.

Julia's eyes widened, the old myth had suddenly made this mission much more interesting. And confusing. The old story was widely believed as fake, so why did these criminals want it?

Unfortunately, she got her answer much faster than she would have thought.