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23 Camo 5103
9:33PM: Thank the moon and the stars for redundancies. The amount of water damage in Walter Korn's chronicle had to be seen to be believed. That's a century of my life down the drain. Haven't the Watchers ever learned how to build airtight containers? Honestly, you'd think we were still back in Thebes.
I've managed to convince Cobb to let me have the third Darius chronicle back on loan. Now, if only I could remember who I buried the redundancy in. Heaven help the Watchers if they've lost yet another complete copy of my senatorial days. This isn't the seventeenth century anymore. They have cameras. If they catch me this time, I might not be able to retrieve my journals again for six or seven hundred years.
Let's see. Did I use palindromes or prime numbers last time?
Right. I used both.
26 Camo 5103
5:10AM: I've copied all the names from the Darius chronicle and given it back to Cobb. He wants to know when Methos ran into Darius. I hope the old man doesn't give me away. It would be just like him to pontificate in front of his Watcher that, no, he'd never met the man they called Methos, when it says perfectly clear in my chronicle that he did and when I was using the name.
It's a damn good thing I convinced everyone last millennium that Methos was tall and bearded. Once I get this Welsh accent down, I could be run out of the town on a rail and they'll only think I'm a hunter.
If only. It would make this damn chore so much easier. I have a hundred bloody names from Darius' chronicle and I can't remember which one has my past. Bless the Watchers for being shitty cross-referencers, because they never noticed how so many have so much in common, but damn them just the same. How many Immortals with no recorded first death fucked a priest on the altar of Jove and was killed for his insolence? I want those memories back. They're mine. Someone should make the Watchers a concordance. They could put it on a computer and I could take it with me when I leave.
02 Yrmo 5104
10:00PM: I've successfully reconstructed my first five hundred years, the period from 3093 to 4019, and given the Methos Chronicle an encounter with Byron. I put up with his crap for years; I deserve to bask in his brilliance whenever I damn well please. And Markus tells me that Byron has been gnawing at his chains, wanting to reinvent himself once again, and I say let him. His travels might send him my way again and there's a bed with his name on it in a cheap hotel a few miles from here.
It turns out that I've overestimated Watcher diligence once again. What are these mortals coming to? It used to be that I could count on them to report everything from major battles to semi-ecliptic Quickenings. Lord's sake, you can see a Quickening from a city away if it's big enough. A Quickening destroyed Pompeii. They can be rather hard to miss.
Yet somehow the Watchers neglected to notice the fact that Simeon Garnesh is dead. Has been dead. Will continue to be dead. I overheard two researchers today complaining about how well good ol' Slimy Simy is hiding. He isn't hiding, you stupid fucking nitwits. I killed him two hundred years ago in the middle of Venice and you should have seen his Quickening. The fact that you didn't disappoints me. It was the last thing I've done as Methos and it didn't even make my Chronicle. It figures. A man spends sixteen years hiding his journals among Watcher records to ensure that they will never be lost no matter how many times he needs to flee at a moment's notice, eradicates his name from everything but myth and Watcher lore, and then when he condescends to be found in order to throw hunters off his trail, the Watchers don't even bloody notice.
Mortals. You never can count on them.
09 Yrmo 5104
3:01AM: Addendum to my last: Simeon Garnesh listed as Avra Luttrack. Avra's Chronicle says that Avra was my lover. Methos' lover. The researcher in charge of dead records thinks I'm psychic.
I've heard a rumor of Methos in Moscow. Off to recover my Russian years.
13 Xchek 5104
4:40PM: I keep forgetting how horrible Russian winters are, or maybe I'm getting fragile in my old age. I've been back for three days and my hands still haven't stopped shaking. But I now have copies of my Russian years and a newly-resworn determination to never ever stub my toes around Watcher basements again.
The television is on and there's a gorgeous red-haired woman walking around topless. Gods bless this enchanting century. Gods curse damp stuffy basements.
32 Xchek 5104
10:30AM: I'm comparing source texts, which is Watcher shorthand for fucking off on the job. Some things never change, but I'm actually comparing source texts. Some enterprising Watcher went through Melvin Koren's Chronicle and tried to trace him through the centuries. He didn't do a very good job, but he went surprisingly far back. Not as far back as a well, but far enough back that if this weren't the wrong century, I would offer sacrifices to every pantheon in existence. It turns out Kronos was in Kiev at the same time I was, and if his Chronicle is to be believed, he took the head of the man hunting me. It was for purely selfish reasons, of course, but the thought that Kronos was still hunting me even then is sobering.
The job is nowhere near done, but once I have finished collecting my complete journals, I am going to spend some serious time finding my brothers. Caspian is probably dead, but I know Kronos isn't. Silas might be, but he avoids other Immortals to the extent that I think anyone who might have tried for his head would have been too young to beat him. I'll have to look.
Now this wanted poster is interesting. What did Kronos think he was doing when he grew a mustache like that? So fucking predictable. So fucking melodramatic. My brother will never learn. Sometimes I wonder what it would take to convince him that I'm dead and I always come to the conclusion that it would take nothing less than my head on a silver platter. Vengeance is mine saith the killer of thousands.
01 Momeni 5106
11:30PM: Today came the ultimate test of Adam Pierson, mild-mannered Watcher. You hear the name Macleod. Which one comes to mind first? In my case, it's Connor, having spent a surreal drunken evening with him three hundred years ago and then the next month and a half getting fucked into walls. But for the Watchers, it's Duncan who's on everyone's tongue. Duncan Macleod, the new ascending champion, the favourite to win the game. Duncan Macleod, who has helped the Watchers immensely by never using an alias. Duncan Macleod of the Clan Macleod.
I'd requested one of his Chronicles out of professional interest last year to help investigate Kronos in his Koren disguise and that was noticed. Stupid of me, but my brothers are my weakness. As are french fries. I was pulled over today while I was making photocopies of the latest library regulations. Professional interest must come first, so the questions started with conjecture that Methos might come out of hiding to help Macleod some day (keep hoping, Dawson), and then descended into what Julian used to call Telling you this for your own good. I call it friendly extortion because by the time these wagers pay off, I'll be out of this country and using a different name. But it isn't like I need the money. The latest John Grisham can wait.
I've put half my month's salary down on Macleod surviving until the end of this (Gregorian) century. And the other half that, should Macleod ever meet Methos, he would expose Methos' identity to the world and therefore make my, Adam Pierson's, job a hell of a lot easier.
Easier for my bloody successor. I've learned my lesson with champions. They'll kill for you, but then they want you to pay them back. Macleod would be the type to demand the payment in moral favors instead of sexual.
And it's a damn good thing I can think fast on my feet, because I wouldn't put down anything on Connor surviving through the year 2000. He's not the type. A good man, yes, but too wrapped up in mortals to survive any more heartbreaks, and mortals have the tendency to die.
05 Momeni 5106
02:50PM: No good thought goes unpunished. I've somehow gotten myself on Salzar's brainchild committee to transform all the Chronicles to electronic copy by 2010. Speaking on behalf of my desecrated, worm-eaten hieroglyphics, he can go shove it. I think it might be time to find another Methos lead and get myself out of dodge for a few months until the dust settles on their computers. Salzar is a good friend, as are the rest of the myth-hunters, but may their book-destroying hearts live in interesting times.
10 Momeni 5106
09:25PM: That's much better. Nothing like a good blowjob to start a vacation off the right way. Say hi, Markus.
*Hi.*
Markus is a wonderful man, but literacy was never his strong suit. Ancient Greek is beyond him. But he has lips like sin, hands that could hold up the world, and ever since I cut his hair under a bowl, he's been mine whenever I've wanted him. He's such a sweet pet. He daylights as an accountant and one of these days the Watchers will see him take a head and put him down in the Chronicles. Until then, he's simply an old friend of Adam Pierson who happens to get off on being tied up and taking heads. Yes, sometimes at once. Markus is...ingenious. If he had been born two thousand years before he was and if Kronos had found him, we never would have needed Caspian.
Caspian. He's in a mental hospital. I haven't stopped laughing about it since I found out. What a perfect place for him. I bet he fits right in.
23 Camo 5108
01:02AM: Marcus Constantine needs to learn how to count backwards and forwards. Time zones aren't so new that he has an excuse to have forgotten about them.
In the morning, I need to remember to send him part of the cross they killed me on. Bloody man must think I'm some kind of packrat. Despite appearances, I don't keep everything. Just most things, and even then, they're almost all in Zurich. Every Immortal over a thousand is either filthy rich or fuck-all poor. Lucky me, I'm filthy rich, but it's hard enough remembering my past. I'm sure I have stashes of priceless antiques just waiting to be salivated upon by an Immortal historian apologist, but I can't bloody well remember where I put them, Marcus, so leave me alone and let me sleep. I'm a five thousand year old man, not a goddamn museum. A man helps you down off a cross and he never lets you fucking forget it. Some friend.
25 Redii 5110
11:21AM: Salzar has informed me that Duncan Macleod knows about the Watchers. I have also been told that there is a strong possibility that Watchers are killing Immortals. Not again.
15 Yrmo 5112
4:30 PM: My journals are complete, I know where all my brothers are, I'm being hunted by someone who wants me deader than disco, and Duncan Macleod, the world's greatest hope, knows my name. It's getting bad enough that I offered him my head. He didn't take it, but now he has the obligation to draw the fire so I can get the hell out of here. I'll owe him a ransom debt, but I'll pay that off when I don't have to worry about Kalas or getting court-martialed by the Watchers for doing what Salzar, may his memory be cherished forever, wanted and creating an Immortal database. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I'm out of here.
16 Yrmo 5112
01:50PM: Umph. For a man so thick-spoken, Macleod gives great head. All right, now I'm outta here.