This post has the following content warnings:
summer camp!
+ Show First Post
Total: 624
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

"What?"

Permalink

She bites her lip.

(They could be listening. They might not be on her side.)

"This thing about the regenerating demons that they're using in medical research or whatever? I just - I remembered something I think I might have heard about them that makes the thing not quite line up. And it's probably nothing, but it just - it smells weird."

Permalink

"Ooooh," whispers Trace excitedly. "The thing they're hiding."

Permalink

"It's probably nothing. But - yeah. Possibly."

Permalink

"And you don't want to just ask Melissa because you don't want her to notice that anything's weird. I could check where she takes the notes and supplies after class."

Permalink

" - yeah. That would be - kind of awesome, actually."

Permalink

"Consider it done," she says with maybe entirely too much satisfaction in her voice.

 

Melissa, it transpires, takes the books and lecture notes and her computer to her car after the lecture, and then drives home with it after an afternoon meeting. "So you'd have about an hour, if you skipped swimming, to go look through the notes for whatever it was that bothered you," Trace reports solemnly.

Permalink

"Computer's gotta be password protected," she notes. "Good work, though. Might be something in the paper notes."

Permalink

"It turns out people just type their passwords sometimes and don't even check if there's someone looking over their shoulder."

Permalink

She smiles, slowly and appreciatively. "You're very good at things, you know that? - there's also the matter of getting into the car, I guess."

Permalink

"I don't have anything for that."

Permalink

She nods. "I have an idea. I don't like my idea, but I have it. D'you think Rebecca's gonna run to the teachers if we ask her for help?"

Permalink

"She hasn't said anything about me breaking into places."

Permalink

"True. OK. There's a camera on the cars, so if I get caught, then - I guess I'm just really excessively into learning."

 

Permalink

" - isn't that what you wanted Rebecca for? She can knock it around so it faces a different direction."

Permalink

"Ohhh. That's smart. I'm dumb, I just wanted her to get into the car without resorting to obvious property damage."

Permalink

"Oh, I guess she can unlock them from the inside. See, didn't think of that one."

Permalink

"We make excellent partners in crime," smiles Karen.

She finds Rebecca afterwards. "Hi. I could use your help with a thing, but it's kind of a sketchy thing so I understand if you don't want to."

Permalink

"Oooh, what?"

Permalink

"I'm trying to get some demon info out of Melissa's car. It'd be a lot easier if someone could point the camera away and unlock it from inside. It's technically illegal, but I'm not gonna steal anything, just look at it."

Permalink

"That's intense. What do you want to look at, do you think she's in on the conspiracy?"

Permalink

- she's honestly super unclear on why everyone thinks there's a conspiracy now. "I dunno. It was something she said during lecture. Just didn't quite match up with other stuff I know. I don't wanna tar her good name until I know more, but it's plausibly kind of a big deal. I won't know until I double-check."

Permalink

"All right. I got you."

Permalink

"OK. Tomorrow, then. We'll have to skip swimming."

 

She can't sleep that night. Breaking into people's cars is way more illegal than - actually, going off the trails and checking out the outside of a secret government facility isn't really illegal at all. Maybe messing with the vents is. It's not very illegal. What she's doing is, like, an actual crime. Not that she hasn't committed actual crimes before - investigations at Sunnydale High require nonzero ethically and legally hazy snooping around, plus there's the whole serial killer killer thing - but it's still the sort of thing that could get her in actual real trouble.

On the other hand, she has this image of an alien strapped to an operating table, doctors shuffling through her organs and determining through trial and error which ones she doesn't need, and she doesn't know anyone's language and doesn't know whether the scary foreign doctors are trying to kill her or not. And maybe that's not what happened. Maybe they asked. Maybe they paid her. Maybe they told her 'ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country', and maybe that was enough.

But maybe it wasn't.

She tries paging Alex. She knows it won't work. She tries anyway.

Permalink

Alex is out of range. 

Total: 624
Posts Per Page: