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Diffstat (limited to 'CH-4.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | CH-4.txt | 62 |
1 files changed, 60 insertions, 2 deletions
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@ -"Let me get this straight, you think you can go through the service records and match the enlistment photos, or whatever photos you have against the guy's christmas photo?" Steven was talking with his mouth full again. Chase cringed and wondered how he could fail to realize he was doing it. She had tried telling herself that maybe the sight of partially masticated hamburger was a kind of art. Living art. But that idea never worked. Now she just insisted they sit side by side at a counter whenever they went out for lunch. that, at least, minimized the visual effects. +"Let me get this straight, you think you can go through the service records and match the enlistment photos, or whatever photos you have against the guy's Christmas photo?" Steven was talking with his mouth full again. Chase cringed and wondered how he could fail to realize he was doing it. She had tried telling herself that maybe the sight of partially masticated hamburger was a kind of art. Living art. But that idea never worked. Now she just insisted they sit side by side at a counter whenever they went out for lunch. that, at least, minimized the visual effects. "That's the plan yes." She sipped her coffee, felt the acid rumbling in her stomach. She did not add *and you're the only one who can do it without being logged* because she figured Steven ought to be well aware of what she was asking. He was the one who administered the whole database system. @@ -56,4 +56,62 @@ Chase assured her mother she would stay and visit, though she already knew she p ----- - +"So she just jumped out of your car and took off?" Elliot shook his head. The signal was slightly delayed, but Steven saw that he was going to drop his head in his hands and give one of his famously exaggerated sighs. + +Steven had been half sitting half leaning on the arm of Hiroshi's chair and craning his head down to the camera atop the monitor could see him and send both their heads flying down the wires, under the ocean and back up into Elliot's London flat where it was, Steven glanced at his watch and did a little math, well past four in the morning. At least it wasn't that late, but then again, Steven thought suddenly, imagine how much more of a clusterfuck this could become before that time in D.C. Lovely. + +His back hurt and Elliot's disapproval was expected so Steven saw no point in sitting through it. He stood up and paced behind Hiroshi who was exhorting Elliot to cut them some slack. Steven admired his roommate's ability to take no shit and wondered absently, and not for the first time, if he would get more respect had he too had sold his first company at the age of eighteen. Or for that matter, if he had just sold a company. Or even started one. + +"So what the hell did John do?" + +Steven glanced over at the arched doorway to the kitchen where John was leaning against the wall, arms crossed and brows furrowed. "I pulled back," he said drily, raising his voice to make sure that Hiroshi's Skype mic picked him up. + +"You mean you lost her?" + +John shook his head. "Yes asshole, I lost her." Look, why the fuck was I following around Steven's friend in the first place? That's the real question here. How the hell did we let you talk us into this crap? We had a good inside person who could help us, and now thanks to your strange desire to play cloak and dagger games we've spooked her to the point that if she ever does find out what's going on here she's sure as shit going to want nothing to do with us." + +Steven was pretty sure Elliot has missed about half of John's rant thanks to acoustics and microphone muting, but it appeared, when Steven glanced over at the monitor that enough of it had gone through to make it's point. he leaned over the top corner of Hiroshi's new Aeron chair, lifted from the now defunct internet startup that had taken care of his visa, paid his way from Japan, put him up in this apartment with Steven and then, about eight months later, imploded. Hiroshi didn't seem worried, in fact he seemed to love being unemployed and, as he pointed out whenever Steven asked if he felt cheated, he had a very nice chair. Steven stuck his head into the camera frame and scowled at Elliot, "Seriously, I look like the asshole here." + +"No shit you do." + +"Fuck off man, I don't care what you think of me, I don't care what anyone in Enigma thinks of me, Chase is my friend, you don't do this sort of the thing to friends." + +Elliot sighed again. "Well, I have good news gents. I'm coming to straighten all this out. I'm coming to America." + +Steven and Hiroshi exchanged a look that more or less said, *he's going to stay with you*. Elliot stared at the screen looking a touch hurt. "No room at the inn, is that the problem?" He clapped his hands in the mic, which produced a loud crunching sound in Jason's speakers. "Did I say anything about needing a place to stay you twats? Relax. I'm coming over for a Ruby conference, giving a talk actually," he paused as if waiting for someone to ask what it was about. No one did. "Anyway, I'll be in D.C. for four nights, two weeks from today actually." + +No one in Hiroshi's room said anything. + +"I think it'll be grand. Good to get over to the colonies every now and then." He leaned his face in closer to the camera and appeared to clicking around on his desktop. A moment later the background of his London flat was replaced by an image of the American flag. "It'll be good gents, first time we're all int eh same room. The brain trust here can really put its brains together and figure something out, maybe come up with something that will take this investigation a bit further than our esteemed steven_42 has managed to do thus far." + +The conversation had devolved to trading handle insults. Steven walked away from the camera and sat down on the leather couch that he and Hiroshi had gone in on back when there was money in the house to spare. He poked around on the coffee table, sifting through a few pizza boxes until he found the two they had ordered earlier. I pulled out the last slice of peperoni and ate even though we wasn't hungry. He half listened to Jason and Elliot wrapping up their call, but mainly he was thinking about Chase, which produced in him a feeling that thinking about Chase had never produced before, guilt. In the beginning it had seems so simple, when the started searching there had been very little to go on. They used the same search tools everyone used, but they came up largely empty so Steven started plugging it into public government databases, but again there were no significant hits. Then one day he had been sitting at work, watching Chase from across the room for the millionth time when he decided to try plugging the name into his own database. Nothing. Then he tried the DoD database, which technically he wasn't supposed to do. The DoD logged all its queries, even Steven's, but he decided no one would ever care. He barely looked at the log files for the systems he was supposed to maintain and he assumed that Walter TK probably didn't look very closely at his query logs either. After all the main point of a log was to have a record of what happened to the database in case something went wrong. It was pretty unlikely that anything was going to go wrong with a single search, so pretty unlikely that Walter would ever even notice that Steven had searched. He would see Steven logged in, but that wasn't unusual since the network Steven was in charge of was set up to connect to Walter's when it needed to. So Steven had just plugged in the name. + +The crust of a Papa Johns pizza was spongy, terrible thing that made Steven regret ever taking a bit of pizza in the frist place. He tossed it back into the box. The first bite of pizza tastes very differnt from the last bite his father used to say. He kicked at the pile of boxes suddenly, sending them flying up from the coffee table and onto the living room floor. What sort of people had obscene number of pizza boxes lying around their living room anyway? + +The flying pizza boxes drew John off the doorjam where he had been leaning ever since Hiroshi and Elliot connected almost a hour ago now. John sat down next to Steven, but didn't say anything. John was older than Steven, older than any of them, probably close to fifty Steven guessed, and John had been the marines for years. He didn't look like a nerd, and when they first met in person at a radio conference several years ago Steven hadn't liked him. John was old. He was divorced. He had kids. He was sociable, he liked to go out. He did not fit any of the stereotypes Steven believed were fitting of the sort of nerd that he could relate to. And yet, despite all that John was definitely a nerd. He had that intangible thing that drew him to other nerds and Steven could sense the same thing in John that he had found years earlier in Jason. He might not share Steven's social awkwardness and he, thankfully, lacked Jason's tactlessness, but John had the obsession and curiosity that Steven considered prerequisites for serious friendship and so, while it took longer, they had eventually become friends outside of Enigma as well as within it. + +Elliot Denning on the other hand was not a nerd. Nor was he something that Steven would ever call a friend. Elliot was an opportunist, as John had put it. He thinks there's something cool about nerds so he hangs around them Steven had told Hiroshi when he noticed Jason was spending more time Skyping Elliot that Steven considered healthy. He and John had staged an Elliot intervention of sorts, but in the end it was decided that since Elliot actually had a bit of money, or at at least claimed to, they should keep him around plus he was the one that noticed the transmission in the first place. Not that Steven or John or Jason wouldn't have eventually, but Elliot had actually found it. As he insisted on reminding them at least once a week in the chat room. Jason insisted that Steven and John simply "didn't get the British thing, you know, they're all a bit off over there. Autumn not Fall, that sort thing. It's just a different language is all." + +Now Steven knew why he instinctively hadn't liked Elliot from the first time he had encountered his handle (lionhearted, cringe-worthy even by Enigma standards), because Elliot convinced him to do things that were very bad ideas. What he should have done was what he initially planned to do -- tell Chase the story from the beginning, asked for her help and if she had said no, well, then there it was. But he had a feeling she would have said yes. Clearly she liked a mystery, that much was obvious to him now. But now he had to explain why he had had a hand in sending her messages via prostitute, following her around after work and generally freaking her out enough to make her, apparently, leave town for a few days. + +He wasn't looking forward to the conversation, but as he listened to Hiroshi and Elliot planning meetings around Elliot's conference Steven suddenly knew he had to tell her first thing tomorrow morning. It would be over the phone, which he didn't like, but it had to be done even if it wasn't the ideal way to do it. + +Ever since Chase had hurriedly gathered up her things and abruptly left work on a Tuesday afternoon she had been calling up Steven every morning and making him call in every favor he had with everyone he knew at the DoD. He was out of favors at this point and quite possibly out of friends as well, but he had managed to get her nearly thirty photos from service records, most of whom were not deceased which meant that he had absolutely no business asking for them. Nor did she. But he had done it because he knew he would have done just about anything Chase asked him to do. + +"Stop beating yourself up about it, it's my fault. I didn't know she'd be that aware." John had leaned over and was speaking softly. Steven nodded. + +"Most people, people that aren't that observant. Unless of course they're doing something wrong, then they look over their shoulder every two minutes..." + +"Well, we did sort of give her some confusing information and it's made her do somethings that she probably shouldn't have. So I guess she's one of those people now." + +John nodded. + +"And I made her that way..." + +John snorted. "You might be taking a bit much credit there kid." + +Steven felt himself blush. He didn't like it when John called him kid. + +"Come on Steven, I think you need to get out of here tonight. Let Hiroshi work out the details with Elliot and how about you and I go get a beer?" + +Steven didn't really want to get a beer. In fact he wanted to sit around feeling miserable about himself all night. Or even better go to bed. But it was Friday night. So he got up, threw on a nicer shirt and ducked out the door with John in tow, leaving Hiroshi and Elliot to scheme on their own. |