by Palladian
Lex nodded, intrigued. “So, you can speak to them with your mind?”
“As far as I can tell.”
“That must be amazingly useful. Have you always been able to do it?”
Riss shrugged. “I don't remember being able when I was really little, but I got into computers at a young age, maybe eight or ten. It was around then that I figured out that I didn't need a keyboard to tell a computer what to do.”
Lex nodded, thinking. “That should probably help a lot in this job. Have you used your abilities to try to help you catalog what's on the network here?”
“Yes, but the problem is that if I'm not sure where the computer is, or what type it is, like in a network, I can’t effectively give it commands or get information. We've tried some experiments like that, and the results have always been random, as far as what I can do.”
Lex nodded in understanding, but wondered why Riss didn’t seem able to meet her eyes at that moment. “I still think it could help, along with some tools, maybe. I tried to figure out the best way to tackle this, and thought maybe we should work on the catalog of resources first, and then talk about what your plan is for securing the computers. I can do the write up and you can verify it. When we're both satisfied, we can turn it in. What do you think?”
Riss nodded. “Sounds good to me. Do you want to get started with the inventory?”
“Sure, but don't you want to get some breakfast first?”
“Not really, I'll get something later.”
Lex shrugged, but began by showing Riss the basic data she'd put together for all the computers in the room. By using Riss' skills, they quickly gathered the rest of the needed information about the twenty-three computers in her room. Once Lex had noted everything down, she turned back to Riss.
“Do you know if we have a computer room here?”
“It's right next door,” Riss replied. “I actually have the permissions to go in. Do you want to go there next?”
Lex nodded in reply so they went next door, being allowed in after Riss hit the access panel near the door with her ID. After getting inside Lex just stood for a moment, staring at the sight. Racks upon racks of servers had been jammed into the room, leaving just enough room for one person to squeeze past and through them. Multi-colored wires came from seemingly every direction, creating a tangle like spaghetti behind the machines and on the floors. The power and network ports all looked overloaded, and the room seemed uncomfortably warm compared to the hallway or Riss’ and Lex's rooms. The hum of working computers seemed to drown out all other sounds. Lex finally looked back at Riss with wide eyes and watched the other woman shake her head.
“I know,” Riss said with a shade of disgust in her voice. “I've told them this room needs a lot more attention than it gets, but they don't listen to me.”
“Is there even someone who administers this?” Lex asked, her hand gesture taking the whole server room mess in.
With a shrug Riss said, “Supposedly there's someone who watches it remotely, and occasionally I've seen someone come in here and mess around with it, but I think it was set up and then basically left alone ever since, aside from the occasional software updates or addition of new gear.”
Lex sighed. “I guess we have our work cut out for us here. I think we should probably make recommendations about having someone administer this place at least part time, do some maintenance, and make some upgrades to this room so it can really handle this many servers.”
“Never hurts to ask, I guess. Maybe they'll take your word for it.”
“Why wouldn’t they listen to your recommendation? You're the computer expert; my knowledge of the subject really isn't all that much. I'm just good at figuring things out and turning them into some kind of order, that's all,” Lex replied with a shrug.
Riss gave her an odd look for a long moment, which caused Lex to meet Riss’ eyes, wondering at the distrust there. Finally, Riss raised an eyebrow with an almost invisible smile. “I guess the others aren't much for gossiping,” she eventually said. “Ask Casey about me sometime. She should be able to fill you in.”
Lex looked down at her notebook, twisted in her hands. “Casey says that I should always ask people about themselves.”
“Tell her I said it's OK if she talks to you about it,” Riss replied, looking at Lex with an unreadable expression and then turned to examine the servers, running her hands over their faces.
Lex swallowed. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry or upset you.”
“I'm not upset,” Riss said with a sigh. “It's just something that's difficult to talk about. Anyway, forget about it for now. Let's get cracking on these.”
“OK,” Lex agreed, turning back to her notebook. They worked for a while, making good progress, but after a few hours Lex had to call a halt.
“I'm sorry, but I've got to eat. Aren't you hungry?”
“I guess,” Riss replied, looking unconvinced.
Lex gave her an odd look, wondering how the woman could work for hours on coffee alone. “But you didn't even have any breakfast! Come on, let's get something to eat now. We can finish this later.”
Again, Riss shrugged but followed Lex as she went downstairs to the kitchen. The two of them poked around in the freezer to find something to eat and eventually located some frozen dinners that didn't look too unpalatable. As they sat to wait for them to heat, Lex wondered aloud why it was that even though a number of people lived in the building, they barely ever ran into one another.
“Pretty simple,” Riss replied. “Serena and I keep later hours than you and Casey, so I see her more than anyone else if I need to leave my room. Joan’s been out on maneuvers with her old unit for the past couple of days, I think, but she's usually out at some of the local bases anyway, even when she's in town. Lily’s only ever here if we're going out on a job. They have her working on some other project in the area during the day, and though she has a room, she doesn't even live here.”
Lex stared down at the kitchen island for a moment, lost in thought before she responded. “So what usually happens when we're sent out on an assignment as a team?”
“It doesn't happen all that often, but when it does, we don't usually stick together. Joan tries to tell everyone what to do but no one really listens. Instead, we all go off and do our own thing.”
Lex felt puzzled. “When I was reading my contract, it talked about regular team exercises and training. Don't we do things like that?”
Riss looked back at her blankly. “I've been here about a year and a half, and we've never done anything like that in all that time.”
Lex gaze fell to the island again, her fingers digging into the smooth surface, this time feeling even more confused. Why isn't the team training that’s supposed to be happening going on, she wondered? She rested her chin in her hands while she leaned her elbows on the kitchen island, thinking that it didn't make any sense.
After a brief dinner where Lex wondered if someone forgot that only the outside box was supposed to be made of cardboard, Riss and Lex continued cataloging the machines in the impromptu server room, Lex stopping halfway through to get her laptop to transfer some of the information she’d gotten by that point. It was late when they finished. Lex had started to yawn every few minutes, but she wanted to keep going until they’d finished cataloging the room.
“OK,” Lex said, tiredly turning to Riss, “I'll finish writing this up tomorrow and store it somewhere we both have access to so that you can change or add stuff if you need to. Tell me where I should put it.”
After Riss finished explaining the network setup for the building and making sure Lex was connected properly, she added, “After this we'll still have to identify and catalog all the other machines in the building.”
Lex groaned, thinking of the machines she'd seen on the medical floor, the screens in the conference room, and any individual computers she or the others there had. The list seemed suddenly limitless.
“All right, let's figure out how to do
it tomorrow afternoon. I won't be able to work late, but we should be able to put together a plan of action. OK?”
Riss nodded. “Sleep well, Lex.”
The next morning Lex spent mostly buried in her strategy books, along with time for a brief workout. She’d found herself beginning to use the ideas in the books on a daily basis, carefully considering the situations she was presented with, the resources she had available, and the outcomes she wanted to achieve. Lex had started making notes on the paper she eventually planned to present, and one thing she noted that day stated that the team should actually have scheduled practice exercises together instead of just talking about it, and she jotted down a few ideas as to what those might consist of. In the afternoon she and Riss discussed how to best identify all of the computers in use in the building, eventually settling on a several-weeks-long, floor-by-floor inventory with sniffer tools to assist. Lex agreed to put in the request for whatever tools Riss researched and found to be most useful.
On Monday morning, Lex greeted Casey at breakfast and asked how her visit with her cousins had gone. After sipping English breakfast tea while listening to Casey recount how much fun they’d had at local monuments and attractions, Lex waited until Casey fell silent for a few minutes, then tentatively cleared her throat, her fingers silently tapping a nervous tattoo on the rough underside of the kitchen island.
“Casey, what do you think about Riss?”
Casey gave her a look with narrowed eyes, and then tilted her head to the side. “I think she seems like a good person, but I don't know; I think there are a lot of things she feels like she can't talk to any of us about.”
Lex's gaze flashed to catch Casey's, intensely meeting those dark blue eyes for a moment before looking back down at the kitchen island. “Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that,” she said quietly, knowing they were being listened in on and hoping Casey got her meaning, that they should talk outside these walls at some point.
As she looked back up, Casey nodded almost imperceptibly. Message received. “I forgot to ask you, do you want to go out this coming weekend? Just the two of us, to this little place I went to with my cousins. I think you’ll like it.”
“OK,” Lex agreed, nodding, “I think Serena wanted to do something this weekend, too, so we'll have to figure it all out, but I do want to try that place with you.”
Casey nodded in reply, returning Lex's earlier intense eye contact, and the two of them finished the rest of their breakfast in near silence, Lex leaving Casey with a smile to go downstairs and start her morning workout with Mr. Chen.
Between her work with Mr. Chen and the various weird medical tests being run on her, the week flew by. Ever since their discussion the previous week, Lex had felt her study with Mr. Chen settling into a comfortable partnership where she seemed to be learning more and much faster than ever before. Also, as odd as it felt to think of a martial arts instructor this way, Lex felt cared for when they worked together in a way she never had with any other teacher.
One particular thing had worried her that week, however. The doctors had insisted on injecting her with radioactive glucose that they said would help mark different areas of her brain during a set of brain function scans. As they explained it to Lex, she thought it sounded dangerous and probably unnecessary, but they eventually talked her into it. Fortunately it had been an afternoon test, because Lex had ended up feeling headachy and nauseous once the doctors had finished with her. When she’d complained, they’d given her some medication that had made her feel so out of it that she’d simply stumbled upstairs and fallen into bed, nearly waking up late the following day.
Lex and Casey ended up going out on Friday night. Lex felt surprised when they didn't take a cab, but Casey explained, “This is a crappy neighborhood, but there are some bars not far from here anyway. We're going to one of the ones that's not too bad and close enough that we can walk. Don't worry, no one will bother us. Some people did before they got to know me, but no one in this neighborhood even approaches me now.”
Lex nodded, keeping her attention on their surroundings, and then asked, “So, am I finally going to be able to meet your mysterious boyfriend tonight?”
Casey looked down at her, a broad grin on her face. “You sure are. I told him to come out and meet us at the place we’re headed for. He should be there in about a half hour, which will give us some time to talk about other stuff beforehand.”
“Yeah, I—” Lex broke off for a moment, looking at the sidewalk to think about how she should put her question, “I was talking with Riss, and she made a comment that the people we work for would probably trust my opinion over hers. When I asked her why, since she’s the computer expert, she told me to ask you. So, I'm asking.”
Casey glanced at Lex with a frown as they both rounded the corner, moving from a block of burnt-out or boarded-up warehouses and vacant lots to a block that at least looked partially inhabited, judging by the window glass and locks on some of the warehouse gates. Lex could even see some bars and shops up ahead in the next block that appeared to be in operation. “I can only tell you what I know because nobody’s mentioned anything else to me about Riss,” Casey finally said. “I'd been with the group several months when Riss joined, though I don’t know if joined is the right word.”
Lex looked at her with some confusion. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t think she did it by choice.” The two of them exchanged a glance, then Casey continued. “From what I can tell, she tried to leave several times during her first month here. Finally, she stopped trying, but I’m not sure why. One of the times she attempted to go, I happened to walk in on her slipping out a window. I guess she expected me to stop her, but since I figured it wasn’t any of my business, I didn’t. She never talked about it to anyone that I know of, so I’m not sure what was really going on, but she did say one thing as she was leaving that day. She thanked me and told me, ‘I don’t know if it makes any difference to you, but I didn’t do it. I’ll pay you back for this someday.’”
Lex and Casey just looked at each other for a moment, and then they continued walking to a bar a few doors down. As the two walked inside, the room quieted briefly, then people began talking again, loudly. Glancing around a bit served to remind Lex of the set of a western film, making the unpolished wooden floor, big bar, and plain wooden chairs and tables seem almost familiar. The room looked to be full of mostly working-class people, almost all men. Lex thought it seemed as if they knew Casey, however, because most of them seemed to go out of their way not to look at her. Casey went to an unoccupied corner of the bar and ordered a beer and a tonic water and lime, and then steered Lex to an empty table in the corner before handing her the drink. She bent close to Lex in order to be heard over the general noise.
“It’s not fancy, but it’s somewhere to go where everyone isn’t too nosy, or too cool.”
They both took a sip of their drinks, Lex enjoying the limey fizz that tickled her nose, and then she looked back at Casey after a moment. “So, what do you make of Riss? What do you think is going on?”
Casey shrugged. “I don't know. From the fact that she's tried to get out a number of times, I'd almost say she's being kept here against her will, but I don't even know how anyone could do that for so long, and why she wouldn’t complain to the police. And when she said that she didn't do it…I mean, the whole thing is just too weird. Did she make some kind of mistake? Did someone do something and blame it on her?”
Lex looked back at Casey, knowing her puzzlement showed in her face. “I’m not sure. It seemed like when we talked that she wanted me to know something, but she also seemed to feel she couldn't talk to me. Maybe it's because of all the monitoring or maybe she just feels she can’t trust me.”
The two of them fell silent for a while, Casey taking another drink of beer and Lex looking at the tabletop and thinking about their teammate. After a few minutes she looked back up, realizing they couldn’t solve this puzzle tonight but feeling determin
ed to give it some thought later. To shake off her worry and curiosity, she turned to Casey with a smile.
“All right, enough of that for now. So tell me about this guy before he shows up! What’s his name?”
“It’s Lou, Louis Wingfield,” Casey replied, suddenly looking uncharacteristically shy, but smiling nonetheless.
“Does he have any family? Where does he come from?” Lex settled a little further into her chair, getting comfortable in anticipation of the upcoming story.
“Well, he grew up with his grandmother and younger brother on a reservation in upstate New York, not far from Lake Erie. His grandmother passed on and he doesn’t know where his brother is these days, so I don’t know if he has any family left,” Casey replied, frowning a little.
Lex’s eyes widened. “Did he say what happened to his mom and dad?”
Casey shrugged. “No one seems to know for sure. All he knows is his father and his mother left him and his little brother with their grandmother when Lou was five and his brother was two.”
Sighing, Lex tried to absorb all of that while she thought about how to move on to a happier topic. Finally, she asked, “How did you two meet?”
Casey gave a big, infectious grin that seemed to come spontaneously. “We actually met at headquarters, believe it or not.”
Lex raised her eyebrows in surprise. “How's that?”
Before Casey could answer, a man appeared behind her. Lex's mind categorized him as large rather than tall due to the fact that it looked like a wall had suddenly appeared behind her friend, a wall that seemed muscular and had dressed in blue jeans and worn work boots, a green flannel shirt and a leather jacket. Lex tipped her head straight back until she saw a face at the top with a dark bronze complexion, brown eyes and long, straight black hair pulled back into a braid. He grinned at her, and Casey’s smile had widened by the time Lex turned back to her friend.
“Actually,” the man said, sitting down at the table next to Casey, “I was working there on a construction project, doing some remodeling on the main floors.”