A/N:
*arrives over a year late with a mug full of chamomile tea* Hey kids, hows it going?
I'm beta-less this time around. After starting this over 2883298 times, I didn't want to bother my chrome cinnamon roll too shiny for this world editor so please forgive me for any mess ups. Grammar has never my strong suit and I am the typoooo queeen.
With that being said any constructive criticism would be appreciated. I just write for hours to stop myself from playing video games for hours but I'd like to improve.
Darcy Lewis' best ideas came to her in the shower. As she rinsed out her conditioner she wondered how hard it would be to slip a few squirts of Nair into her now ex-boss' bottle of Just for Men. His bottle of Balding Baseball Manager Brown with a Hint of Gray was easy to find in the employee bathroom cabinet, and Darcy was sure that some of her former co-workers would be willing to assist her.
After three years of bar tending at the Maroon Marlin Bar & Grill, she'd been fired by her royal douche of a manager. He was the sixth general manager in two years to run the small family owned bar, and somehow, someway, the most successful with a 14% profit increase within the last month alone. Not only was he a money making jerk, he was the prodigal son of the elderly owners, and therefore untouchable. So the firing of bespectacled brunette bartender #2 wasn't even something they'd even think about as long as they had money in their pockets and their precious baby boy back.
To add insult to injury, Darcy slipped in the puddle in front of the bar's entrance. Fuming about her unceremonious dismissal over her "unprofessional snark" led to Darcy forgetting about the moat that formed every time it rained. Lord Douchington could squeeze every last red cent out of a Tequila Sunrise but he couldn't figure out how to call someone to fix the busted storm drain before spring hit Philadelphia.
Even with all of her pain and embarrassment, the night wasn't completely terrible. Ian, a pre-law student she'd met in a theatre class, witnessed the whole thing while he was out with a group of friends. He'd offered both legal advice and a ride to her apartment, and she gladly accepted both. She and Ian had agreed that going after the old coots wouldn't be worth it, with what little mint and damp mints they had to spare, but her ex-manager was fair game.
Darcy groaned a she wrapped a towel around her body, thinking for a moment that she'd rather bust the bastard's car windows than sue him; it'd be quicker and cheaper at any rate. As she wiped down her steamed up mirror, she frowned at the deep blue and purple bruises that bloomed along her right arm. And if the low throbs of pain were anything to go by, Darcy was certain that her hip and thigh looked just as colorful. The ache along her right side gained a rhythm strong and steady enough to make Darcy forgo her nightly lotion ritual, choosing to instead shuffle to the kitchen for water.
She stopped mid-stride as she walked past her kitchenette. A yellow envelope in the center of her dark wood table caught her eye. Darcy had received notifications from the lobby desk about mail last week, but she didn't recall picking up any mail earlier that day. She didn't open unmarked white envelopes that were being left for her because no one could convince her that poisoned letters would ever go out of style. If anyone wanted to in touch Darcy badly, they wouldn't be able to do it through snail mail.
She carefully grasped the bottom end of the envelope and shook out a blue floppy disk and a white business card. The floppy disk was set aside as she looked over the card.
Here's a nibble for the insatiable.
There was nothing else on the otherwise pristine business card, not even a crease.
"So Patrick Bateman is sending me presents now?" Darcy grunted as she dug through boxes in her closet full of electronics. It had been 7 years, if that, since she'd even used a computer with a floppy disk drive.
After the mercifully brief search for a compatible laptop, Darcy popped in the floppy disk. The disk's contents looked harmless, initially. There weren't any "I kno wat u did last smmer" or "r these ur nudes?" messages done up in old Word Art like she'd been expecting.
There were, however, scanned images of memos and letters in English and other languages discussing accidents and assassinations. She recognized some of the dates and details but Darcy was so tired that she couldn't focus on them, until she saw her parent's autopsy reports.
Mark Lewis and Charlotte Webber-Lewis, Indianapolis Coroner's Report, August, 8th 1993.
She had no idea how long she stared at the screen until she remembered to breathe again. An old AIM notification popped up in the bottom right corner of her screen.
Would you like to know more, Darcy?
"Who are you and where did you get all of this information?" She wrote back, her trembling fingers slowing down her response time.
What if I told you that your grandfather's rants had some merit?
Darcy dragged her hands over her face as she tried to think if anything in particular had any merit. When Grandpa Rhett was mad, he was mad about everything. If he dropped a pan he was mad about that and the lack of fish biting at the lake, Lucky the dog pissing on everything in the garage, Darcy's attitude, the poor weather, and virtually anything else that came to his mind. Hurricane Rhett, as her cousins called him, ranted on about everything and as far he was concerned, it all had merit.
I think you know what this means, Darcy.
She nodded her head no as the pencil animation popped up on her screen.
Darcy, we are both victims of a conspiracy that's unfortunately far larger than just the two of us. I regrettably cannot give you any more information until you answer my question.
Would you like to know more?
"Yes," she typed.
There was a vague feeling of déjà vu as she accepted the offer. The flashcards from Sunday school of Satan offering Eve fruit from the tree of knowledge came to mind, as did the question Darcy had posed after the lesson. Who was more dangerous: the one who offered knowledge or the nature of the knowledge?
I am glad that you've chosen to learn more. Tomorrow you will receive a package and a letter with your instructions. Do not open the package until after you have completed the last step listed in the instructions.
Mere moments after she read the last word, the chat cleared itself out and closed down.
There had been no answer when she'd asked who she was speaking to, so for all she knew she had been talking to the Ghost of Jason Bourne. And after a night like tonight, she wouldn't be surprised if a turtle neck wearing Matt Damon stalked her around Philly for the rest of the week.
Drained and on edge, a bleary eyed and red nosed Darcy shut down her devices and retreated into her room with an aspirin and her glass of water. Her last thoughts before falling asleep were of the parents she had mournfully few memories of.
That next morning the sweet temptation of aspirin, fresh coffee and an ice pack were the only things that could lure Darcy out of her bed. Her second cup of Joe was enough of a kick to get her back to the old laptop with the floppy disk some time before noon. She combed through what she hadn't gotten to yesterday, all while avoiding the autopsy reports. Most of it concerned material that would be footnote material in history books but there were a few bigger things that were surprising to see. No matter how different the documents were, they were all connected by two factors: illegal activities and Pierce International Services and Solutions.
In the United States there were products by four companies that anyone not living in abject poverty could find in their household: Stark Industries, Pierce International Services and Solutions, Hammer Dynamics and Advanced Idea Mechanics aka A.I.M.
If you were born after 1970 in North America and did not live an area where technology was frowned upon, then you'd probably been in at least one heated debate about which company was superior: Pierce or Stark. If you popped up into existence sometime after 1998, the debate was more like: Pierce vs Stark with some interference from Hammer. And if your young, unfortunate soul was tethered to this realm sometime after 2001, the debate turned into a melee with Pierce vs Hammer vs Stark vs AIM.
Stark reigned supreme over the other three in both worth and popularity but Pierce International Services and Solution was nothing to sneeze at. Darcy was confident that the company had a small army of lawyers on retainer that could make sure she'd be living off the grid for the rest of her life if anything from that floppy disk leaked to the public.
This wasn't reputation ruining stuff but if the dates and names on the memos were correct, there would be calls for investigations into why CEOs and CFOs were being informed of incidents and accidents days and even weeks before they actually occurred. The fact that there hadn't been anything in the news about these documents led Darcy to suspect that whoever sent her weren't involved with the media or law enforcement.
No matter what document she looked through, or how she looked at the situation, she still couldn't figure out why anyone had sent this to her. She was tech savvy and thanks to undergrad, the bees knees at research, but she couldn't find an angle to work with. And she definitely didn't see how her parent's deaths had anything to with the other documents, unless the mysterious AOL Satan was suggesting that they were somehow connected to Pierce International Services and Solutions. If AOL Satan was implying what she thought he was implying, she'd need to follow through with this.
After a quick lunch Darcy threw on a blue sweatshirt and jogging pants and rode the elevator down to the lobby floor of her apartment. She thought she was alone in the room until a wad of paper jostled her messy bun.
"Didn't know you were still in high school, Jack," Darcy said as she pulled out her mail.
Darcy liked Jack the most of all her neighbors. Tammy two doors down made the best blondies and Martin to the right of her was the quietest neighbor one could hope for but Jack was good people. He'd been a regular at the Maroon Marlin for some time before she'd recognized him as her neighbor. Jack didn't tell her in fear of her easing up on her pour with the Johnny Walker Blue he'd get every Friday.
"Anyone other than me could have done that, you know," he said as he unlocked his mailbox.
"Well you're the only other person in here so you're suspect number one. Plus you reek on Thursdays, dude. It's like just rolled around in a pile of manure and death, I can smell you from around the corner." She fanned her hand in front of her face. Jack's hair was combed back and looked less greasy than typical but his chin was scraggly, the bags under his eyes were practically bruises, and his jeans and t-shirt were dingy. "Why do you look like you're auditioning for a post-apocalyptic reboot of Tool Time?"
He rolled his eyes. "I literally just got off work, smart ass," he said as he tucked his package underneath his arm. "Speaking of work, are you on tonight?"
"Dickus Maximus gave me and my unprofessional attitude a final thumbs down." She grabbed her items and locked the mailbox. "I'll be on my couch watching Netflix tonight."
She explained what happened as they rode the elevator up to their floor.
"So are you gonna do the lawsuit?" He asked as they walked out of the elevator.
"No, it's not worth it. Plus I've got this family thing to take care of and it looks like it'll be keeping me busy for a while," she said as she flipped through her key ring.
"Oh uh, everything alright?"
"Not sure." She shrugged.
Darcy had a feeling that within the next couple of days her life would change forever, for better or worse.
