They'd fallen into a habit of playing paintball together a few times a month, much to the enjoyment of both. Worthy opponents were hard to find in Eureka since asthmatic unathletic nerd stereotypes were in fact sometimes accurate. And few could approach the level of combat training Jo and Taggart possessed. When they played Last Man Standing Jo as the decorated marksman was likely to win. But Taggart usually got his own back in Capture the Flag. The few times they had played as a team they had demolished the field so soundly, it seemed like poor sportsmanship to ruin the fun of others and they began to reserve private times on the paintball courses.
They had just finished another round when they got the alert from Carter and headed his way. Though not before a cheap shot from Tag. Before she opened the door to swing out of Taggart's ute when they arrived at the bunker, a chart laying on the dash in front of her caught her eye.
"Hey, what's this?" Jo recognized the map of the forest around them, but the cluster of symbols in yellow, concentrated in the area where they had spent the morning...
"Nothing" Taggart insisted, reaching to snatch the flimsy out of her hands but she easily blocked his grabs with her forearm. "Gotta go. Carter needs us."
"You designed a paintball battle plan" She had to smile. It was one of the cutest things she'd ever seen. Pretty well done too, it hadn't taken more than a second or two to figure out what she was looking at and how to decode his notations. His strategy was sound, if a little unconventional and a lot dirty.
"Give me that!" Tagg made another grab and almost had it, but Jo swept the battle plan out of reach and pinned his reaching arm down for a moment, giving him a frown "You know, you are in clear violation of the paintball rules of engagement!" he asserted, trying not to sound defensive.
"Me?" her eyebrows went up at that "You've got a regiment of splatter-bots ready to assault my rear flank."
"You'll know when I assault your rear flank." he returned, trying to keep up the bravado.
A moment later he felt Jo's eyes on him and it occurred to him how that sounded. He froze for a moment, then goggled silently, really not sure what to say to make the moment better or even marginally less awkward.
Lucky for him, they really didn't have time for Taggart to dig himself any deeper. Approaching the bunker and being rebuffed by SARAH worked as an effective distraction. Even more effective was the Sheriff, when they finally got him on the comm line, had answered strangely with a "false alarm" and "Josefina". Taggart could tell that threw Jo off her stride a bit and he wasn't too big a man to appreciate the playing field being even again.
"That's your name? Josefina?" Taggart asked as they climbed back out of the bunker. He smiled back at her but her face was stone. His smile dropped and he made a slight gesture of surrender. "And a very pretty name it is, too"
"Don't call me Josefina. Nobody calls me Josefina." she paused. Carter knew that. "I can't believe he called me Josefina"
"Oh, I heard" Tagg made for the ute only to have Jo halt him, her paintball gun held across his body.
"Something's wrong." She came to a dead stop, then turned back to the bunker.
Raising her gun she fired back at the bunker but the projectile splattered in a quickly-disappearing haze of pink paint against an unseen barrier. Taggart narrowed his eyes. That hadn't been there before. Obviously, as they had passed through it twice. Force field tech wasn't installed casually and left on a preset program. Someone had to activate the field behind them. He raised his own weapon and they both fired off several shots, testing the force field before them. Their eyes met when they finally lowered the guns.
Confusion was replaced by suspicion in their gazes. Carter sending them a 911, only to send them away. Refusing to see them and claiming to be alone when the bunker was surrounded by vehicles. Carter's demeanor overall had been weird even before he used the forbidden name. Now the bunker was suddenly even more impenetrable than before. Nothing was adding up here.
In Eureka math was life, and when things didn't add up things went very wrong. She couldn't shake the sense of eyes on them. Something beyond the passive scanners of SARAH. Was it human? Was it hostile?
They regrouped in his ute. Jo had tried calling Carter again with no response. Every person that Eureka usually turned to in an emergency seemed to be down in the bunker already, if their cars parked outside were any indication. And none of them were answering their PDAs. With that intellectual dream team inside, what problem could there possibly be that they couldn't overcome? Jo suddenly felt like she had too many questions and no one to give her answers.
Jo didn't know what the hell was going on, but she was damn sure going to find out.
"We need a way in." she said.