Hey friends! Welcome to chapter 2! Much love to makapedia, jaded_envy and piercelovewonton for their eyes on this chapter! Hope you enjoy! :)


It's been three days, and in theory, nothing has changed.

Soul wakes up late again, worms into the same pants, and drops his phone while putting on said pants. At work, his computer loads like molasses as he nurses a coffee cup, staring at the update bar through sleep-heavy eyes. He sits at the same desk, with the same task: wasting his life away, monitoring his newest recruit.

This is all well and good - except, of course, for the fact that everything has changed.

It's all so strange. He still looks at all of the same things every day, but it all feels unfamiliar. He still hasn't gotten the hang of which colors are which, though he can remember some better than others. Thanks to many frantic Google searches involving color wheels, he now knows that Black*Star's hair is blue, and that the posters in his room are almost all red and black - an enjoyable coincidence.

The second-biggest shock of that day (after the initial Big Shock) had been the realization that his hair is actually just white, which he'd initially found to be a betrayal, a waste of his newly acquired sight, but in the past couple of days, he'd come to find it sort of comforting. A dash of familiarity in the sea of colorful unknowns.

Surveillance, at least, had gone back to normal. Maka keeps her face hidden, and he watches her navigate Google Maps like a pro as she seeks out her next target. Now, however, he is all too aware of the greens of the parks and the blues of the water on his screen.

He is also aware that the sprinkles on Black*Star's donut are bright pink, which he knows because they are currently spilling onto his desk from where his boss leans over him.

"How's she doing?" Black*Star says, making zero effort to hide the obnoxious grin plastered on his face.

There'd been something of an unspoken agreement not to bring up the events of the past couple of days, but the accord is flimsy, and Soul has begun to feel Black*Star's gloating trickling in.

"After a guy in Alexandria today," Soul says cooly, ignoring Black*Star's tone. "Found him through tips on Reddit."

"She's a Redditor?" Black*Star asks.

"No. She's not," Soul says with a sigh. "She's not an anything."

"What do you mean? You've gotta have something on her, after watching her for a week-"

It's frustrating, what he's learned - and hasn't learned - in the past few days.

"I mean, I do," he says. "She's just… all over the place. She has no accounts and everything is proxied like crazy. And I can't figure out where she comes up with her information half the time, she's so fast. Seriously." He gestures to the top of her screen. "She has like, a million tabs open at once, and she uses them all."

"Must make it hard to get to know her," Black*Star says with a wink, and Soul scowls.

"I'm not trying to get to know her," Soul grumbles. "I'm trying to recruit her."

"I love this," Black*Star says, clutching his hands together, and Soul watches their fleetingly crafted ceasefire start to crumble. "A mystery woman. It's perfect for you."

Soul groans. "What the hell is that supposed-"

"Oh, come on, dude, you're like the close-est book ever," Black*Star chides. "All sulky and quiet all the time-"

"Better than obnoxious and loud-"

Black*Star confirms his point by letting out a barking laugh. "Look, dude, all I'm saying is, fate's on your side with this one, and-"

"Look," Soul says with a sigh. "Can you chill with that? I'm just… not bothered by this whole… color thing." He will not - cannot - say soulmate thing, for reasons he hasn't fully investigated.

"You're not bothered," Black*Star repeats. "...You're not even a little curious about her?" He holds his thumb and index finger up in the physical approximation of little and brings them towards Soul's face, which he swats away.

"No," he insists. "I need a job. That's all I care about."

"Oookay," Black*Star says with a shrug. "But if I were you, I'd be dying."

"Yeah, well." Soul shrugs back as he turns to his computer again. "It... just doesn't matter to me, okay?"

… In other news, Soul is a filthy liar. He's so curious about her that he can barely stand it.

Luckily, observation is his forte - gleaning lots of information from very little data is one of his talents, and that's what he's done, difficult as it has been. While her in-your-face coding style has all but stumped him, this tells him that she's insanely smart. And resourceful.

...And bullheaded. Definitely bullheaded. He knows that she's imaginative - her coding and her recipe searches have taught him that. She's also picky. She'll comb through a million butter chicken recipes until she finds the one she wants.

This whole thing is inspiring a change in him already, and he hates it. He'd actually looked forward to coming into work today, of all things. The little seed of curiosity she'd planted in him for the past week has blossomed overnight, and it thirsts for information. Suddenly every little thing she searches has become a window into her personality, another clue to figuring out who she might be.

He's never cared about a recruit before, never had any emotional connection to what the person on the other screen was doing. And it's a frustrating feeling, because for the first time, it leaves him feeling guilty about doing his goddamn job.

He clicks out of his surveillance window and stares up at the ceiling, the familiar unease that's been there for the past three days roiling in his gut, because it was not supposed to be like this.

At the root of the matter… he doesn't know her at all. And yet, it feels like he's wronging her, knowing that he can see color, and she can't.


Maka is not a morning person by any means, but if she happens to roll over just before sunrise, she makes an exception.

Pulling her eyes open is still a challenge, though, and the only thing that makes this morning slightly more bearable is Blair. Her cat had nuzzled into her neck around 4 in the morning, when it had finally cooled down enough to be in physical contact with another living being. With a yawn, Maka sits up, causing Blair to mewl her protest.

"Tea time, pretty girl," she offers as explanation, shrugging into her bathrobe. She picks up Blair with a hand and cradles her in her arm as she carries her into the kitchen.

It's still too hot for English breakfast, so she settles for an iced chai. Blair crawls up and perches on her shoulder as the tea steeps, licking at a paw. As they wait, Maka basks in the coolness of the tile on her feet, the birds chirping their daybreak calls outside. Once she adds ice to the tea, Blair jumps down to the floor to explore the apartment and Maka takes the tea out onto the back porch.

Porch is a loose term. There's only room for one-and-a-half people, though this is perhaps exacerbated by the myriad of plants she has out here - a mixture of her own purchases and gifts from Papa. Nestled in her menagerie, she turns her eyes toward the sky.

Maka still finds sunrises magical, even in black and white.

Shades of gray soar above her, spreading from the white semicircle of light that begins to build on the horizon. It's the closest thing to color she can imagine; every single shade of gray placed on display, a smattering of every hue she knows painted across the sky.

And like so many times before, she's hit with the bittersweetness of seeing something so beautiful, but knowing that she could be seeing it… better. More completely.

Blair eventually follows her out onto the porch, making a show of sniffling at every plant before sprawling out to soak up the coolness of the concrete.

"What do you think, Blair?" Maka asks, nudging her with a foot. "Think I'll ever get to see a real sunrise?"

Blair sniffs at her foot and sneezes, so the verdict must be inconclusive. Maka sighs as she pulls herself out of the chair, leaving the tea mug on the kitchen counter and heading to her bedroom to fetch her laptop.

Lying down on the couch with the computer in her lap, gray rays of sunlight starting to seep in through the windows, she pulls up Notepad and makes a little to-do list for herself for the day, thinking of yesterday's conversation with Liz. Of finding bigger things.

She makes enough to live on... most months, anyway. Although… she usually has to dig into her savings a bit. But rent isn't getting any cheaper in this part of D.C., and the notion of Papa helping pay her rent for these past couple of years weighs heavily on her conscience.

The idea of being reliant on someone else has always been a tough pill to swallow.

"Colors can wait," she mutters. "I'll focus on getting a job first."


"... A job, huh?" Soul murmurs as he pulls up his surveillance tab, the corner of his mouth pulling up wryly at the irony. He watches as she scans Monster for all manner of tech jobs, all of which she is vastly overqualified for, in his professional opinion. But the surveillance period still has three more days to go, and so he will wait, preparing for the appropriate moment.

It's a relief, but it's also daunting, the idea that he's going to start to interact with her. This is exacerbated by the fact that while he's already thinking up potential tests, he's finding them trickier to create than usual. Liz had been right, Maka's hacking is good, and there's very little he can think of testing her on that he hasn't already seen her do.

He is thus forced to do something he never does: he seeks out guidance from the big guns.

"Of course I'll help you out, lovebird," Black*Star crows, opening up his code client with what Soul can only describe as a very unfortunate level of enthusiasm.

"Do not call me that again, ever," Soul says flatly, but Black*Star has already moved on, fingers flying across the keyboard.

Throughout the day, Soul continues to monitor. The Alexandria guy has been put away, and Maka is taking a well-deserved break that involves looking up twenty different recipes for microwave mug cakes. He can almost pinpoint the moment that she decides that mug cakes are too hot for summer, because suddenly up come thirty recipes for fruit salad instead, punctuated by the occasional Amazon search for cat toys.

In the late afternoon, Soul pops over to check on Black*Star's test. It's his typical work: loads of pop-up windows and flashy colors - which, now that he can see them, are even more horrifying than he could've ever anticipated. Black*Star is the master of the distraction - finding things to trip people up while they try to rework the code, forcing people to sift through a lot of gibberish to get to a hidden message.

"I'm pullin' out all the bells and whistles on this one, newbie," Black*Star cackles up at him. "And hey - take your headphones out when you run this. I wanna hear when you solve it."

When he's finally done, Soul attempts the nigh impossible task of giving the test a trial run and keeping up with monitoring. With Maka's lightning fast tab-switching, he ultimately gives up on watching what she's doing to fully address his mock test. Despite its difficulty, it's actually sort of fun - though the pop-up windows are just as terrible and distracting as expected.

As he's nearing the end of the test, he hears the crackle of Maka's microphone coming on again, and he perks up with curiosity as her voice comes through the speakers.

"Hmm hmm hmm," she singsongs. "Okay, here we go. Grocery list. Milk, eggs, tofu-"

Somewhere in the back of his mind comes another mental endorsement - she's smart and practical, it says - but he doesn't think about it. He can tell she's multitasking as she compiles her list - he can hear her voice getting louder and softer as she moves around her apartment, yelling out random foods to add to her list. He chuckles as he returns his attention to the puzzle, tapping away at Black*Star's ridiculous code as she adds items for what sounds like, given her searches from the day before, a recipe for vegan red curry.

Just as she's finishing up the ingredients, her voice fades from Soul's focus as he realizes... sweet, he's figured it out.

With a victorious punch of the enter key, Soul lets out a muttered "yes" as a jubilant YAHOO! erupts from his speakers.

He starts to laugh, because it is pretty ridiculous, and he allows himself to feel exactly one second of triumph... before somehow, inexplicably, the echo of another YAHOO! crackles on Maka's end of the link.

Next to him, Black*Star jumps out of his chair, blue hair exploding over the top of the cubicle wall. Both of them listen in horror as another YAHOO! then echoes back through his speakers, and dread sinks through him at the sound of Black*Star's scream bouncing back and forth between the connections before it cuts itself off mid-word.

An equally stunned silence meets his ears on the other end of the connection, followed by footsteps and a whispered, "huh?"

Silently, he moves his mouse over to check on Resonance - the back door program that the FBI uses to monitor.

It's down.

The two of them say nothing as Maka's voice comes over the speakers again: "...End task. Voice to text. Command: Read grocery list."

A robotic voice responds, "Grocery list. Milk, eggs, tofu, red curry paste, onion, snap peas, red pepper, coconut oil, yahoo, yahoo, yahoo, yahoo-"

"Did you do this?!" Soul mouths at Black*Star as he pulls up the program, and with a few quick keystrokes, it's back up again, though he can find no reason why it should have gone down in the first place. It never has before.

Black*Star, still wide-eyed, shakes his head. To assuage himself, Soul puts in his headphones again and puts them on mute.

"What the fuck?!" he exclaims at Black*Star's furrowed eyebrows. But as he turns back to the computer, he realizes he's got bigger problems.

"Oh no," he says as Maka pulls up a program on her screen. "No, no, no no-"

He jumps into action, unblocking himself again and switching locations furiously on his proxy as Maka grabs hold of the brief connection they'd made and attempts to follow it back. A very real sensation of being physically chased envelops him, and he's literally panting as he jumps around through various locations before finally slamming the program back on.

He adds an extra firewall, even though he knows that if she can ever break through Resonance, a little insignificant firewall will not save him.

She loses him somewhere around Jakarta, and he breathes a sigh of relief, but it was too close a call.

He doesn't know her well yet, but he already knows that she's too smart to let this go.


Since the yahoo incident, Maka's been covering her tracks.

It's not that she hadn't covered them. She's careful to clear logs, to purge search histories. But she's always been the hacker, not the hackee, and now, as she mines her computer for clues on her visitor from this afternoon, she wonders if she'd gotten complacent.

The only clue left behind had been a link back to a program called Resonance - something she's never heard of and that a couple of hours of searching had not given her any results for. The person using it had clearly been behind proxies, but once she'd lost the trail, all trace of the intruder had vanished.

She'd taken a long break that afternoon and early evening to go grocery shopping, as planned. She even elected to pick up four Yoohoos to spite the disembodied voice in her grocery list. When she'd gotten home, she'd turned her computer upside down looking for suspicious code, or malware, but none of her searches have turned up any odd back doors, loggers, or anything else to speak of. Her little laptop is functioning as well as ever, and any record of Resonance had vanished without a trace.

And yet, there's still a warning in the back of her mind, telling her that something is off.

After another day or so of feeling this way, she knows that she has to mention it to someone. She makes a point to completely uninstall the microphone on her computer when she does.

"Hey guys," she says, tearing her eyes away from Google Maps. "Do... you ever feel like someone's watching you?"

Liz and Patty both look up from their laptops, surprise coloring their faces.

"...Whaddya mean?" Patty says, and despite the smile on her face, there's a thin line of concern between her eyebrows.

"Like a ghost?" Liz says, eyes widening.

"Is someone following you?" Patty says, and the look on her face is so utterly terrifying - like she'd kill someone with no reservations - that Maka's quick to put that train of thought to rest.

"No, no! Nothing like that," Maka says, and she goes on to explain what had happened the day before.

"...So, you think someone's watching you online," Liz says. "And... this person hasn't tried to… contact you at all?"

"No, no Nigerian Princes have emailed me or anything." Maka laughs. "It doesn't feel like a scam. Just like… someone's there."

"Maybe it's the FBI," Patty jokes, and Maka rolls her eyes. Liz doesn't laugh.

"Huh," Liz says, and there's something familiar about her expression, the same intensity that she'd shown when they'd talked about bigger things. "Well, that seems hella weird. I hope you figure it out."

"Yeah," Maka says. "In the meantime, I'll just focus on doing my job… I guess."

The three of them go back to work, but the knot in her chest doesn't feel any lighter.


In the middle of the night, Soul's phone rings, and the number is blocked.

The first time, he lets it ring into nothingness, and forgets about it - for a moment. And then it calls back, over and over, interrupting the very informative YouTube video on proxy tracing that Maka has been watching for the past 10 minutes.

Finally, despite every FBI-ingrained instinct telling him to leave it the hell alone, he grits his teeth and picks it up.

"... Hello?"

"Jelly bracelets are so cool. I have every color. At least the labels say I do."

"Wha…"

"Wes hid my studded belt again," the voice plows on. "I'm not going outside without it. He doesn't understand that I have a reputation to protect. I can't show up with checkered vans and no belt, it's called accessorizing-"

When realization hits him, it is heavy and instantaneous. "Liz-"

"I don't care if people say Club Penguin is lame, I've got almost two hundred thousand coins and more Puffles than anyone else in seventh grade-"

"What are you doing on my Livejournal, Liz."

"You deserve everything that's happening right now," she says flippantly. "I love this one - here you've just posted the entire lyrics to Amish Paradise, with 'enough said' at the bottom-"

"Excuse me, that is a Weird Al classic, and it does speak for itself- and also, what did I do?"

"Stop being a creep, Eater," she says, all joking instantly gone from her voice.

Silence falls between them. "... What?" he finally says.

"I don't know what you think you're doing over there, but I don't pass you people's names so that you can watch them through their webcams, okay? You're supposed to be recruiting, not peeping-"

"... What?!" he exclaims, totally affronted. "Not that it's your place to know anything about recruitment, Liz," he spits, "but this is routine. I'm not doing anything outside of protocol."

"I don't care about your stupid protocol," Liz says. "This is a special case, and you will not fuck around with her. I'm not playing around. If you don't contact her in the next day, you will never hear from me again."

It is a special case, though Liz does not know how true this is. But there are two things that he knows, in this moment. The first is that he needs Liz as an informant - she's got her hands in so many pots that she's a source he can't afford to lose. The second is a hunch, and he needs to confirm it.

"...You're friends with her, aren't you?" he says. "In real life. That's why you're fired up about this."

Her silence is all the confirmation he needs. "Twenty-four hours, Eater. Text me when you contact her."

The line goes dead, and as Soul crawls into bed, he begins to accept the reality that the surveillance period may be starting earlier than planned.

The next day, yet another thing happens to accelerate this.

"What is he doing here?!" Black*Star hisses as a familiar striped head of hair strides into their department. It's rare that The Kid would show up unannounced, and as Soul watches the stripes make their way around the cubicles, he scrunches up his face, hoping that they'll make their way past him-

"I need to speak with you both," The Kid's voice echoes from behind him, and Soul freezes, shoulders shooting up to his ears as he turns around.

"Sure thing, boss," Black*Star says, wheeling backwards into Soul's cubicle with another donut clutched between his sticky fingers. He sounds aloof, but there's a wheedly tone to his voice, no doubt a byproduct of their disastrous last meeting.

"I hear you're considering a new recruit," The Kid says, crossing his arms as he leans back against the wall.

"Sure are!" Black*Star says. "Soul did a great job with-"

"Yes, I've looked over your notes," The Kid says. "She certainly seems qualified. Did you happen to find anything on her in the database?"

For some reason, this feels like a trick question, so Soul opts for the truth.

"...No, actually," Soul says. "I did try."

"Did you ever think that maybe there was a good reason for that?" The Kid asks.

Soul and Black*Star regard him in silence. It's another type of question that Soul hates, because it's condescending, and because Soul never knows if he should actually respond to it. Luckily, The Kid saves him the trouble.

"As it turns out, her father is FBI," The Kid says, and Soul doesn't fully understand why there's dread sinking through his stomach, but it's there. "One of the higher-ups, I would guess, based on the length of the email chain I received this morning. Evidently, he's quite surprised at seeing her name in the pool. But he'd love for her to work here. He's been trying to get her to join forever."

"...So what does that mean?" Soul asks.

"It means a few things," The Kid says, standing up again. "First, it means that I will be assisting you with recruitment for the next little while."

Black*Star chokes on his donut in displeasure, but The Kid ignores him. "It also means that you will end the surveillance stage and start testing, active immediately."

This, at the very least, is a stroke of luck, given Liz's ultimatum the night before. "Understood," Soul says, and The Kid nods at him.

"Hey, uh, boss?" Black*Star says as The Kid turns to go. "Who's her dad?"

"His code name is Deathscythe," The Kid says. Instantly, Soul can see Black*Star's gaze burning into him out of the corner of his eye. "Anyway. I'll be back tomorrow to check on your progress. Have a pleasant evening."

"... What is it?" Soul says after The Kid walks away. Black*Star swivels around to face him with a gravely amused expression.

"You are soooo screwed, newbie," he says, taking a moment to swallow down a giant gulp of donut. "I know about Deathscythe and his daughter. He's… intense about her."

"So what?" Soul says. "He's not gonna come around here-"

"All I'm saying is, you'd better keep your true colors under lock and key, my dude. Because daddy's gonna freak if he knows."

Soul stares at the ceiling, white and grey flecks in the tile reminding him of the life he once knew, bringing him back to simpler times.

"...I feel like I'm gonna lose my job no matter what I do," Soul mutters, and Black*Star claps him on the back sympathetically.


See you: in two weeks! If you're enjoying, please feel free to drop me a line. :) Thanks so much for being here!