AN: A couple of days late ... sorry! We've been busy bees.
Enjoy!
Chapter 4: Double Oh Shite
09:00 hours, February 25th
Location: Vauxhall, London
"You look better," Swan observes as she enters the room, placing a cup of tea in front of Cullen.
He eyes it warily before leaning over and scrutinising its contents. "What's this?" he asks, sniffing it, looking disgusted.
"Green tea," Swan answers lightly, her smile growing as Cullen's eyes widen. "S'good for you."
"It could cure cancer and I still wouldn't drink it. It's green!"
"No shit."
He ignores her and the bogie-coloured tea and busies himself with his phone and laptop instead.
"What's new?" she asks, standing behind him, looking over his shoulder.
"IP address hits show that the main grammar Nazis are different from the conspiracy nuts. At least, we're going to treat them as such until we have evidence otherwise." Placing his phone in his pocket, he clicks over to another page on his laptop and points to the screen. "Conspiracy nuts are located all over but must communicate in some way. Just gotta find how …"
"They're a … group?"
He nods, reaching for his tea but changing his mind, groaning when he remembers his cup is filled with shitty herbal tea.
"And," he continues, changing the tab on his laptop, "we've got some reviews on that story."
"Yeah?" Swan asks, sitting in the seat next to him and leaning over eagerly to read.
Soon, she's scowling. "Picking up on the grammatical errors. How original."
"You're forgetting that was the point," Cullen says, reaching out and patting her hand patronisingly. She turns her head over her shoulder and glares.
"Well, it was! Just look at it as a positive. Once your second story posts, chances are our conspiracy theorists will come out to play."
Swan brushes him off by changing focus. Cullen notices she does this quite a bit.
"How's the blog?" she asks.
"Meh."
"That good?"
"I need more content."
"So we need to start posting the second story?" she asks.
"Yeah, that would definitely give me something else to post about on the blog and hopefully generate some traffic."
"Okay, I just need to tidy it up a little."
"I'll go … throw this shite out the window," Cullen says, motioning towards his green tea. Swan doesn't argue, she knew he wouldn't drink it.
11:00 hours, February 25th
Location: Vauxhall, London
"Okay, I've posted it."
Cullen nods, his attention on his phone, his blog apparently forgotten as he immersed himself in …
"What are you even doing?"
He shakes his head and shrugs. "Nothin'."
He's lying. She knows he is, but before she can call him out on it, he throws his phone across the room in anger.
"Motherfuckin' crock of shite!"
"Whoa, what?" Swan asks, confused and worried, looking between Cullen and his discarded phone at the other side of the room. "The fuck?"
"Two days of my life … Two whole days I'll never get back!"
Slowly, she stands and moves to retrieve his phone. It's fine—no damage. Turning it in her palm, the screen lights up, and she studies it for a second, bursting into loud laughter when she realises what he's been reading.
"Oh … no," she whispers. "You poor, poor soul."
"Don't … just don't."
"Why didn't you read a few reviews before you got started?"
"I didn't want any spoilers," he whines, rubbing his face with his hands, looking utterly devastated.
"It's common knowledge this story was abandoned."
"Clearly fucking not."
"Still good though, huh?" she teases. "I read it last week."
"Is it? Fuck. What a let-down."
"It's not marked as complete—that should have been your first warning."
He sits forward, looking confused. "Marked complete?"
"Yeah." Swan nods. "You know, it's how people know whether or not stories are finished."
"Why didn't you tell me that before?"
"I did! It's on a flash card! I printed out a screenshot and circled it."
His lips purse, and he looks sufficiently chastised. "Shite."
Swan hums, returning his phone to him, chuckling when he scowls at the last chapter of A May To December Romance as it taunts him from his screen. The joke's on him.
13:00 hours, February 25th
Location: Vauxhall, London
"You're still pissed off," Swan observes, trying hard not to laugh.
Cullen doesn't answer as he types, not wanting to give her the satisfaction, but the force in which his fingers hit the keys tells Swan all she needs to know.
"If I make a story recommendation, will you cheer up a bit?" she asks, her voice full of mirth, which only deepens Cullen's scowl.
He's intrigued though, and he hates that he is. But he doesn't need Swan for this; he's found a group on Facebook with thousands of recommendations. Currently, he's trying not to post, fighting his newly discovered inner angst-whore and the urge to beg for angst-filled fics to keep him awake at night.
It used to be work that kept him awake through the night, now it's fucking fanfiction. Though, he guesses that still counts as work. Kind of. Yeah, it's … work.
At least they've made some leeway today. They've discovered that the conspiracy reviews are two different people from the same town … probably school kids who've watched way too many James Bond films and think they know about this shite. Still, they need enough evidence before they turn up on their doorsteps and scare the shite out of them.
He's looking forward to that part.
Agent Double-oh-seven shades of shite as their acne-prone faces open the door to Cullen. He smiles, imagining it.
The international security threat at this point? Zero, if you ask Cullen and Swan, but they need to get to the bottom of it all anyway … just in case.
"Okay, that's chapter one of the second story … posted," Swan announces, clicking the return key enthusiastically.
Cullen nods, bringing it up on his own computer, copying the link and adding it to the blog post he's currently writing.
"I've scheduled this blog post to go live in two hours," Cullen says, stretching his arms high above his head.
18:00 hours, February 25th
Location: Vauxhall, London
"New guest review," Cullen announces, leaning forward closer to his laptop. "New IP hit."
"Address?"
He nods. "Still Birmingham. I'll print it all out."
"What does it say?" Swan asks.
Cullen laughs, trying to read it aloud, struggling for breath. "It's a warning … for other readers not to log in." He takes a deep breath to calm himself. "Both of these newcomers sound like professional writers who've been …" More deep breaths, like he's in labour. Bella laughs at his watering eyes as he continues to quote from the review, laughing hysterically. "Training in the art of flipping the script … reminiscent of MI6 counterintelligence programmes like … propaganda dissemination … this site is helping them collect your information."
"They have no idea," Bella says through a laugh, her cheeks hurting under the strain of their shared humour over the situation.
"I really fucking want to reply."
"You'll get your moment."
"I'm so ready for it."
"Me too," she agrees, huffing a long breath, rubbing her tired eyes.
20:00 hours, February 25th
Location: Vauxhall, London
"Well, at least Carlisle's happy with our progress," Swan says as they leave his office.
It's a relief, for both of them. They're now sure that there's no real threat behind the allegations of cybercrime through the median of fanfiction, but they still need to gather all the data they can and pay their little perpetrators a visit. For that, there's still a bit of work ahead of them. If Cullen can get them to come forward and talk, work his way in, and find out why they're doing what they're doing, it'll give them all the information they need to figure out if the people leaving the reviews are harmless kids having a laugh, or actual conspiracy nuts who need help.
"Drink?" Cullen asks, as they lock up.
"Huh?"
"It's early." He shrugs. "Pub?"
Swan's surprised, but … a drink sounds good. It's been a long week, and the pub sounds exactly like the right kind of way to end it.
AN: Thanks to May and Ciara for pre-reading, and Sally for making this readable.
And THANK YOU for reading! Your reviews make us laugh.