Jack and Hiro have been at Ng's hideout for an hour, and for the past half of it the latter two have been working on the contents of the disc with Juanita. Because he is unable to help them in this task, he is exploring the hideout instead. It is part house, part storage warehouse, and part factory. It is also completely underground – there are no windows to the outside world. The door that he and Hiro came through, a cleverly concealed portal in an ostensibly abandoned smelting factory on the edge of the city, is locked to him, but under the circumstances it would not be prudent to go outside anyway. There are a few other people in the hideout, some maids and butlers in the house and a few maintenance workers and engineers in the storage areas and assembly plants, but they seem either too nervous or too engrossed in their tasks to talk to him and Jack, for his part, does not really want to talk to them. He needs time to adjust to the sheer strangeness of everything, and everyone, around him.
There is a small library in the living part of Ng's base and, after he has explored the rest of it, Jack decides to return there. Reading is one of the few things he can do to keep himself occupied at this point. He finds the corridor on which it is situated and starts looking for the door.
As he passes the archway that leads into the living room, however, he hears Y.T. call out "Hey there." He stops in his tracks and turns to face her.
She's sitting in an armchair almost directly across from the arch, removing what he recognizes as a pair of headphones from her ears. Her hoverboard, close at hand as ever, is leaning against the side of the chair. It, and she, look very much out of place in the elegantly decorated room.
Jack is thinking of simply returning her greeting and continuing on to the library, but it does not seem like the right thing to do. She, like him, has had a very traumatic day – probably more so for her – and has been left with nobody to talk to. He knows he is not the best person to offer her companionship or conversation, but at the moment he is the only one available to do so. In short, he feels sorry for her.
With that conclusion, he steps into the room and bows. She waves at a couch near her chair to indicate that he should sit down, so he moves to comply. As he gets closer he can hear the faint, tinny sound of the music she was listening to on her headphones – he's glad that it's so faint, because it sounds absolutely cacophonous. But as he sits down, she presses a switch on the small device to which the headphones are attached and the noise ceases.
Y.T. shifts in her chair to face him. "It's a pretty neat place, isn't it?" she asks.
It takes a moment before Jack realizes that she is referring to the hideout. "Yes, it is," is all he can say.
"But it sucks beings stuck in here, no matter how cool it is," she declares. Jack simply nods in agreement. Four hours ago he would have been shocked by such lack of decorum, but he has already gathered that Y.T. is never polite to anyone, even people she likes and respects.
"Do you have any idea as to when the others will be finished working on their project?" Jack asks.
Y.T.'s brow furrows as she thinks. "Probably not for a couple of days, even if they work nonstop. Which they probably will, or try to anyway." She sighs. "And until they're done, we'll just have to sit around and wait." She puts her elbows on the arm of the chair and props her head in her hands. "I hate just waiting. I wish I could go out."
He hopes that she does not intend to act on that wish. It would be imprudent, to say the least. "Perhaps 'just waiting' will do us both some good," Jack tells her. "We have had more than enough excitement today, and there will undoubtedly be more to come."
She blinks a few times as she considers this. "Yeah. I guess you're right." She lowers her eyes.
Neither of them says anything for a few seconds. Jack looks at her, trying to guess at her age – eighteen at the most, and probably not even that. How had she gotten herself involved in this? "When this is over," he finds himself asking, "What are you going to do?"
Y.T. looks up again, startled. "What do you mean, what am I going to do?"
"Aku's minions know that you are working against him. You will not be able to return to the life you had before, or to your family…"
Y.T. makes a rude noise. "I haven't had a family I could return to for a couple of years now."
Jack blinks. "I am sorry."
She raises an eyebrow at him. "For what?"
"Because you lost your family."
She glares. "I didn't say I lost them. Just that I can't return to them. It's complicated." From Y.T.'s tone of voice, Jack gets the impression that he has touched on a delicate subject. Then the glare fades. "Sorry," she says, and looks at the floor.
Jack feels that it would be a good idea to change topics. His eyes fall on her hoverboard. That should be a safe subject. "I have seen people make use of these devices before," he remarks, pointing to the hoverboard, "And I am curious as to how they function. Perhaps you could tell me?"
Y.T. brightens up. "Sure. Actually, I could do better. One of the storerooms here has a pretty high ceiling – I could give you flying lessons." She grins, more than a little mischievously.
Jack has to think about this offer for a few moments. He is actually curious as to how the hoverboard works, but that grin of hers…
Then he realizes that he is letting himself be intimidated by a teenage girl, and his sense of pride takes over. He stands up. "Yes, thank you. That sounds like an excellent idea."
~***~
Hiro pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and closes his eyes, then opens them again, peering at the text on the screen before him. Yet again, a solution fails to present itself. But he's not discouraged. Creativity and knowledge are important qualities in a hacker, but perhaps more important is a willingness to bang one's head against the wall for long periods in order to figure things out.
"So our original plan isn't going to work," Juanita says. "Just erasing their memory won't do any good, because they can just transmit clean code to them in a matter of minutes. That won't do us any good." She sighs. "There just has to be a way."
"We must come up with a different approach to the problem, then," Ng responds, stating the obvious as he often does. Hiro can't believe they're having this problem – a brilliant technical engineer, two first-class hackers and not a single idea among them.
"'Scuse me." The three of them whirl around at the sound of Y.T.'s voice from the office doorway. "Do you guys have any idea what time it is?"
"Six?" Hiro guesses.
Y.T. shakes her head . "Eight-thirty. Geez. Take a break and have some dinner or something."
Hiro looks at Juanita, who shrugs. "She's right. Maybe we just need to clear our heads for a while." She pats him on the shoulder. "We'll work on this some more later." She turns and walks for the door. Ng does the same, but Hiro isn't quite ready yet – he scrolls through the text on the screen, hoping to catch something between the lines.
Y.T. comes up and waves her hand in front of his face. "Come on. Don't make me drag you there."
Hiro sighs, stands up and shuts off the monitor, then walks with Y.T. to the door. "Well, we've had a fairly educational if unproductive few hours. What have you been doing?"
"Teaching Jack how to use a hoverboard," she says.
He puts on an expression of mock horror. "Uh-oh, we left you alone with him for all that time. I hope you didn't…" She grins slyly in response. Hiro can feel the bottom drop out of his stomach – he was only teasing her, but he never thought that she would really… "Please tell me you didn't," he says weakly.
She doubles over in a fit of laughter, and he realizes that she was just turning his joke around on him. "You are such a…" He doesn't have the words to complete the sentence.
It takes her a little while to calm down. "The look on your face was priceless!" she exclaims as she wipes the tears from her eyes. "No, I didn't. You really think that he'd let me?" She sighs, as if she wishes that he would, and they start walking again.
"I guess not," he says. They drop the conversation as they enter the dining room, where Jack is sitting at the table (though he rises to greet them), as are Juanita and Ng. Y.T. has obviously taken the liberty of getting dinner ready – or telling the right people to get dinner ready – because there is some bread and salad laid out on the table, as well as some place settings. Hiro realizes that he actually is hungry; like most people in his profession, he tends to forget food and sleep when he's working on a project.
He and Y.T. take their places at the table, and they start passing around the food. Hiro can't keep his mind off the problem he's been working on, even though he really doesn't want to think about it at the moment. He just knows he's missing something, one of those things that's just too big and obvious to be immediately apparent.
"How are your efforts progressing?" Jack asks him.
Hiro sighs. "Not the way we thought they would. But there's a way to get around the problem. We'll know it when we…" For some reason, the phrase causes several things to click at once. He stands up from the table. "I've got an idea."
Y.T. glares at him. "Don't even think about it until after dinner," she warns. But he's already heading for the door, and Juanita is getting up to follow him.