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Lori Disney? (Not Likely)

Season 4

Prologue

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It is early-January on the Trinity College campus, and it shows in how abandoned the place looks. In one of the campuses' office buildings is a conference room in disarray- papers pinned to every one of the walls and the table top is not even visible amongst all the scattered files. Each displays the face of a professor along with a whole host of personal information, lie detector data, and photos of them about campus.

In the middle of this mess sits Commander Lucas, boots on the table as usual as he peruses the file of Professor Collins. He has his usual smug look bout him, but there is clearly a lot of frustration under the surface just waiting to burst out.

A woman in a lab coat enters and hands him a lie detector test. "He came out clean," she reports as he looks it over.

Commander Lucas looks it over and then proceeds to rise and flip the table in anger, paper fluttering everywhere. The woman doesn't even flinch. "We know we're in the right place!" he shouts before dialing it back. "There are more than enough occurrences they've all noticed- being attacked by monsters, lions on campus, even the President having his car hijacked. What are we missing?!"

"He was the last one we had to interview," the woman reminds him. "We're out of options now."

"I'm well aware," Lucas reminds her through gritted teeth. At that moment, another woman enters in a lab coat, knuckles rapping on the door. "This had better be good," he growls.

"The tech team found something, sir." She hands him a folder that he immediately starts flipping through. "As you know, we've been digging around the security videos."

"Yes, all the pertinent ones had seamlessly been replaced to show exactly what we weren't looking for," Lucas comments, anger suddenly faded.

The woman smiles proudly as the first exits, useless now. "Well, they've been doing traces for weeks. And we admit whoever did that knew what they were doing- we're talking man on the inside and on the outside. But they managed to pinpoint the source and are working on pulling the videos out without being detected now. It should be less than fifteen minutes at this point."

Lucas smiles, an eerie and unnatural sight. "About time!"

"There's one other thing. This handiwork more often than not was coming from the dorms, though with the wireless here we're having difficulty pinpointing which ones."

A thought suddenly hits Lucas. "It's a student," he whispers. Another worker runs in, this one a dark man in a lab coat. "You've got it?" He nods. "Well, let's get going then." He starts for the door with the man behind him. "And get those files out of my sight!" The first starts scrambling to pick everything up. Lucas walks down a narrow staircase to the security office where a team is waiting. They have outfitted the monitors with all sorts of computers and devices. "What have we got?"

A man smiles over his shoulder from fiddling with the knobs. "You're really going to like this. We found the mother lode." He pulls up a multitude of videos. "Just… watch."

Lucas stands hand on his chin as several videos play out on the screen before him. They depict a group of people in all sorts of strange situations through the eyes of a security camera. A girl with a brown bob and pink sneakers always seems to find herself facing down the impossible with a book under her arm and flashlight in her hand. She is shot, attacked by a leopard, goes for a ride in a tow truck, is thrown into walls in the theater, almost falls off buildings, and even faces down a lion. There are people with her. A young kid with freckles who never seems to leave her side. A girl with a skirt and headband. A boy in a tie. A boy with a backpack over his shoulders. A short girl always in sweats of some kind. Another version of herself that soon switches with a girl in glasses. The images go flying by and finally stop with an image of the whole group facing down Hades himself- the girl unconscious on the floor after a steep drop.

Lucas claps, drawing everyone's attention. "Now that… was riveting." He moves in closer. "I want to know who each and every single one of these kids are… now!" he barks, finger on top of the girl with the book. "Especially her!"

The worker who led them there pulls seven images on different screens with profiles next to each one. "Taken care of. We pulled their records as well." He gestures to the frozen security video before gesturing to their individual pictures. "The two on the landing with the ice are Hannah Frost and Benjamin Prescott. Sophomore and Senior. She's a bit of a computer prodigy and he works in security. They're the ones who hid all of this."

Another worker points to the kid. "Prescott has a step-brother named Charles- the one here." She then points to the boy with a backpack protecting her and the terrified girl in sweats by the stairs. "We also have Michael Harms and Kaitlin Klingbeil." She then points to the girl in glasses kicking the God. "We're assuming the second Lori then transformed into this, which is the DIZ v2.9 program fulfilling its objective." Lucas nods, his eyes still fixed on the girl with the book.

"But onto the one you're pointing to sir. She's Hannah Frost's roommate and obviously their leader. That's Lori Fitzgerald."

"Lori Fitzgerald," Lucas repeats venom in his voice. "So this is the girl who opened the book."

"But the best part is we did background checks," the female worker cuts in. "And guess what? Lori Fitzgerald used to go to school with Jeremy Stevens before she moved to Canada. In fact, she dated him for a time."

Lucas frowns. "So that's the connection? He gave the book to his ex-girlfriend? That can't be it. It's far too anticlimactic. Keep digging," he orders.

"Yes sir," everyone replies, returning to their work.

"And the instant she gets back on campus I want to talk to her. We have some things we need to work out."

A worker turns. "What about the others? They seem to be in this pretty deep."

Lucas shrugs. "Ah, they're disposable. We'll just have to hope their fearless leader picks the easy way… for all their sakes." His eyes lock on the image of this Lori Fitzgerald, clearly getting ready for the battle about to come.