Resignations:
Six months after Wilphamas' collapse.
"Oh! I'm so glad to be saying this to you; you ghost obsessed fruitcake, I Quit!" the junior robotics technician smirked in front of him.
Vlad sat back and blinked at the young woman, than sighed signing the resignation form,
"Okay, let me just call my secretary in and she'll finish the paperwork While I write you a reference, Miss Singer was it?" Vlad said bored with the pretentious woman, so this was the thanks he got for hiring an out-of-work former college grad with a bad resume and evidence of a previous internship with a disbanded evil company that was deeply connected with bio-terrorism.
Vlad had never disillusioned himself; he knew he was a villainous, evil bastard, but even he had standards and genocide via zombies? That was something sick and twisted on completely new levels... still I that didn't stop him from hiring an obviously gifted young woman and paying her a table crumbs wage to 'compensate' for the bad air of her 'previous employment history'.
Really he was sort of glad that she would be gone, she was a liability simply through the fact that the IT department had reported that she had been receiving protected emails from researcher from a controversial pharmaceutical company until six months ago when the company collapsed and said researcher was arrested.
Frankly in his opinion her resignation was ideal, it meant he wouldn't have to fire her himself and possibly have to go through the horrible debacle of legal red tape of reputational racism… again, he thought with distaste about the courier with a previous record of petty work-place theft, his HR team really should have found out that information before he hired the guy.
**page**
Abigail whistled tunelessly as she cheerfully parked her car in the driveway and unlocked the door to the tiny apartment, her normal distain for her crappy basement apartment overshadowed by the knowledge that if the things that Frederic had planed went according to procedure she wouldn't have to live in these sub-standard conditions.
She felt a momentary pang of loneliness about the fact that Frederic wouldn't be helping her with this but put it out of her mind, she didn't know how or when but she was pretty sure one day she'd be able get him out of prison.
Clopping her way down the basement stairs she unlocked and entered her private domain smiled a greeting at the wall of shelves containing the hundreds of little mechanical toys, dolls and stuffed animals that lined them, ignoring with familiarity the way they all raised their arms to wave to her, but stopped to smiled proudly at the thousands of modified Furbies lining the floor and every other available surface in the flat; everyone of them trailing wires that connected to little robotic arms with spindly little needle sharp titanium fingers and legs with little claws that could dig deep into cement and all of them with small glowing blue chips inset in their chests.
**page**
Two days later
Valerie Grey yawned as she walked down the apartment's staircase to collect the daily newspaper, on the way she noticed the lady that lived in the basement flat carting boxes up the stairs and into the ground level enclosed garage.
"Hey Abby! You want a hand with that?" Valerie asked jogging her way down the last few stairs to catch the wobbling box on the top of the stack in the young woman's arms.
"Thanks Valerie" Abigail smiled as moving the box revealed her face, shifting the other boxes a little she reached a hand up and correct the thin stylish glasses she wore from where they were sliding down her nose.
"No problem, you going somewhere?" Valerie asked nodding toward the pile of boxes and bags sitting next to the door into the garage.
"Yeah... a... you could say he's a friend, his had some problems lately so I'm going to mind his house for him" she said thoughtfully, Valerie grinned nudging the woman lightly so as not to upset the boxes in both of their arms and replied.
"Ooh! He that guy you've been talking about of late?" Valerie winked and Abigail just laughed,
"Oh I wish!" she grinned, then regained her sombreness' "no he's just an old colleague from years ago, but as for the other guy, hey a girl can hope!" she giggled.
"Well you go girl!" Valerie told her and Abigail felt a momentary pang of guilt, here she was skipping town to leave innocents like Valerie who would have probably grown up to be a cop or a nurse and possibly saved lives while there she was... a pawn in a plan that would kill thousands... or more if everything went well, she felt that familiar welling of black bile in the back of her mind, but brushed it aside she couldn't pick-or-choose who lived and who died she just had to follow the plan.
'Nothing but a pawn, you are nothing but a pawn in the plan, nothing but a pawn, nothing but a pawn, this is not your fault just following orders, following orders...' she told herself but the words felt flat in her mind.
"Hey, you okay?" Valerie asked later as they loaded the last few bags into the backseat of Abigail's tiny hatchback.
"Yeah sure!" she forced a smile, but could tell Valerie didn't believe it but the girl shrugged and let it slid.
"So I'll see you later?" Abigail said as the girl agreed and waved she went on her way to do whatever she was doing before helping Abigail.
Suddenly alone, Abigail sighed, climbed into her tiny car and started the engine.
**page**
A few hours later she was driving down the interstate as on her radio the news anchorman started to report of a sudden emergency and multiple strange deaths and attacks happening around the lower-income apartments near downtown Amity Park.