She didn't know how long she stood there, she was just frozen and suddenly it was morning. Her alarm was going off and Ruby was standing over her patting her face because she had passed out on the floor. "Emma? Emma. Dude…" Emma opened her eyes, and saw Ruby's green eyes staring back at her with concern. "Dude, you... you okay?"
"Ruby?"
"Yeah, man, yeah, it's me."
Emma sat up running her fingers through her curly blonde hair. "What happened?"
"I was going to ask you the same question." Ruby helped her friend stand up. "You okay?"
"Did you spike the punch?" Emma asked, feeling a massive headache coming on.
Ruby sighed and stepped toward the door once she saw that Emma was steady. "Something goes wrong, you blame me. After all these years, where's the trust?" Emma looked at her friend skeptically. "Yes, I did."
Emma laughed and turned Ruby around. "Get out, I need a shower."
"Yep, Hurry." Ruby said and headed for the living room.
Emma undressed and turned on her shower speaker, she needed to know what traffic was going to do. Traffic in LA was always a nightmare. "...The 101 is clear at Universal City. Watch out for delays near Burbank Airport. Security checking all vehicles. We got a sigalert on the I-605, San Gabriel River Freeway, Ut South Bound. A fender bender on the I-5, Santa Ana freeway, north bound, from 91 freeway to the I-"
Flashes in her vision of the streets mentioned made her go blind. Her headache intensified and she held on to the wall for balance. "Fuck… what was that?" She said, blinking the water and visions out of her eyes.
She looked around and saw the time on the display of the Shower speaker. "Shit." she said again as she didn't have time to dwell on what had just happened. She stepped out of the shower and dressed as fast as possible. Putting minimal effort is how she liked it. She blowdried her hair. Her luscious curls dried perfectly. That was the only part of her she loved. She was almost vain about her perfect hair.
A little deodorant, a bit of lipgloss and Mascara and she was out of the door with her Khakis and polos off to the apple store. Their Apple store had a mobile unit, which provided vehicles for the supervisor to take those housecalls.
Emma rushe to the white sedan parked in her space at her building. The apple Logo on a sticker on the back window. That is the only sign that this is a company car.
Ruby was rushing behind Emma, talking about a mile a minute about what? Emma didn't know. "... So this morning I'm playing xbox. And I'm like, dude, just let me get the sniper rifle, I'll take care of it, the guy won't give me the sniper rifle. I made him eat a frag grenade."
"Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby." Emma stated holding her pained head. "As much as I would love to talk video games with you right now, I've got a really splitting headache and I…" She paused and reached into her pocket and handed the brunette the keys. "In fact, you know what? Can you do me a favor? Do you mind driving?"
Ruby's eyes widened and a smile lit up her features. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." She paused in front of the driver side window. "Are you... are you, look, are you being serious? You're going to let me drive?"
Emma furrowed her brows. "It's a company car, Ruby. It's not that big a deal."
"It's not just a company car, okay? A hoopty's a hoopty, homegirl. I mean, this baby's sitting on chrome. Or... plastic."
Emma rolled her eyes. " Do me a favor and stay off the 5, okay? Because the cops are in a phased deployment." Emma trailed off, surprised at her knowledge . Ruby only looks at her confused.
"Okay. Thanks for the tip, ponch." She said and hurried to get behind the wheel before Emma changed her mind.
Emma walked in and prepared her Geniuses for the day with a morning meeting as she was the supervisor for that team. Corporate had sent down a missive that morning that a virus had actually infiltrated a Mac's encryption and there is a virus going around.
"Fellow geniuses, today is going to be a very bad day. We've got a new computer virus on our hands. They're calling this one the Irene Demova virus."
Aladdin laughed softly, covering his face.
Emma smirked and nodded at her creepy little underling. "Yes, yes, it's named after the Serbian porn star. Lonely dude call volume will be high." She took a deep breath and looked around. "This is a nasty one, kids. It's a computer killer. Last night, one of the displayMacbook Airs was fried when someone... " She trailed off with an eye roll and Ruby stopped straightening out the floor to look at the geniuses.
A slight blush coming to her cheeks. Emma smirked and continued her speech. "decided to enter ms. Demova's website." The blonde supervisor began typing on a trade-in version of the macbook air. She turned to Dorothy then and her other two Geniuses. "Disclaimer, if you are sensitive to porn content please, close your eyes." She finished typing the web address and said. "This is what happens."
The website loaded and a barrage of videos began to pop and flood the screen. Jumbled sounds from Ms. Demova moaning and saying "Food is sexy? Am I sexy? Am I... sexy…" and then the macbook pretty much implodes and the system is completely shut down. Emma demonstrated resetting the SMC and attempting to restart. It wouldn't not even on safe mode. It was completely fried.
The entire herd of geniuses turned to face Ruby.
Ruby sighed. "Sorry, Emma. She drives me crazy. But that's love."
Emma rolled her eyes. Ruby was also convinced that she was in love with Kathryn. She was girl-crazy, and lonely. Why? Emma couldn't guess because Ruby was gorgeous.
"Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll please just ignore dirty aunty Ruby, I think that everything…"
Killian had his phone open to a news site, he was supposed to be listening, but his attention was riveted on the traffic disturbance. And so was Emma. "to arrive in Los Angeles later today to deliver a speech before the pacific security league tomorrow evening... "
The visions begin to flash right in front of her eyes again. She tries to continue what she is trying to say. "Will be... "
"the general has drawn fire for his criticism... " the device keeps saying as Killian notices Emma's distraction. And attempts to silence it.
"Normal." She finishes and takes the phone from Killian
"…General Stanfield, the former allied commander of nato... " comes from the device as she continues to stare.
"He's already here." She whispered. "He landed last night."
"Who's already here, Ems?" Dorothy asked, looking at her boss with a furrowed brow.
"Trying to stop tomorrow night's speech from happening... " came from the device and Emma finally disconnected.
"I don't know." Emma said, shaking her head to clear it.
******************888888888********************
Inside the decimated Data Vault, An NSA General stands faced off with CIA Agent Humbert. General Mills looked over at the tall blond man, "Daniel Larkin was CIA, Graham. He was one of your agents."
"And it was NSA's job to find him and to question him, not to kill him." He stated, then turned to the silent blonde that completed the trio. "Thanks to Rambo here, we've got nothing."
The blonde shook her head. "No, you got a dead CIA agent. It's a gold star in my book."
The older woman purses her lips and stands stiffly looking at the other two. "If this gets out…"
"It won't." Blaize stated.
"Nobody asked you." Humbart sneered at the cocky blonde.
"Actually," General Mills interjected, "they did. Major Blaize is heading up this investigation."
"So what was Daniel after, hmm?" The blonde turned blue eyes to her general. "What did this computer do?"
"Well, this computer did everything." Mills started, "After 9/11, the NSA and the CIA were told to play nice; share their intel. This is how we did it."
"Every scrap of data we had went into this computer." Humbert added. "It mined for patterns in the chatter. Saw things we didn't."
"The data was encrypted into thousands of images." The older woman said. "Whoever received Larkin's e-mail got all of our secrets." She moved closer to the younger blonde. "Find those secrets, Blaize."
Mal pulled out the phone Daniel had in his hand when he died. He showed the two heads of agencies. "I found this on Larkin. Hard drive is fried. We picked up a trace signature."
"Where?" General Mills asked intrigued.
"Los Angeles." She said with a smirk, then shrugged. "Which is perfect. I've been feeling a little pasty."
**************888888888888888*********************
The Apple store is always full. But the early appointments since the pandemic seemed to keep the numbers low. Ruby walked up to her Best friend who happened to be going over appointments on her iPad, and the front door opened. Ruby looked out and her breath caught as a beautiful brunette walked into the Apple store. Beautiful brown eyes peeking over a whine red mask. She was wearing a silk shirt of the same color with a black pencil skirt.
"Stop the presses! Who is that?" Ruby breathed out.
Emma was distracted, singing mr. Postman to her ipad, and didn't hear Ruby exhale.
"You better wait a minute, wait a minute… " she was singing when she heard Ruby's throat clear.
"I hope I'm not interrupting." The woman stated, making Emma almost drop the ipad in her hand.
"No. Not at all." She said… "That's... it's stuck in my head."
The brunette smiles, at least Emma thought so since her eyes crinkled at ths side. " Nothing wrong with the classics."
Emma was lost in the woman's eyes. She was tongue tied and Ruby noticed. Her friend didn't just go for any warm body, so this was a very big deal. "Hi. I'm Ruby. This is, uh, this is Emma." The green eyed brunette stated noticing the other woman's interest in her Emma.
"I didn't think people still named their kids Emma," The woman stated and flickered her eyes over the other girl. "Or Ruby, for that matter."
"My parents are sadists, and carnival freaks found her in a dumpster." Emma stated wanting to make the woman laugh.
"But they raised me as one of their own." Ruby stated not really trying to get between whatever was happening between the other two.
"How can I help you... ?" Emma said, pausing for the woman to fill in the blank.
"Regina."
Emma smiled behind her mask. "Regina. Did you have an appointment?"
"Uh, No… I- i'm new to the area and My iphone just kind of… got disabled. And I- should I go? It's just there is no way for me to check for an appointment."
Emma looked down at the screen on the apple logo. "Oh, yeah… um we need an appointment for the genius bar, but I had a cancellation so… I can just take this out back a moment?" She walked away and to the shop at the back. She restored the device using the Mac out back and came back out to the woman who was looking around at all the devices. " Here you go, good as new. All you have to do is sign in to your apple ID and there should be no problem."
Regina smiled down at the device and stated "Wow! You geeks are good."
Emma corrected. "Geniuses. I would say geniuses probably more…"
"It's no big deal." Ruby stated.
"You know, yeah." Emma stammered, hoping for a save "I mean, apple genius, Genius Bar…"
Before Regina could say anything, Emma's appointment arrived. A dad frantically comes up to them. His ballerina daughter trailing behind him. "Excuse me. I am sorry. I have an emergency. I don't know what I did wrong, but I shot the entire recital, but, um, now it... now it won't play back."
Emma blinks out of her stupor looking at Regina apologetically. Since her problem was fixed she didn't see any reason why she shouldn't turn her attention to the frantic parent. "Okay. We'll just take a look and… I hear the music, you weren't pointing at the stage."
"But…" He said and looked at the darkness of the video as the camera was not pointing at the stage but somewhere above.
"Oh, boy." Ruby murmured.
"Right. Yes." Emma stated. "At least you got the sound?"
The man groaned,"Oh, no. Her mom's going to kill me."
Emma nodded because she certainly would have. " Lets go to the wall okay?" She glanced at the intrigued Regina and apologized again. "I'm so sorry. "
Emma walked away leading the customer and his daughter towards the wood paneled wall at the back of the store, she pulled out her phone and played the song on a homepod so that it would produce stereo sound . Emma nodded, it isn't the recital but mom will be able to see something. "Okay. Are you ready?"
The little girl stood in front of the wall then frowned a little. Emma furrowed her brow and came closer to the little girl and got down to her level. "What's wrong?"
"I'm usually in the back row."
Emma tilted her head as if this was the most concerning thing there was. "Why?"
"I'm too tall." she said and looked down at the floor. "I block the other ballerinas."
Emma pursed her lips and leaned closer to the girl. "Can I tell you a secret? But you can't tell the other girls." The little girl nodded. "Real ballerinas are tall."
The little girl smiled brilliantly and her posture improved. She performs the piece with confidence and poise frankly better than she had on stage. Regina watched the interaction and made up her mind about Emma at that moment.
Emma looked back at the Genius desk, and Regina was still standing there. She smiled at her Emma could tell, so she began to move toward her. Before she could get back to the desk, Leroy stepped up to her with his stupid grumpy face blocking her progress.
"Emma."
"Hi, Leroy." Emma said looking over at the little girl and her dad. "Uh, look, we'll be back up and running in five minutes."
"Five minutes?" Leroy said incredulously, "Do you know what five minutes means in apple dollars?"
"I didn't realize we had our own currency." Emma mumbled. "Look, I'm sorry about all the commotion."
"We are not floor employees anymore, Emma!" he said looking around as he was the floor supervisor. "We are leaders, Apple leaders. And you wonder why Gepetto wants me for assistant manager."
"There's an open position?" Emma stated surprised. "Gepetto didn't tell me about that."
Leroy rolled his eyes. "And why should he? He knows you won't leave the comfort of the Bar." he walked away leaving Emma with the new information about the position. She turned back toward Regina, but she was gone. And Emma was fully disappointed." Ruby walked back to the genius bar with a perceivable grin on her face behind the mask. She had a card in her hand.
"Emma, dude, she left you her card. " Ruby said, flipping said piece of paper on her fingers. Emma came closer to her friend and snached the card from her. It read "Regina Mills" then a phone number and email address. This was too good to be true. "But, what if this is just like… I mean she can't possibly know I am queer…" she mumbled to the card and Ruby laughed and walked away.
"Sure she does, I told her." Ruby said heading to the sales floor to talk to a new customer.
****************** 8888888888888888888****************
After a long day of work, Emma and ruby walk into the courtyard of Emma's Echo Park home. Ruby excitedly discussing the card from this afternoon. "Ems, Why wouldn't you call this girl?"
Emma shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. Did you see her?"
Ruby nodded. "Yes. Oh, man, yes." Ruby moaned, "That's why I'm going to repeat the question. Why wouldn't you call this girl?"
"Because I live on planet earth, Ruby." Emma paused and looked at her friend. "Why are you following me home? "
Ruby hedged an answer. "Aw, come... hey. We're buddies. We're going to go do friend things," Ruby stated and at Emma's skeptical look she continued. "and... I need to use your computer because mine's still acting up on me."
Emma smirked, "Irene Demova."
" Ah! So beautiful and so... deadly." Ruby stated.
The two of them paused thinking about the woman's videos and sighed. "Yeah."
From inside the apartment a person dressed in all black is rushing trying to get Emma's desktop Mac Pro from her house. Almost made it out but the door to the apartment opened. The person clothed as a ninja froze in their tracks as the lights flickered on.
"You know, you gotta understand. This is what I've been telling people for I don't know how long…" Emma was saying and the two of them froze, not believing the ninja in the middle of their living room. Finally Emma noticed her expensive Mac Pro in that ninja's hand, and complained with a groan. " Please, not the computer."
"Ha!" the ninja shouted, putting the computer down and reaching for objects on the shelf. It was as if they weren't seeking to hurt the men. The ninja just wanted the computer. They could very easily disarm or subdue the men without hurting them so they began to throw pottery from the shelf behind them.
"Come on, Emma! Do something!" Ruby said, as she deflected and caught a couple of the objects thrown at them. Though Emma received injuries from the deflection.
Emma staggered forward to try to take her Mac back. "Give me the..." Using a new tactic seeing as how Ruby's reflexes were a lot faster than they thought. The ninja toss the computer knowing that that will distract the owner of the device.
Emma, as expected, reached out to grab the device, and the ninja then kicked her, knocking her down onto the floor. The ninja caught the computer and gently placed it on a shelf behind them.
"That's my friend!" Ruby shouted, stepping in front of them, trying to defend her friend. That was when the ninja pulled out the nunchucks and Ruby did not know how to defend herself from those. She raised her hands and froze. "Okay, look, he's not that good of a friend."
The ninja knocked her back and Ruby landed on top of her friend keeping both women pinned to the floor. But before the ninja I could turn to pick up the computer tower, the shelf beneath it fell to the ground completely destroying the device.
Unwilling to waste any more time, the ninja ran out of the apartment leaving the two women in heaps on the floor. Emma looked over at her destroyed Mac and nearly cried. "Didn't you hang that shelf?" Emma moaned.
In the car, just outside the building, the ninja removed the mask covering her face. She huffed in frustration at her failure. She shook out her dark brown hair, "Damn it!" she said and started the Car. It was Regina.
.
The next morning, Emma and her genius team looked at the remains of her Mac Pro. Aladdin picked up a peace and frowned. "Nah, I've been through it. It's dead. It's totally fried. This hard drive was... murdered."
Emma frowned, the hard drive shoudld have been fine, the casing was done it didn't mean her stuff had to be gone too. Unless that virus Daniel had sent killed her computer. "Bastard," she whispered.
"What if you were the unwitting target of a ninja vendetta, and he returns tonight to strangle you with his nunchucks?" Killian stated.
Emma blinked at the guy. "That's super, Jones. Thanks for thinking outside the box on that one." She sighed, shaking her head. "And here I thought I couldn't get any more freaked out. I'm going to go buy some new locks next door at Large Mart." Emma said and walked out of the Apple store. She needed the distraction. Her Mac had set her back over 5 grand, and that was with her discount. It would take her more than a year to save up for another one.
She entered the Large Mart, searching for an associate to help her. It was taking much too long, and she wasn't surprised when there was so much frustration about their customer service from customers that wandered over her way after attempting to buy one of the Apple Devices from there.
Finally he spotted a man looking at some cutters in an isle. "Oh, thank God." she went over to the lurking man "Excuse me, sir. Do you know where they sell the... " When his eyes met hers, the visions began to com and she immediately knew who he was.
":What do you want?" the man stated, and Emma finally unfroze.
"Um... No. Sorry." she said and began to walk away. "Sorry. Nothing…. Nothing at all. Just... I was, uh…" she looked around and pretended to find what she wa looking for. "Look at that."
Emma turned and continued walking as calmly as possible. Her nerves were fraying but she tried to keep them in. Then she heard his footsteps behind her and she took off running, nearly bowling over an actual employee. "Oh, God! Thank god! Listen!" She said, taking the woman by the shoulders. "There's a guy here, and he's trying to do something. I don't know. You have to call the cops, security, the guy at the front who's checking receipts."
"What kind of guy?" The associate asked, looking at this crazy blonde girl.
"Scary, kind of a terminator vibe."
The African American associate quirks a brow, wondering if this was yet another Karen situation. "Stubble. Red hair. Black leather jacket?" she asked pointedly, ensuring it wasn't some black person she was describing.
"Yes!" Emma stated.
The associate rolled her eyes, that guy also didn't look like he was doing anything but shopping. "Like that guy?" Emma turned and there he was, smiling at the checkout person. The threat immediately gone from his stance. He just didn't look scary anymore. But Emma knew better. She knew exactly who he wasl.
She let go of the lady and decided to forgo the Locks for now. She needed to figure out what was happening with her brain. Why did she know all of these things?
From a black sedan, in the parking lot of the shopping center, Regina watches as Emma made her way back into the Apple store. She was on the phone with Humberdt "I have eyes on him right now. Like I said, the computer was destroyed. Beyond repair."
"Okay. It's done." Her boss said on the other end of the call. "I want you in the air in an hour. "
Regina protested. "But what if he has an external drive? A backup?"
"It's over, Regina." The man said. "The NSA is stepping in. Daniel was CIA, he was our guy, and he burned us. Blaize is on her way out. You're being recalled."
She scoffed, "Because of Blaize? She's a burnout."
"She's a killer, Regina. Old school." He paused and changed the inflection in his voice. "I want you to listen to me. Whatever happened with Daniel, you couldn't have known. You couldn't have stopped."
She shook her head, She could have, she should have been able to see the signs. They were so close… "But I can fix it. If there's a backup, I'll find it. Just give me 12 hours."
Regina hung up the phone, bound and determined to get her hands on something. Anything. And Emma's crush on her was just the ticket.