A/N: Welcome to the Saturday drop! Nothing much to report here, except to look out for a new chapter of Bittersweet Future this weekend. There should also be a Lore Post on my blog today to go with the new chapter today.
Summary:
Valerie investigates the rumors at her school, and goes to make a withdrawal from the Masters' Bank...
Warning:
Emotional manipulation(Typical Vlad behavior), injection(brief mention), general discussion of medical procedures.
Chapter Title:
Inquiry: Search for truth, information, or knowledge; examination of facts or principles; research; investigation
Eleemosynary: Given in charity or alms; having the nature of alms ... (obsolete) A beggar
7:34am; October 22nd, 2005; Casper High
The window on the second floor creaked open, frigid early morning air leaking into the girl's bathroom with a flourish of tiny snowflakes. They landed on the faded linoleum, already melting in the warmer temperatures. Valerie slipped inside, sliding the window shut with a click, and tiptoeing around the droplets of water near the window's edge. She peered out of the door into the hall, taking in the darkened array of lockers and posters lining the walls, before recalling the rest of her suit. So far, so good. She didn't make a habit of sneaking into school on the weekends. There wasn't much interesting to be found there, and trespassing would earn her detention or worse.
However, this week, she'd picked up something interesting milling about school as one of the invisible social rejects haunting its halls. Kim and her little group of cronies weren't the only ones whispering about the Ceris shrine. She strolled down the hall, bold now that she knew it was vacant, and thought through the rumors she'd overheard. Most of the information was consistent. You placed an offering on the altar, made a wish, and got what you wished for...usually. Sometimes your offering wasn't big enough for your wish, so you had to come back with a bigger gift, but no one had visited more than twice to get the same request answered.
She strode down the stairs, sticking to the slanting shadows formed by the early morning light, heading towards the back of the school. The floor's usual dull appearance, marred by mud, dust, and now, more often, snow melt, had been buffed away by the attentive care of the school's janitorial staff. She looked down, catching her nervous reflection in the shiny floors, and took a turn down a rarely used hall. If the rumors were true, and they'd all been consistent on this detail, the shrine would be in an unused room near the A/V club's hangout space. She rounded another corner, eyes traveling along the wall to pick out the room numbers. 115, 117, 119, 121...there! 123. She thought, wariness now tingling up her spine as she approached the fabled shrine. The door opened on well oiled hinges, silent in the oppressive quiet of the empty school.
On the other side sat a pile of colored cardboard, glitter, streamers, candles, and wood. The entire thing looked like someone's overzealous art project, with too many sparkles and carefully cut out hearts adorning the wall behind the wooden altar. Behind the altar, but before the sparkle and heart decorated wall, sat a three-piece poster with stanzas written in red ink in each one and True Love Demands Sacrifice across the top.
If the favor of the goddess one does desire, place an offering to satisfy.
Pray hard, thoughts full of love are required, only pure thoughts will she espy.
Though your lovers' touch you bravely seek, driven by passion into this fray,
No names should pass your lips, no speech, woe betide those who disobey.
Heed these words of warning, desperate beseechers of Ceris,
Lest you find yourself in mourning, driven forever from Bliss.
She leaned over the entire display, taking in the tacky curls of ribbons and the half melted wax. It didn't look supernatural at all. She pulled a scanner out of a pocket, not bothering to re-don her entire suit. The little machine beeped placidly as she swept it over the display, a calm stable pace and not a blip changing the line on its screen. She tapped a few more buttons on its side, trying a few more settings, none any more responsive than the first. In the end, she placed it back into her pocket, satisfied by the scan. There was nothing here. She calibrated all of her scans to ignore the baseline Amity amount of spectral energy. If not, they'd be going off constantly. With that in mind, the shrine and the room it resided in, were no more reactive than a rock.
She pulled her cell out of her pocket, checking the time. She still had plenty before her meeting with Mr. Masters to discuss her working security at the Fall Celebration parade. She frowned down at the screen, and looked over the room again. The cheese and the glitz aside, something did not add up about this entire thing. The remaining offerings on the altar consisted of candy, out of season flowers, and even money.
There weren't any notes with people's names or identifying information to be found. In fact, the rumors all suggested you weren't supposed to leave anything that could be traced back to you at the shrine, or else it wouldn't work. She'd thought it was to maintain the allure and mystery of the entire exchange, and someone was still gleaning info from the students who frequented it somehow. Now though, standing in the dimly lit room, taking in the scene of dying flowers and cheap Clara's perfume, she was befuddled. If no one could figure out who wanted to date each other, how were the match-ups being made?
She puzzled on it for a few moments, and pulled out another device to check for electronic bugs. Another dead end, because this scan picked up only the electronics on her. She growled and glanced around the room once more, eyes searching for anything out of place. The streamer and handmade poster covered walls greeted her, a combination of kitsch and earnestness that left her no closer to an answer than the start. She got down on her knees, looking under the table, feeling around in the dusty dark of the unused storage room. Grit and dust met her hesitant movements, and she wiped her hands on the front of her jeans as she stood back up.
Nothing on the walls, under the table or on it, or hidden throughout the room that she could see. No spectral energy, no electronic signature, not even a low tech book for people to sign to "give their wishes more power". And the instructions had been clear, clear enough, about how to use the altar. It didn't require speaking out loud, said you shouldn't, actually. You didn't even, supposedly, have to tell anyone else you'd been here. The entire set up screamed mundane superstition, but every person she'd overheard insisted their prayer came to life. She tried to square the mundane nature of the space with the mystical, almost divine, way the shrine worked.
She leaned down against the table, taking in the rose petals, pink crêpe paper, and Yankee candles one last time, searching across the scattered pieces of out of season candy hearts and bottles of teen store perfume for any hint of the supernatural. The ordinary materials glinted back at her in the low light, petals scattering as her huff of frustration pushed her to lean away from the table once more. There's nothing. She'd wasted a whole week scuttling around the shadows of hallways, and eavesdropping around two dozen conversations, to stand in a dingy storage room surrounded by the hopes and dreams of desperate teens and no ghost activity.
She sighed out her frustration once more and pulled out the pocket notebook she used to keep track of rumors, crossing off the Ceris shrine. This might have wasted her time, but at least she'd confirmed there was nothing ghostly and dangerous going on in the school. Well, other than Lunch Lady's haunting of the cafeteria storage room. Try as she might, she couldn't chase the ghost off. To be fair, she'd come to appreciate how her presence deterred other spooks when she'd disappeared for a week late Freshman year, so maybe she should stop trying.
She looked down at her notebook, taking in the other mystery of the week in an attempt to shake off the confusion and disappointment of this one. The blackouts still had surviving tech to explore, and with the potential threat of the Ceris shrine solved, she decided to focus on that instead. Better yet, that didn't center on the school, so she could sneak out the backdoor and avoid the threat of being caught inside. She took one last look around the room, taking in the decor with a frustrated scowl, and shut the door behind her. So the shrine wasn't ghost business. So what? Why did that bother her so badly? She had enough on her plate without running another ghost out of her high school, or avoiding tripping into some wish granting ghost similar to Desiree, hovering about school grounds. Her life wasn't that boring! She didn't need a ghost hunt at school to keep her entertained.
She stole out the back door, skipping towards the bleachers, where she could more easily put on her suit without casual onlookers. The success rate suggested supernatural interference, but maybe going to the shrine just made teens more confident? They'd ask for a date, and then subtly change their behavior to imply interest or availability, and boom they got their date. Humans were good at psyching themselves out like that and magical thinking.
Still, she hovered over the top of the school, looking down at the roof before she flew off towards Mr. Masters' mansion. Maybe if the shrine really was harmless and all wishful thinking, she could use it later this year. The instructions only said to 'wish for your heart's desire', one full of love. She desired to be left alone, would love that, actually! If the shrine could be used to psych yourself into a date, it certainly could be used to work yourself out of one. Maybe if she left an offering and thought about it really hard, she'd stop getting notes in class about Homecoming, or anything else, and be able to focus on school and her two jobs.
She flew away from the school, thoughts already spinning about the mystery related to the blackout. The rumors about the surviving tech were easier to come by, everyone happy to chat about their favorite piece of electronics "miraculously" intact nature with little prompting. She still couldn't find a pattern in the types of tech that made it, but it was much clearer now that they'd been well-loved. That also felt supernatural to her, but considering her goose egg result about the Ceris shrine, she considered if she was just being paranoid. No. Anything that looks unexplained or mysterious in this town is worth poking at. She flew around the back of the mansion, banking the board into a turn that would land her in the trees and shrubs not far from the driveway in the front.
A thought and a moment later and she was dressed in civvies, walking up to the imposing front door of Masters' Manor with a jaunty pep to her step and a confident slant to her shoulders. Mr. Masters might be a ghost powered creep with terrible scientific ethics, but he liked her. He was a creep who still thought she was his tool, his patsy, and she could use that to her advantage. She hopped up the few steps leading to the front door and rung the doorbell. This conversation should be simple…
Now, after a brief series of greetings, and a staff worker to guide her to a sitting room, she sat calmly in an armchair, soaking up the ambiance that millions of dollars in interior design created. The seat's plush fabric cradled her sore muscles, tired after a week of ghost fighting, school, work, and annoyed after an early morning wake up. She pushed back into the squishy seat with relish, taking a small sip of the warm hot chocolate she'd gotten from another staff member. The thick creamy delight spilled across her tongue, and she sighed around the pleasant feeling of the drink pooling in her stomach, languidly warming her from the inside. The flavor tasted rich, a combination of dark chocolate, spice, and real milk she knew Masters imported from Wisconsin on insistence the dairy state had the best in the country. Having tasted a few things made with their milk or cream, she was starting to come around to his opinion.
She'd been instructed to wait, and she was content for him to take his time, sucking in hot chocolate and warm well-insulated air inside the giant room. She thought the vaulted ceilings would throw off the warmth of the central heating, but apparently, he had infinite money to waste warming his monstrosity of an Amity residence. No complaints from her, though, because this was the most comfortable she'd been since leaving home. She took another sip of her hot chocolate and closed her eyes, maybe if he took much longer she'd take a nap.
"Have you been waiting long, my dear?" Well, never mind. She blinked open her eyes, spying the older man just entering the room.
"No, Mr. Masters, I just got here."
"Good! I'm sorry for the delay, I had a few business calls with the DLAV group to handle. Now," he started taking the seat opposite her own, "what can I do for you? You weren't very explicit over the phone, just something about an idea for a job?" His voice hitched up at the end as he reached over the table to grab his own cup, this one smelling of brewed coffee.
"Right, I remembered the Fall Celebration parade is coming up."
"Too true," he set the tea cup back into the sauce, eyebrow raised in her direction.
"And I know you have your own security for human world threats for the duration, but do you have anyone guarding for ghosts?" She stopped to nibble on a tea cookie, placed on a tray in the middle of the table by the same maid who'd brought in the cup of coffee. She'd long since learned he didn't mind her snacking, and the man he had on staff as a cook made the best sweets.
"I do have my own plans for ghostly interference," he tapped his index finger on the table, clearly thinking things through, "but I don't have anyone providing air support or as capable of responding quickly over the length of the entire parade. Did you wish to offer your services?"
"Yes," she snagged another shortbread biscuit, this one with sesame seeds inside and tasting of citrus. "I thought I could be useful as a bird's eye view, and maybe as a deterrent to scare off weaker ghosts?"
"Your patrols have lowered the number of attacks in town." He granted, face calm and open. She felt her stomach clench, preparing for the attack his buttering up signaled. "But, I'm worried your suit could use a few upgrades." Here we go…
"Not that I'm not grateful for any updates you're willing to provide," she threaded her fingers together in her lap, then thought better of it, considering it made her look defensive, and reached for another cookie instead, "I was just hoping to be paid with cash?"
"Oh no, my dear, the update is free." He spread his hands across the table, trying to look harmless, magnanimous. "I'm the one who gave you that tech, it wouldn't be responsible of me to leave it wanting in any way with your life on the line. The upgrade isn't the payment, it's just something I've been meaning to do for a while, but haven't had the time to speak with you about."
She took in his slimy smile and softened eyes with more wiggling worms in her gut. There was a catch. He was too evil for there not to be a catch. "What does the update do? More weapons?" She felt her eyes light up at the suggestion, eyebrows raising to join the upturn of her lips. She didn't have to fake being excited about new explosives or zappy toys. He laughed, and waved his hand, reaching with the other for his cup of coffee.
"Always excited for more ways to attack ghosts I see." He paused, to take a drink of coffee, then continued, "I do have a few new pieces of experimental tech I'd like you to try out, but this update is far more holistic and interesting." He set the cup back on the table, taking the opportunity to lean forward, face trying to feign excitement or scientific fascination or some other such benign thing. "This upgrade should let you interface with your suit using your thoughts." He leaned towards her a little farther, "it will be able to read your mind, and will learn your preferences over time. I'll even be upgrading the mesh the armor is made from, making it more responsive and able to mold to your wishes. You are still a growing teen, so you shouldn't have to worry about getting a whole new suit because of a growth spurt."
"I thought…" she trailed off, confusion wrinkling her brow. She could have sworn the suit already read her thoughts. "Maybe I've just got the settings memorized, but it already feels like the suit reads my thoughts."
"Ah," he picked up a cookie of his own, gesturing with it in her direction, "what it does now is predict things based on body movements and previous data. It's a pretty responsive system, but this will go much further. No more tapping things into panels or pushing buttons, now all you'll have to do is think of a weapon or scan, and it will appear, as if an extension of your own will. There won't be any delay, at least none that a human nervous system could detect, between you thinking of your favorite net gun and it appearing to fire at your target. The connection should feel seamless."
"That does sound amazing." It did, really. The whole thing sounded appealing and futuristic and like it would make ghost hunting so much simpler. Except, there was a catch. There was always a catch when it came to the secretly half-ghost asshole running her hometown. "How does it work?"
"Oooo, that's the fun part, well, the fun part for me as a scientist." He chuckled and finished off the rest of his cookie. "The system won't be interfacing with your nervous system directly, that's far too dangerous and would require implants and surgery. So ghastly." He shuddered, leaning back into his seat, his face the picture of polite horror at the suggestion. "No, no, instead, the suit will be talking to a group of nano-machines. The machines will be able to read the electrical signals from your nervous system and translate them to the suit. The intermediary is much safer, and my company has already tested them before."
"Nano-machines?" She watched him smile blandly on the other side of the table. "Those are not only real, but they've gone through clinical trials?"
"Uh, well," he sipped from his coffee, buying time, "they haven't gone through a full trial, but preliminary results are promising. I assure you, there's nothing to be worried about."
"And the nano-machines are going to be mixed into the armor of the suit?"
"Of course not," he frowned then, briefly, "they wouldn't be able to connect and respond to you properly inside the armor."
"So where—"
"They're injected, into your bloodstream, and from there can receive chemical signals from your cells."
"Uh, wow, that's fascinating." That's aword to use for it. "How do they, you know, maintain their function or make more of themselves if they fail?"
"They can borrow the cellular machinery inside some of your cells to replicate."
"Mr. Masters, that sounds like a virus." She finished off her hot chocolate, starting to think of excuses to leave. He wanted to inject her with some experimental nanometer sized electronic critters that could interface with her cells and read their chemical signals? She'd aced biology last year. She knew enough to know that sounded like a terrible idea. It sounded like a recipe for an autoimmune disorder, a runaway destructive cycle of the machines bursting out of her cells, or the machines sending aberrant signals all over, messing up her homeostasis and internal communication.
"Oh, I promise it's not like that. The programmed bots are much more durable than ordinary biological material and made to last more than a decade before any individual bot needs to be replaced." His tone changed, merry, light, optimistic. She watched his eyes brighten and sparkle, lips splitting into a winsome grin. He probably used the same strategy on investors to win them over.
"So, they won't be hijacking my cells any time soon?"
"Absolutely not. That's a method of last resort. In fact, chances are, you'll have an entirely new system by the time any of them would need to be replaced."
"And they only read chemical signals, right? They don't send any to my nerves or anything?"
"That would adversely affect your ability to perform in combat or harm your perceptions of reality!" Yes, you gruesome sleazeball, that's what I'm worried about! She pasted on her customer service smile and settled her hands on top of her knees.
"That would be completely counterproductive to their purpose. They exist as a safe way to connect you to the suit's upgrade without compromising your nervous system or giving you bothersome implants. They are a fancy middle man, an electronic tube that passes information translated into forms both sides 'speak'. It's like an ISP." He'd definitely practiced this speech.
"I'll have to think about it."
"I completely understand," his voice dripped with gooey concern, and he clasped his hands together in front of him, "but I wouldn't feel comfortable letting you work the parade without the upgrades. In fact, I'm not sure how much longer it's feasible for you to work in general without them."
"But, my suit functions great!" She winced at the defensive bent to her tone, voice starting to cut with streaks of anger. "I don't need it to read my mind to do my job. I'm perfectly capable without something like that."
"That's not the only part of the upgrade. It comes with resistances to inference and updates to the OS to prevent hacking and a number of other crucial security upgrades. I'm sure you're wondering why that can't be separated," he held up a hand, the picture of concern, face carrying an artful downturn of his lips. "The new changes to the OS are substantial, and without a way to decrease the interface time, the suit's responsiveness would slow down. On a normal patrol, that wouldn't be much of a bother, but in combat, when even tenths of a second can matter? I couldn't in good conscience let you fly around in that condition. We can't put off the security upgrades forever, either." He settled back into his seat, blues eyes sharp and focused across from her.
"I understand." She was trapped. If she turned down the update now, not only would she be missing out on the money from the parade, but it'd only be delaying the inevitable. She'd walked right into his bait, and now she had a timer on her ghost hunting activities entirely. She thought through her options, closing her eyes for a few seconds. She either got money now, trading in some bodily integrity for cash and more time to circumvent his potential interference, or she ended up less prepared for whatever those nano-machines did in the update later. Put that way, it was an easy choice. "How long will it take to do?" She suppressed a shiver at the predatory smile on his face at her agreement. Snake.
"The injection will only take a few seconds. After that, the entire system will need to calibrate for around an hour. It'd also be best for you to stay at least that long to make sure there aren't any unforeseen reactions to the injection or the new interface." He stood up from his chair, causally brushing out the few wrinkles that formed on his crisply pressed suit. "If you'd follow me my dear." He turned away, already striding with a long, even gait towards the door.
She rocketed from her chair, legs wobbly under her, and she stood to join him. She worked her way around the table and hurried after him, forcing her burning thighs into motion. The rest from earlier eaten away by the anxiety churning through her veins, she quickly matched his pace and drew up beside him in the hall. "Are we heading to one of your labs?"
"That'd be best, I think. After the injection, you can lay down and relax in one of the guest rooms until you're medically cleared. No reason to tarry in the chilly metal lab when you could lounge around instead." He smiled down at her, eyes far too glittery in the light of the spacious hallway.
He doesn't have a right to look that triumphant. She concluded, eyes snapping ahead as they rounded another corner into a separate, similarly decorated hall. She'd been to more than one of the labs in the mansion, but she didn't recognize the path this time. The unfamiliarity clawed at her insides, twisting about like a lamprey, stealing her vitality and clouding her thoughts. She had to stay calm. There was little chance he'd try something today, so getting worked up over it wasn't worth the effort. Still, as one confusing turn was traded for a third, trepidation worked through her, sliding around her spine to curl its sharp talons around every vertebra.
Breathe Gray. Masters wants you alive, useful, and pliable. He's not going to kill you...yet. His greater goal is to leave you feeling indebted and awestruck. Relax! You can do your own research to counteract any weird signals the buggers send into you after the injection. If all else fails, Daddy or even Tucker can help get these things out of me. There are legal limits to his reach. Technically, all of that was true. But he did have something that tipped everything in his favor, the same reason she'd come crawling into this situation in the first place. Money, and lots of it. Judges would look the other way, police departments could be bribed, and a little Black girl from a small town in nowhere America could be made to disappear with enough cash, enough desire to hush things up. She squared her shoulders as they finally reached the lab, one she was familiar with, from a direction she'd never come before. He'd taken them the long way around, maybe just to make her feel disoriented, the asshole.
"Here we are!" He said, voice bright and light, all sweetness and airy positivity. "Now," he waved her towards an examination table, "you sit right over there. I need to get the injection out of cold storage." He disappeared farther into the lab, away from sight, and she let out a shaky breath. In, Out. She could do this. She just had to make it through a little poke, and then she could start scheming ways to neutralize any malicious intent carried inside the nano-machines. She had all the tools she needed, even time; she just needed to stay calm.
She did grimace when he returned, carrying something with a bigger pointed end than she'd like. "Ugh, I hate shots."
"Well, I've never met a child who loved them." He motioned for her to roll up her sleeve, and in a surprisingly swift motion, the entire ordeal was over.
"That sucked less than I thought."
"Glad to hear it!" He looked at his watch and then back to her. "It's around 9:30am now. You should be out of here before 11am. Thank you for being so cooperative, Valerie. I know this was a bit of a shock." He motioned towards the door, already disposing of the evidence. "If you take a right and then head to the end of the hall, Dana will take you somewhere you can wait out the rest of the time. It's about time for brunch. Did you eat breakfast?" His smile was indulgent and a little sweet, all cloying and laid on as thick as the new mud coating the sides of the road after the ice melted this morning.
"No."
"Oh, then I'll have Bernard make you something tasty. I know you love his meals." He brushed the last of the cleanup into a biohazard container and swept his hand through the air, calling up a glowing array of holograms and readouts. She'd seen him do similar lots of times now, but it never failed to call up the sensation of being in a sci-fi story.
"I'll do that… Thanks for the food, Mr. Masters. I'm sure you're busy, so I'll get out of your hair."
"You tell Dana if you feel faint, or any pain, or anything at all off. Something feels unusual, I want to know about it right away!" He scrolled through something on the hovering screens, tapping into a new box that appeared with a flick of his hand.
"Yup," she quickly exited the room, swift steps bringing her down the hall and away from his watchful gaze. Well, at least with his own eyes. She had no doubt the entire mansion was crawling with so many bugs it'd need to be fumigated if they were organic. She got to the end of the hall, meeting up with a new maid she recognized from many of her other visits. The typically dour woman smiled down at her, face warming as she got close enough to follow her.
"Hello, Val, how are you?"
"I'm doing ok, Ms. D, how're you?" She leaned around the older woman to take in the sights around the next corner. Yup, she recognized this path. He'd definitely been trying to confuse her earlier.
"Same as it ever was, darling: dusting, washing, dealing with Mr. Masters' many varied and very important guests."
"Anyone interesting?"
"Not this time, just some stodgy old foggies from the DLAV group last week, and a group of rich investors the week before from out of state. They drank scotch in the middle of the day and smoked cigars and pipes, getting tobacco ash all over everything. Then, they had the nerve to dislike Bernard's finger dishes! You know the ones, the little things on toast."
"The bruschetta or—?"
"That's the name! They said it was out of season because it wasn't the summer. Bah! He'd chosen it specifically so they could taste the late summer's crop of best picked tomatoes. They're heirloom, you know. We get them from this wonderful little farm to the south. In Kentucky, I think? Wonderful flavor, and so juicy, tastes nothing like those sad limp things in the grocery these days. It almost reminds me of childhood..."
Ms. Dana had lots of opinions, especially about the quality of food lately. "I love them, especially because it's always so crunchy and the cheese is so creamy. If it can win over a teen, what's their deal?"
"It's the best starter, they just don't have any usable taste buds left from all that smoking. Ruins your ability to enjoy subtle flavors, darling, don't let anyone get you started."
"No ma'am." She readily agreed, as they passed the last corner into a much cozier sitting room than the first.
"Do you know what you'd like? It's well and truly the fall now, we should have some lovely squash and pumpkin. Oh, and the quail has come in, eggs and meat."
"You know I like Bernard's experiments more than anything else."
"OOOoo! I'll ask what he's been cooking up in there that he needs taste testers for." She scuttled off, shoes clacking against the high sheen marble floors of the manor.
Valerie loved Ms. Dana. She'd seemed intimidating when they'd first met, but that frown only stayed on her face because Vlad worked her to the bone as the head maid of his Amity residence. Since he was mayor, he always had guests, sometimes surprise ones, and the place had to look spotless. It ran like a well-oiled machine to keep it that way. She was that machine's mechanic, and keeping it in top condition was tiring full-time work.
She settled into her seat, taking out her phone to text her father she'd be home for lunch. She wanted time after she left to test out the changes to her suit. The thought occurred to her in a flash, and she tried calling up the system just to see how it reacted. A few seconds passed, and nothing answered her. Well, I guess it really is updating. She read her dad's return text and shoved the phone back into her pocket as the maid returned.
"So, he says he has a new recipe for stuffed French toast he needs testing out with some pecans and baked apples. He also says he poached the eggs different? Eggs seem like eggs to me though. Oh, but he told me to mention we have a cranberry guava juice and that we just got some spicy sausage from Ridgeland Farms, he remembers you like." She leaned back into the room, a few curls framing her smiling, round face.
"All of that sounds wonderful, especially the French toast."
"That's good, because he says it's not quite right, and he wants it perfect before this little soirée Mr. Masters is throwing for the seigneurial leeches of Amity." She ducked back outside the door for a few seconds before leaning back in, "there's a button on that table if you feel off before I get back with the food. It's not a bother at all, young lady, so don't hesitate to press it." Her typical omnipresent frown returned for a moment, as she looked her over. "I'm not sure you shoulda let him juice you up with whatever fancy electronic doodads he'd been all excited about lately."
"He mentioned it to you?"
"Only to the investors two weeks ago. They were from some medical group, maybe a bunch of heads of government medical research? Oh, that's not it," she tapped a finger against the door jamb, before her face lit up again, "that's right. They were from a group of teaching hospitals and medical research focused universities. I think he was trying to drum up interest in human trials." Her frown returned, "I don't like him doing human trials on my favorite ghost fighting girlie."
"I'll be ok, Ms. D.; Mr. Masters knows what he's doing."
"Oh, most men think they know what they're doing, in business and in the bedroom, but you'll come to find out they are all faking it until they make it." She shimmied out of the room, heading off to whatever duties occupied her when she wasn't gossiping with Valerie.
She didn't know what say about that last bit, but she didn't actually disagree with the substance of the older woman's wisdom. Unlike Dana, she wasn't worried about a malfunction; instead, she worried she had spy bots circling around her circulatory system now. He'd pulled up that holographic read-out almost immediately. That suggested they sent some kind of signal back to him. Or maybe it was unrelated, he's not usually that obvious. She took a big whiff of the air as the smell of sweet apples and nutty delights filled the room.
"Bernard whipped this up in a jiffy the moment he heard you were here. Seems like he really values your reviews." Ms. Dana was back with a plate in each hand and another bright smile. "He said your notes about the last soup really helped fix it up."
"I don't know if I can live up to those expectations; I'm just a gal who loves good food."
Ms. Dana laughed, setting the plates in front of her and reaching into her apron for a set of cutlery. "Your opinions are unvarnished, and anyone who loves food can tell someone why they love it. That's all he really wants."
"I can manage that." She sliced off a fork full of toast, grinning at the white cream cheese and nut filled center. "Oh boy, how did he get this inside each slice?"
"I'll ask him while you enjoy yourself." She moved to the door, stopping only briefly to remind her about the call button. She must really be worried…
It was all for nothing, though. She'd finished her brunch and waved goodbye to the busy maid just a while later, feeling energized from the delicious food. She'd considered chowing down on less, thinking about lunch with her dad, but she'd been starving. She knew, with her recent appetite, she'd be hungry again soon anyway. She jogged down the front of the driveway, making a beeline for the closest cluster of shrubs she could suit up in. She looked down at the clock on her cell, content when it read 11:07am back. If Vlad hadn't been lying, the update was finished and her suit was back.
She crouched in the dirt and leaves, closing her eyes for a moment, feeling out the pulse of something that traveled with a surge from her head to her toes. She thought of her board, and—the feeling of hovering in the air echoed through her, weight pressing down into the warm hard metal against the soles of her feet. She looked down and found herself not just on the board, but surrounded by her new suit.
The red and black motif remained, just redesigned in a pattern that fit her aesthetic more. Red stripes traveling down each of her sides to emphasize her curves, fun gauzy bits and bobs that read as sheer, but stopped short of showing any skin, a flirty little red-toned band around her middle that turned into a diamond with a more sheer piece inside of it. She looked through the visor, marveling at the lack of red tinge. The entire thing seemed more see-through than ordinary glass, like looking through her own unadorned eyes, but when she reached up to poke at it, a smooth flawless visor pressed back. She blinked and found herself floating a dozen meters above Mr. Masters' front lawn, unbothered by the cold and breath not even fogging the air in front of her.
A thought brought up the answer to her latest question, and explanation for the suit's newest sealed air system. Instead of just filtering the incoming air and sending it back out, it was now absorbing oxygen from the air itself sending carbon dioxide back out the same way… She was breathing through the armor of her suit? The visor flipped to another page to confirm, yes, she was. With the way the new system functioned, she could breathe underwater. It even automatically filtered out the dangerous ectoradium dust in the Zone without worry. That was genuinely neat. She thought through what to test first, and watched in awe as each stray thought brought up the gun or shield or bomb she'd wanted. A quick check of her forearm showed no weapons' panel, but then one appeared, armor shifting to form it as if to accommodate her whims. Oh, this is excellent.
Maybe Mr. Masters was a miserable little weasel of a man, but he did know his futuristic science. This was everything he'd promised, and then some, and she wanted to take this baby on a test—
The suit zoomed off towards the edge of Amity, a thrum of power sticking her to the bottom of the board. She watched as the streets rushed by underneath her, amazed at the lack of pressure she felt to balance out the speed. Another readout, this time, of the way the armor could compensate for G-Forces. She closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling of just standing still while the world racing around her for a moment, before shooting up in the air.
She climbed thirty meters, and then thirty more, before taking in a deep breath and feeling the board float away underneath her. She fell, wind rushing past her in a roar through her visor filtered senses, then a whispered hiss as it deafened the annoying sound. She spun, arms held fast to her body, twisting through the air and tighter and tighter circles, before calling out to her board and feeling it re-materialize under her feet effortlessly. She stopped a dozen meters from the ground, flight arrested by the sleek machine, and giggled when she couldn't feel the sudden jerk of changing directions so quickly.
She slalomed through the alleys on the outskirts of Amity, making tight turns and bouncing off walls, feet pressing her away from brick as she recalled her board and dug her enhanced metal coated boots into the side of a building. She shot back up into the air, carried by magnified strength above the rooftops once more, before flying again, heading back towards the docks. Everything felt better, brighter, more reactive than anything she'd done with her suit prior. It wasn't just reading her mind, it was magnifying her senses, and it felt like it molded to her every whim.
She hovered above the river's surface, looking down at the ice forming on its shores with pinpoint accuracy. Even from up here, she could see how each lapping wave froze in a new layer, adding another thin veneer of fresh ice over the last. She could hear the call of the city, loud, as loud as she wanted if she concentrated, all the way from the edge. Despite not taking in air through her lungs, she could smell the scent of dying vegetation, the sweet dankness of rot, and the acrid artificial one of lacquered wood and wet stone. She closed her eyes, marveling at how the system compensated, her hearing intensified until the echoes around her painted a picture in her mind in stark black and white relief.
Maybe she'd sold all her privacy for this upgrade, but it was paying back some of it with the coolest set of new abilities she'd ever gotten from the old bastard. An alarm chimed in her ear, and she looked up to see a warning on her visor about lunch with her dad. When had she—She hadn't. The suit could read her thoughts and "knew" she wouldn't want to miss lunch. That should be alarming, but it wasn't. She looked out across the water, feeling the wind against her without the bite of the cold's sting, and fought down laughter. The briefest thought brought up weapons she'd never imagined, shifting across her form in new places to match her fresh armor, and her heart raced with the idea of a hunt. Good luck ghosts...
A/N:
Welcome to the bottom, dear reader! I'm sure Valerie's new suit will have no repercussion and everything will be fine! Expect the next chapter to be available on Wednesday at the usual time.
Can't wait until next week? You can get Lore posts, snippets, send me asks, and more at my blog.
Blog: balshumetsbaragouin . tumblr . com
Thanks for reading, everyone, happy holidays, and see you next week!