The Advancement of Mateo Matic: February 2, 2399

« < » > Table of Contents

Angela is asleep again. Marie and Dr. Farlind woke her up for a few minutes to update her on the current situation, but she had to go back down so she won’t unintentionally purge the immortality water from her system. It’s been about a half hour, and they’re miles and miles and miles away from Earth now. Even so, the computer beeps.

“What is that?” Dr. Farlind asks.

Marie tilts her head at the screen. “It’s another ship. It just disappeared. It’s back again. It disappeared again.”

“Someone’s come after her. How long has it been on Earth?”

“Two weeks,” she answers. They’re about to be boarded. Marie goes over to the food synthesizer, opens the cabinet, and starts to pull the nutrient cartridges out. In the back are various parts. Half of the grip, the other half, barrel, trigger, magazine. In seconds, she expertly assembles them into a gun. She’s finished and aiming at the dark figure who has transported into the ship, and would have been able to shoot if Mateo had not been the one to step into the light. “Oh my God, I nearly killed you.”

“Wouldn’t have been the first time,” Mateo says nonchalantly. He looks around. “Room for three more?”

“Three who?”

“The McIver boys, plus another.”

“If need be, yeah, but who is this other?”

“It’s a newcomer. Name’s Cedar. I don’t know his last name. He’s good people. Constance is after him too. He can’t tell us why. We’ve accepted as much.”

Marie looks at the camera feed showing Angela sleeping in her grave chamber.

“Where’d you get the gun?” Mateo asks.

“Never mind that,” she replies. She tucks it into the back of her pants. “Bring ‘em on board. Then, unless you’re staying, you better get going. You’ve been here for almost an entire day already.”

“I know.” He holds up a portable drive. “This is the updated AI system.” He looks between the two of them. “One of you, or the other, can come back. This ship no longer requires human monitoring. It knows where to go, and how to get there.”

“I’m not leaving my patient,” Dr. Farlind says.

“I’m not leaving my sister,” Marie echoes the sentiment.

“Very well. You still need to upload this. It comes up with a full update on our lives since you’ve been gone. Not only does it tell you what we’ve been through, but you can ask the avatar for clarification. You can also ask it the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, or how many dimples are on a golf ball.”

“Three hundred and thirty-six,” Dr. Farlind answers proudly.

“Well. I guess you don’t need the AI then,” Mateo jokes.

He jumps back to the Bridgette when it pings again. It’s not traveling at relativistic speeds, since it’s not a ship. It has to teleport within range, and then Mateo can reach it. He returns with Carlin and Moray, then makes a second trip for the last passenger. “Marie and Dr. Farlind, allow me to introduce you to...Cedar.”

“We’ve met.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: January 7, 2399

« < » > Table of Contents

Petra is standing over Angela’s bed, watching her chest move up and down under the covers. The monitor indicates that she’s still alive too, though she’s not a doctor, which is why she needed more accessible confirmation. “She asked for this.”

“Yes,” the doctor repeats himself.

“Why would she do that?”

“She claimed that she’s not allowed to urinate.”

She looks over at him. “She didn’t explain why?”

“Sir, you instructed me to accommodate them. I didn’t ask too many questions.”

“I told you to give them what they wanted, not to just ignore your ethical obligations. You should have pressed her.”

“There was an apparent sensitivity of time.”

“So sensitive that you couldn’t have called me in first?”

“Those were not my instructions.”

Petra sighs, and takes a beat. “Is she safe like this?”

“It’s three more hours,” the doctor says. “I have nothing else to do but sit and watch her.”

“Good, do that. Literally don’t take your eyes off her. You’re not allowed to pee either.” She leaves the infirmary, and heads for the bridge. Today is a big day. It’s the turn around. Normal physics says that the faster you’re moving, the harder it is to change direction, and the longer it takes. They ought to be making a ginormous arc around the solar system, but the technology they’re using is decades beyond the need for that, if not longer. Leona Matic gave them more than just a fusion engine. She gave them instant acceleration.

The issue with traveling at fractional speeds—that is, speeds above ten percent of lightspeed—is that it takes an incredibly long time to start moving that fast. It’s not the engines themselves that are the only hurtle, but also the passengers. No organism is naturally equipped with the necessary biological characteristics that would allow it to survive accelerating faster than 10Gs. People have done it in experiments, but not for extended periods of time. But Leona’s people figured it out. Not only did they reach 99.9999% the speed of light virtually instantly, but they didn’t feel a thing. Petra still doesn’t quite understand how the inertial dampeners work, and this is her field of study. Researchers will be publishing papers on the science for years to come. She’s grateful for the opportunity to test it out, even though the trip will only last a few hours of observed time, and a few months of realtime.

They’re at the halfway point now, which means that it’s time to turn around. The plan is to make a stop in the middle of what Leona referred to as the Oort Cloud. While essentially static, they’ll literally turn the rocket, and then restart the engines. If all goes well, they should be on their way back to Earth within minutes. Petra walks onto the bridge. “How are we lookin’?”

The ship’s tiller keeps her eyes on her screen. “Just ran the final diagnostics. Everything is good to go.”

“You sure you can do this?” Petra asks.

“Does a Tamerist kill without reason?”

“I wish they didn’t.” A stranger has just walked into the room. No one else on the bridge recognizes him.

“Who are you?” Petra questions. “Security.”

The security officer assigned to this station draws her weapon.

“That will not be necessary. My name is Tamerlane Pryce, and I’m just hitching a ride back home.”

“Stand fast,” Petra orders. “What do you mean, you’re Tamerlane Pryce? Were your parents warmongers?”

The man sighs. “I did not mean for my religion to turn into that. It just...got out of hand; out of my control.”

“Explain yourself.”

“I’m a time traveler. To say that I was friends with Leona Matic would be...said in bad faith, but we are associates. She would recognize me. Angela would recognize me.”

“How convenient that the only person who might be able to vouch for your identity is currently indisposed.”

“Uh, sir?” the tiller jumps in. “It’s about to happen.”

“Get him out of here,” Petra orders the guard. “Take him to hock.”

“You can go alone,” the supposed Tamerlane says. He points the crown of his watch towards the guard, and taps on the screen. The guard disappears.

“How the hell did you do that?”

“Custom modified teleporter gun,” he says with a shrug. “No big deal.”

The tiller has started counting down, “...six, five, four, three, two, one. Full stop.”

The doppler shades that Leona also designed stop filtering the grayish glow, and turn completely black. “Raising shades,” the aux officer announces so that they can see fully out of the viewindow.

There is something that none of them expected; none but Tamerlane. They’re parked in front of a chunk of rock. Embedded in this rock is some kind of building. The lights are on, so someone is home. “What the fuh...?” Petra questions in a breathy voice.

The astonished bridge crew stands up, and leans forward.

“That, my new friends, is The Constant. It was my home for billions of years. Then they kicked me out, and they thought I would never find them again.”

Frightened but awe-inspired too, Petra admires the sight. “How is this possible?”

“I can get you docked,” Tamerlane tells her, “but you have to give me control.”

“Do it.” Angela has just come into the room. She’s still wearing only her bra and underwear, and holding onto her IV pole.

“Put this on,” the doctor offers, finally catching up to her. He wraps the blanket over her shoulders.

“Angela, you do know him?” Petra asks.

“Let’s just say I know...his twin brother.”

Tamerlane smirks.

“Get—” Petra stammers. “Get us in that building, I guess.”

Tamerlane approaches the controls, and starts tapping away. He lifts the microphone up. “Constance, Vacuum Entry Override Protocol Temple-Algae-Marathon five-nine-nine-eight.” In response, the walls of the building split open. A greenish-blue light appears from inside, and takes hold of the rocket. It pulls them in, turns them up, and lands them gently on the floor.

“Welcome back, Mister Pryce,” a voice says as a staircase extends up to them, and lets Tamerlane start climbing down on it. Petra follows, but Angela has to stay in the airlock, as she can’t handle the steps.

“Step on the landing,” Tamerlane calls up to her. “It’ll bring you down.”

The doctor insists on accompanying her, but everyone else is expected to stay with the ship until they’re told otherwise. Once the other two are safely down on the floor, the stairs contract slowly, and let Angela and the doctor down.

A woman comes into the room. “I suppose it was only a matter of time before we were found. I just thought it would take longer than eight months. I hoped, anyway. Tamerlane, I admire the ingenuity in orchestrating all of this.”

“No, you don’t, Danica, you’re annoyed by it.”

“I can have mixed feelings,” Danica contends. She reaches out to Angela. “Miss Walton. It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Danica Matic.”

“Mateo’s cousin, yes. I met a different version of you.”

“I hope to live up to your impression of her.”

“Based on my experiences in this reality, you have a long ways to go.”

“True,” Danica admits. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll personally escort you to a comfortable medical stasis pod.”

Angela looks over to Tamerlane for guidance.

“Him?” Danica questions. “You’re looking to him to see if you can trust me?”

“If you know that I need stasis,” Angela begins, “then that means you’re not only monitoring what’s happening back on Earth, but also specifically what’s been happening to our team. This means that you know that we’ve been looking for you. Well, they’ve been looking for, I’m not sure I give a shit. Yet here you’ve been, hiding out...like a coward. You could have helped so many times, in so many ways.”

“I’m helping now. Do you want your sister to live, or not?”

Angela frowns, but surrenders. “Lead the way.”

“The rest of you can meet us in the master sitting room,” Danica says, taking Angela’s free hand.

“I’m staying with my patient,” the doctor declares. He gives Petra a look. “Those are my orders.”

“Very well.” Danica leads them both away.

“What is this place for?” Petra asks Tamerlane after the other three have left.

“Get everyone else, including the kids,” he replies. He nods at the stairs, which somehow respond to him by starting to extend back up towards the airlock of the rocket. “What this place is, is a haven for weary travelers. Danica has forgotten this fact, but we...are taking over.”

“Do you have the power to do that?” Petra asks. It’s become clear that Angela doesn’t care for either of these two mysterious people, but she seems to trust this one more than she does Danica.

“Not me,” Tamerlane acknowledges, “but Leona does.” He chuckles. “She should be here soon.”

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Mateo, Ramses, and Alyssa are preparing to investigate the region of the Oort cloud that Aquila mentioned, hoping to find the Constant, or at least a clue to its whereabouts. Unfortunately, they’ll be going in the wrong direction.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 16, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

Angela is sitting on her bed, trying to do breathing exercises. Why does she need a bed? She’s only going to be here for six hours. No, don’t get distracted, that doesn’t matter. Breathe in slowly. Breathe out slowlier. Sit up straight, and puff up your chest. Give as much room to your bladder as possible.

There’s a knock at the cabin. “Angela?”

She finishes exhaling. “Yes, Moray?”

“Are you okay?”

“Open the door, Moray.” She’s speaking in that calm, meditative voice that people use to sound relaxed and unintrusive.

Moray does so, and asks again, “are you okay?”

She opens her eyes, and turns to face him. “I’ll be all right. Did you need something?”

“We’re just worried about you, you never came back to the game.”

“Right, I forgot. I’m sorry about that.” She turns back to the wall, and breathes deliberately again.

“Are you pregnant?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You look like our cow did when she was pregnant with a calf.”

Angela smiles, which turns into a yawn. “I’m not pregnant, Moray. I’m just meditating.”

“Oh.” He’s silent for a moment. “Can I join you?”

“One day I can teach you, but uh...that day cannot be today.” She breathes again.

Moray stops speaking as she continues her exercises with her eyes closed, but she can still feel his presence. That’s okay, if he just wants to watch, she’s not going to get angry about it. Or maybe she should, because this isn’t helping control her bladder very much. Jogging didn’t work either. Nor did pelvic floor exercises, though she probably misread the database, which would have likely gone on to say that that’s more of a recurrent process than a quick fix. Perhaps what she really needs is medical intervention.

Angela sighs, and hops off the bed. “Do you know where the infirmary is?”

“Yeah, we saw it on our tour, before you arrived. Are you hurt?”

“That’s a personal question,” she says.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

He leads her down the hallways and ladders. “It’s over there. I won’t disturb you any further.”

“Hey, Moray...”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

He nods, and walks off.

Angela steps into the infirmary. Only one person is in there with a lab coat, implying that he’s the doctor. “Hello, can I help you?”

She sighs again. “I feel the need to urinate, but I’m not allowed to, for reasons that I can’t really explain to you, but it’s a matter of life and death, and I know that sounds really weird, and I can’t say any more about it, but just know that I’m telling the truth. It’s really important that I hold it in until after the trip, because—”

“Madam Walton, it’s okay. I think I know how to help you.” He steps over to a refrigerator, and starts looking through it. “Ah, here we go.” He takes the vial out, and shows it to her. “Gonagozole. Now, this is not a safe medication, and I would not prescribe it for prolonged use, but if you just need to get through the day, it should be fine, and we can treat the side effects afterwards. Are you okay with that?”

“If it works, I should be able to recover on my own, but...what does it do?”

“It does a number of things, but the result you’re looking for is that it shrinks the uterus, which will alleviate your bladder. But that may not be enough” He takes out another vial. “This will enlarge your bladder, so there’s less pressure to urinate.”

“What are the side effects of these two things?”

“Nausea, diarrhea, headache, dizziness, fatigue, hot flashes, increased heart rate. You could contract a UTI, but I don’t see that happening with one dose.”

“I can deal with most of those, even the UTI, but not the first two. It’s not just urine. I cannot expel anything. The water in my system has to stay there.”

He sighs, and goes over to another fridge to retrieve a bottle of over-the-counter medication. “This will stop the nausea, and cause constipation. You won’t release any fluids, you probably won’t even cry.”

“I didn’t think about crying.”

“Madam Walton—”

“Angela.”

“Madam Angela, I cannot recommend you take these three medications in tandem. The side effects are mounting. Now, I will give them to you, because I have been instructed to literally give you and the kids whatever you ask for. This will work, but you’re going to be in an incredible amount of pain. It’s going to make you unbearably miserable.”

“I only need to last a day.”

“Still...I’d like to talk you out of it.”

Angela looks between the three medications. She has to do this. If there’s even a tiny chance that Alt!Tamerlane isn’t lying, she has to do everything she can to protect Marie. They’re two separate people now, it’s not a selfish act. “Will they still work if I’m unconscious, or would I just soil myself?”

“No, they would still work.”

“Then I need you to give me a fourth drug.”

“A sedative,” he guesses.

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

“Right now.”

He doesn’t want to, but he apparently has to. “Follow me.” He leads her to the back of the infirmary, and into a nook with a somewhat private bed. “Lie down and get comfortable. You may remove your clothing, if you would prefer; I’ll close the curtain.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Angela stips down to her bra and underwear, and gets under the covers. She adjusts herself, and restarts her breathing exercises.

“Are you certain that you want to go through with this? You can still back out.”

She looks up at him with her most genuine facial expression. “Do it.”

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: November 11, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

It’s been a month since Angela, Carlin, Moray, Petra, and a small crew of scientists started their relativistic journey to the Oort Cloud. For them, however, it’s only been an hour, and nothing interesting has happened. The four of them are in the middle of a game of Bridge, but that’s about it. Now Angela’s bladder is yelling at her, so she’s taking her break and heading for the head. When she opens the door, she runs into someone she assumes to be one of the research scientists. She doesn’t even look up at his face. “Oh, apologies. I’ll go find another facility.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, madam,” the man says as she’s trying to walk away. That voice. She would recognize it anywhere, even a thousand years from now. It’s the man who put her in prison, Tamerlane Pryce.

She spins around, a little too whimsically than she would like, given the tone she wants to present. “They were right. You’re here.”

He’s genuinely confused. “Someone told you I would be on the rocket?”

“No, I mean, this reality. I don’t know why you’re on the rocket.”

“I’m here to save your life,” he says cryptically.

She folds her arms. “How? Did a seer four million years ago tell you that it would blow up?”

He chuckles. “We don’t have seers. That’s by design. No time travel, no fortune telling, no temporal manipulation of any kind...except for the thing that controls all of that, of course.”

“Of course,” she mocks. “I would love to continue this conversation, but I really do have to go.”

“I meant what I said,” he calls up when she tries to turn away from him again. “You shouldn’t use the toilet.”

“Excuse me? You’re trying to tell a woman what to do with her body?”

He nods as he’s preparing his explanation. “Exactly four months ago, Earth realtime, you imbibed three cups of water while stranded in the village of Vertegen, on the Svalbard archipelago.”

“Yes, we surmised that they were three types of immortality water. That’s why I’m here, to buy time for my friends to find the rest, so Marie isn’t killed.”

“That’s not why I had the villagers give you the water,” Pryce says. “Something worse happens in your future, and I feel responsible for you, so I didn’t want you to die, but that event cannot be changed. What I mean is, the sequence of events leading up to it can’t, but I could alter the outcome. Fortunately, you came to my reality, and provided me with the perfect opportunity to do just that.”

“Okay. Let’s say I believe you. Why won’t you let me pee now?”

He shrugs with both his shoulders, and his chin. “Isn’t it obvious? The waters don’t last forever. Your body purges them from your system, just as they purge anything else you consume...unless it’s permanently detrimental, like a pathogen. If you pee today, Marie will die. Actually, she’ll already be dead, because the whole point is that you would be trying to save her life in the past. You don’t have much time left. I calculated incorrectly, and didn’t give you very much time to reach all eleven immortality waters before the first ones expire. You can do it, but you have to hold on for the next several hours. Your friends are already on the path that will lead them to a permanent solution.”

“We don’t need any solution that you came up with,” Angela contends. “I lived in your world for centuries, but I eventually broke out, thanks to my new family. We’ll break out of this one too, especially now that I know it’s yours.”

Pryce smiles sadly. “The afterlife simulation is not my world. Now, before you argue, I really mean it. I’m a different version of the man you know. He went back in time, and created a new timeline, one in which no one ever really dies. I was born in that one. I never did any of the stuff that he did.”

She’s taken aback by this, but his story isn’t completely implausible. He certainly wouldn’t be the first alternate self she’s met. There have been so many in the Third Rail alone; it’s like a magnet for them. She herself has an alt who goes by their middle name. “You just said you felt responsible for me.”

“I do. I feel personally responsible for all the people he’s hurt. If he’s not going to make up for his mistakes, then I guess I have to.”

She takes a deep breath. “Horace Reaver was a serial killer in one reality, then a rich douchebag in the next, and a hero in the next. I want to trust that you’re like that, but there’s no reason to believe versions of people in subsequent timelines are always better than their Past!Selves. It could just as easily go the other way. Maybe you’re not the man I knew, but that doesn’t mean you’re an improvement.”

“You’re right, but I can give you this.” He pulls a water bottle from behind his back like it’s Excalibur. “Energy water isn’t the most difficult kind to procure, but in the political climate surrounding the Dead Sea and Birket, I would prefer it if you didn’t risk your freedom by trying to go back there to steal more.”

Angela peers at it. “How do I know that isn’t just tap water from a suburban house’s kitchen sink?”

“I went through a lot of trouble to get you the three first immortality waters. The first one is from billions of years ago, the next is from another universe, and the next is from another galaxy. If I couldn’t even sneak into Birket to get this one, I certainly couldn’t have gotten the others, and the whole endeavor is moot.”

She keeps her eyes narrowed, but accepts the gift. “I can’t drink this yet. If I remember the order, I need waters from the Bermuda Triangle and North Pole first.”

He nods. “The others will handle that. This is a good faith gesture, don’t drink it until you get back to Earth. But remember, you can’t go pee. I haven’t had a doctor examine you, so I can’t say for sure it would purge your system of what you need to keep, but if I were you, I wouldn’t risk it.”

Now that he’s been talking about it so much, it’s all that she can focus on. The pressure is worse than ever, though that’s clearly only a psychological reaction. Assuming she believes him in the first place, how long can she last before she explodes? “Thank you...I think.”

He smiles, “that’s as much as I can ask. I better go hide again. I’m a stowaway, after all. Try to keep yourself busy. Maybe activate your acute stress response. When your body is in a hurry, it shuts down digestion, because it knows that it can’t take a break when you’re running from a saber-toothed tiger."

Angela watches him disappear, then she returns to her cabin to stash the Energy water in her refrigerator. Then she goes out for a jog. It doesn’t work.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: May 4, 2398

« < » > Table of Contents

“Hey, Ada...um, Abdoor—uh...”

“You’re close, sir. It’s Abdulrashid.”

“I knew that.”

“You can just call me Ramses.”

“No, I need to learn.”

“Okay.”

His boss doesn’t say anything more.

“Is that all you wanted to do; learn my name?”

“Oh, no. Umm. Look, here’s the thing. I know you’ve already been working for us for a bunch of years, or whatever, but corporate has this new policy where everybody who starts at a new location—be it their first day with us, or a transfer—has to be run through another background check.”

“Okay...”

“Most of it is easy, I literally just copied and pasted your living, work, and education histories from your transfer papers. But there’s one thing you’re gonna hafta do yourself.”

Ramses thinks about it for a moment. “The drug test.”

Oswald nods, and echoes, “the drug test.”

“That’s fine.” Ramses may no longer have his superpowers anymore, but he knows how to eat and live healthily, so his system is likely cleaner than anyone else’s in this joint. It definitely doesn’t have any drugs in it. “I can pee in a cup.”

Oswald contorts his face. “Pee in a cup? Why the hell would you do that? I’m talking about a blood test to make sure you don’t have any illegal substances in your body. I’m not sure what pee and cups have to do with anything.”

Oh, this world is different.

Oswald takes another sip from his fountain drink, but no longer has the taste for it after Ramses’ remark. “Ugh. Pee in a cup,” he says again, muttering under his breath. “You’re one crazy dude, Abdul-Jabbar.” There is no way, in a reality where people give blood samples instead of urine samples for drug screenings, that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar also exists. The point of divergence was far too long ago.

Stockboy sneaks up to Rames by the side. “Have you even ever had a drug screening before?” he asks, sipping at his own drink, unfazed by the conversation that he obviously heard.

No, he’s never taken one before. In his time, using recreational drugs was rare, so people just assumed you weren’t on them. If you were, and it didn’t negatively impact your productivity, then probably no one would notice. But if they did catch you...

“You’re taking too long to answer,” Stockboy muses.

That’s right, he spends too much time in his head. It’s a habit he picked up from Mateo. “Of course I’ve had one. I spent some time in Croatia. The complex where I wanted to live had a strict drug policy, which required multiple forms of testing. You can test for drugs in urine, we just don’t normally do it.”

“Weird. And gross.”

Ramses sighs, and looks over at him. “Get back to that smart speaker that’s stuck on a triple echo.”

“Sir, yes sir!” he mocks with an equally disrespectful salute.

Now that the coast is clear, Leona feels comfortable approaching Ramses to discuss something sensitive. “You remember that our background information is fake, right?”

“Right,” Ramses agrees.

“So when they run a real check on you, that’s what they’ll find...nothing. The forger didn’t fake a background check, she faked the results.”

“Oh, shit. We’re exactly the kind of people those things are meant to look out for.”

“Not exactly,” Leona corrects.

“Wait, you just had your own check, when you first started here. How did you handle it?”

“I had to go pay the forger again. She was not happy. She said she never wanted to see our faces once we left the first time.”

“I have to work late today, and fill in for Bruno tomorrow.” He looks at her with his deep set Persian puppy dog eyes.

“You want me to go back a third time?”

“Pleeeeeeeaaaase? I just don’t know how much time we need.”

“I guess I don’t really wanna go to work, so...all right.” She takes off her apron. “But you’re finishing my shift here.” She hangs it on his neck.

“Great,” Ramses decides. “I’ll call it cross-training. Thank you so much for this.”

“Sure, Rambo.”

Leona calls Mateo to pick her up, and drop her off at the forger’s secret hideout. He asks to go in with her, but she won’t allow it. The forger will be even unhappier than she was the last time, and they don’t need to compound that problem with extra people. Leona is confident that she can handle it on her own, and it’s true that she doesn’t feel like going back to the lab anyway.

“You’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad,” the forger asks.

“You were mad last time.”

“You silly Egyptian water lily, I was kidding!”

“What’s with you?” Leona questions. “You don’t smile.”

“You don’t know me that well.”

“It’s exceedingly obvious that you don’t smile. You don’t give off the right vibe.”

“Oh, it’s—relax, we’re all friends here.”

“I feel like you’re about to tell me that...” Leona trails off. She takes a receipt out of her purse, and scribbles down a note that reads, Is this place bugged?

“No, we’re not bugged. I’m not trying to trick you, I’m just being friendly.”

“To what end?”

“To...” Her demeanor drops with each following word as she struggles to maintain the charade. “I don’t know what a normal person would say in this scenario.”

“They would tell the truth,” Leona explains.

The forger scoffs. “No, they wouldn’t.”

“Do you need something from me?”

“Do you need something from me?” she returns annoyingly.

“Yes, I need an emergency background check interception.”

“Easy.”

“And in return, you want,” Leona prompts.

“Oh, I don’t want anything,” the forger begins. “However, maybe in the future there could be something that you could get me?”

Leona narrows her eyes. “Something, like what?”

“Well, you work at that lab.”

“You got me in there. You could send anyone you wanted.”

“Honest hour? I didn’t think your fake university transfer would work.” She grimaces. “I’m glad to know it did, though.”

Leona ponders the offer. It would be dangerous, but that’s not the problem. The problem is she doesn’t know what it is yet. So here’s hoping that it’s worth it. “Fine.”