Jamie and X coming to Eureka.

[smart_house]

It may be awkward for X-23 and Jamie, transitioning from Milliways to Eureka. SARAH herself does not notice much of anything when she moves back and forth, but she advised her two guests to sit down on the living room couch before they left the bar.

"Exterior sensors have resumed function," SARAH announces. "Welcome to Eureka."

Comments

[cutting_edgex23]

X is no stranger to cameras. Or to sensors.

Which may be why she doesn't so much as twitch before she grabs Jamie's wrist and tugs him toward the front door.

"Come on. I want to be quick, this is getting boring."

[walksthebounds]

"I'm coming!"

Jamie runs after her, following her through the door.




And they're inside.

[cutting_edgex23]

X pauses just inside the threshold--scenting the air, listening.

Her eyes snap to the stairs, body going tense. Someone's coming down.

She does not want to be seen.

Her hand clenches tighter on Jamie's arm, and she tugs him to where the basement stairs should be.

Her footsteps are silent.

Jamie's--

Jamie's might not be.

[walksthebounds]

Jamie's eyes follow Laura's. He doesn't see anything, but he doesn't argue, either, when she pulls him towards a place he vaguely remembers from schematics as holding a stairway.

His footsteps aren't silent, but they're fairly quiet. He tested the shoes beforehand, to make sure they wouldn't squeak.

He's been on raids before, Jamie has.

[eureka_npcs]

Richard Nickerson has not been on raids. He can't even stand using Raid(TM), a product that really? Eureka should be able to come up with something far more useful and less hazardous to the user's health.

Complete with pocket protector, the landlord of Eureka Gardens looks very much like everyone's least-favorite middle school earth science teacher, and the scowl visible even from the bottom of the stairway at the opposite end of the lobby didn't help much.

Something must have buzzed him -- Richard reaches into his pocket for his apparently Eureka-standard-issue communication device and stares at the screen, reading a message.

[cutting_edgex23]

X has no idea what is happening upstairs, and, since she can't do anything about it now, she focuses her attention on their goal.

That would be the central computer-system of EG, and the information contained there.

She moves slowly down the stairs, matching it with her mental schematics. The most likely place to find what they're looking for is--

There.

[walksthebounds]

Jamie edges quietly after her, darting glances forward and back.

The man at the top of the stairs doesn't look like much of a threat, but Jamie would still very much prefer 'not caught' to 'caught'.

[eureka_npcs]

That makes one of them.

"Richard," EG offers through Richard's communicator - a courtesy to the landlord since the extent of his power is not public knowledge - "Two unauthorized visitors have made their way toward the sub-basement."

Richard doesn't run, but close enough as he starts to cross the wide lobby toward the stairs.

One flight down from Richard, a colder man's voice is piped through speakers in the walls. "Your access to this site is not permitted. Please remove yourselves immediately."

[cutting_edgex23]

X's skin prickles, and her expression gets tighter.

Colder.

But she says nothing.

She just picks up speed.

[walksthebounds]

Jamie glances after X. She's going after the information - all right, that would seem to make it his job to stall.

Talk is what Jamie does best, after all.

He stops in his tracks, turning around in the tight stairwell, and demands in a voice that cracks, "Who said that? I don't see anyone!"

[eureka_npcs]

"Richard advised me not to speak to others."

Down the flight of stairs from the lobby is a central hallway that runs from one end of EG to the other, with fire doors at regular intervals.

At the far end from the two intruders, these fire doors have started to close. And lock.

"I do not believe he would mind, at the moment."

[cutting_edgex23]

X checks the doors along this stretch of hallway, one quick look, then a second (if there's anything to look at).

She is not going to let the locked fire doors stop her.

"Move faster."

Hurry up, Jamie.

[walksthebounds]

If the doors ahead of them are closing, stalling is probably pointless.

Jamie hot-foots it backwards after X, even as he calls, for the benefit of Richard and EG, "Agh! It's a ghost! Let's get out of here!"

[eureka_npcs]

"You are underground. I do not understand who it is you are trying to speak to."

No doors had been closing in front of X and Jamie; only behind.

Pushing them forward, moving toward a goal. It just so happens that EG's and the intruders' goals happen to coincide.

[smart-house.livejournal.com]

SARAH, on the outskirts of town, knew this was going to happen. It was a very high statistical probability that she would lose signal strength and tracking capabilities when X-23 and Jamie went inside EG.

She is unhappy about it.

So is someone else.

Not that SARAH knows that.

[cutting_edgex23]

X knows what Jamie is trying to do. Mostly.

It does not make sense to her, but maybe it will be useful.

And eventually, at the end of a long, cold, industrial hallway, they reach their destination.

X's focus shifts abruptly, though her expression hardly changes at all.

She has worked with computers before.

Her fingers slip across the buttons and keys, eyes searching out the most likely--

There.

[eureka_npcs]

The louder intruder appears to be of no consequence.

EG focuses on the female as she approaches the larger of the two server control panels in the room, no doubt intent on espionage and stealing his landlord's work secrets.

"You will not be permitted to remove anything. I will allow you to leave."

[walksthebounds]

"That's big of you," Jamie calls out, picking his way towards the other control panel and remembering hard what SARAH told him about how to work them.

"We really don't want to get in trouble - are you going to report this on our school records or anything?"

[cutting_edgex23]

"I will leave later."

X's voice is short and sharp.

She frowns a little, concentrating on her work.

Half of her attention is waiting for some kind of defensive measures.

She will deal with those as they come up.

There is no other choice.

[eureka_npcs]

And they do come up.

Not physically, though, so much as electronically.

"I will not allow you to steal." The two panels, readouts displaying a red label of TRANSFER IN PROGRESS, are blinking mundanely at X and Jamie, a status bar crawling from left to right. "I am backing up my systems."

[cutting_edgex23]

X tries a key command, but her attention is already flicking around the room.

If the storage space isn't here, it's somewhere else, and she'll have to find--

Oh.

She lifts one hand to hit Jamie's arm. She tries to make it light.

"Behind you. On the right. Unplug them."

Beat.

"You can break them, too."

If he can. Server stacks are not always that fragile.

[walksthebounds]

Jamie nods and grabs for the plugs, tugging as hard as he can to get them out of their sockets and prattling all the while:

"Really sorry about this, but it would be really bad if there was a record of us being here. See, our parents would kill us, so we're going to have to make sure that -"

With a final tug, the plugs come out. Jamie falls backwards on his rear, but holds them up triumphantly.

[eureka_npcs]

Even with the power from the rest of the building -- from AC electricity to solar panels in the roof -- EG cannot support himself for more than a few seconds.

There's no last words or final message.

Unless you count that TRANSFER IN PROGRESS, and the weak status bar that is frozen on two percent.



It's a quiet two or three seconds until a mumbled whirr and the sounds of a seal being formed in the door to the room. By the echo, the same seal is probably being formed in the other matching fire doors in the hallway.

Redundant systems; Richard must have been expecting an intrusion eventually.

[cutting_edgex23]

X does not seem startled in the least.

She just finishes up her work, looking fiercely satisfied.

snikt

Now to destroy EG's hardware, and the data contained therein. You can't strip data from drives that are just tiny scraps of metal and plastic.

Hopefully Jamie does not mind the carnage.

[walksthebounds]

As long as the carnage is not living, Jamie is mostly okay with it - or at least, okay with ignoring it.

He occupies himself, instead, in writing a note on a small Post-It, as he told SARAH he would: Try stealing someone else's data again, and you'll wake up without windows too. Love and kisses, Your Conscience

The note gets stuck to the biggest monitor with a flourish.