Participants:
| Scene Title | Code Talkers |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Just because it's Saturday morning doesn't mean there's not work to be done and mysteries to solve! |
| Date | November 10, 2018 |
Phoenix Heights - Lance's Apartment.
Saturday Morning Cartoons would be just about wrapping up — if there were still Saturday Morning Cartoons — when there's an excited knock on the door of Lance's apartment. Which places it near to lunch time and no longer really morning. But it's still a good hour, not too early that people might be waking up and not too late that adventures can't happen.
On the other side, maybe expectedly given the height and energy of the sound, stands the reason for the almost midday interruption. Squeaks stands in front of the door, splitting a wide-eyed look between that and Emily, who's not too far behind. She waits a whole three seconds before knocking again. Even though if only Brynn is home she might not hear or notice. Maybe she should just use her key if no one answers.
Four or five seconds pass this time, and the young teen raises her hand to knock again.
"Did you know," Emily says, crutches grinding in the sidewalk salt as she catches up with Squeaks, "that there's these things called phones you can use — wild devices, really — that could let someone know you're coming in advance?" The comment is said to nothing but the air, and likely would be better served once inside, but she's not sure at all anyone's home. After Squeaks knocks the third time, she sighs. Maybe Lance and Brynn were at work and Joe was out doing Joe things. When she breathes again, she draws in a sniff to clear her nose.
"Have a little patience, Squeaks." she encourages in deadpan, hoping her own cynical thoughts are wrong.
It takes a moment before the door cracks open— a brief pause to identify who's on the other side, and then it's opened fully. Lance is there in a plain t-shirt and sweatpants, barefoot, eyebrows raised as he looks to the pair. "Hey," he greets bemusedly, "What's up? Do I need to get a gun?"
Although normally she's awake and on the go, Brynn this time has actually managed to oversleep on Lance's couch. And what with being deaf, the knocking on the door goes unheard. Why is she still sleeping? It could be that she was up way too late making a new mural on Lance's apartment wall — a snow-filled scene filled with realistic glowing firelight and a pond on which people are skating, and some deer in the bare woods of the trees with a large structure just hinted at near the door.
She's re-created home.
But Lance moving through the room to answer the aforementioned door brings her alert and awake, sitting upright on the cushions, wary about who might be actually knocking because everyone who's anyone has a key! She's sleeping in sweatpants and a long-sleeved T-shirt that has definitely seen better days, her dark hair tousled. And she looks worried as Squeaks and Em become visible, scrambling off the couch to sign, Oh God, what happened??
"Hi!" It's not exactly the girl's normal greeting. It's excited and not flat, which might contrast the older siblings' wariness a little bit. There's also a grin that follows, even though it's her typically short one. Clearly there's something that happened, but probably isn't the bad kind of something.
Squeaks ducks by Lance to go inside. She shakes out of her backpack and jacket, then shoots a quick grin at Brynn. "There's a new mark," she explains with both voice and hands. "Another book and another mark and that makes five now. And a new code too."
Head shaking as Squeaks all but squeezes past under Lance's arm, Emily looks up at him pointedly. "Nice to see you again." she offers politely enough, kicking her shoes free of salt and ice before stepping inside. And when she does, it's from a slushscape into an actual winter wonderland. She's lost in looking over the mural that's on the wall, forgetting to slip her crutches off, though at least she's not blocking the door from closing. Eventually, she looks to Brynn, brows arched. Holy shit, this looks amazing. she says with her eyes, looking back to appreciate the art a moment longer.
"You have a key, you know, you don't have to knock— " Lance steps aside as the two women sweep past him and into the apartment, giving them time to pass before he closes the door behind them. "More books, huh…? And a new code? What the hell, can't ink lady just talk to us in normal words again?"
Brynn bites her lip and looks abashed at Emily's open admiration. It took her hours and hours to get just the way she wanted it, her use of her power requiring a deep level of concentration that might explain her weariness and oversleeping. But the signing from Squeaks is parsed and both her brows shoot upward. Holy crap, Mouse. Because what the heck else is she gonna say to that!? The ink mark has been an ongoing situation of WTF for the teens and their circle of people. It was really hard for her, Brynn reminds Lance. She was missing pieces of herself, I mean…
"I like to knock." Squeaks turns to pick up her backpack again, and dig out the journal that's fast becoming part of her normal everyday supplies. "Also, it happened when a SESA lady was looking for Gillian at home. And she wants to take me to the SESA place to research the binary code from before. And the scramble letters." As she explains she flips through the journal to find the new sequence of letters so the others can see too.
=Orsber lbh, nabgure unq sbhaq zr.
Emily only grins at Brynn when she shies away from looking proud of her work. B-a-n-k-s-y are the letters she gets signed at her knowingly. Leaving her shoes and her crutches by the door, she carefully checks the small bag worn diagonal across her chest before sitting down on the cough, minding to not sit on the bag. When the journal comes out, so does her phone, and she taps away at it with slow deliberate strokes to make sure the auto-correct doesn't eat the nonsense and turn it into … well, something that made sense.
"Here we go again." she murmurs, leaning back to peer at the string.
You do great work, admit it, Lance's hands flicker at Brynn, as he sticks his tongue out at her. Once the door's locked he walks back over to peer at what Squeaks has gathered, frowning, "Okay… which SESA lady did you talk to? What'd she say?"
The code's frowned at as well. Yep. That's a code alright.
The vaguely bashful shrug is what Lance gets. Brynn likes her own work and knows she has some small amount of talent, feels like it's good but not as good as it could be, and still really hasn't yet figured out how to take compliments and admiration. Her siblings have to say nice things about it… lest it devolve into Brynn heartbreak. At least, that's the way she figures it (there was this one time, way back in the beginning, one of the kids said something mean about one of her drawings and she cried. She's pretty sure that's why all of them are nice about it now. Heaven forbid she get a swelled head over her art!)
Curiously she moves to look at the journal and the code written in it, looking at Emily and Squeaks expectantly. Did you figure it out already? She kind of expects they were so excited about it, they cracked it before they came.
"I didn't," Squeaks answers as she hands the book off to Brynn and Emily. Like she usually does, the bashfulness and insistence about art is watched with the interest she might give a butterfly — interesting, except fleeting. "It was Robyn. Her book leaked onto the floor and then she went looking for Gillian's books." Something she isn't sure for why. "But after I told her about how it happened. And she pinky sweared not to tell either, not even SESA, unless it's bad stuff."
With a shake of her head, Emily takes the book from Squeaks, leaving it open in her lap as she looks up to Brynn, hands lifting to convey No — not yet.
To be fair, though, she'd only just seen it. Squeaks had stopped by all in excitement and would only tell her 'come on!', providing minimal detail until here with everyone else.
Speaking aloud as she signs her thoughts, Emily wonders out loud, "Okay, so with this one … do we have any clues? Did this Robyn woman have any hints she saw stand out?" Otherwise, she'd just start trying every type of code they'd encountered so far. Well, except binary, for obvious reasons.
She does pause for a moment, thoughts hitching on something Squeaks had said. About 'not telling' anyone else about the mysterious ink woman. Even though this Robyn was a SESA agent, and they were likely the best-equipped to handle this mystery. Emily has to close her eyes in order to bite her tongue about it.
"Oh, it's Robyn." That, it seems, makes it alright to Lance. He's known the woman since he was a kid, after all. "Quinn's cool, even if she turned French mysteriously."
He drops down to sit, folding his legs and leaning back against the couch, one elbow hooking up on a cushion. "Yeah, did she have any ideas?"
Mysteriously turned French? Do what, now? Brynn just slants him a glance. Okaaaaaaay. But her attention comes back to the other two girls and she grins, Are you going to brute force it like the last ones? The query holds her amusement — because she remembers that's what Emily called it at one point.
"No, but she's curious about it." With her hands free, it's easier to use them to talk as well as speak out loud. Squeaks half circles around the others on the couch, leaning so she can look over at Emily's work on the computer. She goes back the other direction, and then squeezes in to sit beside Brynn. "She said the computers at her work might be more helpful and I can go with her."
Emily's mouth quirks to one side as she takes the phrase and begins running it against various keywords on a cryptography tool that she may or may not have downloaded on the way over. Her phone screen reshuffles the letters repeatedly, but never do they fall out in any order making sense. She starts to sigh before catching Brynn's comment out of the corner of her eye, shrugging helplessly. "Might have to." she laments, her tone odd. Certainly she doesn't sound happy, but she's definitely intrigued. Her hand gesture is almost absent, like she's three layers of thought going on underneath, and her attention swivels back to her phone before long. Mystery-cracking mode Emily has activated.
Lance spreads his hands to either side with a shrug at Brynn, which while not sign language still makes clear the statement 'fuck if I know'. He cranes his neck then to look over to Emily, watching her for a moment before inquiring, "You alright?"
The deaf teen scoots to give Squeaks room, but still squeezes in too — she's gonna watch this! Emily in action is always fun. Brynn has no clue how to do what the other girl does.
"Robyn says she used to sing." Because that's similar to speaking French? "Also, she said bad words in French when her book leaked. I think it scared her." Squeaks isn't sure what was said, but it sounded bad. "I told her this happened a bunch of times, and that only you three were told. Plus her now. Since she saw it happen." She shoots a look to Lance and Brynn. "Also Eve called it the Shattered Lady. But I didn't tell her about this until after she guessed."
"Yeah, just fine." Emily replies in that same absent tone, wondering. If none of the ten or so keys worked and they didn't have a clue, maybe it wasn't a Vigenere cipher. So what other options did this little tool have? She starts going down the list of them, her fixation on her phone momentarily broken as she snorts at Squeaks' commentary about Robyn's swearing.
When she looks down to her phone again, her brow ticks upward. "Squeaks, was this note something Ink Lady left for Robyn, or for you?" She holds up her phone, the message and its decoded counterpart displaying.
Before you, another had found me.
"Oh, yeah," Lance's head bobs a bit, his hands idly translating as he recalls, "She was with the Lesbian Band at Gun Hill. It was a bunch of lesbians and Magnes, I don't remember what it was called."
He leans in a bit to the message, then, blinking once. "Huh. Are there— marks like that on someone else, then?"
Brynn laughs, her laughter a mere huff of breath. The Lesbian Band. Having grown up with such a good mix of people in the Ferry — a large number of whom might fit that explanation — it strikes Brynn as a pretty useless description of a band. But she watches the code-breaking with an interested expression because well… now that she's had to admit that Lance was right and there was such a thing as an inkmorph — that is still so ridiculous to her that she can't stand that she had to admit it — now she really wants to know what happened to this person!
"Magnes was that guy on the video." Just for confirmation, because she hasn't ever met the guy. As she talks to Lance and Brynn, Squeaks looks at the phone display. "It was on the floor, like how she split before? When she told Lance off then part of her marked my arm and the other part got on the wall. So…" She chews on her bottom lip for a second, thinking. "Maybe me. But I don't know who else found her."
Blanching at Lance's continued nonchalant commentary, Emily's hand drops back into her lap and she turns to openly stare at him. "What the fresh hell, Lance." Her stare only intensifies. The lack of context is baffling enough, but the language he uses to keep describing people has thrown her off balance.
After a moment, she shakes her head, hand aside so she can look down at the journal. "Okay, so now we know there's potentially … someone else out there hoarding books."
"…what?" Lance blinks twice at Emily, clearly completely nonplussed at her response. "I don't remember what they were called! I was like ten, geeze— ask Robyn, or Colette, or Tasha. They'd remember." He brings one hand up to scratch at his neck, frowning slightly, "Maybe. They might have gotten freaked out and tried to destroy her, too."
When Emily looks at Lance like that, Brynn pulls back a little. She's not sure what exactly threw Emily, not really being able to hear the tonality of the query, and since she wasn't looking, uncertain what was actually asked. Gray eyes flicker between the two, and when they go back to looking at the screen she glances at Squeaks questioningly.
The youngest teen is just as confused, but then she's never been great at understanding social constructs. So when Brynn looks her way she can only shrug. She does add, after her shoulders fall again, Maybe Lance farted? Her nose wrinkles a little bit, probably a cautious test of the air, but she shrugs again, a tinier shrug this time.
All of the names Lance spouts are unfamiliar, eliciting another glance of suspicion at him and his naming conventions before Emily decides to let it drop. She lets her phone out of her hands, looking between the older teens. "Anyway, before I forget to ask, both of you signed up for GhostNet, right?" In place of figuring out some way of signing GhostNet, she more or less signs 'new phone thing'.
She adds aside to Squeaks in a mutter, "He didn't fart, he's just being crude."
"I'm just being descriptive," Lance protests, hands sweeping up in a helpless gesture. His hands move in a quick motion towards Brynn, She's offended I said lesbians. His brows lift a little at the question, then, "GhostNet? Nah, we can't afford that sort of thing, Em."
Offended because he said 'lesbians'? Brynn looks askance at Emily and comments, kind of randomly (from Emily's perspective maybe), If you're offended by lesbians, maybe you better let us know that now — we know a lot of them. Cuz they do! And then she asks, What new phone thing? Because although she has a phone, it's practically never on and she's certainly seen nothing about anything new with the phone.
Squeaks' eyes go to Lance then to Emily and finally to Brynn. Now she's definitely confused. "But if they are lesbians," she starts, wondering. But she doesn't get it, or understand how that's a bad thing. Or crude. She shakes her head and lets that subject drop. Maybe she'll ask later.
Emily's eyes start to widen as she belatedly translates what Lance has said, stammering, "No, no that's not—"
Her cheeks burn a warm red, hands lifting to defend herself. "No, the problem—" Oh god, why was this conversation even happening. "You can't just wave a hand and go 'oh, the lesbians'." she waves her hand and tosses her head to emphasise her point as she signs it. She manages to remember to alter her facial expression to match her tone, just barely, even though she's thoroughly flustered. "And I'm sure Robyn wasn't just 'suddenly French', or however you put it."
Maybe face was saved, maybe it wasn't.
Anyway, she tries to sign, silent and blushing. The new phone thing with the small airplanes— (she means drones) that make the internet and phone work everywhere in the Safe Zone now. It's a paid service. Yamagato thing.
"But that's who they were," Lance protests, laughing as he does, "They were the Gun Hill Lesbians!"
He should not have had this much exposure to Eric Doyle as a child.
"They weren't all in the band, though," he adds, "And Robyn was totally French suddenly, and she never used to be. Anyway. Yeah, we can't afford GhostNet."
Brynn rolls her eyes and just grins at the whole Lesbian kerfuffle. Then she, rather hesitantly, signs to Lance, If it's just a one-time fee… I have some money put aside. She's been working a lot more than he may realize, and she doesn't spend money much at all. And yes, she'll give all the money she made to Lance to do with as he sees fit, if this thing that Emily is suggesting is something that he thinks we need access to. She just isn't sure whether Emily's saying it's some kind of service that has to be bought into or a new actual phone to purchase to enable them to be more in contact. That's not exactly clear in her head.
"I can help buy it," Squeaks chimes in. This is something way easier to understand than what is crude to say and what is not — and the whole don't say lesbians is still confusing. And just because she doesn't live all the time in the apartment like before, mostly staying during weekends, she still contributes when she can. "I work at Raytech, remember?"
Emily simply shrugs. "It's important to be able to stay in touch," she asserts and signs, "Whether it's just a quick text to catch up or … well, an emergency." she starts to frown as she remembers one of the last times she visited. "Like, you guys know I nearly got mugged at the bus stop a few blocks over, right? Back when I was over here a lot?"
This is definitely something she's never brought up before.
"Would have been great to have been like 'hey, there's shit going on outside.'"
"Whoa, whoa," Lance sits up sharply, raising a hand, "Whoa, someone tried to mug you in our neighborhood?" There's a protective anger that flares in his eyes, "Where? And what'd the guy look like?"
Oh Lord…. Brynn could have told Emily she might not want to tell Lance and Joe such things. Some information is best kept among the girls. She winces when Lance does pretty much as expected. Though she too feels the same protective instincts — Squeaks is just smaller and Emily is certainly capable but… she's got limitations sometimes. So that means the boys are going to overreact.
Having experienced… similar problems not that long ago, Squeaks recognizes that look. It chases away excitement and confusion and makes her as uneasy now as it it did then. She leans a little closer to Brynn, eyes darting from Lance to Emily.
For a split second, there's a look in Emily's eye like 'oh shit, maybe I didn't mention that'. Within a blink it's gone and she's waving one hand like what happened was nothing. Immediately trying to downplay the severity of it. "It was dark, and I doubt it'll happen again because I stole his gun and now I keep it on me." Might explain why she's being careful with the handbag.
Emily hastily tries to shift the subject back to her initial point. "But GhostNet — it's been really helpful. I mean, I was able to solve that code like that without spending hours and hours trying to figure out what it might be, and then doing the math by hand. Having the Internet in the palm of your hand really can't be overlooked, and being able to get calls and texts is just an added bonus."
The change of subject doesn't entirely divert Lance, it seems, fingertips drumming on a cushion of the couch as he watches Emily with a frown. Then he's rolling up to his feet, letting the girls talk as he paces over in the direction of the kitchen in utter silence. Literal silence, since he's not making any sound at the moment.
Well, Brynn's well versed in Lance-isms and Joe-isms. This won't be the last that is heard about the matter, so to speak. After all, she can't hear. But she pats Squeaks and gives her a reassuring wink and smile. He just worries. We care about you and about Emily — and you guys are great at taking care of yourselves, but we grew up in a pack, you know? When you're a pack, you look out for one another. And when he hears something bad might have happened, he wants to protect. It's fine, I promise.
She tilts her head at Emily and peers. You took his gun. Do you know how to use that gun? Or are you running around with a loaded firearm that you're not as proficient with as you need to be to avoid shooting off your own baby toe? she demands of their newest member — cuz she doesn't know Em's firearms skills! And Brian would have a cow if they let her run around with a gun and didn't know how to use it properly. And disassemble it. In the dark. By feel. And reload it that way too.
I know. Her answer is small and her eyes follow Lance when he paces away. Anger still makes her cautious anyway. Squeaks looks at the two older girls when he disappears into the kitchen. "Guns are dangerous. You need to know the rules if you have one." Lance taught her those. "Because you don't want to accidentally shoot your friends. They would be dead."
Emily slowly sits up straighter at each thing Brynn says, blinking at the seriousness in the accusation she doesn't know what she's doing with the gun. Her shoulders settle and her hands start to form a response before falling into her lap. Gun-related vocabulary was new.
Even newer, realizing how highly Brynn and Lance must think of her. To care like that.
It should inspire a warm feeling. Instead, she feels a stab of cold through her gut and her chest.
Unmoving, her eyes flit between the two with a growing discomfort. "I know how to shoot. And use the safety." Her enunciation is careful, since she doesn't have the signs for it. It also might be just a part of her mood. Her brow furrows, and she adds with her hands But maybe I don't know much else. As far as she's been concerned until now, using one was the only important thing to know about.
She suddenly shakes her head, palm swiping against her forehead before she grinds the side of her thumb by the bridge of her nose. It might help prevent the headache that's starting to form from all this, who knows. "Just — you should take advantage of being able to have service constantly again." she means to mutter it, but her voice is raised.
"You're right," Lance calls back from the kitchenette, half-obscured behind the fridge door as he pulls it open and leans to reach into it, "We'll look into the price, and all that, see if we can afford it. We can do some work for Keira if we have to, smuggling usually pays well." He's pro-government, but apparently smuggling isn't something that he finds at all a contradiction with that.
"So we can get in touch with people in an emergency."
The information that Emily knows at least the basics of shooting and safety brings relief and a small grin. To Brynn, Emily is competent and capable and doesn't require us to care about her — we just do. She's good people. Weapons are serious business, though. And Emily has obviously been taught well. Maybe not to the level of the Lighthouse expectations, but then again… she didn't have Brian as a father-figure. Knowing the safety rules and how to shoot it is all that's needed for most things, Em. We've just seen what can happen when people who don't know some of that then carry a weapon with them and someone — like your mugger-wannabe — then turns it against you. You know… then you've handed them a weapon they might not have even had with them to use against you, that's all. She hadn't intended for her signs to be accusatory, she was more startled than anything else.
Without being able to see or hear Lance, Brynn simply shrugs slightly. We have signal sometimes. Until we came here, it was better, though, she admits. The towers and stuff farther out were a lot less damaged than things closer to NYC. Even when I had it all the time, though, it's not… as helpful as you might think for me. I sometimes didn't know it had gone off and stuff.
"It's really very important," Squeaks adds quietly and with a small nod. Shooting your friends is bad news, and definitely not something she ever wants to do. It's a big reason why she hasn't asked since that last lesson on guns and safety. When Lance calls out from the kitchen, she turns her head in that direction. "I can help," she reminds him and Brynn, including her with a look. With the GhostNet. Lance might do smuggling again to pay, but I can help too. I get paid at Raytech.
Ah, right. There it was — the gang-like side of the Lighthouse band. Emily lets her hands fall back to her lap, doing Brynn and Squeaks the courtesy of looking at them both as they speak. About guns. Because that's something young people their age should know extensively about by default, right? She lets out a long sigh, brow furrowing as it's confirmed even Squeaks knows her way around a firearm. Even as Emily watches them both, though, her gaze grows a little distant. "Better to get a message 20 minutes late just because you didn't have your phone in hand, rather than getting a message an hour later just because it took that long to get proper service for it, Brynn."
She leans back slightly to pick up the journal carefully and set it on the table in front of the couch. A thought strikes her that causes her to laugh without much mirth, and she suggests, "You could all get on one giant family plan or something."
"We'll make it work." A mason jar of some sort of tea in hand, Lance stops near the entrance to the kitchenette and offers a faint smile, "I'm going to start doing some patrols of the neighborhood, too, I think… I only work part-time, so, I've got plenty of time on my hands."
Yes, because completely normal teenagers do armed patrols of their neighborhoods.
Brynn rolls her eyes and signs to Squeaks, I get paid! Pearl pays me, Raquelle pays me, and I get paid sometimes for freelancing in the market. That was why she told Lance she had money. Emily's kind of pushing it hard enough that Brynn is worried that there's something really important that she's missing about why they should have it. They certainly haven't needed it, really. Do they do stuff like that? she wonders. Family plans, she means. She's never really paid a lot of attention to her phone or anything and she shrugs a little. She looks uncertainly toward the kitchen — between them all, they might make enough money to manage it. Maybe. The teens have made do for a long time now… the cost of living here shocked Brynn, so she can't imagine what a huge company like Yamagato will charge for such luxury as actual cell service around this area. She pulls in a slow breath when Lance talks about patrol… and then nods slightly. She's not even going to try to talk him out of it. He can handle himself.
Her hands start to form a reply to Brynn's insistence, but then Squeaks lets them drop, confused. It's not that she didn't believe the older teen, she's seen the cash that's been saved. She was trying to contribute too, like she always has. She looks at Emily and Lance, then wiggles around until she's found her journal. It's opened, right to the page with the newest code, and she looks down at the jumbly letters.
An actual disgruntled note leaves Emily as she overhears Lance from the doorway. The only thing that keeps her from protesting is knowing that the particular brand of bastard that nearly broke her arm probably (hopefully?) wouldn't be lurking around here anymore. Lance should likely run into no trouble. Likely. She hopes.
This has been a great reminder why you should just keep things to yourself, Em. she thinks to herself. That seems to solve it for her, and she wastes no further time being solemn about it. Arguing with Lance wouldn't be useful at the moment, and she didn't need him or any of the rest of them fishing to know just why she was so insistent the 'mugger' surely wouldn't be around anymore.
"I'll keep an eye out for more Wolves copies, Squeaks." Emily suggests lightly, leaning forward to her.
The moment passes, and Lance just shakes his head before stepping over — reaching out to ruffle Squeaks' hair. "So is there any more of that code," he asks, peering down at her and the journal, "Or is it just that one line saying that someone else found her before…?" Back to the topic at hand, although chances are he'll be out all night, now. Thinking he's a ninja or something.
Brynn looks between Emily's shuttered expression and Squeaks's …. and determines that she clearly missed something in the tones of voice around her, because she said the wrong thing somehow. And as is more or less her usual, she wilts a little and sighs softly — she says the wrong thing a lot — and pushes upward from the couch with a reassuring grin to Squeaks. You guys let me know what you find in the code. I'm going to catch a shower real quick. Be right back out. Her small duffel that contains all her clothes is in the corner of the living room, where it lives, and she rummages out some clean clothes to take into the bathroom with her. It's the one luxury she adores about Lance's apartment — unending hot water at certain times of day.
"Just this so far," Squeaks answers. "And the ones and zeros." She looks up when Brynn moves, echoing the grin with a short one of her own. She's still confused, but maybe that's okay. At least the older girl doesn't seem angry. "I keep looking but the Safe Zone is way bigger than the Underneath." She looks at Emily and Lance as she goes on. "There's lots and lots more people."
"We'll find the others, don't worry." Emily assures her. One way or another.
She leans back into the couch, wistfully suggesting, "It'd be great if she gave us a little more help with that, though…"
"What ones and zeroes?" Lance's brow furrows a little, and he glances to Emily before looking back to the code book. "We'll start checking out bookstores," he suggests, "See if we can find anything. There's got to be some more of those books out there."
A page is turned in the journal, to the one just before the code Emily figured out. "When you tried to trap the ink-lady beneath the bowl," Squeaks answers. "She wrote on the wall and we did yes-no with her. This one Robyn thinks we can run on her work computers and get the answer."
Emily adds with a bit of hesitation, head tilting, "You know, though, if all of her copies have been bought by now…" Well, that'd make things more difficult now, wouldn't it? She can't bring herself to finish voicing the thought. Squeaks already has worn a distressed look enough times this morning. She quickly smiles, looking to the younger girl and shifting a momentary glance to Lance to help her with it. "But with Lance helping search, I'm sure that won't be an issue." And patrolling bookstores for signs of another Wolves copy sounded a hell of a lot better than patrolling as a one-man neighborhood watch.