Alicia at the Library

Grace
The address that Alicia has been given lies outside of town, nearer the mountains, but not far out of the way. There's no ward to protect it, so finding the place isn't as much of an issue as finding the Chantry certainly would be. Its only protection is how mundane it all seems from the outside. Looks like a small office to one side and a warehouse next door, and the only indication that something might be amiss here is the faded image of what might have once been a cow painted on the side of one of the buildings. This business has changed. Nobody's bothered to name it or put up a sign though.

Grace says it's a safe place to talk, in her message. Well, as she tends to say, it's safer.

The next thing that Alicia might notice about the place is the security system on the doors. Biometric locks on this place -- some expensive equipment if all they're protecting is some farming equipment, no?

The last thing that Alicia might notice is how it feels. Kalen's storm predominates, but there a shift in the air, a slice through the lightning.

There are lights on in the building that looks to contain offices.

Alicia
At least it's on the light rail line. She doesn't know how she's going to get back to the house after this is over but she hasn't thought that far ahead yet. Sitting on the train headed towards the mountains gave her time to wipe the eyeliner trails off her cheeks. To freshen up somewhat before she continues the journey on towards the library.

It's nearing nine o'clock at night by the time the five-foot-one teenager comes out of the darkness with half her life in her handbag. Hair unrestrained and a look of tense apprehension on her features.

She eyes the front door in search of sort of a bell or knocker. Starts texting Grace as she sorts it out.

Hey I'm here your door is intense

Grace
Ooh. An (expected) visitor. Grace arrives soon after the text, because let's face it, she is never more than a few feet away from her phone. The door makes a heavy click noise and swings open.

It doesn't look any more like a magic stronghold on the inside, but considerably nicer. Kalen cares for such things as paint on the walls and matching furnishings. On the inside, it seems more polished. Almost like a Hermetic lives here.

"Hey, Alicia. I'll show you to the library, eh? I made tea."

She just assumes that the unrestrained hair and tenseness is just Alicia -- you know, the girl who has been through a lot lately? Grace isn't one to comment on someone's appearance. It would be hypocritical for the one whose own hair looks like it was styled in a wind tunnel.

No, she just turns toward the staircase and starts to show the way.

Alicia
"Cool."

She doesn't appear to be making many assumptions about the building or its location or what it does or does not look like lives here. Granted her voice is quiet and a bit on the flat side like she's just woken up and isn't too happy about it.

Once the door is closed behind them and they're turned towards the staircase she goes on:

"So I kind of found out who owns the Black Orchid. That place's been open for like, twenty years and the owners have clubs in three other cities and one of them is on the board of directors for this organization in Miami, they help troubled youth or something."

Grace
"Oh, really?" That got Grace's attention. She makes a 'huh..' face and then continues on, up to the second floor and down the hall.

"I wonder if it's more like help themselves to troubled youth," she says, and opens the door to... a library of grand strangeness. There is a white lion statue. Also a machine that looks like it's based on a table, only the top is folded at a 90 degree angle and wires to the various electronic parts (cameras, and whatever unidentifiable else) wind up the sides.

There are also books. Books on various topics in various languages, ranging from college textbooks to Grace's collection of science fiction and tomes bound in heavy leather with indecipherable titles crowding the (expensive-looking) shelves.

On the table in the center of the room are two teapots and some mugs, because Grace didn't know what kind of tea Alicia would like, and tea is good. Somebody will drink it.

"Red one's chai, the other is peppermint," she says, and strides over to the table to pick up her phone and check it for something.

She gets to her chair (not the couch) and curls up with her (already prepared) mug. Gives Alicia a little smile. "Don't worry. We'll fix this. Kalen assures me that vampire hunting is a fun activity. I would like to know where you found that nifty info though, eh?"

Alicia
I wonder if it's more like help themselves to troubled youth.

Alicia snorts. "Yeah. Probably."

She takes a moment at the bottom of the stares to look around at her surroundings. To take in the decor and the spines of the books. Easy enough to get distracted by the spines but they're here for bigger things.

With the invitation to choose which flavor she wants Alicia pushes her hair back from her brow and picks the peppermint pot. Pours a mug as Grace assures her that they'll fix it.

"You know," she says. "The Internet. I looked up the club and saw the website didn't have an event schedule or pictures or anything so I was like 'Oh, that's weird' and just kept looking. I've got some websites saved in my email if you want to check them out."

Grace
Ohh, does she want to? 'Visit' some websites perhaps? Read their email? The thought brings a smile. "I'd love that, actually."

She sips her tea. Chai for Grace, because that earthy sharp spice has a tendency to kick the brain into gear. Peppermint too, to a degree, but it lacks caffeine, ahh.

"Hmm. I don't know if Googling vampires is anything like Googling the Technocracy. There are dangerous things to search for out there, you know? But probably not," she muses, and sips, and where did that come from, Alicia?

Alicia
"I used a proxy. If the... vampires or whatever they are decide they want to look for me they're gonna have to start in South Korea."

She considers Grace's tone but doesn't latch onto it. She only knows what Elijah has been up to by gathering scraps from different conversations. Whatever her understanding of his misstep is it isn't a complete understanding. Just enough to be raised-voice angry at him.

Before they change gears she sits down on the couch cat-corner from Grace. Rummages through her bag to find her phone with the hand not holding the mug. She rests the butt of it on the arm of the sofa so it doesn't scorch her palm. When she speaks again her eyes are on her screen.

"So Kalen's been vampire hunting before, huh?"

Grace
"Ohh yes. It's how he Awakened, actually. He was a 'troubled youth', aka dinner. Suddenly he just knew how to get away. Ran the vampire into a speeding truck," Grace says, and mimes a figure with two legs (her free hand) getting smashed by a truck (her tea mug).

"And I do get the idea that after that, it wasn't the last time he fucked up a vampire's night."

Alicia
One would think after what she's been through that Alicia would be able to summon the empathy to at least look up and show some astonishment that that is how the older reality deviant came to realize his power but she's pulling up files on her phone and copying URLs into SMS and only catches the finger-puppet show in her periphery.

But then Alicia's Awakening involved the Technocracy breaking down the door of a hotel room and her possibly killing one of them before escaping with her father so who the hell knows what it would take to impress her at this point. The just-woke-up grogginess isn't accurate anymore. Now she just looks tired. Spent even. It's been a trying few days.

She sets the phone down in her lap. Several seconds will pass before their carriers decide to pass off the data and Grace's phone makes a noise to notify her.

"That's crazy," she says in the dull voice. "So what's he wanna do, go From Dusk Till Dawn on the place?"

Alicia
['a dull voice,' not 'the dull voice.' Come on fingers.]

Grace
"I'm not sure yet what the plan involves exactly. We might be wanting to share this information about the club owners to others, though. You know, in Miami and wherever?" Grace says, and picks up her phone again at the bleep.

"I'm... probably not going to be there for the whole Dusking Till Dawn anyway. I'm not so great at the whole combat thing. But hey, we're making a laser-tag training arena here, so maybe..."

She gets to the info that Alicia sent, and makes another 'hmm' noise.

"I wonder if Ian or Lena know anything about that club in New York. At the very least they could let whoever they know back there know that Dolphin may actually be a vampire den."

Sip. Ahh.

"This is cool. I'll post it up on Ginger..."

Alicia
At the news that Kalen of all people is turning his library of solitude into a freaking laser-tag training arena the girl looks as if she's about to smile. The thought comes to her and the tension around her mouth lessens but she does not actually smile. Dark brown eyes are almost sad in this light. She blows on her tea and takes a sip.

To the idea of Ian or Lena getting in touch with the people in New York the Orphan nods. It isn't as if it's up to her. Maybe she just appreciates knowing what's going on.

Which brings us to Ginger. Hark.

"Is that the message board you were talking about last time?" she asks.

Grace
"Yeah," Grace says, and makes with a bit of sheepish grimace. Last time, she had to let Alicia know about Ginger in the worst way possible.

"But you know, mostly, it's the place where we post about threats to the people in Denver. So everybody knows not to go to the lake until we have the plant zombie problem figured out, or whatever."

Plant zombie. Yes.

And ohh, Alicia. If only you knew that side of Kalen, it wouldn't be a surprise at all. He wants to turn that white lion into a robot (or possibly just animate the stone). He wants to Awaken his servers so they have each other to talk to. He wants to give the office security system an AI with a voice that talks. He wants topiaries outside in the shape of dinosaurs. He wants to foment revolution.

There are reasons why Grace stays here.

Alicia
The plant zombie problem. She doesn't even flinch. She looks at Grace with the same tired-eyed sadness as came into the warehouse with her and tries to smile but doesn't quite manage. Covers the failure with another sip of her tea. She drinks her tea noisy so to spray the liquid over her palate and taste it. Doesn't just belt it back like she's trying to absorb the warmth fast as she can.

It also doesn't have alcohol in it. So there's that.

"I... also... found a picture. Of Doctor Morgan." Oh okay Alicia we thought you were looking up vampires. She flicks her eyebrows like to stave off an incoming reproach and goes on, "I don't have any, and I thought it'd be helpful, you know, since I gave you some of my dad, if you had one of her, too? It was kind of hard to find. I can send that to you, too, if you think it'd help when you go to talk to that guy."

Alicia
"Or if you wanna put it on Ginger, or whatever."

Grace
Hmm. Well, at least Alicia had the sense to use a proxy. Better than nothing, huh? And she's not yet claiming to have gotten a nastygram from a Technocrat.

"I would really rather you... take me with you if you're going to do more looking into that?" Grace says, and weary worry crosses her face. "We've had some... issues before. You know, I helped make Ginger because my mentor and I ended up on a Technocratic watch list for sending instant messages around with the wrong words inside. People have been targeted for the search terms they used in Google. I wasn't really kidding there," she says, and it's not an admonition. It's not saying 'you did wrong, Alicia.' It's just a warning.

"If we go together, I could teach you how to do things a bit more safely, eh? Like, one proxy is good and all, but fifteen with different encryption wrappers along each step is better."

She's not saying no, at least. Just, there is that worry. Bringing all this up reminds her of Elijah and the mess he's in now. That Technocrat is watching him. The very idea...

"I'm sorry I haven't been back with any more info. Three-Mile Island Elly isn't picking up his fucking phone. I'm going to have to start getting creative. And hope he doesn't have a brain zorcher attuned to Correspondence magic or something."

Alicia
And Alicia understands. If anyone would understand it's the daughter of a Son of Ether who landed himself on the Technocratic Union's Bring This Motherfucker In Right Now list after he went back in time and changed the way history panned out. One does not simply ask Google what it knows about Technocrats or people that the Technocrats are actively trying to find.

Not until the apology comes does Grace manage to bust through whatever scar tissue formed over her tonight or the other night or all together. Alicia finally smiles.

"Don't be sorry," she says. "I should've started looking right away instead of... running away and..."

Sigh. She takes another sip of tea.

"Here. Let me send you this." She focuses on her phone again for a moment but keeps talking. "I wanna help you. So... whatever you want to do to make it so I'm not being a dumbass about it, I'm... you know, I'm not awful with computers, and I already know about... locations, interference points or whatever, I don't know what you guys call it. Is that Correspondence magic?"

Down goes her phone. Another delay before the photograph of Alethea Morgan goes to Grace's phone.

"I don't want to bring them down on anyone here but I don't want to just sit here with my thumb up my ass while you do all the work, either."

Grace
"Correspondence is like..." Grace says, and pauses. Hmm. "Well, it's different for everyone. But the way I like to put it? Location is an illusion created by our mammal brains so we don't have to process all the information at once. Volumes don't really exist, it's all actually a two-dimensional holographic data array that some other Mages like to call the Tapestry.

"But you know, you talk to someone else, and they'll say it was the spirit of the wind weaving souls into threads of warp and weft and other shit I don't understand." Grace shrugs.

"To me, everything is connected because everything's all in the same spot, actually. But that's the basic idea behind Correspondence. Everything's connected, everything corresponds, so use that connection. And, you can use it to make sure your connections aren't being wiretapped."

She pauses in the spiel to check her phone again. Alethea Morgan. The picture was on the web for some reason. And Grace kind of sort of wants to hack the server it was found on so that she can determine why. But it is a help.

"You should be on Ginger. If you want it. You could post what information you want then. I removed any mention of you from the thing, but the disappearance of your father is an issue that affects all of us. That, and if anybody sees him or Alethea, it would be nice if they weren't overlooked, you know?"

Alicia
Alicia considers this. Nods her head but almost-frowns a second later.

"He didn't disappear," she says. It isn't sadness. She's numb. She must have taken something on the train coming over here. An even keel is what she was going for. Youth doesn't come preprogrammed with wisdom. "The Technocracy hunted him down."

Irrelevant. They're talking about spheres and Ginger.

"Yeah. Alright. Do you have to install anything, or is it just a credentials sort of situation?"

Grace
"No, he didn't. I suppose I use the term because it sounds nicer. Because I don't want to force you to relive that because of my poor word choices. Truth is, I really suck at this. Talking to people," Grace says, and sighs. "I mean, you'd think..."

But no, Alicia doesn't really want to talk about that. Grace understands. She's been in that place where not talking about a thing is the only way to deal.

"I do have to install something, but it's pretty easy to set up. You just need my encryption software, because that's half the work of providing end-to-end encrypted data transfers, right? We could do it now, even."

Grace shifts, body stiff after sitting so strangely in her chair. "But yeah, it's designed to avoid detection and to avoid having any easily traceable link to any of us. That doesn't mean it's completely secure. I mean, with enough resources at somebody's disposal, any system can be tracked. But I've done the best job that I can to make it safer than just a text message."

Alicia
She sits and listens to all of this the halting explanation for why she uses euphemisms and how it is that Ginger works and the limitations of the encryption software. Alicia nods. It's mute consent. She unlocks the phone and hands it over to Grace.

It's a burner. A drug dealer phone. Some cheap thing she picked up from a gas station that can access a 4G network and process as much data as she's willing to pay for.

If Grace decides to start the install then Alicia doubles back to the conversation's divergence point.

"I'm not a kid," she says. "And I'm not... I know I've been... sensitive, or whatever, in the past, but that doesn't mean you have to tiptoe around it. Maybe I don't want to talk about it, but I didn't want it to happen in the first place, and it did anyway, and it sucks. Sugarcoating it sucks even harder, so if we're gonna talk about it, I don't want to sterilize it. That's all."

Grace
Grace twitches a hand up to the offered phone, then gets up and puts both her phone and Alicia's on the table. Without a word, she's gone out of the room, as though perhaps it was something Alicia said?

But no, very soon she's back again with a cable and a laptop and a weak, pathetic little smile. "Okay. Usually people don't outright tell me how they want to be treated, I just have to guess. That gets... exhausting."

She goes back to the phones and hooks Alicia's up. As she works on setting up the program, she gets chatty again.

"When I've had my own trauma, I've always liked to ease into the subject sort of? Mostly because people would unintentionally hurt me and I wanted to test the waters before diving in and finding out there were spikes on the bottom of that particular pool.

"I just like for people to take what I'm going through seriously, and let me emote how I'm going to emote. None of that 'don't be sad' bullshit, or 'you're too angry' bullshit. Or even worse, the 'you have to be happy for my benefit' bullshit."

She just types and swipes her finger across the touch pad like she's not actually talking about trauma coping techniques.

Alicia
Thus far Grace has not stricken Alicia as the sort of person who would walk away and not come back without a word if something she said had been too blunt. That day in Elijah's apartment both of them had said some things that were not entirely tactful and they had made it through that exchange just fine. She sits in her chair and drinks her tea and does not look surprised to see Grace either leave or come back.

Of course guessing gets exhausting. Alicia returns the smile. It is not pathetic but it does seem as if she has to force herself to get it to the surface of the pharmaceutical pool in which she's floating.

Or even worse, the 'you have to be happy for my benefit' bullshit.

"Yeah. Fuck that." Since this install looks like it's going to take a while she goes ahead and asks, "Do you know Sid?"

Grace
"Mmmhm. I know Sid. Speaking of traumatic experiences," Grace says, and no, Alicia she does not mean it like that. It just sounds very much like it. "Well, this once, I was attacked by some shitty wannabe Mage killers. They got their hands on some Technocratic tech. It was a virus like Ebola only worse. The first time I got a look at it was right after they'd infected me via robot wasp, because really how iconic and ridiculous can you get? Robot wasp?

"Anyway. What I saw then was scary enough. It used your immune system against you. Every time your body 'killed' a virus particle, it would duplicate. Magically assisted healing did the same. It was just like being eaten alive. And then it started going after my brain.

"Sid is a biologist. A really fucking good one. She synthesized a cure. I owe her everything."

So, you know, Sid's a major asshole sometimes, Alicia. And sometimes not. We can be both.

Alicia
So Grace is not the person to talk to about Sid being a split-personality weirdo. Got it. The context is still helpful and even if Alicia's expression does not change Grace can see she is watching her and listening and this in one sitting is more of Denver's past than she has heard the entire time she has been here.

"Just wondering," she says. Her tea is gone. She considers the dregs and then sits up and leans forward and refills it. "So, um... let's say Three-Mile-Island Elly does return your call. Could I go with you?"

Grace
"Absolutely you can go with me. If he calls back, I'll let you know. But I'm going to try again tomorrow, and maybe this time put a little more of something noticeable in the effort? It might work. You can come with."

The typing stops. Grace seems pleased with her efforts, and disconnects Alicia's phone.

"I've put the contact in your list already. You now have a number for Ginger. If you call it, now that you have my encryption on your phone, you can say the words "Hello Ginger" and it will open a hidden voice command menu. From there, you can view or leave messages as you please."

The number is 1-800-FAT-GRLS. Yep. Grace is contributing to the delinquency of a minor again.

And, if Alicia tries it out right now, she'll get the standard Ginger sexy-robot-voice menu spiel of:

Hello, and welcome. To listen to messages, dial 1. To view text messages, dial 2. To leave a voice message, dial 3. To leave a text message, dial 4. And remember, love is just a dial away.

Alicia
Of course Alicia tries it out right now. She dials the number and waits to hear the menu. Might as well take it for a test run while she's got Grace here to make sure she doesn't fuck something up.

"If I hit 2 it's not going to store anything on my phone, right? It's all remote?"

This before she hits 2 to see what's up in Ginger Land.

Grace
"It's all remote. What's on your phone is just some encryption software you picked up on some forum somewhere. Hah," Grace says. "Somebody would have to know to dial the number, know to give the password, in order to really use it. And there is no sensitive data physically stored on the phone, no."

Of course, Alicia, Denver is a hellhole. You can tell by the messages left behind that things here are not quite pretty.

Alicia
And she does look at the messages left behind. Frowns at a few of the titles. Whichever one she goes for first Grace cannot tell but by the amount of thumb-scrolling she does the older reality deviant can tell she doesn't click on the most recent thread. Maybe she doesn't want to know what's going on in the thread about her dad.

"Fuck," she says. "Why couldn't they have picked him up in Seattle? Nothing happens in Seattle. I liked Seattle."

Maybe she's trying to be funny. She rolls her eyes and terminates the connection and looks back up at Grace.

"Thank you. Seriously. I'll... do you want me to say anything, about any of this, or should I just put new stuff up if I find it?"

Grace
"Really? Seattle?" Grace says, as if she's actually pondering. It's in the same half-joking sense that Alicia used. "There's already a thread up about all of this. I'll let you decide what you want to add, okay?"

Because really, that has been the point all along, right? Giving Alicia a decision? A say in what story gets told and what she wants done?

"Hey, do you want to stay the night? It is kind of late, and this place has extreme doors as you saw. We have plenty of couches, and Kalen buys the most fantastic couches."

Because, you know, he buys them specifically to sleep on. And Kalen's the type to care a lot about whether a vampire could break his doors down.

It is a safe place to talk or to just be.

If she doesn't take the offer, Grace will just assume that since Alicia found her way here, she can find her way away from here as well. Maybe they'll sit and talk for a while longer. Maybe Alicia will go 'home' right away. It doesn't honestly matter, not to Grace anyway. It just matters that she was able to help, and didn't manage to totally ruin anything by some miracle.

And tomorrow, when they talk to Elly, the reason for the talk will be there.

It has been good. A better night than a number of recent ones at least.