Meeting with Andrés

Grace
It wan't seven in the fucking morning when Grace blew up Doctor Sepúlveda's phone for a change. She slept first. Naps are important, if you want to remain coherent.

It is, instead, six in the evening.

The messages he gets are thus:

Hey. I've got news. Meet me at Auraria Student Lofts, apartment 203.

Insert obligatory multiple 'Hey's and emojis.

Andrés
The forensic pathologist had sent back a series of flying-stack emojis but no other verbal confirmation of what time she could expect him or if she could even expect him at all. By the time she had messaged him he was well on his way to being completely stewed, and may or may not have still been fucking around with power tools.

Suffice to say he snuck out without alerting his students to his absence, and let himself into Grace's apartment like the woman couldn't shoot him for pulling this stunt.

"What's so goddamn important you couldn't leave me a voicemail?" he asks on his way through the door. That's proof enough the Technocracy hasn't hijacked and cloned him, at least. Unless the Technocracy is able to mimic an individual's propensity for swearing. Then they're in trouble.

Grace
"Same thing that's so goddamn important that I went back to this place to meet you?" she says, and gestures around the bare-bones apartment. "I basically only keep this place around for when I want to talk about horrible shit and I might be being followed."

Grace is busy tacking away at her laptop at a small dining table. She doesn't look up to greet him. Nor does she shoot him upon crashing into her door like that.

But really? She knew who she was inviting over. The resonance of creepy fuck was welcome.

"You know how I said the Technocrats probably weren't involved in this whole thing about Apprentices dying? I was wrong. Some of the dead were theirs."

Andrés
"Wait a minute, wait wait wait..."

He removes his cellphone from his pocket. He's dressed like a depressed humanities professor and not a highly intelligent disciple of Matter, but one of the cardigan's boons is having deep enough pockets to fit an abundance of items. When one's Work requires many items, this is a great boon indeed.

At any rate he finds it quick and taps the screen a few times.

"Say that again. The bit between 'Apprentices dying' and 'some of the.'"

Whether Grace tells him to knock it off or he decides to of his own accord, his next remark is the same:

"Explain."

Grace
I was wrong. He wants to record her saying she was wrong? The fuck? He gets a glare for that one.

"Laura Fairbanks was actually Agent Laura Fairbanks. I ran into a guy's emails that he'd tried to delete and rescued some bits and pieces from the purge. The guy is a Tech. Probably Laura's partner or something. He got a lot of condolences, and reassurance that an investigation was starting up looking into her murder.

"He's hiding out as an accountant... CFO or something at this company connected to the Falcons. Looks like the other side is sniffing the same scent that we're on."

Andrés
"What's the company called?"

Grace
"Palor Technologies. I found a credit card on the weird dude I tracked that had the name 'Elizabeth Palor' on it, and Papa Joe Palor, the CEO of Palor Technologies, was talking about going on safari with a guy called Wiley. This is all connected as fuck."

Andrés
"Hmm."

Sepúlveda takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose, smoothes down the skin beneath his eyes before putting the glasses back.

"And Palor Technologies is located where?"

Grace
"Colorado Springs."

She ceases typing, looks over. "Why do you ask?"

Andrés
Sensing that they're going to be here a while, the Etherite sighs and sits down on a box, feet planted wide like he doesn't trust the structural integrity of the impromptu chair with the task of bearing his weight. Because he's so musclebound and hulking, you know.

"You know what they say happens when you assume," he says. "Something about asses. Does Angela or... anybody... in Colorado Springs... know about this?"

Grace
"Not yet. But I'm working on that. My next stop is to visit Annie. She knows everybody. She'll have the ability to figure out who to tell. But you were going to be looking into this thing too, and I wanted to make sure you didn't step on a land mine before knowing it was a minefield."

Grace watches him sit, gently, on the box. It says that it contains oranges, but most certainly does not. It holds his weight because it is full of textbooks.

"There's other things in the emails I found. Wiley used to go to this support group or something at Saint Paul's Catholic Church -- with Ginny and Garrett Murray. They were talking about reporting Evelyn to CPS because of whatever was going on at home."

Andrés
Snort.

"Good thing they didn't, eh?" He pats down his pockets like he's trying to find his cigarettes. Nervous habit. This isn't his house and if bars are relentless in their refusal to allow smoking he doesn't expect a Mercurial Elite to allow it. "We'd never find the caseworker's body. Is the support group still active?"

Grace
"Yeah, I was planning on going, just to see what the fuck is going on over there. But not before I let everyone know the Techs are crawling all over Colorado Springs. They meet every other Tuesday at the church. The group's called 'Project Hope'."

She looks at the ceiling. "It's just fucked up, all over. I don't think they noticed my looking into their emails, but I can't be certain that's going to last forever. They could do their own forensic analysis on that server if and when they figure out somebody hacked into it. I covered my tracks and melted my rig, but that's about the best I can do."

Andrés
[corr/entropy/mind/time 1: what are the odds that anybody noticed, aka "i have no empathy so i use devices to be reassuring."]

Dice: 3 d10 TN3 (4, 6, 8) ( success x 3 )

Andrés
As Grace starts to expound upon her reasoning behind doing a full wipe-down after taking a peek at some idiot's Yahoo account, Andrés takes a breath that's as much to keep himself from interrupting as it is to do anything else and reaches into his back pocket to remove a device that looks like two other electronic devices microwaved together.

He punches buttons like he's using a calculator instead of a smartphone. That's all she can tell from where she's sitting. It churns and makes other tiny processor noises before he gets his answer.

"Laura's partner might be annoyed," he says, to the matter of forensic analysis, "but I highly doubt he's going to run a forensic analysis on someone rifling through his 'sorry your partner got cacked' account. Dial down the paranoia for a second. Who's going with you to the support group?"

Grace
Grace thinks. She hadn't expected to go with anybody, really.

"You? We could impress them all with our fine handle on the art of talking to people," she says, levels him with a look. "It wouldn't take much for either of us to pull off the look of someone needing psychological help."

"Maybe if we're lucky, Wiley will stop by. Or Phillip Wright, the secret 'Crat."

Andrés
[extending that roll for giggles +1]

Dice: 3 d10 TN4 (3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )

Andrés
A swift THWAP of the device against the side of the box of oranges slash textbooks, and Sepúlveda bites his lower lip when he looks down at the device. Wets both lips like it's really fucking strange for him to have gone so long without drinking something, then taps a couple of buttons.

Nope. That's what he thought.

"Uh," he says, "who the fuck is Phillip Wright? He only has a twenty-five percent chance of giving a shit about the email thing."

Grace
"The one whose emails I read. He wasn't doing normal accounting for Palor Technologies. More like, accounting wizardry, if you get my drift. Totally a 'Crat."

A corner of her mouth turns up.

"Thanks for checking that for me."

Andrés
"Don't thank me, thank my Y chromosome."

Just in case she was starting to warm up to him, there he goes making a sexist joke implying of course he had to check her work for her.

"You sure you don't want to send Nicholas to the support group? He could take Margot with him, Margot loves sitting around talking about feelings."

Grace
"What does your Y chromosome have anything to do with anything? Aside from your dick?"

Which, you know, may be of ultimate importance to him.  Maybe he just loves telling everyone he has one, like a toddler.

"I could ask if Nick wants to check into it, sure. He might be better at the whole... meatspace interaction thing."

Andrés
Aside from your dick?

A flick of his eyebrows meant to stand in for a shrug. That's exactly what he meant.

With the matter of Grace asking Nick to check into it on its way to being settled, Andrés frowns and stands from the box and pockets the device again.

"The fact that you refer to it as 'meatspace' only proves my point." Before he can turn to leave, another thought grabs him. His frown deepens. "This, eh, this email purge of Phillip Wright's, you think it's related to the, eh..." Snap snap snap of his left thumb and finger like the word is a lighter whose hammer won't strike. "... the evidence going missing from the ME's office?"

Grace
"Maybe. They might have gone back afterwards and made sure the mundane authorities didn't look too hard at what is obviously too much for them to handle? It would make sense. But I don't think they were responsible for killing their own."

The fact is... It's looking more and more like Evelyn Murray is. Killing Technocrats is one thing, but they weren't the entirety of those who bit it. It grates against her that the Traditions might not be the good guys in this scenario.

Andrés
"Me either."

They're in silent agreement on the culprit being Evelyn Murray, but Andrés has been a disciple of the Society longer than Grace has even been Awakened. He knows morality isn't black and white. By most people's standards, he's a villain. Look at what he did to his own wife.

"Keep me posted on the field trip, yeah? If Nicholas can't make it, I'll go."

Grace
"Okay," she says, "Thanks."

Once that's said, she turns back to tacking on her (new) laptop. Things need to be set up again, to her exacting specifications.

Andrés
For about half a second it looks as if he's about to say something else. That half a second passes, and Grace is already back to getting herself back online. Whatever it says dissipates, and the Etherite lets himself back out the way he came.