#hacker voice

Margot was simply curious, or obsessed, depending how you looked at it. She knew what had happened at Pat’s Place was no accident. It was a feeling she could not shake, a feeling that had kept her awake, tossing and turning the past week. Now that the sun had gone down, Margot felt a spur of energy and couldn’t stand the thought of another sleepless night. So she’d put on her warmest coat and backpack, and made her way to Pat’s. When she arrived, she found it plastered with caution tape that no one had bothered to remove, and why would they? This place would never reopen. Margot was saddened at the thought. She’d only been there once, a burger last December when she’d come to tour the university. Margot hadn’t enjoyed the tour, but the burger had been delicious. She shook herself from the memory. She wasn’t here to reminisce, she was here to investigate. Margot rounded the building and came to the back alley, where a feral rat greeted her with red eyes. She hissed at it jokingly, watched it scamper away and out of sight. She leaned against the brick of Pat’s back wall and slumped down to sit. Her laptop out, she booted it up. Then -- footsteps. Margot could hear them coming closer, seeing the outline of who, or what was coming her way. “Hello?” She called out.

Nell hadn’t realized that Remmy wouldn’t want to go back to the site of the poisoning, too caught up in getting to the bottom of everything to think that her friend might not want to revisit the site of such a traumatic event. Who in their right mind would? Then again...what did that say about Nell? Shaking that thought from her head, she pushed the memories of choking on air, being unable to breathe, and ultimately passing out from the poison from her mind. She needed to be focused if she wanted to find anything of worth here, even if the sight of that Pat’s Place sign set her slightly on edge. Remmy had mentioned something about a man in the alley, and that would be the witch’s first stop. Creeping under the caution tape, Nell froze as she heard a hissing sound, body tensing as she tried to determine whether or not it belonged to a threat. But someone who’d poisoned an entire restaurant wouldn’t return to the scene of the crime, right? That’d just be irresponsible. Nevertheless, she approached with a wary gait, brows furrowed in confusion as she saw the face of a girl illuminated in the glow of a laptop. “Who are you?” she asked with a frown, not entirely sure what to make of the sight.

A voice. Margot was relieved by the sound, not that she believed in monsters or ghosts or anything. “I’m Margot.” She closed her laptop hastily, not wanting the stranger to see what she had been doing, or planning to do. She knew how suspicious she must look, crouched in the back alley at the site of a triple murder. Margot hoped it was not some detective she was face-to-face with, or someone who would question why she was there and what she was doing. What she had planned wasn’t entirely legal and may be considered a felony in some states. Margot squinted through the darkness, trying to make out the person’s face. “Hey, I know you.” Margot recognised her from her profile picture on Facebook. “Penelope isn’t it?” Nell had told Margot about Faetal Attraction; how exclusive it was and how she should avoid it. It made Margot want to go there even more. Like a moth to a flame. “What are you doing here?” Margot said rather rudely, as if Nell had interrupted her.

Margot. Nell remembered the name from their online interactions as well, and now that she looked closer at the other girl, it did look like the little picture that had been next to her messages. “Yeah, Penelope.” It seemed too ambiguous and tense of a moment to mention that most people just called her Nell. The witch’s frown only deepened at Margot’s tone, eyes narrowing slightly as her arms crossed over her chest. “What are you doing here?” she echoed back out of pure stubbornness. In truth, she wasn’t all that opposed to revealing what she was looking into, but she also didn’t know much about the girl before her other than she was relatively new to town, and a college student. It didn’t exactly provide any reasons as to why Nell should trust her or not. And what was with the laptop? Margot had mentioned computer science online, but who just decided to set up camp in the back alley of a recently poisoned restaurant? “You a fan of Pat’s?” Had the girl been here for the poisoning? 

Margot wanted to snap back, an ‘I asked you first’ retort, but she resisted, knowing that it would get her nowhere. “I was just - I don’t know, interested? I want to know what happened.” Margot didn’t want to give out more than that, not knowing what the girl’s intentions in being here might be. Hell, Nell could even be the notorious poisoner for all Margot knew. “Your turn.” Margot mimicked Nell’s stance, arms crossed in opposition, staring her down in the same manner, “What are you doing here?” She waited for Nell’s answer, hoping it was something good. This interaction was beginning to sound like an interrogation. Margot felt like she was on trial, as if she were guilty of something, maybe she was. “I came here once, a while back. I wasn’t poisoned, lucky for me I guess.” Margot looked grimly at the back door to the restaurant. “It’s sad though, ‘was a pretty good meal. I would’ve liked to come back.” She turned her attention back to Nell, “Were you there, you know, when it happened?” Margot had only heard about the incident through the newspapers, and that had been horrific enough. 

Nell gave Margot a once over, trying to glean whatever she could from the girl’s stance and body language that might aid Nell’s decision of whether or not to trust her for the time being. “Can’t I be interested too?” she asked back, though this time it had less of an edge to it, a hint of tease entering the words. Nell was fairly certain Margot was telling the truth about not being poisoned, as she couldn’t remember seeing anyone that looked like Margot at the grand re-opening. “Yeah, it was good before the whale shark crushed it.” Had Margot been here long enough to know about the real strangeness of White Crest? “I was here.” There wasn’t any real need to mention she was poisoned, right? Nell hated admitting to the fact, as if it somehow made her appear weaker, more vulnerable, so she’d keep it to herself for the moment. “So you’re just nosing around? Is that it?” That’s what ‘interested’ meant, didn’t it? After all, Nell herself had given the vague excuse on many on occasion when she was doing something she most likely shouldn’t have been doing.

The distrust in Nell’s eyes was obvious. Margot knew she wasn’t going to get any real information from her, at least not yet. “A whale shark, that’s how he died, right? The owner? I think I read it somewhere.” She had, just a few days ago, using multiple search engines and a small hack that let her into the White Crest Press’ database. People needed to encrypt their data more thoroughly. Margot had found more while she was there; the reporter’s notes on last week’s tragedy, the names of the deceased. It had made her more determined to figure out the mystery. It was worse to hear that Nell had actually experienced it, firsthand. “That sounds awful.” Margot said no more, sensing that it was a subject better left untouched. She couldn’t stand this beating around the bush any longer, it was getting them nowhere, “I was going to connect to this place’s wifi router.” Connect. That was a better word than hack. It sounded far less illegal, “Maybe find out if they kept receipts of everyone who ate here on that day, trace the credit cards used, or even see what employees were working at the time.” Margot’s plan was a broad one, one that she hadn’t considered greatly before coming down here. 

“Yep,” Nell confirmed, wondering whether or not Margot believed the story of the whale shark. There were still a good chunk of White Crest residents about it even after having seen fish rain from the sky with their own two eyes. “I guess sushi was their real competitor all along.” Was it ill to joke about the dead? Probably. But Nell was bad at boundaries, and she hadn’t known Pat that personally. “But yeah, I don't imagine it was a fun way to go.” The mention of connecting to the router was already sparking Nell’s interest, though. Wasn’t the thing password protected? “That’s handy.” She took another step closer to Margot, her intrigue growing larger by the second as Margot listed off all sorts of information she could apparently obtain. Another thought came to her mind. “What about cameras? Could you also see who was around?” Specifically a well-dressed man in this very alley way that tipped his hat to my friend, was her unspoken addition to that request. 

Margot sniggered at the pun, “At least death by sushi is an unique way to go. More exciting than a heart attack or pneumonia.” Margot didn’t think anyone around here died via heart attack, or any natural cause for that matter. Fish deaths might be more common than she even knew. As Nell took a step forward, Margot opened her laptop back up. There was no point in hiding it now. Margot thought about Nell’s question for a moment. It was admittedly, a better idea than her own. “If they had the camera feed transmitting to a harddrive or computer inside, it should be no problem.” Margot got to work, opening up her cracking software. “Looks like Pat was too cheap for free wifi. That would’ve made this easier,” Still, she’d only have to run a basic dictionary sweep to get the wifi password. Margot didn’t speak for a few moments, deep in concentration. The password: bigkahuna543. Margot nudged the screen so Nell could see the result. “Original.” Margot commented. She entered the password and scanned for devices, finding a server connection that looked like their target. “And, we are in.” Margot brought the server up remotely on her screen. They were now looking at the camera feed. “When was the poisoning?” 

“We can only hope for such an interesting death,” Nell joked back in a rather dry tone. At one time, Nell had been a victim of the folly of youth, and the sense of invincibility that came with being young. After all, she’d had an incredibly lucky streak when it came to escaping deathly situations by the skin of her teeth. But that had shifted after Bea’s death. Now, she couldn’t help but feel that she’d meet a bloody end some day. It was only a matter of time, just as it was for most everyone. There wasn’t time to think about all that now, though. She only vaguely understood what it was Margot was saying about all this tech stuff, but it sounded promising. “You really should meet my friend, Winston. They’re a giant ass computer nerd.” A pleased and vindicated grin came over Nell as she saw the product of Margot’s work displayed on the screen, suddenly much more invested in this girl and what she was delivering. “That was beautiful,” she praised before carrying on. “The thing started at seven, but what I’m looking for probably happened around a half hour later— in the back alley. A well-dressed man with a hat.”

“Winston.” Margot repeated, “I’ll keep their name in mind.” It might be nice to know another techie in town, they seemed so few and far between around here. “Okay, so we’ll start the footage from seven, go from there.” Margot changed the time and date stamps to match. They were accessing three camera feeds, one inside the restaurant and two externally. Margot began the clip, watched as the horrific event unfolded inside. She could make out Nell, though the footage was grainy. Margot looked towards the girl now, swallowing a lump that had formed in her throat. Perhaps seeing this again would cause her to relive it. “I’ll skip ahead.” Margot whispered, feeling as though speaking at a higher decibel would be insensitive. She fast forwarded. It was difficult to watch the chaos ensue, even more so at two times speed. The panicked expressions on each of the diners faces would be ingrained in Margot’s mind for at least a few weeks. Twenty minutes or so into the recording, she hit play. It was now the aftermath of the tragedy, medics and body bags. Then, just as Nell had predicted, movement on one of the external camera angles. The back alley, almost exactly where they sat right at this very moment. Margot stayed silent, as they watched. 

“I can point you their way after all this, if you want,” Nell said with a shrug. Of course...it might be best not to mention the hacking outright to Winston. Not when her friend worked for the police, still. As the poisoning began to replay itself, Nell’s jaw tightened, momentarily fixated on her own form going limp, eventually losing consciousness. Her eyes settled on Bea for a fleeting moment before she realized she couldn’t watch her sister die again, not after the first time. But watching Jared, Remmy, and the other assorted faces wasn’t any better, anxiety clawing its way up her throat at the thought of her loved ones dying. Instead, she focused on the outside where Remmy said they’d seen the suspicious man. “There he is!” Nell practically leaped towards the screen, trying to get a closer look. Here was the key to figuring out what the fuck had happened, and whether or not she was inadvertently responsible for what had happened at Pat’s. Squinting at the grainy picture, she was dismayed to find that she didn’t recognize the man. But maybe she knew someone that would. “Can you send a shot of that to me? His face and everything?” 

Margot zoomed in on the unknown person. A man, brown hair, average build, not someone she had seen around town, and it seemed that Nell didn’t recognise him either. “You don’t know him?” Margot asked, just to be sure. There wasn’t much to make out, his features were obscured by the poor quality of the footage. Was he the one responsible for such chaos? Were they looking at the face of a murderer? Margot clipped the image of him in the alley, a full body shot and a few close ups of his face. “Type in your email.” Margot turned the computer in Nell’s direction and waited for her to enter her address before hitting send. Nell had a bigger stake in this investigation than Margot did. Margot just wanted answers. Nell needed them. “What’re you going to do? You know, when you figure out who he is?”

Nell continued to scrutinize the picture of the anonymous man, trying to wrack every inch of her brain to remember if she’d seen him anywhere near the Ring or not. But it was fruitless. “I don’t know him.” There was only a tinge of frustration to the words before her tone shifted into something harder, and a plan began to hatch. “But I might know someone who does.” She’d been planning to hunt down the rest of the big Ring names anyway, might as well ask them if they recognized the photo while she was at it. Her phone pinged, and she glanced at the screen, confirming that she’d gotten the picture as the corner of her lips twitched upwars in satisfaction. Then she looked at Margot, taking in the girl in front of her. She couldn’t be any older than Nell, and it was hard to tell if she was familiar with the supernatural or not. Maybe she was simply good at hiding it. Either way, Nell didn’t want to take the risk. “I’m gonna make sure he doesn’t do it again. Or anything like it.” 

Nell seemed satisfied with Margot’s work and she was glad to be of service. This hack had proved advantageous for her too, now one step closer to uncovering this town’s secrets. Yet Margot wasn’t satisfied; “I usually charge people for doing work like this.” Margot explained as she began to pack up her equipment. “But, I’d be willing to waive my regular fee, if you promise to keep me in the loop.” Margot had no leverage in this scenario, she’d already done what Nell wanted, but she had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last time Nell would need her help. A partnership could benefit both of them. “I want to find that guy as much as you.”

It made sense that Margot would charge, after all a girl had to eat. Nell had already been thinking about how useful it would be to have someone like Margot helping with this entire thing, but at the mention of money...she wasn’t entirely sure how feasible that would be with her current situation. Then the mention of a waiving came along, and an eager expression quickly replaced her previously neutral one. “I think I could do that. You can tell me a bit more about what you do, and I can tell you a bit more about what I’m doing.” And if Margot was passionate about finding this guy along with her, Nell wasn’t going to ask too many questions. But she did have just one. “Why do you want to find him?”

Margot hesitated. Would her reason for being here make her sound insane? A kook? She took a deep breath. “Ever since I moved here, I have this feeling. Like I’m missing out on something -- like there’s some big secret I’m not privy to.” She looked at Nell, gauging her response to the confession. “That’s why I want to find him. Not just for those poor bastards who died last week, but for me. I want to know the truth.” It was a selfish reason, but it felt right to be honest. She needed Nell to trust her.