Going Once, Going Twice, Going Never.

VIII - The Heat Of An Iced Americano

13 days until the job

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"You tested those drives before placing them on the scanner, right?" I ask Monique as I watch her tapping away on the computer.

"Yes, Alicia."

"And the durability? Will it be affected by rain? Or hail? Or bright sunlight?"

"It's the end of winter, Alicia."

"Is there any chance it might get rusted in the sewer? Cuz it's humid down there."

"It has a stainless steel case with rims filled with dehumidifiers, okay?" Monique says, and I can sense irritation in her voice now.

"What about-"

"Okay! Maybe you should go and check on how Blaise is doing," Monique says loudly before focusing on her computer again.

Rude.

"Blaise, any progress on the layouts?" I ask my dear hacker who blatantly ignores me as she focuses on the firewall which she is trying to break through.

Rude-er.

After fifteen minutes of me sitting in the corner with a puffed up face, the printer starts running and about eight A3 sized pages of blueprints come out.

Oh well.

Don't ask, control, don't ask, control...

I can't.

"You made sure to not alert their security system in any way? Our IP is anonymous right?"

"Are you going to ask me this for every time I open my fucking computer?" Blaise asks me with an irritated voice. Her eerie blue eyes have that look in them again, like she wants to pickle and sell my brain.

I'm just being cautious, sue me.

I take her answer as a yes.

Suddenly a coat gets thrown in my face. It smells incredibly musty. Nothing like the sewer I had been inside though.

"Thanks Minnie," my voice gets scuffled by the thick coat.

"We leave in ten minutes. Go pee-pee or poo-poo, drink or eat or whatever, then meet us outside," she says.

I rip the coat off my face, "You're a bitch."

"I take it as a compliment," she says while fidgeting with the lose strand of the Nirvana t-shirt she's wearing, her jet black hair tied into two adorable space buns on top of her weirdly small head.

"You shouldn't, wait a minute," I scrutinize the t-shirt, "THAT'S MY BAND T-SHIRT!"

Minnie is already out the door, "Thanks for lending it to me bestie!"

I pick my ass up from the futon I had been sitting on and Blaise makes a sound, which suspiciously sounds like a sigh of relief.

"Finally she will let us work in peace," Blaise says, still typing away on her keyboard, not even looking up from her screen.

"She is like one of those cats who sit on their owner's keyboards and don't go until someone else is there to take care of them," Monique comments.

Ouch. I thought Monique liked me.

"I'm right here, you know?" I deadpan.

"For real, that's why I prefer lizards as pets, they eat away the moths for you, Useful as hell," Blaise continues, as if she didn't even hear me.