Ink

Chapter 2

Olivia had loaded the disc into her laptop and plugged in some headphones to listen in private to whatever could be possibly on that disc that was so important to keep with the jar of ink. Just when her mission to try and figure out what could have possibly happened to her father she was stopped in her tracks by some security software embedded into the disc. To say she had felt furious was an understatement, a very big understatement.  She was pissed.

"So close to answers and this happens." She said groaning and setting the laptop aside to try and figure out what her father could've possibly set as a password. She wandered around the house trying to think about it before her mom came home. "I'm going out for a walk," she called out to her mom before heading out going to one of a few places that she and her father went to think or just talk about stuff that neither of them wanted Mrs. Phillips to know about, Jefferson Park. The one park in the city where she could dip her feet in the lake or just walk around on the path to think and be close to her father.

She had always felt close to nature so whenever she was in the city it was hard on her since she felt like she couldn't escape. Something about all the buildings being so close together and people practically living on top of each other felt suffocating. Here in the park, it was different, she felt safe, and she could breathe think and remember the good memories of her father.

She passed a large rock next to the path and she could remember that was the place she learned how to tie on a hook as well as put on a worm all by herself. She had a sad smile as she thought back at that. Going further she found the patch of Tigerlilys that he had nicknamed her after because they were in his word, "as fierce as a tiger yet as elegant as a lily." Then it hit her, maybe that was the password. It was certainly clever and something no one would guess if he wasn't wanting anyone to know what was in that disc, but her if anything happened to him that was. There had to be a reason as to why she was given the key to his storage unit in his will as well as a reason as to why the disc was inside it. It couldn't be a coincidence it had to be a reason.

She had seen many things on her walk before she had gotten a call from the storage unit place, the one she had called the previous week to ask about hours of operation and was at earlier in the day. "Hello?" She asked answering it.

All that could be heard was the man on the other end panting as if he was hurt. "Some men in suits came here asking about your father's unit. Something about an experiment of theirs being stolen. Please tell me you didn't take anything home with you." The man explained and pleaded with the girl.

"No, all I took was some papers, a jar, and a cd, that's it." She explained as she was walking back to her car. "I didn't see any sort of experiment in there."

"Well, they're after you. I suggest you get what you need and get the hell out of dodge. They seemed pissed and you don't mess with the Peregrine corporation, Miss Phillips." The desk worker pleaded. "Please leave for your safety."

"I will." She said before she headed back home to go get a few things she needed for the long trip she was now going to take.

She ran home and began taking her clothes, laptop, some snacks, her stash of money, pretty much everything she figured she would need, and put them in her car while her mom was out at a grief support group. She left a note very cryptic to keep whoever was after her off her scent and left her home. 

She had destroyed her phone at the first wayside she could find and tried to use cash at every possible chance she could get until she reached a place she figured she was safe for the night and decided to watch the video she had tried to see all evening. She entered the password of Tigerlily2000 and it worked and allowed her access to several videos stored on the disc.

It started out with her father in what appeared to be a lab which confused her since that wasn't what her father did for work. "If you're seeing this my Tigerlily, I have passed and my experiment failed. It is up to you to keep the experiment that is held in the jar. It is the other part of what I'm going to inject myself with." He explained before the video cut out. The other videos were full of entries on his experiment but in one of them, something had caught her eye. His notes were moving like the words got out of the formation of words and began to take the form of faces without him touching the paper. Something she had begun to notice happening around her after his death. This creeped her out and what scared her, even more, was the specimen in the jar tapping to get out. She jumped causing all the specimen to jump out of the jar and envelop her before everything went black.

Elsewhere a security team was informed of someone logging into the video files and giving an exact location of the passed-out Olivia Phillips. A man in a deep voice and a dark trench coat said, "We got her, Now approach her with caution boys. We don't know how much of the specimen is in her she could be even more dangerous than our last target."