A Slice of Inside Job To-Go

Finding Orrin [Part 2]

NOTE: Names are not Canon

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3 Weeks Before

"Come on, come on, Turn a little faster, Come on, come on, The world will follow after..." a sweet voice sang in the kitchen in a very low tone.

Brett encountered himself in his childhood home, using the huge elegant kitchen for baking. He was in a good mood and felt that preparing some homemade desserts for his eccentric jerk family would bring some joy to the household. They were apology cakes, given that his older brother Jagg was still slightly mad at him for running against him for US senator.

He gave his heart and best efforts to perform an outstanding job with the food. For a family that was used to only five-star cooks preparing dinner for them, he just hoped that they would eat his cakes and barely notice the difference!

He heard some footsteps approaching, and immediately being able to recognize them as his parents. He straightened his body and sled his clean hand through his hair in an attempt to keep it in place. Wearing a baby blue apron and matching kitchen gloves, he smiled as much as he could and greeted his parents.

"Good evening, Dad," he said with his cheeks glowing in a slight tone of red due to the heat emanating from the oven.

Augustus rolled his eyes and spun the bubbling liquid he was holding in his right hand.

"Katherine, your son is here early," the man announced to his wife. The woman entered the room holding an empty glass.

"Brent, what are you doing here?" after 32 years, Brett had just given up trying to correct his name.

"Weeeell, I got out of work early so I could bake you some yummy pastries! I was recently promoted in my job and I thought we could have a family celebration!"

"Oh, yes. Your job that definitely exists although you can't talk about it or get any pay," Augustus said with notorious sarcasm.

"We-Well, my promotion included a raise on my salary too, so I guess I will be..."

"Be what, Bryan? Less of a disappointment? Less of a disgrace for the Hand family?" Brett shrugged, feeling his anxiety reach a top level because of his father's words. The tough tone in his voice meant purely disappointment. He felt like a child as his eyes began watering up.

"B-But, Dad..."

"Stop calling me 'Dad' you bastard. You are not my son."

He has said that before, Brett thought.

"Wait, you mean it as in disappointment, right? Because, I am your son," Augustus chuckled as he looked askance at his wife.

"Sure, Clay. You are my son. Definitely not an affair your mother had," it was Katherine's turn of rolling her eyes and they both left the kitchen, discussing in a low voice how 'that kid was always a reminder of a broken family'.

Brett just stood in the kitchen, staring at the door where his parents just left, feeling the tears finally coming out of his eyes.

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"Damn Brett, this shit tastes like glory!" Reagan said with her mouth full as Brett remained quiet, thinking about his family situation. He shook his head and showed his iconic smile.

"Just the best for my Bestie!" he pointed at Reagan with his index fingers, watching the rest of the Red Velvet cake being devoured by the half-Asian woman. She pressed some buttons on the control table in the middle of her lab, turning on the lights to reveal the mess she left the last time she stepped into her lab.

"I got a printer, four boards, and lots of red string. Also, I requested some colorful paper. I thought you might like that," she explained as she ripped the old investigations out of the brown boards while he cleaned the whiteboard and began writing with a green marker.

"So, Orrin," he said as he wrote the name, "What do we know about him? What do you remember?"

"Well, uh," she was a little too focused on not pinching herself with the diverse pins, "he was blond, wore glasses, had braces... he wasn't the smartest, I assume. I saw him licking an iced tube and getting his tongue glued to it. Disgusting, but normal for a less-than-ten-year-old kid."

"Remember his last name?"

"Uh, yes?" she stopped throwing papers to the floor and think for a second, "It was... huh," she actually couldn't remember, "It was a hella weird last name, something about a cat."

'Orrin Cat [potentially]' was now written on the board.

"Good thing is we have access to Washington's database. It is not a common name, we should be able to find him quickly."

"This is exciting, Reags! What are you gonna tell him when you re-meet him?"

"Re-meeting him?" so far, the idea of looking for Orrin was never to interact with him. She just wanted to know what had happened to him. Why he never looked back for her.

"Didn't you want to know what happened to him?"

"Yeah, of course, but not making contact. That would just be.." she paused, feeling her heart aching. She somehow felt betrayed by this stranger she couldn't even remember. Was she that terrible of a friend? Maybe Orrin was relieved that she left his side. "Shut up Brett, keep writing."

Shortly after, they both ran back to the panel and began their investigation.

3 hours later...

"So, there are only six 30-something Orrins in all DC, and none of them is the one?!" Reagan yelled, hitting her head against the keyboard.

They had now filled the boards with individual information of each Orrin, no one with the last name they were looking for.

"We haven't checked Montgomery's background, maybe he got married and changed his surname to his wife's," Brett suggested as Reagan quickly pulled out Orrin's Facebook feed, but there were no wedding pictures, only family reunions in which he was always alone. The computer showed a coincidental Tinder profile. In his bio, he stated that he was single and had never been married.

"This is hella weird! Somehow, this boy disappeared from Earth!"

"Don't we have access to other states' information?"

"I could hack into the FBI's database, but it would take us longer to find an algorithm that would show all the matching results," she said, and an idea popped into her mind. She explored old archives in the public education field, until she pulled up a list of names, "This is River's middle school classes from 1998 to 2000."

"Now, let's see..." she mumbled and Brett took a step behind, reading the several names written in the scanned copies of the archives. They both raised an eyebrow and looked at each other.

"There is.. no Orrin anywhere."

Reagan used word finder for faster results, but the coincidences remained nonexistent.

"Are you sure that was his name? Maybe you got confused and it was something like Edwin or Boring," Brett tried to bring up solutions, but Reagan refused to take them.

"Orrin was literally erased from Earth," she said and opened an app that would allow her to create a new AI. Her fingers had never moved so fast before that moment.

"What are you doing?" Brett asked, intimidated by Reagan's determination and focus when writing.

"Just a new intelligence that should look for facial coincidental features with vague descriptions like the ones I gave you."

For almost three minutes, they remained quiet, and the lab's only echo was Reagan's fingers pressing keys.

"I will go get us coffee," said the man before leaving the room.

"This has Rand's name written all over it."