Panic Over ~ Brett Talbot

a mixtape and poison

Not long after did Lydia show up to their house, laptop in hand, ready to continue cracking the code she found. Stiles had attempted to force Vienna to school, but she refused, claiming that three pairs of eyes were better than two. Whilst that was true, she also wanted to be at home for when she'd get an update on when she could go visit her dad.

The siblings had already had another message to let them know that their dad was out of surgery from Melissa and that he was doing well. When she'd read that he'd hopefully be discharged within the next few days, it made Vienna feel a full rush of relief. He was going to be okay.

But the Stilinski siblings had to put their dad in the back of their mind for now – which was far easier now than before – to focus on working on Lydia's list.

The three set up camp in Stiles' bedroom, as usual, as Lydia entered the code into her laptop. Stiles paced behind her impatiently, to which Lydia rolled her eyes multiple times at. Vienna took to scanning her eyes over the murder board again, seeing if her mind could find a way to connect the dots to anything else that they might have missed before. She didn't find anything. But she appreciated having the distraction. The strings of red strung across the board burned into her corneas as her mind whirred, vaguely hearing the small murmurs coming from a still pacing Stiles.

Finally, Lydia clicked enter on her keypad, the sound echoing through the otherwise quiet room. The other two rushed over to peer over her shoulder to find the familiar screen asking for a keyword. Lydia tried typing a few names – well maybe more than a few names. More like the whole town.

Frustration was growing more and more as each name was rejected.

Vienna sighed, "try typing things about your grandmother, she was the one who predicted the list—"

"Transcribed" Lydia interjected.

Vienna gaped at the back of her head before grumbling lowly, "transcribed, predicted, poofed out of thin air, whatever. Just try it, Lyds. It makes the most sense, right?"

"Yeah do that" Stiles added, almost as if he had the idea himself. The two girls sent him a look, to which he just shrugged at.

Lydia tried a few more words.

LORRAINE. MARTIN. LORRAINEMARTIN.

Nothing was working.

It wasn't helping that the printer was beeping ever so obnoxiously. It made Vienna want to rip her hair out. Or bash the printer with Stiles' baseball bat. Or just throw it out of the window – whatever worked.

"Try Maddy. It's got to be Maddy" Stiles tried.

"Doesn't Maddy feel a little obvious to be a cipher key?" Lydia quickly countered.

Stiles didn't even respond to Lydia's quip, only focusing on his suggestion, "I guarantee it's Maddy"

Lydia sighed but typed it in anyway, only receiving the error message once more.

"There's too many options" Vienna grunted.

"Okay, your name!" he suggested before explaining further, "She left the code for you, right? So, it's gotta be your name" Lydia typed in her name, only with the same result.

"Was she close with your mom?"

Lydia answered Vienna's question with a nod and Stiles suggested typing in her name too. Lydia did so, typing in 'NATALIE', to no avail.

"Do you have any beloved family pets?" Stiles tried uselessly and the two girls just grunted in annoyance.

A few minutes went by of pure silence as each of them racked their brains for an idea that would actually work. Vienna went back to look at the murder board, thinking that they could be killing two birds with one stone by focusing on both the list and the whole picture too.