Today’s your free day. Cassie spent the night with you, promising today would be a good day. She brought her laptop, a tablet and a phone (“the last one’s for you”, she claims, but she mentioned Tessa would monitor it), and let the former running while she looked for lunch. As she returns, you notice she checks her laptop before grabbing the tablet. “Program’s running. That should help us.”
“Help us with what?”
“C’mon...” She grins. “Planning the plan!”
“But wait – isn't your mom gonna...?”
“I pulled up a few strings, so she should leave us alone for a while. But of course, I don’t trust her, so I ran a couple programs.” She drags you towards the laptop, showing her work to you. “I had one of my old friends splice me about 3 hours of footage.”
“Footage?”
“Are you gonna echo me? It’s spoofed footage – it'll make Mom think you’re doing normal stuff. You’ve got only a couple clothes, so it makes things easier. Remember when we saw that awful rom-com?”
“Uh-huh...”
“Well, I had the video footage spliced in with a couple shots of you alone, worked the audio, cleaned it, then removed the timestamp. I got a program that loads it into the servers, so when she checks the footage, she’ll think we’re seeing a movie or something.”
“And this is gonna help us...?”
“By masking what we say and do.” She snorts and giggles. “You get it? ‘Masking’?”
“Yeah, yeah...”
“Aww. I thought you were gonna laugh! Anyways – I also have a VPN running so that it spoofs our IP address, since I figured it’d be best if we used Wi-Fi for this call.”
“Call?” Cassie knocks your head, making you wince. “Ow!”
“Hey - what’s wrong with your head? Can’t be all the sex – I'd be even more of a dunce than you. What I mean is the call – your favorite client contacted me and wanted a video call between Momdad, her and us.”
“Dad’s gonna--!” She holds your mouth shut. “Alright, alright! It’s just that I didn’t expect this call!”
“Why do you think I said this day’s gonna be special?” Cassie checks her laptop, satisfied. “Excellent - the program’s running in case something happens. Gonna check my phone just in case. Anyways, the call’s gonna be from the tablet, so get it as soon as it rings, okay?”
“Alright...” You move to the couch, and Cassie makes a quick call before you see the tablet come to life. The call comes from a very familiar number – your mother’s. As you answer it, the image on the other side clears, revealing her face. “M-Mom!”
“It’s alright, Davey. No one’s here besides the agent.” You see the image move slightly aside, revealing Adrienne. “She claims she already met you.”
“Uh...” You glance at her with guilty eyes. “Y-yeah.”
“Is she that shy,” Adrienne asked, “or is that the skin’s influence?”
You gasp, prompting Cassie to approach you. “Izzy? What’s wrong?”
Noticing your mother – or rather, your father – staring curious, you quickly clear things. “Uh, it’s... half-and-half. And I met her under the name Isabella and Cassie decided I should stick with it – uh, for the time being.” (You give her a hard glare in hopes she gets the message.)
“Yeah,” your friend replies. “For the time being. Anyways, what was that all about?”
“I was asking Isabella if her shyness was natural or the skin’s influence.”
“Oh, that.” You snap at Cassie, and she chuckles nervously. “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you – she knows everything about the skins. She knew about them even before I asked.”
“You... know?”
“Just forgive her,” Cassie intervenes. “Her mind’s a bit mushy.”
“Perhaps it’s because of information we’re withholding. See, I’ve been tailing a different case, and as soon as I heard about your case, I figured there were too many ties to ignore it.”
“Another case?”
You notice Adrienne laughs, probably from Cassie’s gesture. “Yes. You see, a couple months ago, there was a strange explosion at an abandoned building near Sanderson Avenue. We thought it was a drug lab, but it held very advanced technology.”
“It so happens that it’s all connected to Mom.” You turn towards Cassie, surprised by her revelation. “Turns out, I was originally called in to check them.”
“You what!?”
“Hey - you want to get their help, no? Anyways – I started fooling with them and realized how they worked, so... Well, ‘Mom’ and I made a deal. She’d give me a new life, I’d stay shut.”
“But that means you just broke your deal.”
“Izzy, what did I tell you? I’m going where you’re going. If that means ratting on Mom, then who cares?”
“Cassie’s collaboration turned out to be extremely important,” Adrienne continues. “Turns out, she’s the key witness to the true identity of Tessa Wright.”
“I know she’s not who she’s supposed to be, but why is that so important?”
“Because the woman inside her is none other than the late justice Martin Wright.” You don’t make a connection, but your “mother” quickly clarifies.
“He was accused of shady deals, Da—uh, dear. Collusion with the Mafia.”
No wonder why she controls the criminal underworld, you realize.
“But they found him dead. Autopsy and everything.”
“Except,” you deduce, “if this Martin Wright is inside Tessa... That means he cloned himself to fake his death?”
“Exactly. Leaving no trace to him. If we are to accuse someone, it’ll have to be Tessa Wright. But if we can corner him and take away his skin--”
“That’ll be difficult,” Cassie reveals. “I know Mom has more pens than the black and brown ones.” (Just how much did she reveal to the Feds!?) “One of them apparently can seal people inside the skins they wear.”
“But with Cassandra’s collaboration, we may get ahold of some of those. Once we can reveal who’s behind Tessa Wright, we may do some justice.”
Justice, you echo sarcastically. Sell out a criminal mastermind, straighten this town...
“And maybe get some degree of normality,” your “mother” adds.
Forcing us to live our old lives... You only have one question to make. “What do you need me for?”
“I heard from Miss Wright that Tessa has offered you an interesting proposal. We need as many people she can trust on our side.”
“Does that mean I should accept it?”
“Mostly to ensure we earn her trust. I’ll wait for her offer, see what she wants with me. Set up a careful trap. Turn her intelligence apparatus against her.”
“That doesn’t tell me a lot.”
“What it means is that you’ll keep doing your current job.” You glance at your “mother”, and she looks away – as if recognizing what’s being asked of you. “If any of your clients happens to be from the FBI or the local authorities, keep me informed. Same thing for anyone who might be important – you feed her that info, you feed me that info. You’ll tell me all she knows.”
“Is that it?”
“Occasionally I’ll send an agent to feed you false information – undercover agents, plants, the works. Everything to earn her trust.”
“In my case, I’ll set bugs everywhere. Since she knows I’m good with tech, she’ll trust me. I’ll try to push for you to get some liberties.”
“And in my case,” your parent affirms, “I’ll keep tabs on her financials. It’ll be harder, but I’ll keep her informed about any accounts I might have access to.”
“What I plan is to have enough evidence against Tessa to pin her as the one behind it all.”
“And then?”
“Dismantle as many organizations as we can,” Adrienne claims. “Probably under her face – a ‘favorable agreement’ of sorts.”
“Except it’ll be a Fed posing as her.” You find the idea troubling. “Is this right, though? We don’t know a lot about that technology.”
“I understand your concern,” she states, pre-empting your worry. “I’ll find out who’s behind them, but I won’t handle this information to the Federal government without proper vetting – if the CIA or another intelligence agency made them, I’m quite sure they’ll butt in.”
“That’s about what you told me,” Cassie tells Adrienne. “Now tell her about the deal we made.”
“Deal?” You glance at Cassie, ready to answer her. “Hey - I think I’m owed that answer. You’ve left me in the dark about all this.”
“I was getting to that,” the agent mentions. “I made an arrangement with Miss Wright for her services – she will retain her identity and help us as a consultant.”
“White-hat hacker, bestie! Can get inside any fuckin’ server, and Uncle Sam can’t say anything about it.”
“As long as it’s not treasonous,” Adrienne points out. “Of course, I am willing to extend deals for you as well.”
“What kind of deal? You mean... keeping our identities?”
“I believe Miss Wright stated your interest to retain that identity.” You feel shocked by being outed that way. You look at your “mother”, baffled.
“Uh... Dad? You... you’re okay with this?”
“David - uh, Isabella.” You notice how hard it must be for him, but the way he called you by your new name is recomforting. “Trust me when I say I understand you. I want to do everyone right – Marie, Claire, Tina, Nick and you.”
“How?”
“I told agent Silva about my deal with Tessa. She promised the government would pay for your studies – Tina's, Nick’s, everyone’s. Full scholarship, and recommendations as well.”
“Dad.”
“And Marie asked me to be out of her life. I arranged for her to remain as Ashley for as long as she desires.”
That takes you by surprise. Your dad plans to let your mom remain as Ashley? Is he really willing to vindicate himself that way?
“We can always arrange for a deal on our own,” the agent claims. It’s very tempting – to live as Isabella, under an assumed identity, for the rest of your life.
But as good as it sounds, something’s very off. Why would the Federal government make such generous offers? What if this is all a trap?
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
More by this author