xp_logs | Nathan and Jake, Thursday morning

Given that Madelyn has her end of the investigation into his father well-covered, Nathan goes to Jake for some additional help with the business end of things. Jake is mildly intrigued and agrees to chase the paper trail.

He really could have just emailed Jake about this, Nathan knew, but then, he knew precisely where to find Jake and so the emailing was kind of redundant. As he got more and more comfortable with his telepathy, he started to understand why Charles used in-house email so rarely. Why am I not surprised that he's in the kitchen? Kitchen or office seemed to be the Places Where Jake Was most of the time.

While waiting for the info-drop from the contact in Prague, Jake had happened to look up and seen the poster on the door, and believing that Wanda would somehow _know_ if he'd ignored her command, he'd gone off for food. He knew someone had been making cookies. He could smell it. Ha. Someone had thought they could hide them on the top shelf. Jake stretched. Fools.

Nathan paused at the kitchen door, blinking at the sight of Jake stretching for - yes, cookies. Why was he not too terribly surprised? "Most people just use chairs, Gavin, you know," he remarked.

"Where's the fun in that?" Jake replied, and elongated a finger long enough to reach the tin.

"True. And I shouldn't talk - I show off with my TK often enough doing everyday things." Nathan came over and sat down on one of the stools, eyeing Jake thoughtfully. "Are you still running yourself into the ground these days?"

"Nah, not at the moment." Jake turned around, opening the tin curiously. Oh, with glazing! "Mainly I'm just infogathering at the moment. Remy's running around like a crazy person, of course, but he always does that, from what I've seen. Betsy is pretending to help, but what she's really doing is telling me that she needs more information, and that the information I give her is the wrong information. Intel people are so picky." Jake shook his head in mock sadness, aware that his fondness of his job was shining through.

Nathan made a noise that might have been understanding or amusement. Or maybe both. "Then I can be selfish with a relatively clear conscience, and ask you to do some info-gathering for me." He paused for a moment, chewing on his lower lip. "I don't know whether the gossip's worked its way in your direction yet, but I have this whole long-lost father thing going on right now." And he almost managed to sound as flippant as he wanted to sound. Nice.

"I've heard something, yes. Haven't really been paying attention," Jake admitted around a cookie. He swallowed. "How's that working out for you?"

"Kind of strangely, to be honest. Mostly because according to my father, my memories of my pre-Mistra life are a little..." Nathan paused, then gave a small, wry smile. "... okay, completely fucked up. Which I'm tempted to believe, because if you add up everything I do remember from those twelve years, the sum total accounts for about a year. Maybe two."

"So you're a clone or something?" It was possible he should lay off the scifi for a while, Jake thought.

Nathan stopped, blinking. "Okay, there was an explanation that hadn't occurred to me," he said, striving for a humorous tone. "Actually, though, I'm leaning towards the idea that Mistra wiped out what's gone and altered what was left, because it makes sense, and at this point there's no way to tell. Unfortunately," he muttered, "that also means I can't verify what Saul's saying based on what I do remember."

Jake chewed on a butterfly glazed cookie while he considered it. He nodded slowly. "I think I can see where you're going with this."

"Madelyn's looking into things from her end - the FBI's the best source of information for some things." Nathan shifted on the stool, glancing at the fridge. The door opened and a bottle of water came floating out and over to where he sat. "You've got better business contacts, though, from what I understand and a few things Dom's said to me. My father runs what's apparently a fairly successful data recovery business in San Francisco."

Jake's eyebrows rose and he finally seemed interested. "Really? What's the name?"

"Samara Data Recovery," Nathan said. "I was actually just looking at their website yesterday... it was interesting," he said a bit vaguely, looking up at Jake as he unscrewed the lid on the water bottle. "I don't know precisely what I'm asking you to do, here. I may be just being... paranoid. But even if everything he's saying is true, I don't get how he went from helping run an experimental community looking into sustainable Arctic living to running a data recovery company."

"Um. People are strange?" Jake suggested, blinking. He'd found that this generally worked as an answer to most things. He could tell Nathan was looking for a different answer though, so he nodded. "I'll boot up the Infonet database, see what we have. The name is familiar, so there should be something. Want me to follow the papertrails?"

"I'd appreciate that," Nathan said gratefully, relaxing a little. "Like I said, I can't know for sure whether he's telling the truth based on what's in this screwed-up head of mine. The more information I get to support his side of the story..." The better I feel about wanting to believe it? Nathan shrugged. "Paranoia's not such a bad thing, I guess."

Jake grinned. "You're talking to a member of the esteemed Intelligence trio - we practically worship paranoia."