xp_logs | Behold A Red Horse

Darcy and Doug use their hacking ability to access all the possible intel, discovering that Spain has gotten desperate in the process.

All hands on deck didn’t happen that often in Snow Valley, but they moved with surprising alacrity when they did. Darcy and Doug had been all but shoved into the server room from the start, maximizing their most powerful systems to generate all the intel they could. Marie-Ange had made it clear that if they needed to use a little brute force electronically and not be as clean as possible, that was already cleared.

"Lemon, compile data and sort by month, please." Darcy stood, twisting her torso and stretching her hands towards the ceiling with a series of satisfying cracks along her spine. "Well, at least we have the cot and coffee pot," she joked, pulling out a protein bar. "It's gonna be a long night."

"Such romance." Not that Doug was expecting to both attempt to sleep on a single cot at the same time - he knew they would likely be sleeping in shifts so that one of them would always be awake to act on intel as the situation developed. "Just tell me it's not Kevin's idea of coffee, at least."

"Working with what I've got available to me, babe. It's a pity Betty's was already closed for the day when we got the all-hands, or I'd have gotten us two plates and whatever pastries they had left for the day. Instead, you're getting my protein bar and oatmeal stash and maybe some candy from the bodega if you're a good boy." She gave Doug a saucy wink, tossing him one of her protein bars. "And no, we're not to the truckstop special stage yet, it's still the first night. If we're still digging in 36 hours, I'll bust out Kevin's sludge."

Doug shuddered. "I think I'd rather risk the judgmental stares of the staff at Coffee of Doom when I order one of those caffeine monstrosities," he admitted. He pulled open his laptop. "Okay, while Lemon does the thing, I'll take a stab at some of the easier sources to crack. Like the Red Cross." He'd feel bad about it later. And probably shift some money to them from a more despicable source as penance.

"After 36 hours of awake, I won't care where my caffeine comes from, just that it keeps coming." Darcy shrugged. "Of course, by that point I might be caffeinated enough to hear colors. Didn't manage it on the road trip to Vegas, but it came pretty close at one point before Kevin made me sleep." She grabbed a second laptop and curled up against Doug's legs. "Lemon's doing compilation, you're hacking the angels... guess that means I get to go after some of the less benign entities, yeah? Shake me if you need my attention. Or hm. Maybe have the nanites fuss? I watched some of the tape from when I was interacting with Vi, and I'm not very aware of my surroundings when I dig deep."

"Something something the 'dArK wEb'?" The 'studly capz' was practically audible in Doug's dramatic delivery of the term. As Darcy settled into her searching, and her eyes began to lose focus a bit, Doug made a long stretch to grab a small whiteboard for notes on items of importance. That way Darcy could look over at them if she needed a break, and he wouldn't forget to mention them. As he made his way through case notes and medical test results, he frowned. Even after being removed from the vicinity of Jaca, the victims of whatever was happening showed no signs of recovery, remaining in an unresponsive state of rage so total that it was requiring nonstop sedation and restraint. He wrote several bullet points on the whiteboard and nudged Darcy with his nanite arms, encouraging the 'friendos' to grab her attention.

Darcy had laughed at the comment, the sound fading into the occasional hum as her eyes focused on the screen in front of her. The room faded, becoming various codes and the occasional images as she delved deeper than just her hacking skills could take her, circling and entwining around the coding she encountered as unobtrusively as she could manage. Several of the pathways made her feel grimy, as viruses, malware, and other hostile entities lurked at the edges of the parts of the internet most people only knew of from commercials and movies. A few she dismantled, others she skirted past carefully. To her own dismay, some of what she lurked through had clever layers, tripping her up and leaving a filmy sludge behind as she continued forward.

All for nothing.

There was plenty of talk about Jaca, and the conspiracy theorists were having a ball linking it to everything from airborne viruses to mutations and magic gone wrong to something ancient thawing in the Pyrenees mountains and trickling down rock and through earth to taint the water supply. As always, the faction that accused various governments or shadowy world organizations or the damn masons for everything from fixing sports matches to profiteering off diseases were some of the loudest people with the dumbest theories. But nobody was taking credit, and no concrete information beyond some shaky, static-y video and medical files seemed to exist.

It was annoying as fuck, just like the itch in–oh. Darcy carefully backed out as she felt the gentle nudge of the nanites in her meatspace, eyes blinking slowly as she adjusted back to human thought. "Find anything good?" Her throat was scratchy, and she wondered how long it'd been since she started looking.

Doug shook his head. "I don't know that you'd call it good - all the stuff out of the Red Cross seems to be that the victims are not recovering. Even after being physically moved from Jaca proper. That suggests that whatever's behind this is creating some kind of permanent alteration in people." The question of if there was even anything left of the original victim behind the induced frenzy...well, Doug couldn't decide which option would be potentially worse.

She nooded. "Same. Nothing useful, but also nobody suspiciously well-informed. Some medical record leaks, but that's—" Darcy frowned and suddenly hunched over with a sharp cough, shoulders shaking as she struggled to breathe around the sudden tightening of her airway. "Normal enough for this," she croaked out a few minutes later as she pushed her laptop to the side. It'd almost certainly need a wipe again later.

A buzzing from Lemon caught her attention. "What's–" She swayed briefly as she scrambled to her feet, arms flying out for stabilization. "Whoa. Okay. I'm fine. Moved too fast or something." She leaned over Doug, staring at the screen. "Shit. Spain's called in the Avengers."

For emphatic cussing, Doug had yet to encounter a language in the universe that could match Russian. A particularly profane blast left his mouth at the news from Darcy. It wasn't so much the Avengers themselves, but more the knock-on effects of such an internationally visible group of heroes and their long logistical tail would bring. "Start sending the pull-back codes," he told Darcy as he activated a few more screens. "I'll get you the locations."

"That was hot." Darcy pressed a kiss to Doug's cheek and gave his shoulder a squeeze as she took the seat in front of Lemon. Targeted messages developed under her fingertips, warnings to the team about the imminent Avengers involvement and the nearest safe locations to retreat to. "Remind me later to add working on my Russian to our hangout time. Right now I'm limited to basic food ordering, asking for the bathroom, and starting a bar fight." She paused for a second. "Still better than my German, somehow."