goddamngrenades | OPEN POST

"One can never be too young to find the right interplanetary school to eventually spend wasted years amassing debt at." Just because she's bunk at streetsmarts... She bounces a leg nervously. Were this a different situation, this would look even sketchier than it already is, a young girl running off with a mysterious stranger.

"This new life, though. I know it's meant to stand up to all the tests. Do people ever come back to their old lives? That you know of?"

"Ok, now I buy that you're fifteen. Twelve year olds are never that cynical." He plugs in the appropriate age as he flicks through their options. "Where are you from?"

Was she always that cynical, or is that just her sense of humor? Or maybe it's just developed since--her family. But that doesn't hold her attention for long because, wow, rude, way to just ignore her question completely.

"Altea," she supplies, then pushes off the couch and comes to totally not hover by his elbow, peering at his more technological setup. "But do people come back to their own lives of their own will? Not by getting outed, I mean. Or is everyone who hires you looking to disappear for good?"

"Good choice." He lets the kid look for a moment before turning to peer at her, white scarred eye and all. "Rude."

That's it. No poking, no glaring, just a peer and a word. Come on, kid, you gotta know better than that. "Not my problem after I finish my job. They take their files and photos and go wherever. They do whatever they're gonna do, I take my money and go get more parts for my bike."

Or beer.

Or go to a strip club but, yeah, not saying that in front of the kid.

"Hey, I'm not touching." Looking's not rude! Looking can be admiring. She's bold enough to stare right back at him, and that overwhelming feeling of familiarity comes back. That kind of scarring is pretty distinctive. Maybe subtract a few years...?

"I guess that's good," she starts slowly, and maybe peering at him is rude, but Pidge is no paragon of manners. Much to her mother's chagrin. "Means you don't keep asking questions once these questions are done. Easy business deal."

"Do you like it when people look over your shoulder while you're working?" Rude. He maintains, rude.

And yeah, it's pretty distinctive scarring- but he's been listed as dead long enough by enough notable publications on the other side of the galaxy to not have to worry about it for the most part. No one that knows or cares or even has his data is anywhere near this damn city. "So. Pidge, looking for schools, fifteen. Step up to the screen and we'll take a few photos. Did you want to redo your fingerprints too or not?"

"They can look so long as they don't touch. Maybe I like showing off." Or maybe she'd like to, but what she does is either way over everyone else orrrrr illegal. So.

She moves off to step up, wondering for a moment--glasses on, glasses off? Better keep them on. It's amazing what just the addition of eyewear can do to distort what people see. Her brain is still puzzling out the mystery of, er, the Mystery Contact. "I don't plan on getting in enough trouble that I should get my prints taken." But if she does get into that kind of trouble, it's probably going to be the kind where she either dies or is thrown in a facility that doesn't care immediately for standard procedure.

"Sit back, Pidge." He doesn't go so far as to touch because- child. Actual child. Teenager, sure but. A kid. You don't just go around poking kids, even if they're all in your space. He has some restraint, after all. "Good, I haven't done the process on someone as young as you before and can't say if it'd grow out or not. Also? Stings like a bi-"

Shit.

"It hurts."

"Do you have a name I can call you by at least while I'm here?" Pidge asks, doing as told. "Since you have a name you can call me, and there's really not a lot of good nicknames I can think of involving motorcycles."

She glances over again, smirking. "Aww, look--identity forger's got scruples."

"Taylor." It's honest enough (real name) and irregularly used enough (everyone in the project called him York) to make it safe. The only people that knew it was his are dead or think he's dead.

It works.

"I might be a criminal but I am a criminal with standards."

Hmm. She can't assume it's his real name, but she shuffles that off into her mental database as well. "I appreciate you not taking the money and running and also doing a thorough job of this whole setup." Even if it's run out of a bachelor pad garage. "I knew there was a reason I hired you."

"I've got a reputation for getting the job done." This isn't the weirdest thing he's swung- nor is Pidge the youngest. It's just usually kids and their parents when he does work on anyone roughly this age.

"The Yelp of the darkweb speaks highly of you, anyway, so your idents must be thorough and up to spec. Were you always a forger?" Maybe she shouldn't be asking the career criminal semi-personal questions but hey, they'll be here talking personal (fictional) details for a while.

"Can you call it 'underground' instead of 'darkweb', please? Both are illegal but for very different reasons." Reasons he's not gonna get into with a kid. Reasons that make this gig, with a kid, doubly uncomfortable. "Not really."

She wiggles her fingers at him. "Show me the forbidden identity forgers." There are dark places of the net okay, just...the dark places she went were this type of illegal. "I guess you must've done something else before to get that scar. Did you get your eye upgraded?"

"If I got it upgraded I would have a working eye now, wouldn't I?" Nosey, this is why he didn't work with kids. Kids asked questions. He flicks through the next set of files, scans Pidge in for the photos, and gets to work building that fake background.

"I wouldn't have any way of knowing if it worked or not--you could have it look any way you wanted it to, and having people think you have a bad eye when actually it's a supercomputer would be a pretty nice advantage." Is this the rambling part of the day? It might be. "But you'd probably work faster, if you could afford one of the better models. You wouldn't even have to do anything about your scar, if you think chicks dig scars." She has no opinions on the matter, being Definitely A Boy.

"Drink your soda." Sooner he gets this done, the better. At least the rambling is somewhat familiar even if the voice is all wrong every which way. "Look not everything is solved by shoving a supercomputer in your skull."

He would know. Christ, he would know.

"Not everything. I mean, sure, AI for ships make them run smoother with less human error, and smart AI? They're..."

Her soda's halfway to her lips, almost pouring into her lap but not quite. Squinting into the middle distance. "They're..."

Internal database query: results established. Subject: Taylor. Physical traits and deviations for age scanned. Subject found. Verification required...
Continue?

The can is slammed hard to the tabletop, splashing up orange. "You're one of them," she gasps. "You're from Project Freelancer."

Just a kid, not a threat. Just a kid, not a threat. Just a kid-

Two words and he's on the other side of the sofa, pistol in hand and pointed at Pidge's head which (wow overreaction much, self?) is not how he thought tonight was gonna go. It seems too much like genuine surprise but he hasn't managed to scrape a life together for himself after fucking dying by being careless and anything less than completely paranoid.

"You're a little young for a UNSC plant, kid." Is it better or worse that he sounds more or less the same?

There's fear, of course, in a distant way where she leans back, away from the gun trained on her head, but the indeed genuine surprise is still gaping on her face. "A plant--I'm trying to get answers from the UNSC! I need to hide from them, kind of like you!"

"And why the hell do you need to hide from them, huh?" HE doesn't ask as a rule but- this kid broke all of them by recognizing him. No one that knows about him is supposed to be this far out here.

"I recognized you, didn't I? I think they take offense to anyone that can hack their systems like that and get away with it. In fact, I'm pretty sure in some places it's called treason. This is part of the getting away with it."

She leaps to her feet but doesn't make any moves closer, but even for a kid with a gun in their face, Pidge looks ready to fight. "I'm trying to find my family. My dad and my brother went missing, and the UNSC is covering it up! They said they died in a shuttle accident, that it was pilot error, but that's not true at all! I wasn't looking for you."

"...Well, then." The pistol goes back in it's shoulder holster and York lets himself slump back against the sofa. Okay. Not a plant, just a kid.

A kid that can hack like a motherfucker, apparently, but just a kid.

"What makes you think they're lying? I'm not saying they aren't just. What tipped you off?"

She hoped that would be enough, but she's still kind of surprised when it is. There's blood pumping now, and she can't just fall back on the couch like he does. "The pilot they had doesn't just make errors, for one. His record's too good. And we found out over the local news before anyone official came to us. It all just seemed...sketchy."

Pidge frowns down at the floor, fists curling and uncurling. "Maybe I was just in disbelief for a while, but I looked, or I started looking. If it was what they said it was, it wouldn't be classified. Pilot error is just a story. I didn't find everything, but I found enough. Some of the data that managed to transmit before losing contact. It just doesn't add up. I don't know if they were involved in some secret project, or taken by aliens, or what, but I know where I'm gonna start looking once I get out there."

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