Percy
On three separate occasions during the night, I suddenly snapped awake, felt too lazy to try opening up my eyes, and ended up falling back asleep. The fourth time came soon after, but this time there was light shining into my room. My whole body felt like it had swallowed an anchor, but the light became too much of a bother for me to continue trying to sleep. Half awake and with blurred vision, I sat up and reached to shut the curtains by my bed, only to feel around and realize they were already shut. The light must have been coming from outside my bedroom. I kicked off my blankets, rushed over to close the door, and shot back into bed as fast as I could with the least disturbance to my comfort.
I spent what was probably 10 minutes trying to fall back asleep, but it wouldn’t happen. Fuck it, I thought, if everyone else is awake, I might as well join them. I kicked my blankets back off, rubbed my eyes, and walked out into the hallway. Everyone’s doors were shut. I slugged down the stairs and found nobody in the kitchen or living room. Just one lamp by the Roundtable that got turned on. I looked out the curtains next to the front door. It’s still nighttime. How the hell is that possible? Did I sleep through the whole day?
I saw light coming from the basement door, so I walked down the stairs to see if Graham was still awake, which he unsurprisingly was. He was sitting at the coffee table in his corner, with… all of the paperwork I had been working on. He looked up as I made it down the final step. “That was fast,” he said. “Thought it’d take at least another 15 minutes.”
“Did you seriously finish all my paperwork?”
“Yeah. I did.”
I walked over and sat next to him at the table. “You… didn’t have to do that, you know.”
“I know. But I wanted to. Had to stay occupied somehow.”
“Hope I didn’t wreck the papers I had too much.”
“Some were torn or wrinkled beyond repair, but they all got replaced. No worries. But whatever. How was your 45-minute nap?”
“45 minutes? That felt like a whole night’s sleep.”
“Yeah. That tends to happen when you take naps.” I started shuffling through the papers when he asked, “So… did you notice anything that seemed… off about Adrian when you first met up with him?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. He just doesn’t seem like he’s anywhere close to the same person. He doesn’t even act like he’s a person at all. It’s fucking weird.”
Stolen story; please report.
“Dude, he’s been in the military for the last four years. He just got out of fighting in Syria. War changes people, Graham.” He sighed and scooted back to his desk in his roller chair. “So is this it? Are we done with Solaris now?”
“All that’s left is Linda’s house. We’re good as gold after that.”
“Wow. Oh, and did you figure out how to knock out their power yet?”
“Well, I looked at the area on Google Maps, and I saw that there was a whole line of giant trees sitting next to the power lines. They’re tall enough to hit the power lines, but knocking a tree down is going to be far more difficult than a telephone pole. The thing is, all of those trees have branches that reach over them, so if, say, one of those branches could suddenly break off onto a power line, that should be enough to cause a blackout. Of course, there’s no easy way to make that happen, given that the area is covered with security cameras. Skyler couldn’t just climb up the tree and break the limb off, because the cameras would quickly spot her. So instead, since we aren’t dropping Skyler off at the neighborhood, I figured we could drop a child off who could climb up that tree and ‘accidentally’ break it off. Then Skyler could make her way to the house, walk through the front door with the house key, connect the CEO’s laptop to the main server, stick the hard drive in, and wait. If all goes smoothly, the rest will play out on its own. Bada-bing bada-boom.”
“Uh… you want a child to participate in our plan of breaking into someone’s house?”
“They aren’t participating in anything. He’s just a child being a child and climbing up a tree for fun after inconspicuously being dropped off by his mom. And Skyler isn’t ‘breaking in,’ she’s literally walking through the front door. It’s not breaking and entering, it’s just… fucking entering.”
“You’re saying that like you already have a child that we can use.”
“As a matter of fact, we do. Korey has a son, and she already agreed that he could do it under close supervision.”
“Korey? The manager of the business we’re working with?”
“No, the Korey we met at the sauna two weeks ago. Obviously it’s the fucking manager, don’t ask questions you already know the answer to. And it’s not like the kid would be in any danger; the way she described it, the fucker could climb before he could walk.”
I yawned and stood up. “Whatever you say, G. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have breakfast to cook up because the light you left on in the living room kept me from falling back asleep. Thank you for that, by the way.”
“What? I haven’t been up there since you guys went to sleep, somebody turned that off. No, wait, that might have been Adrian who did that,” he said as I started up the stairs. “Are you sure that wasn’t Adrian? Check with Adrian!” I shut the basement door behind me.
The paper on top in the breakfast recommendations bin by the fridge was a printout from a food website, presumably put there by Graham. It was just a basic breakfast quesadilla. So this was definitely from Graham. The picture of it looks good, so it’s worth trying out.
Just needs scrambled eggs, salt and pepper, tortillas, cheese, bacon… all of which are available. If I make two, then each of us should be able to get half a quesadilla, only… shit, Adrian. Cutting a tortilla into fifths is going to require more time than I’m willing to give. I guess I could just make three, cut them into eighths, and just let them choose how to split it.
Jesus, all the conversations we had about Adrian coming back, and not one of them addressed the simple issue of how we’d split meals. What else could we have missed?
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