Phia's Fragile and Fantastic Fingers || ONC 2023

Mercy and Misadventure

I don't go to class.

I walk back to my room to put on clothes and take my meds, and forget all about Algebra II. I use my pink paper and Penelope's purple pens to scribble notes that I don't understand. I get nothing from it except a vague feeling of calm. I don't get answers about where Penelope is, so I switch tactics to try and interrogate my fingers.

"Do I have new powers that will help me get Penelope back?"

Nothing

"Can you tell the future?"

A little

"Then were is Penelope?"

You were chosen to find her.

"Is she in Portugal or something?"

You were chosen to find her.

Jesus Christ. My fingers are no help. I start to plot on my own. If I'm the chosen one, then I can figure out how to do this one.

There are a few things to overcome, of course. Most importantly, I've had most of my YEPP privileges revoked. I maintain that YEPP is overreacting. They maintain that I hacked their intelligence files so I could create found poetry out of old intelligence briefs. Apparently that is "immature" and "dangerous." I don't know what they expect from me. I was raised picking pockets and sneaking into places I didn't belong.

When I was six, and my mom was busy flirting with a guy at a gas pump, I realized I was hungry. The 7-Eleven had food. I did not.

Ten minutes later, I had food, and the 7-Eleven had...slightly fewer kitkat bars. No harm no foul.

YEPP doesn't exactly see it like that. So I'm banned from the intelligence building, any room with an unmonitored computer, the hangar bay, 3/4th of the housing hallways, several of the training rooms, the kitchens, janitor's closets, and finally, inevitably, the labs.

Luckily  Nicola Jamison has access to everything, and I have her keycard.

I decide to start my research by combing the public access documents. It's easy and won't raise too many red flags. The how is a little complicated, because I'm not supposed to be unsupervised with a computer, but the library won't check, especially if I'm signed in as the very studious Nicola who is supposed to be in Geography class for the next hour.

I slip out of my room and walk to the library like I'm supposed to be there. No one bats an eye and I snatch a few tablets off the public tablet trolly. I stash myself half under a table in the back corner.

Twenty minutes later I find the heavily redacted reports from the night Penelope disappeared. There're the reports from Me, Mercy, and John, as well as one from Spencer Kerry the person who assigned us that night, Gerri Winsley, the head of the search team, and the four other Empowered Youth they called in to help with the search.

I did not find their reports particularly helpful,

"Mission began on [redacted] at headquarters [redacted] at 07:00 hours. We left from [redacted] on a [redacted] [redacted] helicopter. Assigned to the mission were mission leader [redacted] and team members [redacted], [redacted], [redacted]".

I spend another 7 hours going over everything they have on the public server, writing down document titles and numbers so when I can break into the private data banks I can get to the exact files I need as quickly as possible.

I'm disappointed to find that none of the files I've be looking for are listed as 23 b230 n2i3 203, but that means nothing. There is so much more information in the private data, that I'm sure those numbers will match with something.