Rowan locked her door carefully, checking once more to make sure the pillows she had stuffed under her blankets actually resembled some kind of human being. She walked over to her window and opened it, poking her head out.
"That doesn't look safe." Stiles whispered to Malia, watching Rowan slowly slip out of her window and onto the roof.
"We're gonna catch her, it'll be fine." Malia shrugged, Stiles's eyes widening. "You ready?"
"Not really." He muttered, rubbing his hands together.
"If you drop me, I will kill both of you." Rowan said, easing her way towards the edge of the roof. She grabbed tightly onto the rain gutter, praying that it wouldn't break as she dangled above them.
"Three, two, one." Malia counted down, Rowan letting go and falling into their arms. She stood up, brushing off her jeans.
"Are you okay?" Rowan frowned, looking over a stiles who was holding his chest and wheezing.
"I'm good." He winced, giving them a thumbs up. "Just got the wind knocked out of me."
"Stop being a baby." Malia scoffed, patting him on the back and walking back to the car.
"You sure you're okay?" Rowan watched him, bend over with his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths.
"I just need a second."
•••
"Yeah, I don't hear anything." Rowan whispered, her eyes trained on the record player.
"What are we doing?" Stiles muttered, standing up and swinging his arm to gesture at the room. "This room wasn't even made for us. We need someone like Lydia, or Meredith, and we're just sitting here listening to a stupid record player play a record that doesn't play anything."
He reached forward and shut it off, his irritation evident in his movements. "Come on, there's plenty of other things that we can be totally useless doing."
Stiles moved to open the door, but Malia turned and stared at the record player, confusion lacing her features.
"What is it?" Rowan asked, watching her gaze move to the wall.
"Guys." Malia said, making Stiles turn around. "I can still hear it."
"But it's not on." He pointed out, Rowan giving him a 'duh', look.
"Then it's something else. Something spinning." She stood up, Rowan following suit.
Stiles examined the player, his eyes drifting towards the cord connecting it to the wall. Instead of being plugged into an actual outlet, it actually went into the wall. He wheeled it aside, looking back at Malia and Rowan.
"Can you just yank it, or something?" Rowan blurted, both of them looking at her in surprise. "I don't do well with suspense, sorry."
Stiles grabbed the cord with both hands, pulling back on the cord until it tore all the way up the wall. The three teens started pulling away at the dry wall, which came apart easily in their hands. They all stepped back, watching the machines spin in front of them.
"What is this?"
"The dead pool." Rowan and Stiles answered in sync, staring at the machines in awe.
Before they could react Malia lunged forward, her fist aiming for the machines until Rowan grabbed it. "Malia, no."
"You can't just smash it to pieces, okay?" Stiles stepped in front of her, pointing at the open hole in the wall. "If this thing's being used to disseminate the list then it's probably gonna keep going until everyone's dead."
"Then what do we do?" Malia asked, letting her arms fall to her sides.
"It needs some kind of prompt, or command or something, right?" Stiles suggested, his hands on his hips. Malia stepped forward, moving his arm away when he tried to hold her back.
"What about a key?" She pointed at the key hole in the machine, Rowan and Stiles exchanging glances.
"You should probably call Lydia." Rowan whispered, Stiles nodding and pulling out his phone.
Within a minute Lydia was on FaceTime, Stiles quickly explaining what the found as he showed her the machines. "See it? There's gotta be a way to turn it off right?"
"I don't know." Lydia gave him an anxious look, the sound of her heels clacking against the floors of the police station heard through the phone. "I don't know anything about computers from the 1970s."
"Neither do we." Malia butted in, shoving her face in front of the camera. "Rowan's smart, but she's not that smart."
"Thank you, Malia." Rowan nodded, rubbing her forehead.
"Okay where's the monitor?"
"Lydia, there is no monitor." Stiles moved away from the wall, growing more panicked. "There are buttons, knobs, spindles, no monitor."
"Wait, turn the phone back." Lydia paused, her eyebrows knitting together on the tiny screen. "Point it at the carpet."
"The what?"
"The floor! Just show me the floor!" She snapped, her patience running low. Stiles moved the phone so she could see the floor, giving Malia and Rowan a confused look. "There should be red blotches, a wine stain."
Rowan's eyes scanned the white carpet, which was surprising clean for such an easily stained color. "There's nothing."
"That doesn't make sense." She muttered, shaking her head. "I gave the five hundred dollars I was supposed to use to hire cleaners to Brunski."
"Lydia, what the hell does wine have to do with anything?" Stiles waved his arm around, almost smacking Rowan in the face.
"Red wine doesn't just disappear." Lydia said, before looking up in realization. "Unless it wasn't wine."
"What? What do you mean?"
"The ashes weren't ashes, the study isn't a study, the record player isn't a record player." She explained, speaking rapidly. "So maybe the wine, wasn't wine. Stiles, you have to find the wine. Find the bottle, there could be something about it."
"What is it, what's it called?" Stiles asked, looking at her through the screen.
"It's a 1982 Cotes du Rhone." Lydia said, Stiles handing Rowan the phone to hang up and darting out of the room. After a few minutes and various thumps coming from somewhere in the house, he ran back to the study with a bottle in his hand.
"I think there's something inside." He shook it, something rattling in the bottle. "Do you have like a wine opener, or-"
Rowan and Stiles both watched in shock as Malia yanked the bottle from his hands, smashing it onto the floor. Stiles bent down and searched through the glass, pulling out the key. He stood up, all of them staring at the key before he ran over and stuck it into the machine.
He glanced back at the girls before turning the key, the machines whirring to a stop. Rowan looked at Malia and Stiles, taking a deep breath before letting it go.
"It's over."
YOU ARE READING
Agony ☾Stilinski
Fanfiction"Sometimes it's just pain. Others, it's agony." ● ● ● Rowan Sinclair had her life all planned out. Class president, graduate with perfect grades, go to college and study medicine. Get into a good career, fall in love and start a family when she's re...
