16- Crime Scene Cleanup

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A/N: sorry vegans

Maxine Clarke

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Jana stared into the scope of the rifle, taking in a breath. I watched the bird carefully as she flexed her trigger finger, letting out the breath as the trigger clicked. The silencer on the gun had stifled the brunt of the noise, but the shot sent a swarm of the birds into the air in a flurry. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her frown slightly, one eye closed as she picked off three more of the birds before relaxing her grip on the gun.

"Those should have fallen a few yards out from the treeline. Would you mind getting them, Brooks?" Brooks was a cook from Brisbane who had been flying out to assist in some major political function's catering. The chance to have someone who actually knew what they were doing dealing with the food had been a welcome prospect.

"Sure, but I'm not really used to working with unprepared meat. I'll see what I can do." Jana nodded him a thanks and he walked off. 

"We have three more magazines for this one, but after that we're going to need to figure out an alternative means of hunting. Military grade sniper rifles are cool and all, but not really meant for hunting." Jana popped the magazine out of its place and put it into her pocket before disassembling parts of the gun. 

"We can fashion some snare traps for now, and we could easily rig some kind of fishing net that wouldn't need much oversight."

"Yeah, that should work for now. Our next priority needs to be establishing contact as soon as possible. Since the sat phones aren't working we could try to use their pieces to make a larger scale broadcasting device." Jana sat criss-cross as she picked the shell casings off of the ground, counting them under her breath. "Help me find this last casing, would you? I'm supposed to have nine, but I've only found eight. I don't like having them laying around."

I skimmed my fingers over the grass, stopping at the feel of cold metal at my fingertips. "Here," I said, handing it to her. She cast one last glance over the space before standing up, holding the rifle at her side. You could barely tell that she had been sitting on that patch of grass, moments before. The things she did out of mere habit bore striking resemblance to what someone would do whilst cleaning up a crime scene. 

"That should be enough for today, thanks for your help." 

"No problem," she responded absent mindedly, her eyes drifting to the left. She twirled the last shell casing between the fingers of her free hand, eyes narrowing.

"Mind telling me what you're thinking about?"

"This is Louie Edison's gun, correct?"

"Correct." Jana made one of those dismissive hm  sounds and dropped the shell into her pocket again. She mouthed something, and then shook her head slightly.

"Sorry, I got distracted. I'll make sure this gets back to Louie." Before I could respond, she had already begun to walk away.

. . .

Agent Wiley smirked as the flint pieces clicked together, sending the branches into flames. Everyone sat around the fire, happily soaking in its heat. I had found that the nights here were similar to those of England in the winter, minus the snow and rain. A few feet to my left, Parker sat with his agents, joking with them. Across from me, Jana sat with her knees to her chest, staring into the fire as she exchanged words with Carrie.

"You know what, when this thing's over, drinks are on me." Parker said, looking up at the sky. 

"I'll hold you to that," someone muttered. When this thing's over.

"Before I forget to ask, do we have anyone here who specializes in electrical engineering?" Contrary to popular belief, government agents aren't all masterminds who are good at everything. We would need a tech professional to be able to set up a broadcast. There was silence, and I swore. 8.3% of the American economy is made up by the tech industry, so statistically speaking it wouldn't have been unlikely that there would be someone on the flight who happened to work in that field. I suppose we would just have to work with what we knew and the knowledge of the flight engineer.

I stared into the crackling fire, rubbing my face. I think it had finally hit me how much my life had changed in the last four days. The odds of being involved in a plane crash are 1 in 4,068,434. Though this obviously was a targeted event, it still seemed funny that I had been one of the people to be there. Of all people, me. When you hear about these terrorist attacks and shootings and all the other horrors of the world you never really register that though the chance is slim, that could have been you. For once, it had indeed been me. Been us.

"We're going to get out of this." I whispered under my breath. I noticed Jana staring at me through the fire, something almost like a smile on her face. She was still spinning that shell casing between her fingers. 

"I can read lips, you know." She spoke, raising her voice louder than I'd ever heard her talk before in order to be heard over the chatter. "Your optimism is. . . nice."

"Miss Jana No-Last-Name likes optimism? I never would have guessed." From the other side of the campfire, Jana stood up and sat down closer to me.

"It's a given that people either react with pessimism or optimism in situations like these. I'm the pessimistic type, and the optimists can sometimes be annoying, but since you're seeing it strategically, it gives me a little more faith in your optimism."

"I can't tell if that was a compliment or an insult." I laughed.

"It's a compliment. Or at least a semblance of one. It's not a bad thing, is what I'm trying to say. Stay in touch after this whole thing is over, okay? I could always use contacts in Europe." There it was again. When this thing's over.

"As long as you don't want me to commit treason I will take you up on that." 

When this thing's over.

What--- is that- no, it can't be- do i sense. . . OPTIMISM? Yeah I realised that I usually end these things with a plot twist or something but lets face it Jana needs a break and I feel I've kinda been lacking on Maxine's character dev. ALSO

300 READS BB. 100 IN WEEK I COULDN'T BE MORE THANKFUL

(in celebration lets pretend that this chapter isn't a day late)

I currently have NML planned to last 30 chapters, give or take a few. Have a good January because I can't think of any current holidays

Also, I like really like musicals, and this week alone I've watched 10+ hours of Starkid productions and saw a bunch of my friends in a musical so up there is the link to the first scene of Poe Party. Poe Party isn't a musical, but it has people from Starkid in it and its genuinely great so you should go watch it if you like crime-comedy. (I watched Solve It Squad Off-Broadway while writing this so go watch that too)

*unproofread sorry

<3 K

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