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 Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 9:57 am
Rep would text a text message at 4:55 in the morning as follows:Text from Caelius I will see you in my office at 5 am.
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 11:50 am
Rep had been expecting something awful - it was Mark after all, but it was only as the other man started packing his things into a bag and talking about vacation that there was a slowly dawning horror about what he just might have signed himself into. He had been about to complain, to plead for perhaps a little bit of leniency or to get someone a little bit more suited (anyone who wasn't him) to the job in question, but Mark was really ******** good at running away and had already displayed that talent admirably. There was nothing left to do but take his sheet of paper
Explaining to Harrison about what he'd managed to do had been a lot of ******** fun. He hadn't been happy to say the least, even on protests that he had tried to read it before signing it and had just signed it anyway when the text was too small and boring. He'd finally conceded despairingly that it hadn't been Rep's fault, he was just stupid. This was comforting.
Taking Mark's advice with due seriousness, he'd kept his phone close to hand all night and blearily opened his eyes when it buzzed at 4:55. Scrambling out of bed and disturbing Harrison as he did so (he wasn't apologetic, the early bird would be up ******** soon anyway) he threw on his clothes and scurried, unbrushed to Cael's office, arriving just in time to knock the door. He wasn't a morning person and it really showed, he'd only remembered his coat as an afterthought and in terms of personal grooming this morning he was only a minor step up from Mark.
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:15 pm
Thankfully for Rep, Mark had provided both the contact information necessary as well as the standards of dress code (nearly non-existant). The Death lead sat at his desk with a perfectly cut bagel and a perfectly porcelain white cup of coffee that had gone lukewarm. He was just staring at the laptop in front of him.
"Sit," he commanded in all his braid-less majesty, turning the computer screen around. It had the blue screen of death. "Fix this."
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:22 pm
Rep edged into the room with the kind of cringing subservience he reserved almost exclusively for the presence of leads, unsure what kind of fresh hell awaited him inside the office. It was almost uncanny how quickly his puffed up bravado and arrogance went AWOL when he was around someone who could dice him into tiny cubes of low grade meat.
When he was told to sit, he sat, like a dog, without hesitation.
It took a moment for him to realize what he was being told to fix, eying the screen and doing his damnedest to keep a straight face.
"Right." he said slowly. "Right errr. Have you tried turning it off and on again sir?"
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:27 pm
"What do you mean." The Death lead actually looked as close to perplexed as he could get, as if Rep was trying to explain the world's greatest artifact mystery.
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:31 pm
"Um." he said. "Permission to stand up and help." he said. Because he wasn't about to violate a direct order to sit. "Or" he hastily added. "Just press and hold the button on the tower. It looks like an O with a little I through it. Just hold it in till the screen goes away." Every word was very carefully calculated to be as straightforward as he could manage.
"It will reset the machine."
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:35 pm
With the same impassive look as always, Caelius pressed his index finger to the power button in one majestic grand swoop. He held it. The computer screen turned black.
He didn't look pleased.
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:38 pm
Waving his hands hurriedly in front of his face, Rep piped up before the look of irritation could get any worse. "Again! Press it again Sir!" he stammered hurriedly. "It'll boot up again." Please god let it boot up again.
He was starting to understand why Mark was the way he was already.
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:49 pm
Sure enough, the operating system loaded again, prompting the login screen.
Caelius leaned forward, scrutinizing it. There was a long pause. "It requires a password."
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 8:57 pm
A password?! It needed a ******** password, that was ********. Because he didn't have any passwords. He'd be responsible for bringing death division to a ******** grinding halt because he didn't have a username and pass because Mark hadn't ******** left him one.
Rep almost cried out to hurriedly protest his innocence. It was an instinct he only managed to clamp down on last minute when he noted that fast movements or loud noises might not be great around Cael when he was possibly feeling frustrated. He took a careful deep breath and went on.
"Mark didn't leave me any of the passwords." he said, and braced himself.
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 9:06 pm
There was a very, very long pause.
Both Rep and computer were thrown out the window, which unsurprisingly, did not bring Death division to a grinding halt.
By the time Rep regained consciousness in the infirmary it was ten am, as indicative of the flashing cell phone pending a new text message.
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 9:14 pm
Rep hadn't been sure what hit him, but it had probably been a monitor. He woke up unsure where he was and what the ******** happened and was afforded only a slim amount of time to sort out these pivotally important questions before he noticed his phone flashing for his attention. Picking it up he made a strangled sound of panic before untangling himself once again from another bed and putting on the clothes he'd had on the day before - despite them being grubby and scuffed up from the fall from the window.
He ran the whole way to the lighthouse, his muscles protesting the entire time, managing along the way to send out a text message to Harrison just to remind him he was still ******** alive and relatively well.
"I'm.. I'm here." he said, leaning on the door frame to catch his breath and hoping he wasn't too late.
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 9:21 pm
"You are late." confirmed Caelius, holding a severed head.
To clarify, it looked like a minor massacre had happened in the lighthouse, and the head he was holding had black crystalline fragments sprouting from both eyes. The rest of the severed body a few feet away also was covered in it. The head was placed on the table next to the laptop, another one.
"Pull up the profile for James Smith. I want all information recited to me."
The laptop had no icons for any sort of profile grabbing program.
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 9:30 pm
"Yessir, sorry sir." Rep said hurriedly, taking in the disaster that was the lighthouse. At the very least he wasn't rattled by the obliterated body, numbed to gore and blood by far too many ******** missions. The crystals were new though and he immediately got a Bad Feeling from them, deciding that he wouldn't touch them at all if he could avoid it.
Instead he did as he was told and made his way to the laptop, looking for any likely-seeming database program, checking the start menu, checking the desktop, checking anything that could contain what Cael wanted him to find, harried and stressed beyond the bounds of his usual limits. In his panic he wanted to ask the Death Lead if he had any idea what the program was called only to remember the Blue Screen Incident. He decided against it.
This s**t made front line battles look easy.
"Just a moment Sir, I've never used this stuff before." he said anxiously.
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Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2014 9:32 pm
Black crystals from the head had begun to branch out, now encompassing just the bare corners of the laptop. It began to take an ominously organic shape, like a pair of claws reaching forward.
The Death lead remained oblivious, checking the body for signs of God Knows What, maybe some sort of secret artifact hidden up their-
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