Chapter 7

Caroline and Oliver team up on the search for Daedalus. Caroline makes a new friend.

Chapter 7

Do you know what’s hard? Finding someone to build custom electronics in a corner of the internet where everyone has at least a f*****g Masters in computer engineering.

At least, that’s what Oliver kept shouting.

Caroline was just barely treading water here. From what she could tell, if you wanted to buy drugs, guns, a baby, or some creepy combination of the three then the Dark Web was your place.

If you weren’t into any of those things then you better do the internet equivalent of backing away slowly because you were definitely not in the right place.

Caroline imagined being in the Dark Web like walking into a seedy dive bar on the bad side of town. The place was filled with the type of people who you could tell killed someone to be accepted into something, a gang, a cult, middle-management position at a call center.

To put it into terms people in the Dark Web would understand: it was the most wretched hive of scum and villainy in the galaxy.

Oliver was busy at his computer searching through 4Chan looking for anything that could lead them to Daedalus. She could tell he wasn’t getting anywhere because every few minutes he would mutter a string of obscenities under his breath.

“How’s it going over there, Caroline?” he asked.

“Huh, oh, y-yeah, good, good.” Caroline was busy checking her email she needs a break, and couldn’t stand being on the Dark Web for that long. Before that, she was on Amazon looking for a new laptop because Oliver had to install a special browser to access the Dark Web and she was sure it put her on a list of some kind.

“Really,” he said, hopefully, “what did you find?”

“Erm…” was her answer.

Oliver wheeled around from the kitchen table to face her on the couch, “You stopped looking didn’t you?”

“…No.”

Oliver scoffed and spun back around.

“What about this,” Caroline said to the back of his head, “Looks like Mills is planning on some sort of press conference this weekend. Could have something to do with the case.”

“Probably.” He said curtly.

"Well..." said Caroline, "shouldn't we look into it?"

Oliver stopped and faced her again.

"Jesus, you really are a baby cop. What good would that do? We still don't know what his plan is; at most we have a few blurry photographs. At least, we're a pair of crazies chasing conspiracies on the word of a dead guy."

"Stop talking about Devon like you didn't know him!" Caroline shouted, "he was my friend as much as he was yours, no matter how much you like to pretend you don't have any!"

Caroline hated how dispassionate and cavalier he was about Devon's death. He talked about him like he was just some random person he met on the street one day, but he wasn't, he was Devon d****t and he deserved better than Oliver. She was about to say as much to him when Oliver said.

"Look, all I'm saying is that we can't go it half-cocked, that won't do anything except get us killed. Nobody will believe us. We need to know what we are dealing with, all that press conference did was give us a deadline."

Caroline knew that she just wanted to hear it from someone else. She spent all that time looking through a broken drive and fruitlessly searching the swamps of the Internet looking for something, anything, to help the case, but it wasn't working. She felt useless. The thought that they could get away from the drive, even for a bit, was too enticing not to look into. Daedalus was their target now, Mills would have to wait.

Caroline made an attempt to go back to searching, Oliver dove back in immediately after saying his piece, but Caroline was having a harder time. She kept staring off into space trying to do anything other than the thing she was bad at, then it hit her.

"What if he didn't use the Dark Web?" She said.

"He had to have used it," Oliver said, "no company would make a drive like that for someone like Devon."

"No, what if Daedalus isn't the name they go by."

Oliver spun around a third time and folded his arms, "Well no s**t, Daedalus is a dumb f*****g name, of course it's a handle. Do you think Banksy's name is actually Banksy? No parent in their right mind would do that to their kid!"

Caroline chose to ignore him, "What if it's an actual business and the creator just uses the username to sign his work? It makes sense. Devon could have looked up the person, commissioned the drive and gotten it fully assembled. He would have never thought to break it open to check."

Oliver looked at Caroline and made a motion to say something snide about her idea but he changed his mind and said, “Fine. Do whatever you want. I’m going to focus on something that might actually work.”

Caroline didn’t wait to hear what Oliver said, it was probably appropriately bratty. She was just happy not to have to lurk in the dark corners of the internet. She immediately went to work searching for purveyors of novelty flash drives. She never knew where Devon kept getting the things, why he wanted so many, nor what he had on them. She didn’t think too much about it and just assumed, like most guys, it was a lot of porn. There were surprisingly a ton of places that sold drives and she began to realize that she stumbled into an incredibly niche and diehard community, think doll collectors but for flash drives shaped like Darth Vader.

“Got it!” Caroline said and she threw her fists in the air.

“No, you didn’t,” said Oliver pettily.

“I didn’t find Daedalus specifically, but I found where to find them.”

“How?” barked Oliver.

Caroline was really getting tired of Oliver in general, but she was determined to push past it in the name of stopping whatever was going on at Howell. “Turns out novelty flash drives are a way bigger thing than I thought.”

“How so?”

“They have conventions, apparently.” Said Caroline, as she looked back at her screen to double check. “And there’s one going on tomorrow. I bet that this Daedalus person will be there and we can talk to them about the drive.”

“Huh,” said Oliver, “I guess there really is something for everyone.”

“Totally, you, for example, have your teenage angst and bitterness.”

“Get on with it,” said Oliver, unamused, “Where is the damn thing?”

Caroline scrolled down on the digital flyer she found on the Flash Fans website. “Uhhhhh, it looks like its being held at Lafayette Hotel Ballroom. I think my prom was there.”    

       

“Don’t know where mine was,” Oliver added, “skipped it.”

Caroline rolled her eyes to the screen, “That doesn’t surprise me.” 

“Sorry, we can’t all be prom queen like you, Baby Cop.”

“I wasn’t prom queen, jackass. What’s with you, do you have some sort of crusade against fun?”

“No, and you brought it up. I wasn’t looking for a fight.”

Caroline knew that was a lie, but he did have a point, “I think it’s time to call it a night.” Caroline suggested.

“Great idea,” replied Oliver as he closed his laptop with a bit more force than was probably smart.

Before Oliver left he said, “So what’s the plan tomorrow? We meet-up at the convention and play a little good cop, Baby Cop?”

“Yeah, fine,” she answered shortly.

The door shut behind Oliver, and Caroline was left in her apartment alone. She let out a long sigh and rubbed her face. Why was this so hard, she thought? Devon seemed hell-bent on making her life hard. He also had a terrible taste in friends. She would rather work with anyone other than Oliver. All this rattled around inside her head, but one thought was louder than the rest: food.

She had come straight home from work and didn’t have time to eat and the ensuing deep dive into the bubbling pit of the internet prevented her from finding something. Now that things have settled down her stomach decided to say its piece.

There was a Chinese restaurant near her apartment that wasn’t too bad. She grabbed her phone and gave them a call. The woman on the other end asked her in broken English what she wanted and Caroline tried her best to convey as much, but like every time the call seemed to devolve into the pair shouting numbers at each other like furious mathematicians. Caroline thought it best not to try to give them her address and left to pick up the food herself. Besides, it was a nice day for a walk.

It was a brisk day, well, brisk is a relative term, whenever it drops into the low sixties people break out the jackets. Caroline wasn’t from the area, she grew up in Baltimore and never got used to the warmer weather. The winters were brutal in her hometown, but she loved them. The way the city looked covered in snow, the chilly walks through the park, and a warm cup of coffee at the end of a long day was her idea of bliss. When she moved away for school her body acclimated, as best it could, to its new surroundings, unfortunately, that meant when she came home for the holidays the winter wonderland she used to love became unbearable. She ended up spending the entire time holed up in her childhood room in what could only be described as a topical sub-climate wrapped in blankets.

Nowadays, this was as close as she got to that old feeling.

The restaurant was only a block and a half from her apartment, but the walk did her no end of good. It wasn’t super late but like most Chinese restaurants it was almost perpetually empty. Caroline never understood why these places even had a dining room, to begin with surely they knew how empty their restaurant was on a daily basis.          

“You early!” shouted the cashier in what was probably meant to be a more level tone, “Wait over there!” She pointed to a row of ratty metal and fabric chairs, the kind that was one step up from the uncomfortable metal folding chairs. The thin faux-leather plastic was torn in several places exposing the yellowed stuffing underneath. It was times like these when Caroline wished people made those disposable toilet seat covers for general use. Dutifully, she took her seat being careful to sit on the edge of it. She let herself lapse into thought, or in reality, fall asleep. She was still running on fumes after trying to crack the drive. She was just about to drift off when the piercing voice of the cashier broke her out of her trance with a jump.

“Why everybody early today? Go! Sit!”

After a second, Caroline took in the scene in front of her, and it confused her.

That woman had no business being here, at least, not on this side of town. She was clearly a businesswoman; she must have just gotten off work, Caroline thought, because she was still dressed in a smart business suit, navy with a white blouse, and a matching navy skirt. Her blonde hair tied up into a tight bun. She looked flustered, Caroline noticed.

The woman took a seat on the opposite end of the row.

Caroline nodded towards the counter, “They can be a bit much can’t they.”

The woman looked up in surprise. “What? No, I’m used to it. Work’s just kinda got me overwhelmed.”

“Man, I can relate. My old boss sorta…left and all his work fell to me.”

“Promotions can be hell.” The woman added with a weary chuckle.

“I guess you could call it a promotion,” said Caroline with a vague wave of her hand. “Feels more like a death sentence.”

“When don’t they.”

“I’m Caroline,” said Caroline.

“Stephanie,” she said without looking up.

Stephanie fidgeted in her chair and looked over at Caroline, “It’s just…my boss is a bit crazy, he has such high expectations and he’s not the kind of person you let down, ever.” She thumbed her phone’s screen. “He gave me this new job and it’s way more than I’m prepared to do.” She looked around the room, seemingly at nothing. “My actual job, the one I was hired to do, that was easy, well, not easy but I could do it. I was good at it. This new thing…it’s definitely not what I signed up for.”

“My old boss was a bit eccentric too.” Caroline confided, “we worked together on this project for like a year and he refused to tell me anything about it, now he’s gone and it’s up to me to finish it and I still don’t know a damn thing.”

“What do you do?” Stephanie asked.

“I’m in the police academy right now, but this isn’t related to that. I guess you could say its contract work or something. But I’m not really getting paid and I get all the stress of a normal job.”

“So you work for a non-profit or something?”

“‘Or something’ sounds about right. What about you?”

“I run the Marketing and Planning department for a fortune five hundred company.”

“Wow, have I ever heard of it?”

“Probably not.”

“What are you doing all the way down here?” Caroline asked.

She lightly slapped her phone in the palm of her hand, “I was hungry and my phone said that this place was nearby.”  

“I live down here,” said Caroline, “this place isn’t too bad.”

Caroline got the feeling she wasn’t really listening.

“You!” shouted the cashier as she aggressively pointed at Caroline, “Numba four, egg roll, no rice!”

“That’s me,” she slapped her thighs and got up.

“Thanks,” pipped Stephanie, “thanks, for talking. Hope I wasn’t too much of a bother.”

Caroline blew out her cheeks. “Don’t worry about it. Us working girls have to stick together.”

Stephanie gave her a confused look.

Caroline realized what she said. “Erm, uh, that’s�"that’s not what I meant.” Then she did her best not to make the exit anymore awkward.

 

Author's Note

I'm curious if I'm skirting a line between writing in a dialect and racism with the cashier at the restaurant because that wasn't my intent.