Eric picked up a dropped page, looking over it. "I can pick out a few sigils… powerful ones, at that, but troubling."
Time After Time (One on One) {OPEN}
Lulu raised another eyebrow at him, looking over. "You know what they mean? I…I can read some of the stuff, and I get all of the coding in here, but you know alchemy?"
((oml I just realized my aura is a dark pink :)))
((Ayyyyy))
"Not alchemy, but magic. And these sigils… this is some dark stuff. Like, the stuff I was told to avoid growing up." He said, shaking his head.
"Waaaait a minute." Lulu grabbed his shoulder and turned him towards her. "You recognize the symbols of dark magic?"
"I was taught to avoid them as a child." He said, shrugging. "Never use them, keep a distance."
"Huh." She blinked and leaned back over his shoulder. "So…you can see auras and your family knows magic sigils. Are your family witches?" She asked, turning to him. As she was leaning over his shoulder, her face was really very close to his.
"Ummmm… my mom was. And everyone on my mom's side. Dad on the other hand…" He shook his head, suddenly registering how close she was.
"Dear god." Lulu breathed with a small smile. "That's actually really cool. As long as you're not…you know, summoning dead near me."
"Hey, the only dead I talk to are family." He said, raising his hands in surrender.
She laughed a little, looking back at the folder. "Do they, like…mean anything? There's a ton of retracted stuff around the names of the operators and things like that, and there's some records showing that they got into some databases she might have been in."
"Let's just say… every bad thing you've heard about witches? It's that." He said, shoving the paper away.
"Hm. Alright," She agreed, picking up the one with the coding on it and swinging her other arm around his shoulder to point. "See, this stuff. They got into the wikipedia article on her."
"She has a Wikipedia article?" He asked. "Actually, better question, why are they getting info from Wikipedia?"
"They're not getting info. They're putting stuff in," She said, jabbing a finger at a sentence made of numbers and strange characters. "A whole new section of the article, looks like."
"Any clue what it says?" He asked, a bit worried.
"Yeah." She squinted at the fine print. "New heading: The famed musician and politician died on September 18th, 2019…" She paused and looked up at Eric with wide eyes - their faces were still close, but she didn't seem to notice. "That's four days from now."
Eric froze. "No. No no no no no no no no no no no-"
"Alaistirkha. Relax," She soothed as best she could, tightening her grip on his shoulder with her right arm. "We have four days. Four days, you hear me?"
Eric shook his head. "Four days to uncover a whole conspiracy that can result in our deaths and the death of my little sister." He said, still panicking.
"I don't know about you, but I can get a lot done in four days," She said, keeping a safe grip on him while turning her eyes to the paper again. "We need to get through all this stuff."
"Okay. Four days. Four days…"
"You do…the witchdoctor stuff, and I'll go through whatever computer stuff I can. Quick. If you see anything worth keeping, point it out," She instructed, grabbing a handful of papers from one stack.
Eric took another stack, reading through the papers.
Lulu's arm was still around his shoulder, the other holding a couple of papers. Her face was still very close to his as her eyes scanned the fine print, sometimes squinting or clicking her tongue in agitation.
"All of this is, like, super dark. Like, full on necromancy and demon summoning." He said, a bit skittish. "But then they have stuff about using DNA to kill souls… completely." His eyebrows raised. "Oh, that's where the science comes in…"
"To kill souls?" She asked, looking back at him again. "I mean…what?"
"Look!" He said, moving to show her the page. "To kill the soul so it won't come back! They spend a whole paragraph about how the soul is where the rebellion lies!"
"Allah," She breathed, scanning it with her finger. "But how would they do that with DNA?"
I haven't gotten to that part yet." He said. "But that- that is all levels of fucked up! They've killed people several times to get rid of their souls!"
"Who even-" She groaned, leaning her head on his shoulder for a moment before sitting up again. "Four days."