Young Writers Society

Edelgard completely forgot that Berry was still sitting there. With a thump on the table, she pointed at Sadie and glowered at her.

"Are you an enemy? What goods are you talking about?"

Edelgard was getting ready to shout when she remembered that it wouldn't be necessary. She looked at Berry.

"Tie Sadie up!"

Sadie scoffed but took a step backward, giving herself space in case she needed to fight or flee.

“Tying me up is more of a second date sort of activity, don’t you think?” she asked dryly. She eyed Berry. She didn’t have too much to worry about from them, she was pretty sure. Not that she was particularly strong or fast herself. But it was hard to be intimidated by someone like Berry when she was used to Mr. DeLuca’s men. She looked back at Eldegard. “Besides, why would I be fetching you Veo if I was an enemy? I’m just here to enlist, possibly.”

Berry looked around the room. Oh, the irony of stealthily slipping in all on their lonesome, only to watch some other person trying to do the exact same thing get caught. She should have tried the new recruit method from the start.

Berry got to their feet, frantically looked around the room to make it seem like they didn't want to upset their boss, and then turned back to Miss Edelweiss with a flustered, confused expression on their face.

"What am I supposed to tie her up with?" Berry asked, seemingly dumbfounded. They were hamming up the emotion that went along with the question, but it was actually a genuine one. For the life of them, they couldn't see any rope.

Edelgard was taken aback. She stared first at Sadie, who was trying to write everything down coolly and then continue her explanation and then at Berry, who was also there in the room as if they didn't know how they had just got in.

For the first time that day, Edelgard was a bit flustered and didn't know what to say. She counted to ten for a moment and thought about what would have happened if she had never opened the door and just made herself comfortable in a bar somewhere until the next morning when the bar owner would throw her out because she had fallen asleep behind the counter again.

"You!" she spoke in a stern tone to Berry, "You are going to close the door. Lock it!"

She then turned to Sadie.

"You sit down here and tell me how you got here. How did you get in?"

Edelgard turned back to the table and looked at the drinks.

"Not exactly what I want. I think Berry will take the first sip. After all, it could be poisoned..."

Miss Edelweiss's back, thankfully, was turned when Berry pulled a face at her decision. Locking a door was something that they could easily do. They only wanted to seem a bit incompetent. Just enough for any intentional mistakes to be swept underneath the rug, and just enough to still be trusted.

But Berry really wasn't fond of having to theoretically drink some poison.

Berry resisted the urge to sigh. At least it wasn't a Delusion or the Abyss. Now that was poison.

Berry locked the door, then turned around with the same innocent, airy expression they had on their face earlier.

"Shouldn't Sadie drink it?" Berry said, looking thoroughly confused. It was a last ditch effort that Berry doubted would actually work. "She's the one who brought it."

Edelgard looked at Berry and then at Sadie. Her suggestion was already a good approach.

"I think you two should drink. And I'll watch to see if anything happens to you."

Sadie unlocked her phone in her pocket and deftly navigated to her panic button as she got locked in the room with this paranoid freak. Mr. DeLuca would be furious with her if he had to rescue her a second time in a single day — less than an hour after she promised to behave. But he would. He’d rain hellfire down upon this place to get his most useful hacker back under his protection. He may force her to stay supervised for a bit, but, well, that was better than getting bound and tortured by these randos.

But then they started bickering about poison and entirely ignoring the fact that she was just here to be a recruit.

“Oh, for goodness sake,” Sadie scoffed, rolling her eyes.

She picked up one of the bottles of water and held it up in front of her so that Edelgard could watch her crack the seal on the brand new un-poisoned bottle of water. Then she picked up the orange flavored Veo and shot a squirt of it into the bottle. She was technically actually allergic to Veo and most other low sugar supplements. But she supposed a mild allergic reaction was worth not having to call for help. She picked up the lemonade flavored Veo next and squirted some in as well. It was going to be a horrific flavor. But she figured the woman was going to be paranoid if she chose one over the other and she didn’t want the other human in the room to have to deal with the anxiety of not knowing that perfectly safe water was, well, safe.

Sadie put the cap back on and shook the bottle to mix it thoroughly, then popped it back off and chugged a long drink, emptying a third of the bottle. She cringed as she pulled the sickly sweet bad-combination beverage away from her mouth. “Bleck! That’s repulsive… but not poisoned. So come off it.”

Either Sadie had an immunity to poison, or the drinks weren't actually poisoned. Berry was inclined to believe the second one more. No one, they supposed, would want to drink that combination of drinks on their own.

So while Berry was grateful they wouldn't have to feign getting poisoned, they weren't exactly excited to drink that horrible concoction.

They followed what Sadie had done to prepare the drink, then took one, long sip of it. It was better to get it done in one horrible gulp.

To their surprise, it wasn't actually that bad. Once they had a moment to process the flavor, they even found themselves liking it. It wasn't that much worse than Snezhnayan Fire-Water, at least.

"It's safe," Berry confirmed with a nod of their head.

Edelgard continued to be sceptical that the poison might not kick in until a few minutes later, but she didn't want to pass that tension on to Berry and Sadie and remained in her cover with a brief nasty grin. She sat back in her seat, didn´t take a drink and tried to put on a friendly tone, but it didn't work out the way she thought it would.

"So what exactly is the reason for this double disturbance?"

Sadie had a bad habit of joking around when it wasn’t, in fact, time to be joking around.

Such as now.

“Oh, I just came to get — POISONED!” She choked on the last word and clutched her throat as she stumbled towards the chair and fell back into it heavily. She stayed sprawled in the chair, pretending to be far more confident than she actually was. Was she pushing her luck? She was probably pushing her luck. “Or, y’know, to come hear your pitch and see if I want to lend you the skills of the best hacker on this side of the globe. Whatcha got?”

Oh, Berry liked Sadie.

If it wasn't for the airheaded persona they had been going for during the past few months and all of their travels, they would have smiled at Sadie's antics. Berry hoped Miss Edelweiss let her into this little group just as much as they hoped Miss Edelweiss would let them in.

"I'm here for training," Berry said, keeping it nice, short, and simple. They paused. "I think?"

Edelgard watched Sadie's game and was convinced that she was just faking it. Nevertheless, she had almost believed that she would have to administer first aid and give her a shot. But when Sadie started talking again, she was not prepared for this tone. Before she could say anything, however, Berry spoke.

"It seems we have come together here today..." began Edelgard, looking at the door behind them, "Yes, so requests are usually made by phone or post. That's taken care of by Alex or Alfred, I don't know what his name is. I haven't heard anything from headquarters about anyone coming either, so I assume you're here voluntarily, or spies."

Edelgard pulled a bottle with an indefinable content out of a drawer and drank from it.

"We have quite a difficult training session ahead of us, if you really want to take part in it, which most of you won't get through and run home crying. That's where we usually separate the wheat from the chaff. It pushes you to your physical and mental limits!"

Edelgard paused and thought about what she could do to check whether Berry and Sadie might be spies after all. And she got a fun idea...

"We can skip that and move on to another training that is tailored to you. What do you think?"

Sadie looked at her warily, actively focused on appearing nonchalant despite the surge of anxiety. She looked at Edelagard coolly. "I'm not sure you've given me enough information to form an opinion. What sort of training do you have in mind?"

Edelgard looked at Sadie and almost narrowed her eyes.

"You claimed you are "the best hacker on this side of the globe", then show me by hacking into the ABC (Antarctic Bank of Commerce) and paying me my debts."

Edelgard pulled a crumpled piece of paper from another drawer and tossed Sadie her bank statement.

"You'd have an hour. Are you ready?"

God. Sadie hated working interviews. Mostly because potential employers never understood the complexity of what they were asking her to do. “First of all, it took me five hours to make it past their firewall the first time I did it and it went up to seven the second time since they installed a bunch more defenses — I’m sure it’ll take me even longer this time. Second, where’s the equipment? I can’t very well do it on my phone.”

Sadie caught the paper the paper and looked down at it.