Young Writers Society

\/ Conrad Selingren \/

Once, back when he was still a hotshot in juniors hockey, Conrad's billet mother had informed him that if he was going to get into anything weird, he'd better not travel to a secret, secondary location to do it. Mrs. Gainsley had been right about most things in life, and had probably been right about this thing, but that didn't mean Conrad always listened. After all, he still forgot to fold his laundry right when it came out of the dryer sometimes. And he'd gone into accounting instead of computer science, the major she had advised he pick.

So here he was, following Red Shirt and the nice lady and the teenager out of Red Shirt's ostentatious red tesla and down a short, half-story flight of concrete stairs, to a steel door to a basement restaurant simply called 'On Tapas'.

Red Shirt held the door open for them all, and the trio walked into a dimly lit room filled with bar tables and ringed by booths. The walls were dark. The ceiling was an inky void. Navy blue fabric covered every horizontal surface. The only light seemed to come from tiny hanging bulbs that shed barely-noticeable orange cones over each table.

Despite the hour being just a tad early for office lunch, the place was already hopping. Men in clean, white button-ups and sharply-ironed chinos leaned over standing room tables, joking over their phones and laughing. Women in smart-looking business suits smiled wryly at their coworkers. Every plate in view was smaller than Conrad's hands. Though to be fair, he was a bit of a giant.

The hostess led the group in a circuitous path around the restaurant before gesturing to a booth in the farthest corner from the door. The girls piled in, and Conrad tried to squeeze in on the side of the table facing the rest of the room. He always felt better with his back to a wall.

Red Shirt ordered something with a Spanish name, and the nice lady ordered more things on top of that, and the teenager made a covert face of disgust, and Conrad wondered what was so secret about this object they were supposed to get back that they had to meet like this. And then, when the ordering was done and the waitress had left, Red Shirt clasped his hands together and leaned over the table, a smile on his face.

"Well," he started, "I'm very pleased that you all have agreed to this... task."

"No problem dude," Conrad said.

The teenager nodded, looking like she was trying a bit too hard to look professional.

"Yes, well. The two million up front has been deposited into your accounts, as promised. So perhaps you'd all like to get to know each other while we wait for our food to arrive?"

The nice lady quirked an eyebrow. "Well, that has to be a first. You're asking us to tell each other our real names? What is this, your first time?"

Conrad looked to the teenager and together they cringed.

Red Shirt coughed. "Ah, well, no, but my employer wants to build trust on the team."

"Trust or reassurance that we won't betray you?" Dwyn fired back, then smiled pleasantly. "You know what? You're right, we should introduce ourselves! Do you want to go first, Red Shirt? I'm taking a wild guess that that isn't your real name."

"I am under instruction to remain anonymous," Red Shirt said, "and I can assure you three that you all have our deepest confidence and trust. Speaking of which, Miss Dwyn, if you would please give me my wallet back?"

The woman pulled a wallet out of her pocket, an intelligent grin on her face as she handed it over. "So sorry, of course! It fell behind the booth cushion when you sat down and I didn't want you to leave it here accidentally!"

"Of course," Red Shirt replied dryly as he took his wallet back.

The woman turned her smile to the rest of the group. "You can call me Dwyn," she said, "and that's all you really need to know about me."

When she finished, several seconds of silence lapsed as Conrad made awkward eye contact with the teenager to see which one of them would have to go first. He finally he caved. "Uh, well," he tried. "I'm Conrad. My teammates call me Rad sometimes though if you're a nicknames kind of person. I'm helping the University of Chicago out with some pro-bono accounting work right now." He looked to the teenager and tried desperately to communicate that she should step in now. If they let him talk any longer he was going to bring up his hockey stats.

The teenager gulped, probably realizing she was now the only one left and couldn't escape this.

"I'm Luna," she managed, voice almost squeaky.

The whole party looked at each other, sizing one another up in the kind of awkward silence that Conrad usually only experienced when his team played against particularly unsportsman-like opponents, and then the waitress pulled up to their table with a tray of tiny plates.

She unloaded them with frightening efficiency, like a forward taking shot after shot on a goalie, and Conrad's heart sank when he saw the offerings.

One plate had three tiny burgers on it. They were cute, he had to admit, with the fancy toothpicks and well-buttered buns, but he was pretty sure all three would fit in his mouth at the same time. Another plate held a handful of deep-fried dumplings, and another was a miniscule bowl of some rice dish with shrimp and clams in it.

Make no mistake, it all looked good. It was just... tiny. Conrad was usually pretty okay with being twice the size of everyone around him, but being here in his ruined shirt and taking up half a booth seat while he contemplated eating every morsel of food from what was supposed to be a shared set of appetizers, made him feel just a little out of sorts. Delicately, he picked up a burger and tried to take as small a bite as he could.

As everyone dug in, Red Shirt pulled out his phone. "Now that we're all acquainted," he said, "we can get to the real business."

Conrad abandoned his food to pay attention. He had a sandwich at his desk anyway, so Luna and Dwyn could take whatever they wanted here.

Red Shirt tapped a few things on the screen, then placed the phone on the table for everyone to see. "This here," he explained, gesturing at a grainy image of a square of ancient writing, "is one of the artifacts Dedd donated to the University of Chicago in his will."

"You have the money to give us two million upfront each but you can't get a better picture than that?" Dwyn said, then muttered under her breath, "foda-me."

Red Shirt ignored her and continued talking. "My employer, you see, is the rightful owner of this object. It was taken from... them... several decades ago, when Dedd was still a young man. Unfortunately, we were never able to retrieve the object through the legal system, and now that Dedd is, well, dead, we have very little proof of ownership."

"The statute of limitations is probably over," Conrad pointed out. "It legally did belong to Dedd for a while, if it was taken decades ago."

Red Shirt glared. "Regardless of the legal status, the fact remains that it is rightfully the property of my employer. Thus, you have been enlisted to help get it back."

Well, never let it be said that the law could be wrong sometimes. And this was totally up Conrad's alley. Helping someone get their stuff back sounded great!

"So... what is it, exactly? Because I've already told you this picture is--" Dwyn stopped, glancing at the girl before continuing, "...garbage." Her hands reached forward to angle Red Shirt's phone towards her.

Before she could get to it, Red Shirt snatched the phone away and tucked it back into a pocket, on the side away from Dwyn. "It has sentimental value," he said. "And it doesn't matter what it is. You're just meant to get it back."

"Como diabos você espera que nós voltá-lo se--" Dwyn started angrily, then caught herself and smiled, wiping away any tension or displeasure on her face. She said carefully and slowly, "How do you expect us to retrieve it if you won't tell us what it is?"

"You are the professional," Red Shirt said. "Surely you can figure something out."

Conrad picked up a dumpling and stuffed the entire thing in his mouth. He hoped they weren't going to split the check on this place.

"Are you going to send us the picture?" Luna asked, as Red Shirt scooped a tiny pile of the rice dish onto his plate. "Just so we can be one-hundred-percent sure we get the right artifact?"

Red Shirt grumbled his assent.

"And where exactly are we supposed to go when we have it?" She continued.

"I will send you coordinates when you confirm you have the object in your possession."

Luna pushed a tiny plate of julienned fries out of her way and pulled out a notebook, removing a pen clipped to its front page and chewing thoughtfully on the end. "Right. Is there anything we need to know about the object before we get to it? Is it fragile? Will fingerprints damage it? Anything?"

Red Shirt sighed, and Conrad emptied the fries into his mouth straight from the plate.

"I will send you whatever other pertinent information comes to mind," the man said. "Just... here's my phone number."

Conrad picked up the plate of dumplings and ate them all too. He raised his hand like a grade schooler and tried not to cringe when Dwyn laughed at him, though she covered it up quickly with a cough. "Uh, I have to get back to work soon. Can we finish this up some other time?"

"I have an idea," Dwyn put in. "We all know this food sucks so let's skip the pleasantries next time and go to a place with actual food."

Clearly at the end of his patience, Red Shirt opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it and sighed again. He settled with a firm glare at Dwyn, before redirecting his attention to Conrad. "Fine. Fine. I will take you all back. Just let me know what questions you have by phone. Guess I should leave this to the pros and let you do whatever you're going to do."

Red got the check, and despite being two million dollars richer, Conrad was grateful that he wouldn't have to waste his money on that fancy crap. When they finally all made it back to the university, he stopped the girls and pointed out his car in the lot.

"Look, I'll be off work at 6. We can get burgers or something and talk without that guy on our backs, yeah?"

Luna perked up in interest, and Dwyn's casual smile turned just a little bit terrifying.

"And trust me," Conrad said. "I know the best cheap restaurants in Chicagoland."

Luna had to admit that despite all the excitement she had on the promise of a cool lair she couldn't help the tiny hint of doubt that had first crept into her mind at the sight of this restaurant that they'd made their way to. It was all very hush hush and their entrance at the restaurant had exceeded her expectations for the coolness but the first site of the entrance to the restaurant itself had given her a pause. It looked a lot more like the sort of restaurant you get tricked into going before being ambushed rather than a cool heist planning type restaurant. Not that she knew about heist planning restaurants from anything besides movies, perhaps the real life ones did have to be shady, or maybe whoever had planned this game hadn't done enough research into that area and thought such a restaurant was the one to go with.

Walking into the restaurant wasn't doing much to quell Luna's fears either. Forget a heist, this place looked like it was setup up just about perfectly for some ritual potentially involving summoning the dead, or was that the game she'd been playing a tiny bit too much the past week. She was never quite so glad that she'd been the last person to enter something. Whatever monster popped out from the darkness would go for her last, maybe it wouldn't even notice her tiny frame next to everyone else here.

Things did improve after that however, as she saw that there were other people here, healthy ones that did not look like undead minions she'd half expected to be populating this place. In fact as she took a slightly less biased look around the place it started to look a lot more like a heist planning area. It was a bit more people than she'd expected and there didn't look to be any sort of cool smart board or hologram projector for them to receive instructions from, but the place was populated by the sort of people she expected to finance something like a heist and there was a distinct air of luxury around the place. Maybe the whole aesthetic of this place was just a part of its luxury. She'd heard of places like that before too, now that she thought about it.

Once they were seated at a sufficiently discrete place things proceeded along the kind of lines she'd expected, only she found out not too long into this little meeting, it wasn't as amazing as she thought it'd be. Well, it was everything she'd expected of a super luxury place, it just that as it turns out while luxury was quite cool, it was not very conducive to being not hungry. The wonderfully fancy looking plates looked small even in her tiny hands and the food that was on it barely covered said tiny plates. It wasn't that the food was bad either, it wasn't as amazing as the descriptions in movies and books would make you believe but it was fine, it was just a very tiny amount of it that also didn't fully seem to sit right with her.

She didn't voice any of this as she sat through it however, she didn't want to end up accidentally ruining anything here as she was prone to do, so she kept her mouth shut as she ate whatever was put down in front of her, vowing that she would drop by another place to actually fill up for lunch whenever they got a break after this whole briefing was complete.

Luckily for her, it seemed like she was maybe not the only one that was unimpressed by the food on the table. The Kool Aid man was also frowning ever so slightly at the plates. The other two present however mystifyingly seemed to be enjoying what was going on or at least their facial expressions were just impossible for her to have any chance of correctly deciphering.

Before she had to endure this current situation for too long however, their little meeting was coming to an end and she could think of going to a place with actual food that filled you up, without leaving a slightly questionable taste in one's mouth.That was how she then found herself making her way out of this fancy restaurant, once again bringing up the rear behind the rest of the group and trying to hear what Red Shirt had to say before they all parted for the moment. Luna had no idea what was going to happen next now, not that she had too many brain cells in that direction at the moment, her mind was mostly screaming at just how cool the briefing as short as it was had been.

\/Dwyn Souza\/

Dwyn forced a polite smile the whole meal, eating tiny things that she forced down. It had set her on edge, the man wanting them to give their real names-- and that hadn't been enough, either. He had given her name before she had the chance to give a fake one. That was over the line.

Now, she stood on the sidewalk with the other man, Conrad, and the girl, Luna, contemplating everything that had happened. She doubted they'd given fake names, even though they'd had the chance to. For some reason, they didn't look like the type to even know to do that. They all watched as Red Shirt's car drove away,

"Look, I'll be off work at 6," Conrad said, pointing to a car. " We can get burgers or something and talk without that guy on our backs, yeah?"

Luna seemed interested in that, but Dwyn couldn't help the grin spreading across her face. She fought to contain it and make it look like she was excited at the idea rather than laughing at him. He'd actually given real information on himself? He actually had a job here right now? And he'd told them exactly where and what it was, as if he could trust them.

"And trust me," Conrad continued, "I know the best cheap restaurants in Chicagoland."

Trust him? She didn't know him. But instead of saying that, Dwyn smiled and said, "Sure. Let's exchange numbers."

The girl, Luna, looked at her nervously. "I mean... should we be giving each other our real numbers?" She said doubtfully.

Dwyn rolled her eyes. "Don't be stupid, I wasn't going to give you my real number. The first thing you two need to do with your money is buy disposable phones."

"Oh," Luna said in a small voice. A moment of silence lapsed, before Dwyn looked up and grinned.

"Want to see who that guy really was?"

"What do you mean?" Luna said.

"I've got to get back to work, so..." Conrad said nervously, glancing back again at his car.

"Oh, it'll only take a second," Dwyn said, pulling Red Shirt's ID from one of her pockets. She was glad she'd decided to steal his wallet after all. "Let's see who you really are, Red Shirt."

"What's that?" Conrad asked, seeming to get drawn in against his intentions to go to work.

"His stamp card to a coffee shop," Dwyn said sweetly. "What do you think it is?"

She looked at his ID card, looking for any signs it might be fake, before saying thoughtfully, "Philip Fields. Interesting." She looked up. "Well, we'll meet back here at... six, let's say? So you go back to work and you go back to... wherever you're going to," Dwyn said, addressing the last part at Luna. "Where are you going to? What are you, a middle schooler?"

Luna blushed bright red. "No."

Dwyn slipped the ID back into her pocket and raised an eyebrow. She watched as Luna tried to stand up tall to make herself look older, which only worked slightly because she was still very short-- and considering Dwyn was already short, that was saying a lot.

"I'm in college actually," Luna said, putting on a confident face and crossing her arms.

"Sure you are," Dwyn smiled, though her sarcastic cheeriness didn't speak the same idea. "So where are you going? Do you have somewhere to go?"

"Maybe you two should stick together," Conrad said, scratching his head awkwardly. "I mean, since she's a kid."

"I'm not a kid," Luna objected, and Dwyn let out an annoyed sigh. She'd wanted to spend her day digging up dirt on this Philip Fields, not babysitting.

"Where are your parents?"

"I'm not from Chicago," Luna said nervously. "They think I'm on a trip."

"If you're not from Chicago, you are on a trip. Why can't she go with you to your work?" Dwyn turned her question to Conrad.

"I can't really bring strangers into work with me," he said.

"Just say you're her dad, you'll be fine," Dwyn dismissed.

"She's too old for me to be her dad," Conrad pointed out. "Why don't you bring her with you to wherever you work and say she's your sister?"

"I'm not white!" Dwyn exclaimed. Several seconds of silence passed.

"Maybe I'm adopted?" Luna suggested quietly.

Dwyn took in a deep breath for several seconds. They weren't going to give up on this. Finally, she forced out, "Alright, you'll stay with me."

"Okay," Conrad said, seeming relieved that they'd figured it out. "So I'm okay to go to work?"

"Yeah, sure," Dwyn replied, tucking a strand of loose hair behind her ear.

"Okay. Okay, cool. So, uh, six?"

"Six," Dwyn reaffirmed. Two million dollars was a lot of money-- but she was already beginning to question this decision. Dwyn took jobs for the fun of it, and if it wasn't fun, it wasn't worth it. Then again, she was stuck with a teenager and some business-man, both of whom clearly had no idea what they were doing. Dwyn allowed herself a small smile-- how much more fun could it be than that?

Luna was having a hard time deciding what to feel at the moment. For one their briefing was still pretty fresh in her mind, the few notes that she'd managed to make based on Red Shirts hurried and rather cryptic comments already exciting her to no end. It was a little suspicious how little information the man had wanted to give them, she thought experiences like this involved fun puzzles that you actually got to know about, but maybe this guy had just not being paid nearly enough to sit there and narrate everything and would rather forward it to them. The challenge would probably end up being better that way anyway. If they'd only been told these things and not given any copies. Luna shuddered to think of what that situation may entail.

Before she could bask too much in the afterglow of that, there was more being promised with another meeting sometime later that day, just this team. Even thinking the term felt a bit strange, there weren't a lot of teams she'd been a part of over the years, but what she did know from the few she'd been on was that they were incredibly fun. She didn't let herself get too excited for this one however because while she might not have been the best at figuring out what people though, it was pretty clear both her new teammates thought of her as a bit of a liability. Well, maybe that thought was a bit extreme. They just seemed to think that she was a bit too young for this situation, and in all fairness, they weren't completely wrong. They were both definitely in their twenties if not thirties for the man. The fact that she was so short and small didn't help matters at all. However, she was 19 for crying out loud and this was getting ever so slightly embarassing. Being compared to a middle schooler was not part of her plan to enjoy this little heist.

Besides just the obvious embarassment, the way the two of them seemed act like she was going to end up handicpping the team was not a fun situation to think about going forward. The worst part about that whole ordeal was she didn't exactly find that she had too much on her side to refute their ideas. It wasn't like she had done anything so far to prove that she would good at all that much. Conrad just seemed like the sort of person who probably had a lot of experience at this, and could probably do a lot in terms of helping them prep their little heist considering he had an actual job inside the place they were going robbing. Even though the woman seemed to doubt Conrad's abilities almost as much as she doubted Luna's, Luna was clearly the less useful of the two at the moment unless they had to sneak into a tiny hole.

As for the woman, well Luna couldn't exactly blame her for the way she seemed to be ever so slightly judging the two of them since as far as actual hesit related things were concerned the woman had so far proven herself more than useful just from the amazing way she'd managed to figure out the identiy of the mysterious red shirt. There hadn't been the slightest clue as to how she managed to steal that wallet. Sure, the woman had said she'd just found it on the seat, but considering how she'd swiped that ID in that span of time, Luna wasn't going to believe that particular lie.

As much as she was already midly in awe with the woman however, she got the feeling that Dywn also really didn't like her, or at least would rather be doing this heist of theirs with someone more competent. She really hoped they would run into some form of locked door at some point or the other. Or maybe a safe or something. Just anything that fell into the one area of expertise that Luna did actually have so that the rest of her team didn't end up leaving her behind on the day of the actual heist. Maybe they'd have to go through a few locked door in whatever scouting it is they end up doing later.

As she was mentally running through all of this, it suddenly registered that she'd just ended up signing herself up for spending quite a few hours with said woman when it probably couldn't have been more clear that the woman would probably rather pay Luna to leave her alone. Not that Dwyn seemed the person to ever something like that aloud, but the way she'd talked there wasn't exactly the most subtle which considring how much of a poker face the woman had maintained earlier with red shirt meant she likely really didn't want to do this.

Reflecting on that, Luna didn't know how she had somehow managed to convince herself that spending the time till six with Dwyn was in any way going to be end up being a remotely good idea. She'd somehow even helped in actually convincing the woman with some help from a Conrad who also clearly didn't want to spend too much time with her although she sensed the man wasn't being nearly as dismissive as she felt Dwyn was being at the moment. The fact that she was now going to have to spend the next few hours with that woman was only now starting to sink in. It didn't even need to be the fact that it was clearly someone who didn't want this to happen, the fact that it was a complete stranger didn't do too much to help matters either. There was too many ways this could all go horribly wrong.

As she ran through all of this in her mind, Conrad left, heading back to his job. She had no idea how he could survive in a professional environment with a shirt like that, but she was never going to work up the courage to ask him that. With the man gone however, she finally turned to Dwyn, knowing that something was going to have to happen now. She couldn't very well stand here motionless or maybe run and hide behind the nearest dumpster like her brain was yelling at her to do.

Taking a deep breath, Luna turned to face the older woman, silently entering a mild staring contest as she waited for her to say something. Luna did not want to be initiating this conversation on her own because she genuinely did not know what anyone would say in such a situation.

"So," Dwyn said, "you ready to do some shopping?"

\/Dwyn Souza\/

Dwyn had decided she was going to make the best of the situation. It was a very hard decision for her to make, but seeing as she had no choice, she put on a smile and sucked it up.

"Shopping?" Luna said hesitantly.

"You need a disposable phone. Both of you do, in fact. And since I'm so generous, I'll buy them myself," Dwyn said cheerily, starting down the street at a brisk pace. Luna ran after her to catch up.

"So where are we going?" She asked, struggling to keep up with Dwyn as they wove through the crowded sidewalks of people.

"Currently? The tram."

"Wait, but-- I don't have a ticket. Won't it be full?" Luna said, flustered. Dwyn paused and looked at her.

"You haven't been to Chicago before, have you?" She noted, before turning around and continuing to walk.

"Actually--" Luna said, speeding up again to reach her, "we came here on vacation once. But I was really little."

"Oh, that's cool!" Dwyn said with bubbly enthusiasm. She knew she might be going overboard, but her mind was so focused on everything Philip Fields-- Red Shirt-- had said that she wasn't really attempting to reign in her sarcasm. She started up the steps to the tram, and Luna ran up alongside her.

"Look, I--"

"Don't worry," Dwyn said breezily, flashing her a warm smile. "You don't need a ticket in advance. It's like the subways in New York except above-ground."

"Oh." Luna scratched the back of her head, looking embarrassed. "That makes sense." She stayed silent the entire ride, though she seemed to be processing a lot, and Dwyn felt no need to break the silence. It gave her plenty of time to "Oops, sorry!" her way into several new wallets, hopefully full of cash. She even managed to get an expensive-looking watch off someone.

When they got off, she flew down the stairs, Luna following behind her. "So where exactly do you get disposable phones?" Luna asked.

"A phone store," Dwyn said, glancing at her slightly with a frown. "Where the phones are."

Luna blushed. "Well, I knew that, I just wasn't sure what makes a phone... disposable?"

"A flip phone," Dwyn said. "The ability to flip the phone makes it disposable. Get an old enough model, and they're cheap and virtually untrackable."

Dwyn stopped in front of a worn-out generic tech store, one she'd come to a few times. She opened the door and gestured for Luna to go in front of her. "After you."

Luna walked in and Dwyn looked around. A bored Latino teen smoking a cigarette slumped across the counter, his eyes scanning over them boredly before focusing back on the small tv playing a soccer match rerun. Dwyn knew it was a rerun only because it was a game in Brazil, and the announcer, speaking Spanish, kept mentioning players who had already retired.

Luna whispered, "So what do we--"

"Why are you whispering?" Dwyn asked. "We're in a store, not a library." The announcer let out a surprised yell, and Dwyn cheered, "Eh, que bonito é!" as the goalie blocked a kick. The teen slammed his hand down on the counter in frustration, and let loose a few curses in Spanish.

The teen at the counter glanced over at her, then turned the television off in frustration. "What're you here for?" He asked, looking over both of them disinterestedly as he pulled the cigarette from his mouth and let out a big puff of smoke.

"Disposables," Dwyn said.

He watched both of them for a second, then stood up and said, "How many?"

"Five," Dwyn said, pulling the watch off her wrist and setting it on the counter. "This is good, eh?"

"Eh," he muttered in agreement, pulling it across the counter towards him and putting it away before pulling out five boxes and pushing the boxes towards them. Dwyn picked them up, smiled, and said, "México won the game, you know."

The teen shrugged, "I know. Reruns," before turning the tv back on and slumping back down on the counter.

Dwyn took that to be the end of the conversation and walked out the door. She was half a block away from the store when she remembered she had Luna with her, who was walking beside her completely silent. It was creepy.

"Why did you get five?" Luna asked finally. "There are only three of us."

"Because you two need two," Dwyn said. She didn't trust them with only one disposable.

"We've still got several hours left before we meet back up again," Luna pointed out. "What do we do?"

"I'm going to the library to look up this Philip Fields. You can look in the kids section if you want."

Luna, flustered, started, "I'm not--"

"I'm kidding," Dwyn laughed. "You're just easy to mess with." It was true. She was.

"Alright..." Luna said. "So we're going to look him, and... what?"

"Find whatever we can on him. If it's a fake ID, then I contact some people and figure out where he got it. If it's not, then he's way more stupid than I'm hoping he is."

"Yeah... wait. Why are you hoping? Don't you want to figure out who he is?" Luna asked, confused.

"Oh, I want to know who he is," Dwyn agreed, "but if he was stupid enough to give us access to his real identity, then imagine how stupid the person who hired us must be for hiring him." Dwyn paused, then tilted her head. "And if that's the case, this is going to get a whole lot more interesting."

\/ Conrad Selingren \/

Conrad made it back to the office just after noon, still in his pink-drink-dyed shirt. And while he had been up to important business, his coworkers would perceive that as taking an hour-long lunch break and not fixing the problem that would have excused his long lunch. It was not a good look.

It was such a bad look that when Conrad sat down, Lisa sneered at him over the cubicle wall.

Clearly, Conrad needed to step up his team player game. Both here and with his other team. Maybe they weren't outwardly disappointed with him yet, but they would be if he just coasted along on their coattails.

He started with the accounting work. That was easier, after all. From twelve-thirty to four-thirty, he attacked the history department's accounts with spreadsheets and virtual basic modules and cross-checked the math with the tax code. And then, when Lisa started packing up, he started in on the other stuff.

A few years ago, Conrad had managed the accounts for Northern Trust's office remodel, and he'd learned a fun little tidbit: most companies of a particular size kept the drawings of the build-out somewhere for future reference. And given its size (and how many remodels they probably went through), the University of Chicago was likely to do the same. And while that kind of information probably wasn't available to the public, it was almost certainly somewhere on the university's servers.

Which Conrad had access to for the next few weeks.

He found the construction documents for the Dedd exhibit first--since doors had opened there only two weeks ago, there was still some financial activity going on for the project, and recent folders were always easiest to find.

Now then. What did he actually need from here? The finances were of interest to him, but probably not all that useful. Or maybe they would be? Conrad copied them onto his USB just in case. There was a folder of something called RFIs, and ROMs, and many other acronyms that seemed designed just to confuse people. Then, buried in a folder called CCDs, he found a little collection of documents labelled As-Built Record Drawings.

Well, little was an understatement. There were easily 500 separate PDFs to sort through in there.

Conrad glanced over the cubicle partition and found Lisa still packing up. His clock read 5:30. He didn't have time to look through 500 documents. And even if he did, he'd never even seen a floor plan before. He'd have no idea what was useful. Biting his lip, he copied the whole thing onto his USB.

Now for the museum building itself.

After pulling open Google, Conrad looked up the ancient history museum building. The wikipedia article listed an opening date, but no major renovations, which might make things a bit difficult. After all, how was Conrad supposed to find floor plans from 1930? And obviously the security now would be different, so if he didn't have a date for the latest security upgrades, he'd have a heck of a time finding more information.

Lisa slid her chair out from her desk. "Well. I'm headed out." She shot Conrad a suspicious glare, then narrowed her eyes and leaned over. "What on earth are you looking at?"

Conrad sighed. "Ah, you know. Got on a weird google tangent." He clicked open his excel file and waved Lisa off. "Don't worry! I'll get everything done on time. I promise."

His ever dubious coworker sneered at him. "If I have to pick up your slack, Northern Trust isn't going on the donor list this year."

Conrad was pretty sure the donor list was already set, and that Northern Trust had donated enough money that subtracting his pitiful salary would have no impact. "Whatever you say," he agreed. With some people, it was better to just let them have their way.

Lisa's footsteps gradually vanished into the office, and Conrad picked up his investigation once more. Security systems were probably upgraded regularly. He'd find something somewhere.

He pulled open the history department's annual reports, going all the way back to 2010, just to see if any particular line items might lead him in the right direction. Surely a renovation would be big enough to have its own summary in an annual finance report.

At five-forty-five, he stumbled upon a blink-and-you'll-miss-it row in the 2018 report. Feeling very cool, despite only clicking on his mouse and not doing cool hacker things, he navigated over to the records for 2018 and dug around a bit... and lo and behold. Building-wide security drawings for the ancient history museum.

He dragged the folder onto his USB, watched in eager anticipation as the little green bar filled, and ejected the drive as soon as he could.

After all that hard work, he deserved some pizza.

Luna clutched the two brand new phones she'd gotten as she walked behind Dwyn. She knew it was probably a bit weird to be walking behind the person she was supposed to be hanging out with, but it felt much more natural that way. Besides Luna was pretty sure Dwyn would never want to walk side by side with her anyway. And her assumption would have to do, from the little she'd managed to read of the woman, it was pretty clear that Dwyn wasn't going to actually tell Luna what she'd actually feel about any of that if she ever worked up the courage to actually ask.

Trying to dismiss those thoughts from her mind, Luna continued on her path following behind Dwyn. They were currently headed towards the library where Dwyn had suggested they'd be able to look up the identity of Red Shirt. She genuinely had no idea how it'd be possible to do that, sure she'd seen people track down everything from ancient civilizations to lost prophecies in libraries, but those were in movies, she assumed a google search and then some fancy fast typing while yelling out techy words wasn't going to work in real life to look up the identity of someone.

Luna had the sense to nod along with Dywn like she knew what she was talking about however. Even if she knew barely anything about this sort of thing, she had to blend in for the moment and not get kicked off the team until she could maybe find a few books to help her out with the more heisty part of things. She really wished they'd run into some sort of locked door soon so she could prove herself to be less useless. She'd even take a jammed bathroom stall at this point, anything so she could feel like she belonged a tiny bit more.

With those thoughts rattling through her, Luna kept up the pace until they were finally standing in front of the library. Standing in front of the doors, Luna felt a lot more at home than she had when they'd visited the other store earlier. Sure, it wasn't like she'd never been to a shop like that before, but the confidence with Dwyn had just gone about ordering those phones and the way that the man behind the counter had responded had added on an extra cool but also intimidating air that was just foreign to her. As much as she loved everything that had to do with a heist, she had never gotten anywhere remotely close to an actual one before. The library was an entirely different story however. It was a place she visited a lot and she was sure she could at least try and keep up and maybe help Dwyn in her plan to research this identity.

Taking comfort in those thoughts, Luna drew nearer to the entrane where Dwyn had turned back for the first time in a while to acknowledge that Luna did in fact still exist and was behind her.

"If you go somewhere else, keep track of the time," Dwyn said nonchalantly. "It's big enough that it would take a long time to find you if we needed to go."

Luna nodded, taking a deep breath as she followed the woman through the large wooden doors and into the air conditioned interior. Luna took a second to take the place in. She'd been to quite a few libraries in her time and this one appeared to be a fairly normal one. It didn't seem to be one of those absolutely massive ones that she alway thought she was going to end up lost in, nor was it a particularly small one either. It was one of those libraries that managed to be just about the right size to feel somewhat cosy and comforting, which she immediately liked.

Luna didn't have too much time to bask in the glow of her surroundings however because Dwyn clearly was a woman on a mission and after sparing a few seconds to her surroundings, most probably in an effort to gauge just how crowded the library itself was and where the spot with the least people were, she disappeared into the shelves. For a second Luna wondered if Dwyn actually was going to be doing her research by diving into some unknown secret book or something stashed around before Luna realized that Dwyn was probably headed towards some sort of computer station deeper inside the library.

Standing there just inside the entrance, Luna took a moment to decide if she wanted to plunge into the depth of the library after Dwyn or hover around nearby. She knew that she was probably not going to be the most help given she didn't really have that good of an idea where she needed to be taking things. Now that she thought about, browsing the children's section....well more like the young adult's section she mentally corrected was not the worst idea anyone had ever had.

Luna stood there trying to decide if that option was genuinely viable. Dwyn had after all suggested that she do exactly, although as she thought more on that she realized that when the woman had said it was a joke she'd probably meant it. If Luna ended up miles away from whatever research Dwyn was conducting and she found her later reading in a book that was probably not going to help the opinion that Dwyn currently had of here. With that in mind, Luna decided to follow after Dwyn. She was still probably not going to be of too much help, but she could at least hover around the place and pretend like she knew what was going on.

It took Luna a second to find her. The library itself turned out to be a little bit of a maze to navigate and with no one to guide her she managed to double back on herself a couple of times before she finally managed to figure out a route that took her to a row of computers mounted somewhere in what must have been a corner of the library. She didn't immediately spot Dwyn. She wasn't on any of the devices she could see.

Luna looked around a bit, thinking that perhaps Dwyn had maybe found some sort of alcove somewhere where she could work without absolutely everyone being able to see what she what she was working on. That would make quite a bit of sense considering how careful the woman seemed to be about keeping things secret, which Luna realized was probably the correct way to go when it came to something like a heist. After all, even if whoever had planned this was making the whole thing an experience the random people that were in the library had no way to tell they weren't actually robbing a place and there could be misunderstandings that they probably should look to avoid.

Finally after a few minutes of searching Luna finally found a tucked away corner where she spotted Dwyn. She'd already fired up the computer and was in fact rapidly typing away at something. Maybe those movies weren't a hundred percent wrong after all.

Luna now stood thinking once again, mentally trying to come up with a plan that would allow her to avoid embarrassment as much as possible. Just walking over there and pretending like she knew exactly what was going on was probably a bad idea, but standing out here where Dwyn could probably not even see her wasn't a good idea either. Maybe she should just circle around the woman for a second, not lng enough that she'd get scolded for blowing their cover, but long enough that Dwyn knew that Luna wasn't just roaming around the library completely oblivious to the reason they'd come here.

With her decision made, Luna made her way carefully towards Dwyn, trying not to make it obvious that she was making a beeline for the corner. She knew enough about being careful around people that heading straight for the darkest corner of the library would probably give off the wrong vibe. And so she decided to take a slightly more loopy write, trying to make it look a lot more natural than what Luna felt it was before Luna found herself almost directly behind Dwyn. Once there Luna froze again trying to figure out the best way to let Dwyn know she was there and paying attention without being too direct about the whole thing.

She thought of leaning in for a moment before she realized how creepy that was going to look. Dropping something and doing the age old shoelace trick she'd read about in entirely too many heist novels also seemed like a bad idea. She didn't want to end up physically alerting Dwyn in anyway. Considering how engrossed the woman seemed in her work, that felt like it wouldn't go down too well. Her moment of indecision didn't get to go on for too much longer however as Dwyn suddenly turned to look behind her, probably having seen Luna approach somehow. Whatever alcove Dwyn had chosen, it probably afforded the woman a far better view of her surroundings that Luna had initially assumed.

"Could you try to look a little less obvious while you're playing super-spy?" It sounded like a jab, but Dwyn's teasing smile said she wasn't really upset about it.

Luna blushed, trying not to feel too called out as she mumbled something that didn't even make sense to her. Thankfully Dwyn turned back around to her work leaving Luna to wallow in her new sense of embarrassment by herself. She really had to find a way to make herself useful here and fast. Standing there she thought for a moment, trying to think of anything and everything that could possibly come in handy when looking up a person. She could distinctly remember libraries having archives and the like you could pull up to look people up, or was that from that one movie where someone had tried to research their family. Luna couldn't be sure although she realized that whatever archive existed it probably wasn't a pile of old newspapers like the movie had showed. Well, it might have been, but she doubted any of them could access them, it was all probably stored in the computer and at any rate, this Philip Fields person hadn't looked nearly old enough to be the sort of person you searched for by looking through old newspapers.

Then Luna suddenly remembered phonebooks. This was also coming from some movie and she had genuinely no idea if phone book even existed anymore, but it was the best idea she'd had in a while. Even if she herself had never had to use a phonebook, the idea behind that one seemed a lot simpler than whatever digging Dwyn was carrying out on the computer at the moment so Luna quickly started to look around, seeing if there was something like that where she could make herself a bit more useful.

With that in mind, Luna began to walk around a bit. She had no idea where anything in this library and come to think of it, she had no idea where something like a phonebook would be in any library. It wasn;t like she'd had any reason to look for ever before and the one scene she'd seen in the movie had involved a phone booth. The movie had been from the 80's after all. The fact that it was definitely not wise for her to just try and find a librarian and ask them for help didn't help matters and so Luna found herself getting partially lost as she searched around the place.

After getting a little bit frustrated about her lack of progress after a while, Luna glanced at the time. It had been nearly an hour and a half since they'd arrived in the library. Luna stood rooted the spot in midl shock. She hadn't noticed the time going by at all. She was used to doing that when it came to reading a good book, but this was probably the first time she'd wondered around aimlessly in a place for so long. Maybe she should be getting back towards the place where Dwyn was. If she was even still there that is. It'd been long enough now that it was possible that the woman had finished the task she'd come here for and just left.

Thankfully, as Luna finally managed to find her way back, Dwyn was still there, albeit now seated in a different station, this time with a couple of books by her side. Whether those books were genuinely helping out in whatever she was looking up on the device or if she'd bought them there to blend in with everyone else doing research in the library was anyone's guess. From the looks of things Luna could at least confirm that whatever Dwyn was doing, it was clearly not doing. The intense look she'd had when they'd first come in was still there although now there was also a bit of a sly smile there. She had a feeling that this Philip Field person was proving harder to find information about than Dwyn had initially anticipated which Dwyn seemed to think was a good idea. Luna could understand where she was coming from, but she did have to wonder why Dwyn was so fixated on finding out the identity of the man who'd told them the details of their heist. He was probably some random actor after all, surely there wasn't some clue to solving the heist wrapped up in this man's identity. Luna wasn't stupid enough to miss something like that, was she?

Before she knew it, Luna found herself doing a few more laps around the library before settling down on a seat that was not too far away nor too close to Dwyn, letting out the smallest of yawns. The time was starting to blur together now and Luna was beginning to wonder what on Earth could be taking Dwyn this long. Maybe this library just had an atrocious internet connection or something.

Another hour or so later Luna was finally put out of her misery as Dwyn proceeded to get up from her seat.. She looked triumphant and Luna smiled. It seemed as if she had managed to locate something, and whatever it was that Dwyn had found, it seemed like it was good.

"Well," Dwyn said cheerfully, "they're good at covering their tracks, but I am better! Philip Fields has officially been dead for over a decade!"

Luna couldn't hold back the groan that decided to escape her mouth at that point. They'd spent three hours of their time to figure out that. Surely something like that would take much less time to find out. She didn't voice her thoughts although judging by Dwyn's reply to said groan, she'd figured it out anyway.

"They must've bought the ID off the black market. Don't worry, this is good! At least we know they aren't cops undercover or anything." Dwyn looked back at the computer and proceeded to exit out of whatever she'd been on, obviously thinking of that as the end of the conversation.

"Are we going to go meet up with Conrad now?" Luna finally asked, voice a bit lower than she'd have liked, but the way that Dwyn was currently treating her had not helped her inability to speak to strangers in the slightest.

"Yeah. I'll have to contact some people to figure out who bought the ID, but for now, there's nothing I can do here." Dwyn stood and started to walk away.

Luna nodded along and got up. Trying not to look too conspicuous, she stretched out, letting loose a small yawn as she tried to get feeling to return to her limbs after being seated in almost the same position for the past hour or so. Hopefully things would soon be getting a bit more exciting than standing in a library to figure out one singular line of information.

\/Dwyn Souza\/

Dwyn got onto the computer and started searching for Philip Fieldses without trouble. The problem was being able to narrow down which Philip Fields she was looking for. She narrowed the age range and race, looked through countless information. It took over two hours of dead end after dead end for it to hit her-- she grinned and started searching through obituaries. There had been no evidence of a live Philip Fields, but once she pulled out the ID card again and started to look through the other information, it finally clicked up. She stood up, feeling on top of the world.

"Well," Dwyn said cheerfully, "they're good at covering their tracks, but I am better! Philip Fields has officially been dead for over a decade!"

Luna groaned. "They must've bought the ID off the black market," Dwyn added. "Don't worry, this is good! At least we know they aren't cops undercover or anything." Cops would've put up a few social media profiles, insert the name into some story with a picture as evidence the person had existed. Whoever this was, they were professionals. Dwyn began exiting out of everything on the computer, and deleted the browsing history. She hadn't realized how long she'd stayed silent until Luna spoke up.

"Are we going to go meet up with Conrad now?"

Dwyn looked at her. "Yeah. I'll have to contact some people to figure out who bought the ID, but for now, there's nothing I can do here." She'd need to talk to Derek about that at some point.

Before she knew it, they were out of the library and back on the tram on the way to the museum. They didn't talk, but her thoughts ran constantly as she thought over everything that had happened. Of course, getting stuck with two amateurs wasn't her greatest professional moment, but she supposed it added a certain thrill to it. After all, it was just an extra challenge, wasn't it? And she loved a good challenge. And once she found a private time to call Derek, she'd get one of his contacts working on who bought the identity of Philip Fields-- and if she could figure that out? Well, not much would come of it, but the very idea that her hirer wanted to be kept secret made her more intrigued in finding out who it was. She wouldn't do anything with the information, just know that she had the skill to find it out, and that alone was reward enough.

Tomorrow she'd drop off another box of "found" items at one of her regular pawn shops and trade in some money. Then, she'd wire one million to her siblings and parents, split up so it wasn't suspicious to the banks. The money could all end up in her parents' hands just in time for rent and whatever medical bills needed paying now. Seeing them was out of the question considering how they all felt about her "habits", but that was alright.

She refocused her mind. Tomorrow would come, but first, she had to get through tonight. More talking with amateurs, eating some filling food, and of course, what would be her favorite part-- the planning of the heist.

\/ Conrad Selingren \/

Conrad called the nearest Giordano's up before he even made it out of the office. That was the secret to deep-dish. Order before arrival. At the height of hockey season, he called at the end of the second period of each game so his team would have piping hot pizzas and a table waiting for them as soon as they were out of the locker room.

He made a reservation for a table for three at seven, made sure that a meat-lover's and a spinach deep-dish were on order for them, and then hoped neither of the girls were allergic to gluten. Then he remembered lactose-intolerance existed and checked his backpack for lactaid. His team's goalie had spread those around for emergencies.

The weather tonight was almost perfect. A cool, Lake Michigan breeze blew through Conrad's hair and tie as he left the admin building, peeling away a few layers of heat and humidity. A few fluffy clouds drifted in the sky overhead, and the noise of traffic was muffled by the isolation of campus. The only thing that could make it better was ice.

"So," he heard, and Conrad nearly jumped when he saw Dwyn and Luna appear from around the corner. "Is dinner on you? That's sweet!"

Conrad balked. He didn't want to pay for dinner. They all had like a ton of money now! But maybe for tonight it would be easier? No one liked splitting pizza bills. He scratched his neck and sighed. "It's on me. But I'd appreciate if someone else got the tip."

Dwyn tossed her hair and smiled like she was agreeing but keeping Conrad on thin ice, and Luna nervously fidgeted, and Conrad led them to his car.

The unfortunate fact of living in a city meant that Conrad owned a car that his enormous hockey bod was not meant to sqeeze into. As he turned his head to pull out of his parking space, he noticed Luna eyeing the sliver of space between his seat and the one behind him. Dwyn just opened his glove compartment.

"So, uh," Luna tried, watching as Dwyn rifled through Conrad's car napkins, "what are we going to eat?"

Finally. A conversation. Keeping his eyes on the guy tailgating him through traffic, Conrad brightened and lowered the volume on his music. "Well, I was thinking since you two are from out of town, we could start with some real Chicago staples, you know? Deep dish tonight. Chicago-style hot dogs and beef sandwiches tomorrow. Then we can hit up one of those diner type places where the cooks have the crazy strong accents if you're still in town after that."

"Oh, the famous deep dish? I've heard mixed reviews. And doesn't it take a while to bake?" She stuffed Conrad's car napkins back into the glove compartment and pulled an empty water bottle from the door cupholder next to her.

Conrad scoffed. "Brah. Don't diss the 'za. And deep dish is not soggy. It's like five layers of crust and cheese and tomato goodness."

"Sounds tasty?" Luna said, though it sounded like a question. She was such an adorable kid.

"Anyway," Conrad continued. "I called ahead. With traffic, we should get there like ten minutes before the pizzas are ready. Did either of you bring a computer with you?"

The girls exchanged a look, and Dwyn revealed Conrad's laptop from under her seat. That wasn't where he usually stored it - but maybe he'd put it there this morning to keep it from overheating in his car?

"Well I guess that works." And Conrad pulled his USB out of his pocket. "Hopefully one of you can figure out this stuff better than I could. You know, I've never actually looked all that closely at a floor plan before? The text is so small."

What followed was an uncomfortable moment where Dwyn contorted herself out of the shotgun seat and into the back next to Luna while Conrad tried to avoid the way her feet kicked out when he made a sharp turn. The seatbelt warning beeped. Conrad swore he saw a cop car at an intersection. He wasn't sure when, or how, since Dwyn's hands never seemed to come anywhere near him, but at some point his USB made it to the back seat, where Luna plugged it into the laptop and opened it up.

"Buckle your seatbelt, Dwyn," Conrad said.

"Oh my god are those your tax returns?" Dwyn replied. "I could literally steal your identity."

"Buckle your seatbelt."

Luna's laptop made a little chime sound as she clicked around. "How would his tax returns let you- wait, no, Dwyn, you really shouldn't open those"-

"Don't open my tax returns," Conrad grit out as the car in front of him made a very sudden stop.

"Whoa, who's Thomas O'Conner?" Dwyn asked. "These definitely aren't yours- you don't seem like you make this much money. Oh darn, the social security number is blacked out." She didn't look all that disappointed though. In fact, her hands were already making for the computer like she had plans for those tax returns.

"I'm a professional, Dwyn," Conrad answered. "And buckle your seatbelt."

"Let's just open up those floor plans!" Luna suggested, and Conrad caught her trying very politely to get Dwyn's hands off the laptop in the rearview mirror.

Somehow, the floor plans got opened. Dwyn gave Conrad an appreciative tap on his triceps.

"Good job, gajo. Did you really need all of it though?"

"I wasn't sure what to grab," Conrad groused.

"Wow, I didn't know plumbing diagrams looked like this," Luna said. "What does any of this even mean?"

"Open the security ones," Dwyn said, pointing at the screen.

Blessed silence followed. Conrad coasted to a stop at a red light and tilted his mirror to watch the girls ooh and ahh over his hard work. He could already see the gears turning in their heads, formulating plays for how to get through key card entrances and bypass camera angles.

Maybe he'd find the brain power to make plans too, once he finally got to eat his pizza.

\/ Conrad Selingren \/

The maitre d' led Conrad and the girls to a booth in the back of the restaurant, out of view from the entrance but not so well-hidden that they were completely isolated. Giordano's was a family type of place after all - its lights were bright and the space was open, and grubby children wiggled in their seats while tired parents tried and failed to wipe tomato sauce from their kids' faces.

The booth seats were high. When Conrad listened around, he heard snippets of other conversations, but nothing discernable. Not that they were doing anything bad, per say, but maybe talking about sneaking into a place was a bad idea.

"So?" he tried, lacing his fingers together on the table. "Any first thoughts from you two?"

The three of them were silent. Conrad could feel Dwyn sizing him up like she was a forward considering how she'd get a puck past him. Luna bit her lip like a nervous winger on first line for the first time.

"Nothing?" Conrad tried again. "Seriously? Should I have gotten takeout instead?"

"No no! This is fine," Luna said. "Umm. I guess I could start?"

Dwyn smiled and leaned her elbows on the table. "Aww, sure. Go on."

"Right, uh." Luna took a deep breath to fortify herself, puffing her cheeks as she exhaled. Then she spoke, voice low. "So, it's kinda hard to explain, but...uhh...don't worry about the locks. I think our biggest concern is going to be security footage and coverage and stuff."

"I mean I have a key card and could probably get the museum added to my building access," Conrad explained. "I wasn't going to worry about it anyway."

Dwyn frowned. "Are we planning on doing this in broad daylight?"

"No?" Luna said.

"I mean, yeah," Conrad said at the same time. The girls both shot him dubious looks. "What? That's the best time."

"The..." Dwyn searched for the right word for a moment, "thing is in plain view of museum guests. You think that's smart?" She sounded incredulous.

Conrad considered this. "Wouldn't people think we were doing something bad if we went in at a weird time though? I mean, come on, it's not like we're doing anything we couldn't pass off as normal."

Luna took a long sip of water. "I thought we were supposed to be discreet. I just. I think it would be better if no one saw than if everyone saw and thought we were doing something else."

"Look at that, the middle schooler is correct," Dwyn said casually. "Look, you're obviously new at this, so I'll put this nicely, which I do not do often-- pickpocketing is broad daylight. Shoplifting is broad daylight. Breaking in somewhere you aren't known is broad daylight. Broad daylight is not for jobs where they can track it back to you. Did you ever consider that if something goes missing, they might look at what key card was registered right before it happened?"

Conrad blinked. "Oh. Yeah. You're totally right, bro. So what are you thinking?"

"Well, not broad daylight, for one," she said, an amused but lazy smile on her face. "We'll do it at night, like the kid said." She smirked slightly in Luna's direction. "Get in and get out at a time when no one is there, without leaving any trace of our passing through." Her eyes looked around the restaurant calmly, and she suddenly straightened. Her elbow connected with Conrad's ribs.

"Dude, what"-

Luna pointedly glanced toward the open end of the booth.

A waiter sidled up to the table, pizza in each hand, his face split by a big, customer-service smile. "Hey! Spinach and meat lover's deep dish?"

"Yep!" Conrad said, sounding just a little high. "That's us."

"Sweet! If you guys could just move your waters a little- ah, yup there we go." The waiter set the pizzas down in the center of the table, and Dwyn slid a plate over to catch the drool from Conrad's chin. They smelled like heaven. And like cheese. It was so good living so close to Wisconsin.

"Well, if you guys need anything, just let me know," the waiter said, wringing his hands together. "Enjoy your meal."

The trio watched him leave, and Dwyn reached for the meat lover's pizza. "Careful," she warned as she lifted a steaming slice up and flopped it onto her plate. Conrad couldn't tell if she was talking about the plotting or about the pizza. Maybe it was both.

They abandoned their plans for a few minutes. Conrad used his hands to lift a slice of spinach pizza straight from the pan and into his mouth, then immediately regretted it when the boiling tomato sauce seared the top of his mouth. Luna made a valiant attempt to copy him and wound up using her fork and knife to get the first few bites in. Dwyn chuckled at them both before showing Luna the correct way to eat deep dish.

When the girls had each made it through a slice and Conrad had gulped down three, they got back to business.

"Probably not a good idea to bring the laptop out when our hands are covered in pizza grease," Luna said, "so we'll go into more depth later, but basically the security drawings show the location and estimated sight radius for each camera in the building. It doesn't look like there are too many of them though. They're mostly focused on the doors."

"Which would make your mysterious don't-worry-about-the-locks thing difficult, I assume?" Dwyn asked.

Luna sighed and reached for another slice of pizza. "Unfortunately yes. I don't suppose either of you can create some kind of video loop to cover for me?"

Conrad frowned. Last time he'd needed someone to bypass a camera for him, his boss had set it up. If the security were handled locally, he could probably access it at work though.

"Do we have any way of knowing if the footage is stored on campus or by a third party?" he asked.

Luna shuddered. "I hope it's not in that thousand-page specification document you got. I don't think I'd know where to start with that."

"Well, if it's a third party," Dwyn said, "there'd be an expense for it, right, Mr. Accountant?"

"I guess if it's monitored by a third party," Conrad agreed. "But I have no idea about storage. Data can go anywhere."

Luna raised her hand quietly. "Um, the lines on the drawing connected all the cameras in the building to a security room with fiber lines? Implying they're not wireless? I don't know if that helps."

"This is why we should just do it during the day," Conrad groused. "You two could totally pass as students."

Dwyn took a bite of her second slice of pizza and chewed for a moment. "Oh my god. Students."

"Um," Luna said. "What about students?"

"It wouldn't be weird if a pair of research students were in the building late, would it?" Dwyn said, her normal smile widening. "If the two of us can get our hands on the student cards of people who work in those archives, we could totally get in and out. We just have to make sure our faces aren't visible. Besides, I've got enough looks to pass as a dozen different people."

Conrad thought back to all the nights he'd spent in the accounting department's computer lab as an undergrad. "Dude. That'd totally work. How are you going to get student IDs though?"

Dwyn grinned. "Why don't you just leave that to me?"

\/Dwyn Souza\/

Something had been bugging Dwyn the whole dinner, and she couldn't figure out what it was. She was more than capable of getting her hands on a few student IDs-- that would be no problem. She could definitely get disguises for all of them, so even if camera footage wasn't taken care of, they'd be in the clear in regards to that. So what was driving her crazy? Maybe it was the meat on the pizza. She liked pizza, but something about the way Americans cooked sausage was so foreign to her, despite the fact that she'd grown up here. Maybe it was because she'd grown up with Brazilian cooking, and this was not how you seasoned good sausage.

She knew that wasn't it though. It was like a feeling on the tip of her tongue, and she kept running through everything she'd done in the past few days, along with anything she needed to do. She needed to run by her place, though there was no chance in hell she was doing that with either of these two. She didn't trust them with her full name, let alone where she lived. She needed to call Derek and ask him to follow the purchase of the Philip Fields identity. She needed to send the money to her family for her dad. What else...

Of course, she also knew she wasn't feeling great about the inexperience right now. It felt like a game or a trick-- anyone who wanted the job done right would not have chosen purposely to hire these two, right? They could've hired her alone, saved themselves twenty-four million, and gotten the job done better! Not that she was still hung up on their inexperience. She was going to do the best with what she had, and if she abandoned them at a moment's notice then so be it. She did need to at least try to get them to walk like different people though... Conrad's frame alone was enough to make him pretty easily recognizable if he didn't learn to walk like he wasn't a giant made of rock who'd recently woken up from a thousand year nap. And Luna was constantly nervous, her eyes looking around everywhere. Even when she wasn't doing something suspicious she looked suspicious. But still, that wasn't what was bugging her. It frustrated her to no end, to the point where she was half paying attention to the conversation and half trying to figure out what was setting off her alarm bells.

Her eyes scanned boredly over the restaurant and entrance, watching the people come and go-- and that's when she spotted him, and it hit her. "Merda!" she cursed, "we need to go."

"Huh?" Conrad asked, confused. "We haven't paid for the--"

"We need to go," Dwyn repeated, annnoyed. She could see Kaique with his stupid, smug, righteous face, a kid clinging to his leg and the other in his arms as he walked in. How could she have forgotten?! They'd come to the one place his family frequented on the one night his wife went out with friends each week. Dwyn wanted to scream. The more she considered it, the more it seemed like a reasonable reaction.

"Can we get a box for the pizza?" Luna asked.

"No," Dwyn snapped. "We're leaving."

"Is there danger?" Conrad asked, looking around way too obviously to be any help if there had been any danger.

He was heading their way. Stupid Kaique and his stupid knowledge to call ahead and save a stupid table. If he'd acted like the normal people and just waited outside instead of being all high and mighty with his calling ahead and his stupid smartness she probably could've slipped past him without being seen at all. As it was, he'd already spotted her. He froze in place, and the waiter leading him to the table kept walking without him. He watched her for a few seconds, his perfect hair just out of reach of his perfect eyes. Stupid hair... stupid eyes... The kid at his pants started tugging and the kid in his arms was getting antsy, but he stayed still. "Waiter, one moment," he called, and started walking towards her.

"No, no, no," Dwyn whispered, wanting to bury her face in her hands. "Don't come over here!" She was never this out of control of her emotions, or her presentation of them. Then again, it was a bit hard to stop herself when it was her stupid, perfect older brother.

"Do I need to fight someone?" Conrad whispered, and Dwyn found it laughable-- and just a little nice-- that he'd offer.

"Dwyn," Kaique said, pulling to a stop in front of their table. He shifted the kid in his arms, now clearly Dwyn's niece Iracema, to his other hip. That meant the kid standing beside him must be Miciela. Dwyn hadn't seen her in a few years. She must be five or six now. Neither of them would recognize her. It felt like a knife twist in her heart and urge rose to punch Kaique herself.

"We were just leaving," she muttered, standing to push past him.

"Hey," he said, stopping her with a hand. He glanced at the people at the table, then whispered in Portuguese, "Você está fazendo isso de novo, não está?"

She tilted her head slightly. "Doing what again? I'm not doing anything." She refused to turn this into some sentimental, "We're family, let's speak Portuguese together" thing. He could speak English perfectly fine, and all he was trying to do was tug on her sentimentality for a time she wasn't sentimental for.

He sighed in frustration, giving up on the Portuguese. "You need to stop this, Dwyn! It isn't good-- for any of us."

She felt herself grow furious, an anger she didn't usually feel-- and behind it, she felt the pain that came with it. He had the audacity to tell her to stop this, as if he had any place in her life anymore? To say that it wasn't good for any of them, as if he hadn't been one of the ones to basically kick her out of her own family? "I am doing this for you," she hissed.

"No you're not, don't lie to yourself," Kaique said, glancing at Conrad and Luna behind her before looking back at her and lowering his voice. "I'm just concerned, alright? We never hear from you anymore, besides the mysterious amounts of money that somehow magically end up in our accounts. I'm worried about you," he said softly.

"You're the one who said not to call." Dwyn spat back.

"That is not what I said," Kaique replied sharply.

"What did you say, Señor Perfeito?" She mocked. "Señor Justo?" He just stared at her, as if she had slapped him. She refused to acknowledge the hurt in his eyes or the set in his jaw. After a moment of silence, the kids started to squirm again, hungry for pizza. Miciela started to pull on his leg again, whining softly, "Papa, quero pizzaaaaa!"

Dwyn watched him for several seconds, then slowly and painfully pulled her neutral expression up. She was done being emotional, and she was done talking to him. "Now, if you hadn't noticed," she said coolly, "I'm busy, and we're leaving. You'll get the next check soon." And without saying another word, she walked to the exit and right out the door. However incompetent they were, she trusted that Luna and Conrad could at least follow her out.

Luna slid into the seats of this restaurant with mixed feelings. On one hand, this place was far more cheerful than the creepy place from earlier and seemed like a place where her hunger problems were all easily going to become a thing of the past, on the other hand, it was a bit too bright and cheery for it to be a place for heisting. Given her latest experience with a restaurant however, Luna would take this particular combination any day over what they'd endured earlier.

At first they were sitting in a bit of an awkward silence before Luna, decided that maybe she'd better start talking first in case that won her brownie points to avoid being thought of as the most incompetent on on the team, never mind the fact that she almost definitely was the most incompetent on the team.

The conversation flowed from there with relative ease and Luna found herself getting a tiny bit more comfortable as they talked. Once she'd pored over all of those drawing from earlier and had formed a mini mental plan, her excitement for the heist managed to temporarily overshadow the fact that she was still speaking to two total strangers.

The pizza arrived soon after and Luna had to resist the urge to let out a small cheer. She'd never had this particular style of pizza before but it definitely smelled delicious and there was definitely enough to fill her up. The next few minutes involved nearly burning her tastebuds to a crisp and getting her hands covered in grease. She didn't mind however, considering it was definitely wayy better than the lunch they'd had earlier and she was finally starting to feel semi full.

After they'd eaten a decent amount, the conversation started to flow again and Luna slipped into the excitement of the moment, enjoying the fact that sometime soon she could finally do something to show off her actual skills. The keycard doors this place had seemed like they'd be a fun challenge. She knew she could open doors of that general type since there were a couple at random hotels she'd done, but she did realize the ones here were probably much better quality than those. Hopefully not too much better quality.

When they'd finally managed to semi finalize a plan Luna had to stifle another shriek especially after Dwyn's entirely too cool declaration of leaving the acquiring the ID's to her. Dwyn was rapidly making it harder for Luna to remain normal in her presence.

Their little bubble was suddenly burst by a declaration of "Merda" by Dwyn. Luna only knew French and a little bit of Spanish, but they were close enough to what must've been Portuguese by Dwyn that she immediately knew something was not right. Her suspicions were confirmed moments later as Dwyn immediately declared that they needed to leave immediately.

Luna found her heart hammering a bit too loudly in her chest as Dwyn started to look the least she'd been in the time that Luna had known her. Whatever was going on it had to be bad. Then Conrad offered to start punching and her eyes went wide. A fight of any kind was not going to help matters at all.

Then an argument broke out with someone. Luna did her best to make herself small in their corner, trying not to intrude on what felt like a somewhat personal conversation although Dwyn clearly wasn't enjoying any moment of said conversation.

The argument came to a head after a while and Dwyn seemed to regain her lost composure quickly. She seemed to have said something final because she got up and started to stomp out of the place. Luna exchanged a look with Conrad.

Nodding towards Dwyn, she shakily got up. Even though she'd not taken part in the argument whatsoever she felt oddly shaken by the suddenness of it all. Giving the man who'd argued with Dwyn what she hoped was some sort of apologetic smile, she walked past. She didn't know why she'd done that, but it oddly felt necessary. She then had to quickly jog to catch up to Dwyn who was already at the door and soon the trio were walking out of yet another restaurant with what had been a somewhat half formed plan. At the very least the food had been enough that she wasn't less hungry than when she'd gone into the restaurant. She couldn't say the same for that other place.

Luna's inner curiosity made her want to immediately ask Dwyn what that had been about but for one she was definitely working up the courage to question something that had made Dwyn of all people lose her composure and two that would probably be rude since judging by the whispers of Portuguese that was probably someone from Dwyn's family. Deciding that perhaps the best course of action would be pretend like that argument didn't even happen, Luna tried to continue their conversation from where it had ground to an abrupt halt.

"So are we done with the plan then? You'll get some ID's and we'll do the..uhh thing," said Luna changing her words at the last moment as she realized they were now outside where anyone could hear them. "When should we go in to do a bit of scouting, we can probably pull the student trick for that one too?" Luna didn't even realize how much she was rattling off at once, but she kept talking, hoping she was doing the right thing.

\/ Conrad Selingren \/

Silently, Conrad wondered if he should stop Luna. Dwyn's attention had long since departed from the heist, and even as the trio attempted a little walk-and-talk to continue their discussion, it was clear she wasn't participating.

"So, um," Luna said, "we could meet at nine? Maybe? Dwyn?"

"Huh? Oh, sure." Dwyn didn't even look.

"Do you guys think I should sign up for a department tour?" Luna asked. "Would a department tour even go into that room?"

"Sure," Dwyn said.

Luna didn't seem to have anywhere to take the conversation after that. She wrung her hands together and wrinkled her eyebrows in Conrad's general direction while Dwyn fumed at the buildings they passed until Conrad could bear it no longer.

"Well!" he said, clapping his hands to see if it would catch Dwyn's attention. It did. Barely. "I have to be into work bright and early. Why don't we call it a night? I can drive you both to your hotels if you want?"

As if shaking off the fog of a migraine, Dwyn turned her old attitude back on. She smiled and laughed, waving dismissively and then gesturing with a thumb in some other direction. "I think I've got a pretty good handle on where I'm going. See you two later!"

"Oh, uh, bye?" Conrad said.

"Bye?" Luna echoed, almost too softly for Dwyn to hear as she flounced away, humming a tune that seemd catchy and upbeat, but also like something a girl could kill to. Which, honestly, described a lot of songs now that Conrad thought about it.

He and Luna watched as Dwyn disappeared, and then turned to look at each other. The pink-and-orange sky cast long, dark shadows over the streets, putting the buildings in stark silhouette and the cars in garish yellow glare.

Luna pursed her lips. "I don't mean to sound like... ungrateful"-

"I'll show you where to get a Ventra card."

"Whew. Yeah. Okay. I assume that's the trains?"

Conrad's billet mother had told him that he should escort ladies home if they trusted him and give them to means to do it themselves if they didn't. And while Conrad might have had a few dalliances that were foggy in his brain, Mrs. Gainsley was pretty much always right, and Conrad, when he failed to follow her advice, usually turned out to be wrong.

It still rubbed him the wrong way, sending Luna off by herself. She was like a kid sister, if Conrad had ever had a sister. But hey, as a local, he could at least handle this.

They walked in awkward silence to the nearest train station, and Luna hesitated only a little when he jaywalked across a long, empty stretch of one-way road.

"Every station has the kiosks," Conrad explained, as he hiked up the creaky metal stairs to the L train platform, "but you kind of have to be careful because there's like a totally different set of trains called the Metra, and they don't use the same fare system."

"Oh?" Luna squeaked.

"Yeah, the Metra trains use an app. Or you can buy one on the train? But it costs twice as much."

"Why are they different?" Luna asked, as Conrad poked at a kiosk and put forty dollars on her card.

"Business reasons."

The machine spat out a card with a whizz and a click before returning to an advertisement on the home screen. Luna took the card and grimaced at it, still looking uncertain.

"The Metra stations are way bigger," Conrad reassured her. "I promise you won't get on one by mistake. And hey, if you're worried I'll give you my cell and you can just call me if you get lost, okay?"

After another second looking over the card, Luna tucked it in her back pocket and narrowed her eyebrows down into a stern game face. "I've got it. I rode the train at home. It'll be just like that."

Luna listened intently to every word that Conrad had to say. It had been quite the turnaround for the afternoon, but she had to hang on to every single word if she was going to manage to make it back to the hotel. She had no idea what had gone down with Dwyn with earlier, but she did not have the time to process all of that right now or think about if Dwyn would actually show up on the time they had hurriedly half agreed to.

This was turning into a minor nightmare and a repeat of the time she'd first had to take the train by herself. Well sort of. She really hoped it wouldn't be an exact repeat of the time she'd first taken the train by herself. She'd ended about six stops off from where she was supposed to go and without the courage to ask anyone how to get back, it had been a horrible five hours before she'd been picked up.

As the memories ran through her, she turned to Conrad. She'd made a rather bold declaration there after he'd suggested given her his phone number because she really didn't want to appear any weaker than she already had but the thought of taking a step inside all alone and her very badly timed memory was making her reconsider her bravado. There was absolutely no way she was going to ask him to escort her there. That would be far too embarrassing, not to mention he was probably only being nice with his offer to drive them back. He must have actual work to take care of given he was in fact an actual adult. No, she'd have to do this alone. But...having that number was starting to feel more an more like a great option. Even if she could never work up the courage to actually dial the number, simply having the option to do so do seemed like it would actually be a half decent idea even if she probably didn't even get the correct number. She knew Dwyn would never give it to her.

After another excruciating moment of thinking, not wanting to make things too awkward for poor Conrad by her just standing there silently, she gave the tiniest of nods, hoping that maybe he'd take the hint, before deciding that verbalizing would be a far better idea. She was the one who'd lowkey refused him by making that statement in the first place after all.

"I'll take the number, " she muttered, a little too quiet, but just loud enough to be heard over the general noise of the area.

Conrad proceeded to hand her a business card. She took a second to glance at it. She was no expert in anything to do with stuff like this, but at first glance it didn't look like it was fake, unless someone had gone to a lot of effort to make a fake business card, which Conrad just didn't quite seem to be the type for.

"Thank you," she said. She wanted to say more, but her embarrassment was coming in full force now that she had to say an actual goodbye. With a steadily rising blush, she managed a nod in the direction of the man before she turned to leave. If she didn't start walking now, she was going to end up frozen to this spot for quite a while and that would not be very good if she wanted to have a place to sleep for the night that was not the sidewalk.

Putting Conrad behind her, Luna walked towards where she was supposed to be getting on the train, mentally running through the small checklist she'd made for herself as far as what she was supposed to be doing until she got to her hotel was concerned. She had had the very strong urge to write it all down in her notebook but she'd been far too embarrassed to bust that out again. It was one thing to write down heist related details, it was another to show that she could barely remember something that should be as easy as going on the train.

Trying desperately to avoid thinking too hard about what might happen if she ended up lost again, despite the detailed directions there was every chance she was going to accidentally distract herself with something like she'd done that time she'd gone on a train for the first time or she could...

Luna's thoughts trailed off as she tried to mentally slap herself for reminding herself of that horrible moment yet again. If things continued at this rate she was going to be running out into the night screaming faster than you could say 'train' and that was not how she wanted this particular night to end.

For not the last time that day, Luna wondered why she hadn't just booked a hotel that was within walking distance of the museum or just decided to walk anyway. It didn't seem like it would be that far. Sure she'd probably collapse out of exhaustion trying to walk that kind of distance..but at least she would have to deal with less people.

Her mind chose that moment to remind her that the whole reason she hadn't picked walking distance was because walking along the streets when night was falling would be the height of stupidity for her to do alone. Realizing the risk associated with that side of the world far outweighed potentially getting lost inside a train station, she steeled herself once again, managing to dispel her thoughts for hopefully at least the next fifteen minutes. She would even settle for five. Anything to get her bearings long enough to actually get on the train. Then she'd be able to force her mind to laser focus on listening out for her stop.

With that particular mindset by some miracle she managed to make her way onto the train. She had triple checked and quadruple checked to make sure she'd gotten on the right one by doing every check she could think of besides asking another passenger which of course was completely out of the question unless she ended up just completely lost.

Once on the train, Luna looked for the most out of the way corner she could possibly find that still let her keep an eye on when to get off and squeezed herself into it, trying to look as small and invisible as she possibly could. Taking a deep breath she checked the name of her destination for the twentieth time, committed it to memory one more time for good measure and then settled down, or tried to settle down as much as she possibly could as the train pulled out of the station.

As the train began to move, her heart began to calm down ever so slightly. It wasn't exactly familiar, it felt quite different from the trains she very occasionally did take back home, but the fact that it was moving steadily and the sounds of machinery working did calm her ever so slightly. It wasn't the first thing that people usually tended to put trust in, but for some reason it had always worked for Luna.

With this is mind, Luna managed to keep herself from going into full blown panic mode and stay focused on figuring out what her next stop was going to be. With this in mind, the time went by fairly quickly, at least it certainly seemed to be going by a lot faster than she'd expected it to given her nervousness and soon she realized she was coming up on the station she needed to be getting out at. She didn't let herself relax quite yet, but she stood just a tiny bit straighter. She may just have made it here. It was silly to be celebrating something as simple as going on the train, but it wasn't the first time she'd done that and it was certainly not going to be the last.

A few seconds later Luna walked out of the train, letting out a sigh of relief that probably made her fellow commuters think she'd just escaped a kidnapping. With that she ran through her mental checklist once again, trying to remember how to get out of here. ONce she managed to pull that part off, the rest would be much simpler. She'd spent a good amount of time going through the whole process of getting into the hotel with Sadie and if she forgot at any point, she knew she definitely could call Sadie whose number was definitely going to work and she wasn't going to judge her for certain whereas with Conrad she could never be fully sure.

Ten minutes later, she was slipping out of the station with a sigh of relief that definitely out did the previous one from getting out of the train. She did a quiet little punch in the air in celebration. She had made it. Now to follow the directions to the hotel. Luckily Sadie and her had thought of this one before hand and the hotel was pretty closeby to this particular station. It was a bit darker out than she would have liked, but if things went well and she managed not to get lost she should be inside within the next fifteen minutes in the worst case scenario.

With that held in mind and wrapping her hands around herself to calm the shivers that were happening both from the air which had gained a bit of bite as it got darker and the general sense of having to walk all this alone, she set off to her destination.

By yet another miracle, she somehow managed to find herself in front of the hotel she was supposed to getting to. Or at least she hoped so. It certainly seemed to have the right name written across the front in pretty bold letters. Unless there were some very thorough scammers with a pretty high budget running something, she was safe in assuming that she had made it to the proper place. With that in mind, Luna walked upto the door, staying a few feet away so that the doorman wasn't going to open the door for her and start greeting her. Hopefully said doorman wasn't going to take her taking a pause before entry the wrong way and think she was going to do something wrong.

Steeling herself up to ride a train and potentially get lost was one hurdle, but now having to actually talk to real live humans in order to check into this hotel was proving to be a challenge on an entirely different level. She was almost a 100% certain she was going to end up saying something incredibly stupid and get kicked out. She decided that if she was going to find out whether that happens or not, she was going to have to go in and so with deep breath number five hundred and four of the day, she steeled herself and walked upto the door.

She mumbled a Good Morning to the doorman in response to his Good Evening and immediately brushed bright red as she tried to smile and not look as mortified as she currently felt. She'd just got in through the door and she was already messing up. Hopefully the man didn't think she was weird already.

Once through the door, Luna took another second to catch her breath. She felt like she was about to start running a marathon. She risked a glance at the woman on the front desk. She looked friendly, at least for now, smiling at another guest that was talking to her. Luna looked down at her feet for a minute, mentally running through exactly what she was going to have to say one last time.

Once she finally made it to the desk, as she was prone to do in such situation, she began to ramble out everything she was supposed to say. Luckily for her, the lady seemed to indeed be an actually nice person, or at least she was good enough at her job to appear that way and without too much embarrassment and looking like a freshly ripened tomato, Luna clutched a key card in her hand, ready to head out towards the room she was going to be staying in.

It wasn't too long before she then finally found her way into the room. Soon the door had been safely locked behind her after she'd triple checked the room number of course (the fact that her keycard couldn't possibly open any room besides her own was totally irrelevant). With that out the way, she proceeded to do a full on celebration as if she had just won the world cup. She had successfully made it to her hotel room in one place without getting lost once.

With her min celebration out of the way, she set about getting ready to turn in. It had been a bit of a long day and as exciting and awesome and inevitably embarrassing as it had been, it was starting to take its toll on her. She should probably get up a bit early tomorrow to do a bit more research and maybe memorize those security plans anyway.